Editors Note: This rant was written by the Twitter troll himself, James_C_L. All words and opinions are his and does not reflect the staff of The Tech Ninja team.
The $900 mistake
“Groundbreaking”, “innovating”, “risk-taking”, “mindblowing” (no pun intended). Those are words I “use” to associate with the Samsung Galaxy Note line of devices.
Look, I don’t mind paying a premium for flagship devices. I make a good living and I’m confident that I have earned the right to splurge on a few expensive tech devices every year. That being said, when I reach deep…. and I mean deep into my pockets every year for the “King of Phablets” (I hate that F****** word by the way), I want something in exchange that is going to WOW me.
Beginning with the Galaxy Note 5, Samsung took the approach of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. Where I understand the “playing it safe” angle, those rules have never applied to the Galaxy Note line of devices in the past. The Note line was the one that stood out from the crowd, always toting the latest processor and optics, as well as the largest battery (previously removable F*** YOU Sammy) among Samsung’s flagships.
Last year Samsung conveniently packaged up whatever worked on the S6 and S6 Edge+ then shoved a pen up it’s ass and called it a Note 5. I am not knocking the overall performance, camera or battery life on the Note 5 because I loved the device, I was just disappointed that I once again had to spend $800US on a device that was a rehash of the S-line.
But this year…ohhhhh boy this year. This Note 7 is a whole new animal. Between forcing a “curved only” screen on everyone, to once again packaging up the S7 Edge & ramming that pen in there, Samsung is at it again. This year is special though, this year Samsung had the audacity of jacking up the price to $850US as well as putting a SMALLER BATTERY than the S7 Edge. Wait.. what? The Note has a smaller battery than the S-line devices? Na, that’s impossible couldn’t be, it’s a larger device! Larger? yes.. by .2″ (5.5″ vs 5.7″) but larger is larger right?
I’ve heard unofficially that “Samsung needed room for the S-pen” Oh yea? S6 Edge Plus had the same size screen (5.7″) as the Note 5 but both shared the same 3000mah battery. This year the Note is a larger device with a 100mah smaller battery, unacceptable. On my S7 Edge I average about 6 hours of Screen on time on the 3600mah battery. That comes out to about 60 minutes of screen on time for every 600mah of battery. The Note 7 has a 3500mah battery so mathematically that would come out to 10 minutes less SOT per 60 minutes (don’t worry I did the math right). Unfortunately things just didn’t work out that way. On a good day I can squeeze out 4 hours of SOT, if I am really trying to watch I can get 5 hours (disabling sync, lowering max brightness to 80% via device maintenance app) but why should I have to cripple my device to get a days worth of usage?
I am not even mentioning the whole “flame-gate” debacle because it was so grossly over exaggerated that it made me laugh quite honestly. Did I exchange my device? Yes, why not. I had so many hairline scratches on my “soft as plastic” Gorilla Glass 5 display I was glad to have a mulligan (a do over for you non-golfers)
I should mention I am restricted to the Snapdragon 820 version of the Note 7, not the in-house Exynos processor that the rest of the world gets to enjoy (that’s another rant for another day). I don’t care if it performs faster, runs cooler & battery lasts longer. I’m not importing an Exynos version to the states and lose out on some of the “already shotty” coverage bands T-mobile has to offer.
My advice (and this is coming from a Note fanboy) is you aren’t a S-pen user (unfortunately I am) then save yourself $400 and pick up a mint condition S7 Edge on Swappa. You’ll still get to enjoy the best in class 12mp camera, SD820 processor (but with less lag for some reason), ip68 water resistance, SD card support & QHD Super AMOLED panel, the only thing you’ll be missing out on is drawing d**ks on your co-workers faces with the accuracy only the S-pen can deliver.. something I can’t live without apparently.
Love,