In the presence of widespread criticism and outright cynicism, Samsung remained the course and helped establish a new category of extra-large smartphone. I will give it the benefit of the doubt, but that only goes so far. The Galaxy Note Edge ($ 870 up front or 24 monthly payments of $ 36.25) is the latest experiment in a long line of one-off figure. While I applaud the infamous break from convention, the eponymous really serves no purpose curved screen Edge should have already. It is essentially a dedicated strip of screen widget always accessible. The Note Edge is otherwise the same phone as the Editors' Choice Galaxy Note 4 so it's not a complete write-off, but you pay a premium to the original for what amounts to a cool tech demo.
Design, Display, and Call Quality
Any discussion of Note Edge revolve around a unique, curved screen, but from every other part, it looks almost identical to the original Note 4. You get the same fake-leather-coated plastic back and metal frame, but the polished chamfering is limited to the front side. Plasticky feel a bit more of me, but assures me this Samsung is made from the same material. At 5.96 by 3.24 by 0.33 inches (HWD) and 6.14 ounces, the Edge Note is shorter and lighter, but noticeably wider than in Note 4. The extra wide and made me anxious about often inadvertently exposed Edge hit the input screen, but palm-rejection works better than expected. The Power button is also moved to the top edge, which I hate, it makes the phone placing the top bunk of frequent re-hitch.
Samsung display lists as a 5.6-inch Quad HD Super AMOLED panel, but requires some further explanation. First, the Quad HD + resolution refers to the flat area of the display, 2560 by 1440 pixels, and the curved edge screen, which adds an extra 160 pixels wide. The 5.6-inch spec refers to the entire display, including the Edge curved screen. In fact, the flat area of the display measures just 5.5-inches diagonally. Depending on where you begin measuring and what elements of the interface shows, increases the extension of the screen Edge another few tenths of an inch, with some overlap in the flat part of the display.
The display quality is still excellent, which corresponds to Note 4 of bright colors and light, but it is noticeably smaller when held side by side, and with a little rainbow refraction inducing actual glass. It is still plenty spacious, but makes you feel like you're using extra-large phone without proportionally extra-large display.
Such as Note 4, supports EDGE Note the full range of T-Mobile GSM, UMTS, and LTE networks. Making strides T-Mobile with its fast LTE network, but it still lags behind Verizon in terms of coverage, as we found in our latest test Fastest Mobile Network. Note also supports EDGE feature booster Download, supplements weaker Wi-Fi with LTE to improve speed. This is useful for spotty Wi-Fi coffee shop, but be aware that it will count towards your data cap. Call quality was good in my test, but nothing to write home about. Earpiece becomes powerful enough to cut through the distractions and shipping via mic is clear and easy to understand. Noise cancellation is not impressive, allowing more noise than the Nexus environment 6. Note Edge supports Wi-Fi calling and T-Mobile HD Voice features.
Battery The Edge Of note is slightly smaller than the Note 4 (3,000mAh to 3,220mAh) and it is technically also driving more pixels, even if the display has a smaller area. On a battery rundown test, in which we streamed a video on YouTube over LTE with the screen brightness set to max, the Notes Edge lasted for 6 hours, 15 minutes. That is still a solid result, but not nearly as wonderful as Note 4 of 7 hours, 56 minutes.