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Note v G4

The Samsung Galaxy Note five is a very dissimilar telephone compared with the Note 4 , but it as well stands apart compared to other flagships. Many of the features Samsung removed from the Note line continue to exist elsewhere, but you won't have quite the same experience. Take the LG G4 as an instance: It's more modular and lighter, simply are the missing software features worth the tradeoff? Let's come across how they stack up.

Blueprint

Samsung and LG are taking fundamentally dissimilar approaches to making smartphones correct now, and y'all tin tell the instant yous choice one up. The Note 5 is a solid slug of metallic and drinking glass, only similar the Galaxy S6. There'due south no flex or give anywhere in its frame, and the drinking glass back, while slippery, feels and looks great. Samsung added a slight curve to the rear glass panel to arrive easier to concur as well.

G4

The LG G4 still relies generally on plastic for the frame and back cover. The device is only a lilliputian smaller than the Annotation 5, simply it's substantially lighter (155g vs 171g). It has a less subjectively "premium" feel because of it, only it can exist more comfortable to use for long periods. LG's stab at a premium design element is the optional leather back cover. It's the aforementioned as the plastic cover, but there's a (very) thin layer or genuine leather stretched over top. It doesn't feel or look equally nice as Motorola's leather backs, but the G4'south backs are removable. And what'southward dorsum in that location? And so many wonderful things.

Note_5_2

LG has equipped the G4 with a removable 3000mAh bombardment and a microSD menu slot behind the dorsum cover. The Notation 5 also has a 3000mAh bombardment, but it'south completely born. There's also no microSD carte slot. The Note 5 too has a wireless charging coil built-in, but LG makes you buy a clunky "Quick Circle" flip case if you want to add wireless charging to the phone.

Samsung has likewise implemented the great touch on-based fingerprint sensor in the home push button from the GS6 on the new Note 5. The LG G4 doesn't take an equivalent hardware characteristic — it uses software nav buttons anyhow. The G4 does accept a cool button layout that makes the phone convenient to use. The book toggle and power push button are in the centre of the back cover, correct below the camera lens. That's right where your alphabetize finger is probable to rest while holding the telephone.

Display

The Annotation 5 uses a five.7-inch Super AMOLED display with a resolution of 2560×1440. It'southward very similar to the brandish on the Galaxy S6, just a lilliputian larger. It's the best screen on a smartphone right at present. There are enough of phones that have good screens, but nothing can touch Samsung'south most contempo AMOLED panels.

LG isn't completely out of the running with the G4. This phone has a slightly smaller 5.5-inch LCD display also at 2560×1440. Information technology's every bit as clear as Samsung's AMOLEDs, but some other qualities are defective. LG did a good task improving the LCD panel in this year's flagship compared to the G3, only you can tell adjacent to an AMOLED that it'south dimmer and less vibrant. This is only how LCD technology behaves at super-high resolution.

G4 display

Samsung is really into curved screens these days, but it's LG that has a curved screen in this comparing. They call it a "quantum display" but let'due south not go crazy. It's a nice high-resolution LCD with a slight elevation-to-lesser bend. I don't think it makes any functional difference, but you can fix the phone confront down on a table without worrying well-nigh the screen being scuffed.

The Note 5'southward big trick is the S pen, which nests neatly in the slot on the bottom of the telephone. The screen contains a special digitizer to take advantage of this stylus. The G4 doesn't have any feature to friction match this, so if you desire stylus input, the Note v is the clear victor. You can utilise a capacitive stylus on any phone, merely the Note'southward version is considerably more authentic and has pressure level sensitivity congenital-in.

Internals

The Galaxy Note five has absolutely top-of-the line specs. In that location's a 64-bit Exynos 7420 SoC, just like the one constitute in the Milky way S6. To say this is a fast ARM chip would exist a spectacular understatement. Information technology destroys everything else in benchmarks, and even performs well in real life. This fleck has a quad-cadre cluster of high-power Cortex-A57 CPUs and a second cluster of four efficient Cortex-A53 cores.

snapdragon

The LG G4 is a bit more modest considering the not-Samsung equivalent of the 7420 is the octa-core Snapdragon 810, which is decumbent to overheating. And so LG went with the Snapdragon 808. This chip has merely ii Cortex-A57 cores and 4 low-ability A53s. On paper it sounds like a disadvantage, but in that location'due south very little performance impact. The G4'south GPU is a little weaker, though. The G4 is probably more stable than it would accept been with the 810 anyway.

Samsung has opted to add another gigabyte of RAM to the Note five, for a total of iv GB. The LG G4 only has 3GB, but these devices will likely utilize that RAM in different ways. If the Annotation 5 behaves like the GS6 (and information technology probably does), apps will be closed in the background faster than they are on the G4 and other devices. That tends to make Samsung'southward phones a little faster in general usage, only slower at multitasking. The RAM management scheme is probably something to do with multi-window mode.

Exynos-7-Octa

Internal storage in the G4 is 32GB in all variants, but you can add a 128GB card for not too much money. It'll be slower, but information technology'southward fine for archiving media or photos. The Note v will come in 32GB and 64GB variants, and that's all the storage yous get. Samsung accidentally listed a 128GB version of the device online last week, just that was an error. Samsung uses incredibly fast UFS 2.0 NAND in the Note 5. In sheer access speed, information technology leaves the G4 in the grit.

Software and Everything Else

Both phones take Android 5.1 right at present, which is the latest version of the Bone for the moment (not for much longer, though). The Note v will have an updated version of Samsung'due south TouchWiz UI layer. TouchWiz used to be pretty terrible, but information technology has improved over time. Samsung has pulled out many of the superfluous features and cleaned up the interface. In fact, I think TouchWiz looks more modernistic these days than LG UX 4.0 on the G4. Samsung only made the transition to Lollipop a trivial better — LG's software looks as well bland by comparison.

air-commandThe system-level alterations fabricated for the South Pen are the main difference between the G4 and Annotation 5. You can pull upwardly Samsung's floating tool console at any time with the stylus to capture a screenshot, take a note, and so on. The G4 has a built-in notation app, but information technology's nada special. Samsung also has a very deep multi-window system in the Note five. LG has a similar feature in the Note 4 (Dual Window), but it'due south not nearly as good.

The Note 5 will rely heavily on the same fingerprint sensor, simply the G4 does at least have a cool software trick that makes it easier to unlock the telephone. Y'all can set a Knock Lawmaking lock method that lets y'all simply tap on the screen in a certain pattern to both wake and unlock the phone in 1 pace. Both phones, of course, support all the standard unlock methods as well.

LG-G4 camera

The Note 5 has a 16MP camera with an f/1.9 lens. That's the same configuration as the GS6, which means it'south very similar to the G4. LG'south device has an 16MP sensor also, only the lens is slightly better at f/i.8. The G4 does very well in low-light situations, and the photographic camera app is incredibly powerful. You lot can tweak the exposure, focus, white balance, ISO, and even capture RAW files. Samsung has some of these more advanced options, only no congenital-in RAW yet. The Annotation v is probable to keep Samsung'due south tradition of astonishing HDR camera operation, though. No other OEM tin can touch Samsung in this department.

Another difference is price. Samsung is asking over $700 for the 32GB Note v, simply LG has been dropping the G4'southward cost in recent weeks to effort and gains some footing on Samsung. You lot can get this telephone for around $450-550 depending on carrier.