Samsung Goes Big with Galaxy Note 5 and S6 Edge+

Also important is how you charge the phone, and how long the phone takes to charge your battery completely. In typical fashion, the packaging follows after the S6 edge before it – a minimalist box with no pictures or images plastered on it. Rather, we’re just given the phone’s name and a mini-sized specs sheet listing on the back of the box.

Whether the Note 5 will be a significant upgrade, aesthetics aside, will have to wait until August 21st, when the device is released in Canada.

Samsung has made several hardware changes for the new devices, including a faster processor for the Galaxy Note 5 and increasing the screen size of the S6 edge+ to 5.7 inches from 5.1 inches on the S6 edge. The leap here isn’t as big as it was from the Note 3 to 4, but it’s still noticeable.

After five years, Samsung has finally figured out what the Note needs to be: a blank canvas, as accessible and intuitive as the pen and paper it is inspired by.

Another cool feature is the ability to take notes on the screen when it’s turned off. Pull out the S Pen, jot something on the black screen (the digital ink is a white-ish color) and save it if you like. Those numbers are still a few years away from being achieved in Canada – Rogers and Bell just rolled out Cat-6 support – it’s provides a bit of headroom for the future.

This touch interface also ditches the device’s ability to create or extract ZIP-Archives with the Native File Explorer.

“The Note would have been a good fit for Europe’s enterprise market, and if Samsung expects the S6 Edge+ to attract the same business users I don’t believe it will succeed”, commented Francisco Jeronimo from market research firm IDC. You’ll no longer have to choose between convenience and speed. The Note 5, meanwhile, now features a curved back to resemble the S6, with the aim being to fit comfortably in one hand and win over the phablet naysayers. The GS6’s home button double-tap shortcut is here as well. As far as the price of the Galaxy Note 5 is concerned, the 32 GB model is expected to cost $24.67, $30.84 and $37 under Next 24, 18 and 12 plans, respectively.

The first item on our list is clearly the most obvious. The new generation wearable is lighter, its physical design altered to support the new Samsung devices, and should be more comfortable than the first edition.

Right off the bat, the Galaxy S6 Edge+ is a great device, perhaps not in every aspect, but there’s a lot to love here.