At Samsung’s latest Unpacked event in New York, the Korean giant has officially unveiled the Galaxy Note 5, the company’s greatest Note device to date. One of the most notable changes over its predecessor is the S Pen, which has received numerous upgrades. The king of phablets now has a worthy successor.
First, specifications. The Galaxy Note 5 is powered by Samsung’s very own (and very capable) Exynos 7420 processor, which features four Cortex-A57 cores clocked at 2.1GHz and four 1.5GHz Cortex-A53 cores. It also features a 5.7-inch 2560 x 1440 resolution Super AMOLED display, 4GB of RAM, 32GB or 64GB of non-expandable storage, a 16MP rear camera, and a 5MP front-facing shooter.
The battery capacity of the Note 5, on the other hand, is now rated at 3,000mAh – 220mAh less than the Galaxy Note 4. That being said, it still supports Fast Charge, which charges the phablet to full capacity in 90 minutes (or 120 minutes via wireless charging). Other than that, the Note 5 also features Ultra High Quality Audio (UHQ Audio), which upscales compressed audio files up to 24bit/192kHz.
While these are very respectable specifications, the most interesting aspect of the Note 5 lies in the new S Pen. The most obvious new addition is in the spring-release feature, which works just like a ball pen. Press the S Pen in its housing, and a bit of it pops out for you to pull out. In terms of software, Air Command can now be customised to add frequently used apps on top of the default S Pen apps. Other than that, Samsung claims that the Note 5’s S Pen boasts “even more natural handwriting than the Note 4,” which is of course a given. There are other new features as well, such as enhanced Action Memo abilities that let you scribble while the screen is off, and the ability to edit PDF documents using the S Pen.
We have confirmation from Samsung Malaysia that the dual-SIM variant of the Galaxy Note 5 will be made available in Malaysia. Unfortunately, we have not been told yet of the actual launch date here and its retail price.
Alongside the Galaxy Note 5, Samsung also announced the new Galaxy S6 edge+. Read more about it here.
