The new Samsung Galaxy Note is here and it is not the Note 6, rather, it is a gorgeous Samsung Galaxy Note 7. Samsung skipped the numbers for obvious reasons – to avoid the confusion buyers had when it came to the Note and S flagships each year.
Now that the confusion is no more, it comes down to the matter of whether or not to upgrade from your current handset to the new Galaxy Note 7. For those of you who skipped the Galaxy Note 5 upgrade for various reasons, you now have another chance to ditch your ageing Samsung Galaxy Note 4 in favor of the new Note 7. To help you make the right decision here is an early look at how the Galaxy Note 7 compares against the 2014 Galaxy Note 4.
Just like the Note 4, Samsung went for a 5.7-inch Super AMOLED display screen for the Galaxy Note 7. You get a design that is a look-alike of the Galaxy S7 Edge, but as usual, the S Pen stylus is there to bring out the Note’s uniqueness. While the Galaxy Note 7 might not have such significant upgrades on the display quality when compared to the Note 4, the fact that it takes a curved dual-edge design makes it a standout. But this only adds to the premium looks the phone already has thanks to the metal and glass build it comes with. You also get a slimmer and more compact design on the Galaxy Note 7 as compared to the Note 4.
While the Galaxy Note 4 might still be able to put on an impressive show, the upgrades of the Galaxy Note 7 in terms of hardware will dwarf what the former has to offer. These include a newer Snapdragon 820/Exynos 8890 SoC and 4GB RAM as compared to the Snapdragon 805/Exynos 5433 SoC and 3GB RAM of the Note 4. It gets even better with the storage as the newer model comes with 64GB and room to expand via a microSD card. You also get a microSD card slot on the Galaxy Note 4, but the onboard storage is stuck at 32GB.
Samsung also made some huge improvements on the cameras. The Galaxy Note 4 has a 16MP snapper on the back and a 3.7MP selfie sensor, all of which are nowhere near the 12MP primary and 5MP secondary cameras on the Galaxy Note 7. In fact, this is the same camera configuration that has made the Galaxy S7 a top-of-the-table phone in 2016. Samsung went further to include IP68 certification on the new handset, which makes it waterproof for up to 1.5 meters depth and for a period of 30 minutes.
One of the nifty additions to the Galaxy Note 7 is the iris scanner. This enables the users to unlock their devices by scanning their eyes instead of fingers, which is the case of the Galaxy Note 4. According to Samsung, this new way of doing things is much more secure than the previous, but still, users of the Note 7 get to use the fingerprint scanner if they feel like.
The Galaxy Note 7 is already available for pre-orders and U.S. shipping is expected to start in two weeks’ time.