If you’re wanting to size up your opinion (and wallet) before Samsung announces in September, you won’t have to wait until IFA 2015 in September to find out. You can now know about the Note 5, two months early.
New images from French tech site nowhereelse.fr show a smartphone that looks like a larger Galaxy S6. The display is one giveaway that we’re dealing with a Note device, not to mention the bottom hole across from the speaker that suggests the S-Pen stylus slot. There’s only one speaker on the bottom, but at least it’s not on the back of the device and subject to easy sound muffling.
The speaker grille and USB port all match Samsung’s current design in the Galaxy S6 and S6 edge, as does the camera, flash, and heart rate sensor, so Samsung’s borrowing its own design language from its current Galaxy S devices for its Note phablet. The USB port matching the Galaxy S6 shouldn’t surprise us, but what it does indicate is that you’d be better off preparing for yet another year without water and dust resistance on a Note device (perhaps a Note Active could come at some point in the near future?).
The build quality matches what we’ve seen in the Galaxy S6 and S6 edge, so you’re looking at aluminum 6013 metal wrapped in Gorilla Glass 4 for the front display and back cover. Gorilla Glass 4 has proven to be durable in 10-feet dropping instances, although torture tests show that even a few, repeated drops from smaller distances can crack the display panel and back glass.
It’s true that we cannot see the back of the device, so we can’t say for sure whether or not it doesn’t sport a microSD card slot. However (and we think this is necessary to mention), the matching S6 language doesn’t bode well for microSD card slot lovers. Samsung removed the coveted microSD slot from the back of the Galaxy S line this year, opting for a new approach to storage with its own UFS 2.0 flash storage that is said to be faster and more secure than Samsung’s trademark microSD card setup.
From what we do know, the Galaxy Note 5 is said to sport a 5.9-inch, Quad HD display with a screen resolution of 2,560 x 1,440 pixels. A rumor claiming that the Note 5 will sport a 4K resolution is still on the table, although we think the Note 5’s similarities to the Galaxy S6 (from the photos themselves) doesn’t bode well for it. Much like the Galaxy S6, the Note 5 will also feature an octa-core, Samsung Exynos processor (numbered differently than the 7420 processor) with 3GB of RAM, 32GB of minimum storage, a 5MP front camera and 16MP back camera (both featuring f/1.8 camera apertures) that should create cinematic-quality photos, and a 4,100mAh battery that should ensure 2-day battery life for most users. The Note 5 will likely run Android Lollipop, seeing that Android M won’t arrive until Google’s Nexus devices are unveiled around October-November.
Samsung will announce the Note 5 at IFA 2015 on September 4th in Berlin, Germany.
What do you think of the Note 5 photos? Are they legit? Should we trust them? If so, does this impact your decision to get what will be the hottest device on the market?
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