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[thoughts] What the S5 needs to do before April 11th to earn my money

Well, THAT happened 10 hours ago........
The launch for the S5 came and my enjoyment faded pretty quickly. You can see from my track record in my signature that I've been a pretty loyal customer of Samsung for quite some time now, and this may be the first Galaxy launch that I won't have a pre-order in the system. Other than stepping away from the Galaxy line to pick up the Atrix 4G, the first mass produced phone with a fingerprint scanner, coincidentally, I've enjoyed only Samsung phones for the last 4 years. The "premium version" of the S5 was supposed to be 5th in line, what with the 20MP camera, metal body, G-Note 3 battery size, 5.25" screen - you've seen it all and read it all, it didn't show up today. Now unless Samsung is about to pull the biggest stunt they've ever pulled, the Unpacked5 event is in the books and we're not getting anything more than what we got today.
Is there any positive that came out of this event? Sure! USB 3.0 is a big thing for me as I have lots of 3.0 gear and want that from my next phone, it's dust and water resistant, cool fingerprint scanner providing it works flawlessly unlike the one on the iThing, updated TouchWiz which (try not to judge) I actually like a little bit, the wearables, the bigger focus on health, better processor, camera, and connectivity, but then comes the let downs, especially for S4 owners. Same 1080p screen at almost the same size, same 2GB of memory, almost the exact same front camera, soon to be the same OS (again, I like TW so I'm sticking it out on 4.3 until the TW 4.4.2 comes out), same plastic body that I don't necessarily mind, but would have appreciated a little change other than just putting dimples in the back cover, and probably worst of all to me, they're offering it in a 16GB format again after what they just did to us who pre-ordered and / or early adopted the S4, sticking us with next to nothing for internal space because they believe everyone has kids and needs to have likely a ton of space dedicated to a kid mode with pre-installed games and crap. I'm single and not looking for that anytime soon!!! It's like they claimed to listen to their customers but only those who are married, have children, want a "modern glam look," whatever the hell that means, and work out enough to bring their phone with them while exercising!
Damn that's a lot of negatives so far. So what can Samsung do between now and launch to earn my money short of releasing their ultra premium version that was supposed to exist but doesn't, and calling this one the S5 Neo? Let's take a look, and please, feel free to help me add to this list!
Ship the phone with an unlocked bootloader - I know, fat chance, right? But if you don't want people complaining about lack of storage, let us kill it off as we see fit! I also know it isn't up to Samsung on this, the carriers are the ones being douchebags about it, but Samsung put their foot down with them previously by stopping them from dictating all the individual revisions when they launched the SIII, making them all the same shape and size, so why can't they force their hand on this in the sake of making even the smallest group of their customers happy - those that truly use the phone for what it was meant for!
Negate the 16GB version - this is obvious, why the hell is this even a thing anymore with Samsung.... just get rid of it if you're not going to slim down this ridiculously large ROM of yours! Ship with the 32GB at minimum and announce the 64GB as well. iThings do this as a standard now, and while iSheep love to keep their music on their device and we have this little thing called external storage and another little thing called Google Music, we don't have to, but seriously, cut the crap and ditch the 16GB model!
Allow us to remove certain features we just aren't going to use, EVER - as I stated already, I don't have kids and don't need a Kids Mode. If you aren't going to let us root the thing AND aren't going to launch it with more than 16GB, let me get rid of the damn Kids Mode. Or the health features. Or anything else I decide useless or unnecessary. When looking at pics of the camera settings on the S5, I'm able to download more features as I see fit - why not make some of this crap downloadable and not don't ship it with the device? Why not make an Aroma-like installer when you first boot it and say "hey, would you like all of this crap or just some of it?" like any PC software does when it installs something - Typical or Custom installation. Sounds like I'm asking for a lot here, but really, I'm asking to not be forced a lot that I really won't use. And before you comment that if I don't need it, don't buy it in the first place, there are so many things I love about my S4 and TouchWiz that I'm not planning to part with in order to have "a phone," my N7 has a purpose and it isn't so I can keep the screen on when I need it just by looking at it. It does great for playing movies on a trip but not for letting me change the channel of my big TV when I want to watch a blockbuster movie....
Ship with at least the S805 processor for crying out loud - if you're not going to blow us away with something new and powerful, at least ship it with the very latest processor this time from Qualcomm. The 800 has been out for months, the 801 is obviously an incremental update over the 800, and the 805 isn't that much better, but at least give us the goods instead of just going along with the same processor found in the N5 and G-Note 3. I don't think we've heard which one for sure will be included, but from what I've read, so far they say it's the 800 or the 801. EDIT - it's the 801, confirmed by Qualcomm....
Include wireless charging in the box - I shouldn't have to say this, wireless charging is now old technology, the SIII had the capability but not the attention or love needed for Samsung to just release the official cover, the S4 cover took 3 months to post online for sale, and with all the competition shipping their phones with it included, why aren't we able to get it without paying $50+ for it? I used a 50% off coupon to get it for $25, but that's $25 more than I should have spent after being let down on a promise that the SIII was supposed to be able to do it on a phone with nearly useless internal storage....
Sell us some legit accessories this time, namely a car dock - I'm always impressed when people recognize me from my review on the only working car dock for the S4 since Samsung decided to screw around with the whole thing and make my Infuse dock useless. It worked on the Skyrocket and SIII, and would have fit the S4 except it wasn't possible to get the thing working properly by charging and outputting dock audio on it, so it's collecting dust in a box right now. Sure, I get it, you want to sell me something new instead of letting me use the same one for my last phone, and that's different than what you are doing (or didn't do?) with the wireless charging cover, but in this situation, you're not even selling me one! The S4 sold tens of millions of devices, did you stop and think that maybe ONE of them would be going in a car and being used for playing music or navigating that owner safely from one place to another?
?
?
?
That's all I got for now, I'm sure we can come up with more and while I highly doubt Samsung is listening to people like me, one of their 200M customers (I'd like to think I counted 4 times for buying 4 iterations of the Galaxy line), there's always a chance someone is listening. I bet they'll listen when they're trying to figure out why the sales figures are going to be monumentally lower this go-round, that's for sure!!!
A note to fanboys of all kinds, Samsung, HTC, Nokia, iThing, etc - let's keep it clean here, please. You haven't heard me bash anyone else here, even Samsung really, so please don't get this thread locked on me. I'm sure you have witty comments like Nokia and HTC have today, with their "Samesung," "Buyers Remose," and even the most original ones like telling me that you're disappointed or this phone is ugly.... As if we haven't seen those comments before. Be original if Samsung isn't, post something relevant to the discussion if you're going to post at all! I don't waste my time on writing this stuff to insult others, so don't do it to insult me. If you were never considering buying it, you don't have any reason to comment on here because nothing you're going to say will come across as helpful to myself or others. If you were considering buying it or even, dare I say switching from another brand, or actually will be buying this phone - let's discuss intelligently your reasons why!
:good:

FM radio..
In Slovenia in past month we have major electric blackdown becouse of mother nature - no internet no nothing.. but FM radio did work.. on my S2 I could still listen what is happening, but on newer device.. bljah.. must have tool which cost them 1 euro cent per device..
Sent from my GT-I9100 using xda app-developers app

I agree with all you say. Particularly about wireless charging, and accessories which get launched with fanfare and then never see the light of day. The other thing they could do is to put one of the new gear items in the box too. That would be a good sweetener. Lol.
Sent from my GT-I9505G using Tapatalk

NO KNOX!!! Or forget about Custom ROMs and warranty.

redzion said:
FM radio..
In Slovenia in past month we have major electric blackdown becouse of mother nature - no internet no nothing.. but FM radio did work.. on my S2 I could still listen what is happening, but on newer device.. bljah.. must have tool which cost them 1 euro cent per device..
Sent from my GT-I9100 using xda app-developers app
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How do you know it doesn't ?

Two points here:
1. I see you are American, and that in the US the carriers **** in their customers' heads when it comes to freedom. The international S4 has an unlocked bootloader, it has been like that since the original S.
2. The Snapdragon 805 isn't available yet, sadly.
And why isn't 2GB of RAM enough? I have 300+ apps here, 9 accounts syncing and available RAM never goes below 700MB.

I'm going to point something out to everyone here that wants Samsung to get rid of security features such as locked bootloaders or Knox.
We are the minority. Do you Expect Samsung to tailor to us and risk the average consumer's information and safety so people can run an AOSP build or a custom kernel?
Ship the phone with an unlocked bootloader - I know, fat chance, right? But if you don't want people complaining about lack of storage, let us kill it off as we see fit! I also know it isn't up to Samsung on this, the carriers are the ones being douchebags about it, but Samsung put their foot down with them previously by stopping them from dictating all the individual revisions when they launched the SIII, making them all the same shape and size, so why can't they force their hand on this in the sake of making even the smallest group of their customers happy - those that truly use the phone for what it was meant for!
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While I'm not excusing the US carriers for doing this, but why do you think they try to steer people away from rooting and unlocking the bootloader? People mess up, brick their phone, and then try to do a warranty claim on them. They're protecting their profits, and as a business you cannot blame them for that. Anyone else here would do the same thing to retain profits. And what do you mean "use the phone for what it was meant for?" The phone is meant to be a mobile multimedia cellular device, which in fact still does on the software it ships with no problem.
Negate the 16GB version - this is obvious, why the hell is this even a thing anymore with Samsung.... just get rid of it if you're not going to slim down this ridiculously large ROM of yours! Ship with the 32GB at minimum and announce the 64GB as well. iThings do this as a standard now, and while iSheep love to keep their music on their device and we have this little thing called external storage and another little thing called Google Music, we don't have to, but seriously, cut the crap and ditch the 16GB model!
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I do agree with this, I don't see too much point of the 16gb version. Still at least gives you a start of 10gb of storage at least.
Allow us to remove certain features we just aren't going to use, EVER - as I stated already, I don't have kids and don't need a Kids Mode. If you aren't going to let us root the thing AND aren't going to launch it with more than 16GB, let me get rid of the damn Kids Mode. Or the health features. Or anything else I decide useless or unnecessary. When looking at pics of the camera settings on the S5, I'm able to download more features as I see fit - why not make some of this crap downloadable and not don't ship it with the device? Why not make an Aroma-like installer when you first boot it and say "hey, would you like all of this crap or just some of it?" like any PC software does when it installs something - Typical or Custom installation. Sounds like I'm asking for a lot here, but really, I'm asking to not be forced a lot that I really won't use. And before you comment that if I don't need it, don't buy it in the first place, there are so many things I love about my S4 and TouchWiz that I'm not planning to part with in order to have "a phone," my N7 has a purpose and it isn't so I can keep the screen on when I need it just by looking at it. It does great for playing movies on a trip but not for letting me change the channel of my big TV when I want to watch a blockbuster movie....
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You can disable features you don't need. But just because you decide a feature you think is useless or unnecessary, does not translate to everyone else will think this too. I like the kids mode feature, I've got kids and nephews that get my phone somehow all the time.(Anyone with kids can attest to that too! ) I'm sure people will love this feature.
Ship with at least the S805 processor for crying out loud - if you're not going to blow us away with something new and powerful, at least ship it with the very latest processor this time from Qualcomm. The 800 has been out for months, the 801 is obviously an incremental update over the 800, and the 805 isn't that much better, but at least give us the goods instead of just going along with the same processor found in the N5 and G-Note 3. I don't think we've heard which one for sure will be included, but from what I've read, so far they say it's the 800 or the 801.
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This is Qualcomm's area right here, ARM cpus are following the development of x86 cpus. Meaning it's reached a point now where development for ARM cores is slowing down, tremendously. We probably won't see any groundbreaking ARM cpu's come out for maybe at least a year or so now, took x86 cpus years to show good and cost effective performance gains.
Include wireless charging in the box - I shouldn't have to say this, wireless charging is now old technology, the SIII had the capability but not the attention or love needed for Samsung to just release the official cover, the S4 cover took 3 months to post online for sale, and with all the competition shipping their phones with it included, why aren't we able to get it without paying $50+ for it? I used a 50% off coupon to get it for $25, but that's $25 more than I should have spent after being let down on a promise that the SIII was supposed to be able to do it on a phone with nearly useless internal storage....
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Now you're just being greedy.
Sell us some legit accessories this time, namely a car dock - I'm always impressed when people recognize me from my review on the only working car dock for the S4 since Samsung decided to screw around with the whole thing and make my Infuse dock useless. It worked on the Skyrocket and SIII, and would have fit the S4 except it wasn't possible to get the thing working properly by charging and outputting dock audio on it, so it's collecting dust in a box right now. Sure, I get it, you want to sell me something new instead of letting me use the same one for my last phone, and that's different than what you are doing (or didn't do?) with the wireless charging cover, but in this situation, you're not even selling me one! The S4 sold tens of millions of devices, did you stop and think that maybe ONE of them would be going in a car and being used for playing music or navigating that owner safely from one place to another?
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I do agree with this, but also at the same time there are 100s of other companies making accessories that Samsung does not make.
Samsung is not going to tailor the phone just for one person or a small group, they're doing it for what they believe are the best choices for their devices. Looking at their track record of the Galaxy line up, I'd say they've got it down pretty good.

Why do u need a 2k screen on a 5" device? It eats battery life, it bogs down cpu and gpu performance for something that your eyes can't notice. I cant even see a pixel on my s4.
Sent from my GT-I9505G using Tapatalk

My wishlist for S5 -Premium
1. 5.2" inches screen in body-size of S4. It's not too hard if they look at LG G2.
2. Radio FM, and playable via loudspeaker.
3. Good camera in low light condition.
4. Smaller bezel, by aluminum.
5. QHD display.
6. Better performed in drop-test, maybe
7. Keep removable battery + external SDcard.
8. Snapdragon 805 or Exynos 64bit octa-cores.
9. Only 1 "main" international version, both have LTE-A, 4K video rec etc...
10. Wireless charging included.
11. Ram 3G
12. At least 32 GB internal memory, like Note 3.
13. Fingerprint inside screen.
14. Max brightness at 600nit, like Note3.
15. Flash Xenon for camera and flash led for Camcorder.
16. 120 fps video recording at 1080p
17. Not too heavy. <150g.
18. Clearer audio recording, noise reduction.
19. Stereo sound on louder speaker like HTC One.
20. A better earphone with improved DAC
21. Sapphire glass for screen and camera lens.
22. Dust and water resistant is good, but I hope it will not affect the bezels.
23. Remove Samsung logo in the front and rear. Just Galaxy.
24. Note 3 fake leather still better than this S5C, or aluminum body.
25. Working, interchangeable for S-pen or any stylus pen, docking, etc
26. Front camera 5MP, rear 18MP
27. Hot plugged battery, SIM and microSD card without restart phone.
28. Include an projector like Galaxy Beam
29. USB 3.1
30. Removable and downloadable all bloatware, Knox, gesture...
31. 3000 mAh battery
32. New flat Touchwiz, it's still ugly.
33. Touchwiz fully runnable in ART and compatible with any pixel density.
34. Free lags, especially open the contacts/dialer must be faster.
35. Dual boot Android & WP, maybe triple with Ubuntu or GPE rom.
36. Update firmware at least 24 months, not like i9300.
37. Not too many versions in worldwide.
38. For some sharing features like Galaxy Beam, Samsung should share this app to works on other Android devices, (now we only have Android Beam).
The same for SS smart watch, smartTV....
39. Still support Adobe flash (it's not SS or GG obligation, but I hope it).
40. Improved airview and air gestures in smarter way than before (Example: hover finger on the links help user preview link, not zooming like now). Open the API for all the sensors function and support the developers to create much good app based on them.

dandroid13 said:
Two points here:
1. I see you are American, and that in the US the carriers **** in their customers' heads when it comes to freedom. The international S4 has an unlocked bootloader, it has been like that since the original S.
2. The Snapdragon 805 isn't available yet, sadly.
And why isn't 2GB of RAM enough? I have 300+ apps here, 9 accounts syncing and available RAM never goes below 700MB.
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When kitkat was being written all the engineers had to use a smart phone with only 512 mb of RAM.
This will be moot tho with TouchWiz which is the most bloated god awful software on Android. 2gb IS enough yet the s4 still suffered from lag.
With the newer processors not being available yet Samsung should have focused on design. They put zero effort into that. This will be their first flop in the galaxy line. And by flop I mean by their standards. It will still sell millions.
Sent from my VS980 4G using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

fernando sor said:
When kitkat was being written all the engineers had to use a smart phone with only 512 mb of RAM.
This will be moot tho with TouchWiz which is the most bloated god awful software on Android. 2gb IS enough yet the s4 still suffered from lag.
With the newer processors not being available yet Samsung should have focused on design. They put zero effort into that. This will be their first flop in the galaxy line. And by flop I mean by their standards. It will still sell millions.
Sent from my VS980 4G using XDA Premium 4 mobile app
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I have minimal lag here, but even Nexus can lag, it's not just TW or Sense.

adichandra said:
Why do u need a 2k screen on a 5" device? It eats battery life, it bogs down cpu and gpu performance for something that your eyes can't notice. I cant even see a pixel on my s4.
Sent from my GT-I9505G using Tapatalk
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Click to collapse
this is so true. people just want a better spec sheet not realizing going above 1080p will actually lower benchmarks particularly with the s800 and 801 being the only SoC available now. To get something you probably wont even notice you will be sacrificing just about everything else performance wise.
---------- Post added at 01:45 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:40 PM ----------
dandroid13 said:
I have minimal lag here, but even Nexus can lag, it's not just TW or Sense.
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Come on It was a pretty common bug on the s4. I have a Samsung tab note 10.1 and it lags considerably.
I've had numerous HTC phones over the years and sense has been toned down quite a bit. sense 3.0 was a system draining nightmare.
I really don't think you can compare a straight android ROM to A samsung rom and say with a straight face this makes no difference on performance or lag.
Just compare the size of a nexus 7 rom to any s4 rom.

fernando sor said:
Come on It was a pretty common bug on the s4. I have a Samsung tab note 10.1 and it lags considerably.
I've had numerous HTC phones over the years and sense has been toned down quite a bit. sense 3.0 was a system draining nightmare.
I really don't think you can compare a straight android ROM to A samsung rom and say with a straight face this makes no difference on performance or lag.
Just compare the size of a nexus 7 rom to any s4 rom.
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Sure, the Note 10.1 is slow, but the problem isn't how light or heavy the ROM is, the lag happens because the Java-based Android Runtime isn't a optimized as iOS, for example.

dandroid13 said:
Sure, the Note 10.1 is slow, but the problem isn't how light or heavy the ROM is, the lag happens because the Java-based Android Runtime isn't a optimized as iOS, for example.
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It's actually dalvik at runtime. Dalvik virtual machine and kitkat is optimized quite well.
When you add a huge amount of code on top of that of course it will change the performance.
Sent from my VS980 4G using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

fernando sor said:
It's actually dalvik at runtime. Dalvik virtual machine and kitkat is optimized quite well.
When you add a huge amount of code on top of that of course it will change the performance.
Sent from my VS980 4G using XDA Premium 4 mobile app
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Sure, but it'll never be as good as iOS or WP, sadly.
Anyway, here's a closer look at the new TW, and, you guys can kill me, but I really like it. http://www.phonearena.com/news/New-...z-what-changed-with-Samsungs-software_id53163

dandroid13 said:
Sure, but it'll never be as good as iOS or WP, sadly.
Anyway, here's a closer look at the new TW, and, you guys can kill me, but I really like it. http://www.phonearena.com/news/New-...z-what-changed-with-Samsungs-software_id53163
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Actually that's a matter of opinion. My nexus 7 2013 and HTC one run as well as any iOS device I've played with. And they're of course other factors such iOS locked down system, boring home screen, no widgets, tiny screen etc.
Sent from my VS980 4G using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

Saw today a tweet from O2. 661 Euro. That is a lot of money. Think I have to pass.

anubius said:
Saw today a tweet from O2. 661 Euro. That is a lot of money. Think I have to pass.
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Damn.

[Q] Finally jumping to the Nexus 6.

Verizon contract is up in a couple weeks so I'm jumping to T-Mobile (costs less) and getting the Nexus 6. I just have a few questions.
Are there any weird quirks with the phone? Anything I won't find out by playing with the phone in store for 10 minutes? Is the phone as powerful as the specs say it is?
I saw some of the older battery life charts in the other thread and they aren't terrible. Is battery life still decent? I'm looking for 4-5+ hours of screen-on time ideally.
Does the "quick charger" that comes with it work well?
Tl;dr Do you recommend the phone?

It's a loaded post, which is why a lot of views, but nary a reply.
However ....
Your title to me is better than jumping on a N6, which could be disastrous to the phone.
If you have looked over the threads, you'll get varying opinions, and mostly IMO it depends on two things:
What they had/came from
What they expect out of the N6.
I will only speak for myself; I came from a VZ GNex I hung onto for 3 years - anything I may have gone to would be a worthy HW upgrade, however I want to tweak my phone when I'm ready to, and that means a Nexus.
I love the phone, it was a bit of a letdown, as I was already running 5.0 on my GNex, so the experience was to a larger, faster smoother phone than what I had. Other than that, I'm loving every minute of having it, plain and simple.
I have one other person who transitioned to one, and he loves it as well.
I'm not going to tell you to get it, you have to go play with it and decide for yourself.
To your specific questions:
quirks - no more so than any other phone, I haven't found any yet myself - most who post I think have to do with not knowing what they set in Lollipop, I've already had it for a bit, so I'm used to it.
Yup, its fast and powerful, whether or not you decide to go unencrypted is up to you, which goes to what you had and what you expect - are you going to unlock root, mod? You can enjoy this phone for quite a bit of time before maybe even needing a reason to go mod it.
Personally, I haven't yet, nor have a lot of members here (check the what rom are you running on VZ thread) because again, I haven't (other than wanting to change my softkeys) had a good reason (to me) to invest the time to do it.
I'm sure it will happen, but not right now. right now I'm just enjoying the hell out of having it.
Batt time is always subjective, whether or not we care to admit it. No two devices are going to run the same, have the same app load outs, some have different memory it appears, and some may actually (gasp) have a bad batt on arrival.
Mine has ran terrific (remember again - what I had and what I expect), and the QC runs great to recharge if need be. I can say that I love not worrying about the batt right now on it daily, but that's for me and my usage.

Battery is fine and its quick. The fast charger works well. I'm not really a fan of them but its what it comes with. I came from a m8 which was a nice device but I like this one better.

Raikalo said:
Tl;dr Do you recommend the phone?
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My wife and I jumped from Sprint to T-Mobile, handing off our Evo 4G's when the Nexus 6 was released, and wouldn't look back. The Nexus 6 has been nothing short of awesome... the camera, speed, screen, everything - is awesome. We keep ours in thick iBlason "Armorbox" cases, and still enjoy our QI charging (I'm unsure how QI isn't a requirement in modern phones these days!). A lot of friends complained about the size, but those that got it anyway, ended up "getting over it" and now won't go back to the smaller screens, heh! It still fits nicely in my (male) jean pockets -- with the large case -- but you'd be hard-pressed to get it safely in female pockets (sorry ladies... you're not allowed to put stuff in the pockets!).
Quirks: one big thing jumped out at me, but isn't a big deal for most. The phone does have built-in RGB LEDs that sit underneath the top speaker, yet, they chose to block access to this functionality. I guess they reused the underlying board but didn't want the LEDs, but nonetheless, they are invaluable to me: I enjoy knowing if I have something waiting for me *without* having to look at the screen - whether while in bed, sitting on the desk, riding the bike, etc.! The plus, you can get at these LEDs if you're rooted. So... if that's possibly desirable to you, I'd recommend unlocking the phone as soon as you get it, so you can avoid the data wipe down the road. The Lightflow app can handle them quite well (though I believe it requires the "Pro" version, for a couple bucks). ...and as of now, the LEDs are "on or off" - no flashing... but hey, I'll take what I can get!
Oh, and not really related to the phone itself, but a Google-Nexus 6 quirk -- quite annoying at the time, for me -- Google's "My Tracks" app was broken for awhile (unable to acquire the GPS signal). There are a gazillion alternatives out there, but I'd been a long-time daily user of the app, and Google broke it!...for months. It was disappointing that they would break core app functionality on their *current* flagship device, for their own app, and choose to ignore it for such a long time. I think the 5.1 update fixed whatever problem they had, but that was a pet peeve.. On the plus side, I've enjoyed the feature-rich alternatives that I was forced to explore, ha!
We haven't messed with de-crypting ourselves, as the phones are super-duper-fast as-is, but we love them. These are our introduction to the Nexus world, and we love the fact that they no-bars-hold permit unlocking, and that the updates are, of course, front line.
Tl;dr I highly recommend the phone! Phone size is the only recurring complaint among friends.

Thank you everyone for the replies. Yes, battery life is subjective ...so long as most of the reviews say the battery is good enough, that's all I care about. First-hand reviews from users are always the best because I know everyone isn't just trying to sell me a phone . As far as the LEDs being unusable when not rooted, that isn't a big deal for me. My current phone (Razr Maxx HD, xt926 verizon) has the LEDs and fantastic battery life through various mods, but is simply not cutting it anymore for what I need. I've never heard of the My Tracks app, so I guess it's a good thing since I didn't know it was broken lol.
This will be my first Nexus phone... I have the Nexus 7 (2012) tablet that is currently running CM12 nightlies, so I'm familiar with the "Nexus experience" and Lollipop already. I like it quite a bit, but it did take a little getting used to. I was very much planning on unlocking and rooting the N6 immediately, but I'll play with it a bit and enjoy the stock experience first.
@vormund Do you like T-Mobile, now that you switched from Sprint?
@RW-1 Can you explain the encryption you're talking about a little more? This is the first I've heard of it.
Again, thanks everyone for the replies. I'm pretty much sold on the phone at this point.

Raikalo said:
Thank you everyone for the replies. Yes, battery life is subjective ...so long as most of the reviews say the battery is good enough, that's all I care about. First-hand reviews from users are always the best because I know everyone isn't just trying to sell me a phone . As far as the LEDs being unusable when not rooted, that isn't a big deal for me. My current phone (Razr Maxx HD, xt926 verizon) has the LEDs and fantastic battery life through various mods, but is simply not cutting it anymore for what I need. I've never heard of the My Tracks app, so I guess it's a good thing since I didn't know it was broken lol.
This will be my first Nexus phone... I have the Nexus 7 (2012) tablet that is currently running CM12 nightlies, so I'm familiar with the "Nexus experience" and Lollipop already. I like it quite a bit, but it did take a little getting used to. I was very much planning on unlocking and rooting the N6 immediately, but I'll play with it a bit and enjoy the stock experience first.
@vormund Do you like T-Mobile, now that you switched from Sprint?
@RW-1 Can you explain the encryption you're talking about a little more? This is the first I've heard of it.
Again, thanks everyone for the replies. I'm pretty much sold on the phone at this point.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am currently using MeanPop 2.11 on my Nexus 6 and it has a blinking LED light for notifications, a blinking red light for while your phone is charging and a green light for when the device is fully charged. I had the phone a couple of hours tops before I rooted it, so I can't really provide an opinion on the device out of the box. My brother is using a non-rooted Nexus 6 and he loves it as well. We both came from the Note Edge, but enjoy the Nexus 6 more than any device we have used up to this point. Out of the box, the device is encrypted (which some people have stated that their performance suffered compared to being unencrypted). You can easily unlock the phone and decrypt it. There is a solid guide for this in the development section. If you have any questions, feel free to PM me or ask them here and I'll assist where I can.

slimc84 said:
I am currently using MeanPop 2.11 on my Nexus 6 and it has a blinking LED light for notifications, a blinking red light for while your phone is charging and a green light for when the device is fully charged. I had the phone a couple of hours tops before I rooted it, so I can't really provide an opinion on the device out of the box. My brother is using a non-rooted Nexus 6 and he loves it as well. We both came from the Note Edge, but enjoy the Nexus 6 more than any device we have used up to this point. Out of the box, the device is encrypted (which some people have stated that their performance suffered compared to being unencrypted). You can easily unlock the phone and decrypt it. There is a solid guide for this in the development section. If you have any questions, feel free to PM me or ask them here and I'll assist where I can.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That solves the LED issue. I will probably decrypt the device since I don't know why I would need it encrypted. Thank you. I will definitely message you with any questions, but I won't have the phone until closer to the end of April (24th or so), so it will be a bit yet. I'm just glad the phone is shaping up to be as great as I am expecting it to be.
Out of curiosity, what are the benefits of leaving the phone encrypted?

Raikalo said:
@vormund Do you like T-Mobile, now that you switched from Sprint?
@RW-1 Can you explain the encryption you're talking about a little more? This is the first I've heard of it..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
T-Mobile has been equal-to-or-better than Sprint in Tucson, AZ... their customer service is dreadful (store reps are absolutely useless), but if you're persistent, you usually come out alright - which I'm happy to do with the difference in cost (+$10 to join my sister's plan versus $30+ for Sprint's split... among the other (contract, discount, etc.) considerations! Data is hit-or-miss on the outskirts of the city, but so is Sprint (and ATT)...Verizon seems to have solid service out there, though...(then again, you pay for it!)...
Data speeds are almost always slower when compared to Verizon (a friend with Verizon did some speed tests with me...we're both usually LTE, but he'd consistently get 3-4x faster speeds...this probably varies greatly by locale and their networks), but it's sufficient for me. If you're one to watch Netflix or download a ton, it'll probably be quite the downgrade.. but me - I'm on wireless for any big data usage, so network-wise, I'm just mapping, a little music streaming, geo tracking and such.
Encryption: For the extra paranoid or those with ultra-sensitive information on their phones, perhaps?
I suspect it would make things a little more difficult for law enforcement, too... depending on backdoors and such? Actually, yeah, that looks to be the case!
After seeing the speed comparisons, I'd definitely switch over now, even though the phone is fast-as-can-be as it is, ha. One of these days maybe... but for now, it's a few more minutes in a already-crazy day.
slimc84 said:
I am currently using MeanPop 2.11 on my Nexus 6 and it has a blinking LED light for notifications...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks great to know, thanks for the info! +1 for a custom ROM. I think the reason Lightflow can't do it directly - with rooted stock - as it'd have to keep the phone awake. There well may be ways around that by now... I just wish they'd enable direct access without (there's just no good reason to take away a hardware feature... disabled by default, but come on! ).

vormund said:
T-Mobile has been equal-to-or-better than Sprint in Tucson, AZ... their customer service is dreadful (store reps are absolutely useless), but if you're persistent, you usually come out alright - which I'm happy to do with the difference in cost (+$10 to join my sister's plan versus $30+ for Sprint's split... among the other (contract, discount, etc.) considerations! Data is hit-or-miss on the outskirts of the city, but so is Sprint (and ATT)...Verizon seems to have solid service out there, though...(then again, you pay for it!)...
Data speeds are almost always slower when compared to Verizon (a friend with Verizon did some speed tests with me...we're both usually LTE, but he'd consistently get 3-4x faster speeds...this probably varies greatly by locale and their networks), but it's sufficient for me. If you're one to watch Netflix or download a ton, it'll probably be quite the downgrade.. but me - I'm on wireless for any big data usage, so network-wise, I'm just mapping, a little music streaming, geo tracking and such.
Encryption: For the extra paranoid or those with ultra-sensitive information on their phones, perhaps?
I suspect it would make things a little more difficult for law enforcement, too... depending on backdoors and such? Actually, yeah, that looks to be the case!
After seeing the speed comparisons, I'd definitely switch over now, even though the phone is fast-as-can-be as it is, ha. One of these days maybe... but for now, it's a few more minutes in a already-crazy day.
Thanks great to know, thanks for the info! +1 for a custom ROM. I think the reason Lightflow can't do it directly - with rooted stock - as it'd have to keep the phone awake. There well may be ways around that by now... I just wish they'd enable direct access without (there's just no good reason to take away a hardware feature... disabled by default, but come on! ).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
A wakelock is triggered with the flashing LED even in the custom Rom (burns 1-2% per hour that the LED is flashing). It's definitely worth having though. The ROM is solid and I haven't had a single issue with it yet.

After reading the benchmarking for encryption vs decryption, I'm definitely decrypting the phone when I get it. I'm not overly worried about the LEDs (does seem weird though that it's not like all of the other android phones I've had, where they just work, regardless of ROM). I'm in the middle of the East Coast where (according to coverage maps) 4G is more available, so I'll definitely run some speed tests and see how T-mobile's data speeds stack up on this side of the country. I really just need a fast browser with good, stable internet speeds. I won't complain if it's faster than 3G.

Worth the Upgrade?

Forgive me members for I have sinned... It's been far too long since I popped a SIM in my OnePlus One
I've been using my iPhone 6+ exclusively for months now for a few reasons I'm hoping to have answered here by real-world users. I'm no stranger to Android, but I have fallen in a bad groove with iOS and just settling :/
I use the camera a lot. Not for anything super special, but I'm able to take FAST photos when I need it. Hit the button, and it's saved and done in under a second. Sharp, accurate... but tiny at 8mp on a 1080p screen. I've looked at samples of the Note 5 camera, and the quality is good, but how is the speed of the stock camera app? I don't want to have to wait 2-4 seconds before I can regain use of the camera again, nor have to wait 2 seconds for it to take a photo.
Is the built-in email worth using? I have gmail for my personal email, but my company is stuck on a 2003 exchange server and I'm forced to use a generic "email" client on phones I switch to. I need to be able to set priority on outgoing, and flag/star emails. (Everything else I need should be baked into any email client at this point... BCC, attachments, custom sig) Not a huge deal if it's not good... I can use CloudMagic if needed.
It's been a while since I even gave a Samsung phone a glance, but last time I did, screen-burning was a big issue... Is this still a problem anymore with the newer screens? I'm a fan of auto-brightness, but I input text a lot, and rarely change keyboards. I don't want to find out in a year that my screen has been burned beyond repair
Any help with these would be greatly appreciated. If I like what i'm hearing, I'll be going to T-Mobile this weekend to pick this up!
Thanks all

Hers is a camera speed and quality comparison between the 6s plus and the Note 5, I would say the camera is fast, probably not that fast as iphone but you will get better quality photos with the Note 5
http://www.phonearena.com/reviews/Apple-iPhone-6s-Plus-vs-Samsung-Galaxy-Note5_id4095/page/3
As for emails, you can use the built in email client or download any other from the play store that will do more than you want.
I'm not sure about the screen burning but my guess is that it was more of a concern with the unrealistic and inaccurate Amoled popping colors in the previous generations. The first thing I do is that I switch screen mode to basic as it provides accurate colors and I guess will reduce the probability of screen burning.
Hope it helps.

Liskrig said:
Forgive me members for I have sinned... It's been far too long since I popped a SIM in my OnePlus One
I've been using my iPhone 6+ exclusively for months now for a few reasons I'm hoping to have answered here by real-world users. I'm no stranger to Android, but I have fallen in a bad groove with iOS and just settling :/
I use the camera a lot. Not for anything super special, but I'm able to take FAST photos when I need it. Hit the button, and it's saved and done in under a second. Sharp, accurate... but tiny at 8mp on a 1080p screen. I've looked at samples of the Note 5 camera, and the quality is good, but how is the speed of the stock camera app? I don't want to have to wait 2-4 seconds before I can regain use of the camera again, nor have to wait 2 seconds for it to take a photo.
Is the built-in email worth using? I have gmail for my personal email, but my company is stuck on a 2003 exchange server and I'm forced to use a generic "email" client on phones I switch to. I need to be able to set priority on outgoing, and flag/star emails. (Everything else I need should be baked into any email client at this point... BCC, attachments, custom sig) Not a huge deal if it's not good... I can use CloudMagic if needed.
It's been a while since I even gave a Samsung phone a glance, but last time I did, screen-burning was a big issue... Is this still a problem anymore with the newer screens? I'm a fan of auto-brightness, but I input text a lot, and rarely change keyboards. I don't want to find out in a year that my screen has been burned beyond repair
Any help with these would be greatly appreciated. If I like what i'm hearing, I'll be going to T-Mobile this weekend to pick this up!
Thanks all
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You'll be happy with a Note 5 honestly. In terms of the camera, I take rapid photos with mine all the time without issues. There's also a double tap home button function that takes maybe 1.5 seconds to pull the camera up and focus from any screen, even when the screen is turned off. My wife loves using my Note 5 for pictures over her LG G4.
Screen burn in hasn't been a thing for quite some time now. There is however, still the issue of shading that occurs on all AMOLED displays when on dark images, or scrolling a dark Web page. I think the Note 5 and S6 do the best to avoid that issue, but it does happen slightly. It's just not as visible.
Auto brightness is awesome on the Note 5 as well. There's an "over bright" function that kicks in automatically when the sun shines directly on the screen, or when you're in a very bright area (outside). It's awesome, and to me, can be a little overkill even in direct sunlight. Lol. It's a great feature though.
No SD like iPhone, but that's not an issue as we have cloud storage for dayz! Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox.....it goes on.
Sent from my SM-N920T using Tapatalk

Jammol said:
You'll be happy with a Note 5 honestly. In terms of the camera, I take rapid photos with mine all the time without issues. There's also a double tap home button function that takes maybe 1.5 seconds to pull the camera up and focus from any screen, even when the screen is turned off. My wife loves using my Note 5 for pictures over her LG G4.
Screen burn in hasn't been a thing for quite some time now. There is however, still the issue of shading that occurs on all AMOLED displays when on dark images, or scrolling a dark Web page. I think the Note 5 and S6 do the best to avoid that issue, but it does happen slightly. It's just not as visible.
Auto brightness is awesome on the Note 5 as well. There's an "over bright" function that kicks in automatically when the sun shines directly on the screen, or when you're in a very bright area (outside). It's awesome, and to me, can be a little overkill even in direct sunlight. Lol. It's a great feature though.
No SD like iPhone, but that's not an issue as we have cloud storage for dayz! Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox.....it goes on.
Sent from my SM-N920T using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I appreciate the detailed reply! As you can see from my phones I currently have, I personally don't care about SD storage, and I haven't had a phone with a removable battery since the Galaxy Nexus so I've learned to deal. I checked out the link that @samitro provided, and the difference of 1.93 to 2.1 seconds is all the change I will be experiencing... So basically, it will be the same as far as I am used to

Liskrig said:
I appreciate the detailed reply! As you can see from my phones I currently have, I personally don't care about SD storage, and I haven't had a phone with a removable battery since the Galaxy Nexus so I've learned to deal. I checked out the link that @samitro provided, and the difference of 1.93 to 2.1 seconds is all the change I will be experiencing... So basically, it will be the same as far as I am used to
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Good to hear. Glad we were able to help. Will you be rooting it and such when you get one?

Jammol said:
Good to hear. Glad we were able to help. Will you be rooting it and such when you get one?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Depends... I'm jumping to T-Mobile when I get it, but I have a weird process when I root a phone.
Usually I will go 100% lock & stock UNTIL I find something that I just can't stand (bloat, battery, audio) but if I do root, I look for a stock ROM (or just keep the stock one) and modify it on the phone to remedy the issues I find. I haven't owned a Samsung since the Galaxy Nexus (not really a Samsung phone) and what I am reading about KNOX kinda scares me lol. T-Mobile doesn't really have too much junk on their carrier phones, but it is still there, and it still bugs me. I'm kinda worried about battery life, but I have read a lot here about how to save it sans root access.

Liskrig said:
Depends... I'm jumping to T-Mobile when I get it, but I have a weird process when I root a phone.
Usually I will go 100% lock & stock UNTIL I find something that I just can't stand (bloat, battery, audio) but if I do root, I look for a stock ROM (or just keep the stock one) and modify it on the phone to remedy the issues I find. I haven't owned a Samsung since the Galaxy Nexus (not really a Samsung phone) and what I am reading about KNOX kinda scares me lol. T-Mobile doesn't really have too much junk on their carrier phones, but it is still there, and it still bugs me. I'm kinda worried about battery life, but I have read a lot here about how to save it sans root access.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I like your system. That's the one I use personally as well. I will say that the one thing that will be annoying really quickly is the T-Mobile system app/process adapt.app. It's what they use to root checking or any kind of custom modification of the device. Even when you're not modified though, it'll sit there and pull root access and constantly scan your device, sucking up battery. It's more invasive now on the newest LP build, and on the MM beta that was leaked.
Don't worry about battery on the Note 5. It is surprisingly really good what they were able to pull off on only 3000mAh. You can pretty much freeze most bloat even without root. There's also a thread here for debloating without root using a script that goes undetected.
As far as knox is concerned. Don't root if you plan on using Samsung Pay. Once you modify the kernel, or root the device, the efuse is blown and your knox counter will forever be tripped. Even though you can go back to pure stock, knox will still be tripped and Samsung Pay will never work. There is NO work around.
I love the Note 5. I was skeptical about it because I had a Note 4, but I am glad I got it. It is an upgrade for me over the Note 4. I'll say the one thing I don't like about the Note 5, is that it's not very hand friendly at night when you're on the phone laying in bed, lol.

Awesome camera, fast, no lag... But, full of bloat, unknown battery drain, less settings about some properties!
worth to upgrade?
From Note 2 - No
From Note 3 - Buy a note 2!
From note 4 - Wait for note 6!
From iphone- At least i can flash custom rom and kernel! but it is not an upgrade huh??!

umudeus said:
Awesome camera, fast, no lag... But, full of bloat, unknown battery drain, less settings about some properties!
worth to upgrade?
From Note 2 - No
From Note 3 - Buy a note 2!
From note 4 - Wait for note 6!
From iphone- At least i can flash custom rom and kernel! but it is not an upgrade huh??!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I appreciate the reply, but I don't think I could go back to a 2012 phone for my needs I'm glad you found a device that is working for you though

Liskrig said:
I appreciate the reply, but I don't think I could go back to a 2012 phone for my needs I'm glad you found a device that is working for you though
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Actually i have a note 5 and i am a tired user who wait for marshmallow update. Hi five samsung!!!
Sent from my SM-N920G using Tapatalk

umudeus said:
Actually i have a note 5 and i am a tired user who wait for marshmallow update. Hi five samsung!!!
Sent from my SM-N920G using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, Marshmallow is nice. I got the OTA from Google for my Nexus 5 and I really enjoyed it. Hopefully Samsung will be open to using a lot of the features already present instead of baking them out.

AT&T Galaxy S6 Delayed Notifications

I'm currently rocking a galaxy s6, but I'm having a lot of delayed notifications issues with it. (i.e I receive a text message or gmail email but don't actually get notified until I open the app or like 2 hours later). I've tried factory resetting the phone, att support, google support, and Samsung support. I also tired messing around with the battery optimization, syncing interval for gmail, and a few other things but I cannot get it to fix the issue. Thus, I'm hoping someone here has an idea of what else there is to try or if all else fails, phone recommendations. Though, I'd rather try to fix the issues rather than buy a new phone.
In terms of phones, normally, I would probably go with the s8, but I'm having second thoughts on this phone because of my s6 issues. I was also considering a oneplus 5. What do you guys think?

riahim said:
I'm currently rocking a galaxy s6, but I'm having a lot of delayed notifications issues with it. (i.e I receive a text message or gmail email but don't actually get notified until I open the app or like 2 hours later). I've tried factory resetting the phone, att support, google support, and Samsung support. I also tired messing around with the battery optimization, syncing interval for gmail, and a few other things but I cannot get it to fix the issue. Thus, I'm hoping someone here has an idea of what else there is to try or if all else fails, phone recommendations. Though, I'd rather try to fix the issues rather than buy a new phone.
In terms of phones, normally, I would probably go with the s8, but I'm having second thoughts on this phone because of my s6 issues. I was also considering a oneplus 5. What do you guys think?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I went from s6 to Moto z Play, and very happy. I'm definitely staying away from carrier branded / locked down phones from here on out (I like having the option to unlock/root, even though I'm still bone stock locked with the MZP).
I had also considered the OP3T at the time. If I were in your shoes, I'd go OnePlus 5.

dandrumheller said:
I went from s6 to Moto z Play, and very happy. I'm definitely staying away from carrier branded / locked down phones from here on out (I like having the option to unlock/root, even though I'm still bone stock locked with the MZP).
I had also considered the OP3T at the time. If I were in your shoes, I'd go OnePlus 5.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nice. One of my friends has the Moto z Play and he loves it. Says the battery life is fantastic too. When did you make the switch from the s6 to the moto and how much did you pay for it?

riahim said:
Nice. One of my friends has the Moto z Play and he loves it. Says the battery life is fantastic too. When did you make the switch from the s6 to the moto and how much did you pay for it?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Switched the very end of last year. Paid $350 outright through republic wireless, and got 6 months of service from them for free (I had to pay $2.xx a month for taxes) with unlimited call and text, and 1gb high speed data. It was a great chance to try another carrier (obviously I have ATT since I'm here). I carried both plans - republic is great, but they use T-Mobile network, which sucks a lot of places I go, so I always carried both Sims. I use gvoice for all calls, so doing numbers didn't impact people calling me. I do typically use considerably more than 1gb a month of data as well, and the bigger data bucket republic plans aren't much cheaper than my part of a 3 line 15gb plan on ATT.
Phone itself is a huge improvement over the S6. It has taken somewhat of a hit in battery life as it's upgraded from Marshmallow to Nougat. Originally I was easily seeing 8+ hour screen on times in a day, out I could go 36 hours off charger with maybe 5h SoT. Since the upgrades it's gotten a little worse - probably 6h SoT in a day. Some people say a factory reset will restore the old battery life - if I get time to set the phone back up I might try this, but I still have never killed it in a single day, and can count on one hand the number of times I've ever plugged it in before going to bed. Performance for any of the apps I use is on par or better than the s6. It's not quite as blazingly fast as the 800 series chipped flagships, but in normal use it's not noticable to me.
Only downside is the camera. It's probably ok in terms of competition at this price point, but it is a significant, almost always noticable downgrade from the S6. This bothers me a little more than I thought it would (I knew it wasn't a great camera going in) and I will be giving a good camera more priority in my next phone purchase.
Hope that helps... Sorry for the wall of text!

dandrumheller said:
Switched the very end of last year. Paid $350 outright through republic wireless, and got 6 months of service from them for free (I had to pay $2.xx a month for taxes) with unlimited call and text, and 1gb high speed data. It was a great chance to try another carrier (obviously I have ATT since I'm here). I carried both plans - republic is great, but they use T-Mobile network, which sucks a lot of places I go, so I always carried both Sims. I use gvoice for all calls, so doing numbers didn't impact people calling me. I do typically use considerably more than 1gb a month of data as well, and the bigger data bucket republic plans aren't much cheaper than my part of a 3 line 15gb plan on ATT.
Phone itself is a huge improvement over the S6. It has taken somewhat of a hit in battery life as it's upgraded from Marshmallow to Nougat. Originally I was easily seeing 8+ hour screen on times in a day, out I could go 36 hours off charger with maybe 5h SoT. Since the upgrades it's gotten a little worse - probably 6h SoT in a day. Some people say a factory reset will restore the old battery life - if I get time to set the phone back up I might try this, but I still have never killed it in a single day, and can count on one hand the number of times I've ever plugged it in before going to bed. Performance for any of the apps I use is on par or better than the s6. It's not quite as blazingly fast as the 800 series chipped flagships, but in normal use it's not noticable to me.
Only downside is the camera. It's probably ok in terms of competition at this price point, but it is a significant, almost always noticable downgrade from the S6. This bothers me a little more than I thought it would (I knew it wasn't a great camera going in) and I will be giving a good camera more priority in my next phone purchase.
Hope that helps... Sorry for the wall of text!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Awesome! Thank you very much for the review, it's really helpful. For me, probably the most important aspects of a phone are:
1. Reliability in terms of calls, texts, notifications, etc
2. Battery
3. Camera
4. Performance
5. All the other neat tricks and features (fingerprint sensor, water resistant/proof, etc)
I really did like my galaxy s6 until it stopped reliably being a phone. I don't know what the issue is but I can't seem to fix it so I guess I need a new phone. Though, everything else is still working great (with the exception of the battery, but that's expected from a 2 year phone).
I'm really tempted to get the oneplus 5, but at $500 it's on the fence for me. Also, I can get a s8 for around that price and the s8 seems to be a better phone overall, but... I really don't want to go with Samsung again and risk the delayed notifications.
I apologize for my rambling. Thanks again for your input!

riahim said:
Awesome! Thank you very much for the review, it's really helpful. For me, probably the most important aspects of a phone are:
1. Reliability in terms of calls, texts, notifications, etc
2. Battery
3. Camera
4. Performance
5. All the other neat tricks and features (fingerprint sensor, water resistant/proof, etc)
I really did like my galaxy s6 until it stopped reliably being a phone. I don't know what the issue is but I can't seem to fix it so I guess I need a new phone. Though, everything else is still working great (with the exception of the battery, but that's expected from a 2 year phone).
I'm really tempted to get the oneplus 5, but at $500 it's on the fence for me. Also, I can get a s8 for around that price and the s8 seems to be a better phone overall, but... I really don't want to go with Samsung again and risk the delayed notifications.
I apologize for my rambling. Thanks again for your input!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No notification issues for me on MZP.
I was skeptical of the "long touch on FP sensor to turn off screen" feature I was reading about when doing research, but now I think it is complete genius from Moto. I almost never touch the power button. Every phone should have this feature, I'm not sure id be willing to go without it. And the MZP fingerprint sensor is TONs better than the s6

This will be my first Samsung in a while

here's the minireview (after i bought it so late, knowing there's no Note21 coming, and written some summary about rooting):
Looks: who cares, it's hidden in the case, every phone nowadays looks the same. Thou naked, Note10 is the hottest phone, and this one looks similar to it. How does it help? You can enjoy it on the internet, like a window shopper. Your ugly case will decide its fate! For truly unique look,. get a foldable.
Body: heavy as hell, what can I say. Ultraultrathin case on the way to compensate. You have three choices: X-Level case, pitaka case, or give up. I miss the Bixby button to program it in Xposed Edge and there's no Lockdown option anywhere. On 1+ I could use unique wakelock geatures or unique fingerprint menu to trigger some stuff. Here there's no immediate shortcuts unfortunately.
Battery: hesitated for a month reading horror stories about battery. With A11, root, usual wakelocks (AOD, dt2wake, raise2wake), bluetooth & location tracking & VPN running nonstop and 1:1 data and 200 apps as on all past phones, and even without 1+ aggressive RAM cleanup, i must claim the battery is fantastic on Exynos. 3 days easy with my relaxed usage, which is just like OnePlus 6-7-8 I used to have.
Charging: pretty fast for a single battery. You saw the results on gsmarena. Not bad for an emergency topup. Highly compatible with many chargers (unlike 1+). Of course it can't match 8T or 1+9 speed, but very close to 8Pro. But you have tons of chargers around the world at your disposal. Shame on 1+ for this "Apple" type of strategy. In my huge collection of cables and USB testers I have just one of each which supports "Warp". I charged each 1+ at 8W thanks to this as I refuse proprietary methods. Still I did have their Qi charger to celebrate the addition of Qi, and interestingly Note20 won't charge from it.
Fingerprint: better than S10, potentially faster than Oneplus, however it's killed by a massive sluggish response to unlocking. Simply put, finger is recognized very fast but then there's a huge delay til screen is unlocked or app accepts it!
Camera: took an hour to carefully analyze few pics made in the same place, under 2x zoom I couldn't fault it and only found issues on 1+ side. The 1+ 8Pro, which is my reference flagship of 2020, featured issues: yellow tint, massive hair artifacts which look like compression, massive transition artifacts (like a botched Bokeh on a picture which is not even portrait mode!), less detail in each pic, lot of extra noise, highlight clipping. On the other side, this Note didn't have any issue. I'm bit shocked, i expected more balanced battle. Not like 10:0 for Samsung. It's just one mode tested: AUTO on main camera. Nothing else matters because thats how pics are made by people (that's what Xperia owners don't get: "but but you need to use the Pro mode" ). I don't make pics, but i can see the phone will be inheritable within family very easily as they love cameras.
Software: bloated into oblivion, had a lot of work with the guide so expect some serious time burnt on debloating this monster as 1+ owners laugh into your face. Rooting and updating will be only with cable and via Odin, as you can't even enter recovery and DL mode without PC anymore. So the sd card will not save your arse when abroad. However unlocking bootloader is without "agreement", so the warranty is still valid in EU. As bragged earlier, lot of functionality forces you to login and the account demands even your phone number aaaaand I couldn't even fake email and phone! They're so dedicated to capture your real identity so it's best to stay logged out. Even the frikking wallpapers which are ugly this season cannot be changed. But on the other side, the OneUI OS gives you way more than bland 1+ or Xperias, there's always some extra for you. Like the hints in Settings, one hand use, the SmartStay, the cool magnifier, the Spen actions, voice control of camera, camera minivideos, the kid mode, the notif reminder, e-z split screen, the conversation bubbles, richer AOD, rotating wallpaper, Bixby routines, Edge panel etc. Notifbar is full of shortcuts which usually indicates how rich OS is. There are even apps, like video or song browser, something that no longer exists in many OS. Notably the firewall is missing. So overall, after debloating it's stronger perhaps more productive than those vanilla OSes. I love the split screen can be done with dragging from Edge panel.
Speed: massive improvement vs s10 generation i'd say. For the first time, i see Samsung device can be snappy. But don't expect 1+ speed, it's not THAT fast. It's still just Exynos. I even noticed lagging animations here and there, but it's not nonstop like on gen10.
Display: 8Pro and Note20 were rated as the best displays by several ranking agencies and im not paranoid enough to claim their rankings are bogus. Just like i don't hate Dxomark or even positives boasting DisplayMate. Having quite many flagships in past I can see Samsung is always more readable than any other brand. I appreciate the brightness during the day and night. It doesn't force you to increase brightness manually every single night. Now the dark environment use: the backbleeding isn't obtrusive like on Tab S* or OLED TVs, it doesn't have status bar burnt like 8Pro, and it's pretty uniform. With gray color and low brightness I could see the screen blink once which was scary but couldn't replicate it anymore. Well in any case, we do NEED new display technology to replace this pulsating OLED nonsense. No problem with swiping like on Xperia5ii or ZFlip, not many mistouches, the curve is gentle. The resolution is limited at 120Hz but I will say it again: i cannot see more pixels or any detail better under physical magnifier. FullHD is better than Xperia1ii [email protected] any time that's why I couldn't buy that Sony. I do lower resolution on every phone, incl 8Pro which can run 2K @120Hz.
Network: another improvement since S10 is improved network, just like notebookcheck reports, it's in back to top league with 8Pro. WAN speed averages for me: 482/290 on Note20U, 440/234 on 1+8Pro, 481/147 on S10. Pure WiFi AC speed averages were 600/709, 648/706, 610/696 respectively. Making S10 quite good for LAN despite initial horrible S10,S10+,Note10,Note10+ results on notebookcheck, well i'm testing them in same exact position at the same time, so my results are more real at this point.
SD card: nothing exciting here happened over a decide except when they remove this feature. No advancements were made to utilize UHS2 or UHS1+ speed of Extreme cards. Benchmark is 61MBs, so it's not capped like Xperia to 30MBs. Again, can't use sd card to recover your ROM, but rather to store encrypted backups (from OAndbackup currently as 3C can't encrypt and TitaniumBackup is dead).
Overall gen.10 Samsung owners (S10,S10+,Note10,Note10+) have every reason to update their midrangers. Others will buy S21 as it's finally got a decent Exynos. I personally won't buy 227 frikking gram brick without sd card. For 1+ owners it's a preference of freedom to root, (insert "irrational" in EU) fear of losing warranty, "i'm tired with Samsung", properietary charging (1+), sd card, too much bloat, lot of extras vs vanilla etc. Both are strong flagships, didn't expect such good battery and camera result here. After disappointing Z Flip and Xperia5ii, and a decent pause in Samsung ownership (I didn't keep Note9 and S10 for myself so my last longterm device was S8) i'm keeping this as a main driver. I can clean it up very well, there's no snitching, there's zero Samsung connections active and battery clearly proves it. So for rooted users this device is a gem. Nema problema.

Thanks for sharing.
Keep in mind that it's just your personal opinion, and other users might have different opinions.

There is a note 21 coming. Not sure where you got that from but they said it some timr ago when rumors started circulating that a new note IS comimg
And how the hell are you getting 3 days of use?! When i use my phone super light for two days i barley make it to thr second night and even somethimes i need to give it few mins of juice in thr car or somwhere just so i can make it. And that id with very light use.
What bloat are you reffering too, do tou have a contract pgone or sim free? I have sim free and the only bloat i have is the odd sammy software that i occasionally rven use.
Ps. OneUI is not an OS but skin.
Re speed i am an owner od s10, note21 and s21 and i see verry little differrnce between thr s10 and note21, although i do not play games but i use photoshop, lightroom, drawing software and some other similar there is not much difference to say it is massive. There is, it is normal but not massive for sure and all 3 phones feel snappy as hell. Started using sammy with the s7 again and from that point on one from each generation and all felth at their time spanny and very goos.
The only bad thing i have expirianced with my s10 is wifi connectivity, it was poor compared even to my older phones, and with the note 20 ultra 4G is very VERY poor. Or the regular pgone signal. I constantly loose wifi or 4G in places where my other friends do not on all 3 of my phones since the s10 including my note 20 ultra.
As a previous one plus owner i can tell you that the only difference in quality for comparing Oneplus and samsung is thr camera. Nothing else. Onepkus makes solid phones, and they are getting expensive to a point where you comoare them with the top hitters of samsung but the camera is light years behind, there are not even in the same ballpark to compare there.

It_ler said:
Thanks for sharing.
Keep in mind that it's just your personal opinion, and other users might have different opinions.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No harm in having different opinions we are all different people after all.

tixooo said:
There is a note 21 coming. Not sure where you got that from but they said it some timr ago when rumors started circulating that a new note IS comimg
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
well..that's a rumor agains rumor
tixooo said:
And how the hell are you getting 3 days of use?! When i use my phone super light for two days i barley make it to thr second night and even somethimes i need to give it few mins of juice in thr car or somwhere just so i can make it. And that id with very light use.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yeah im also lightly using the phone.. but it's nonstop connected to PC and watches, VPN, location tracking, all typical wakelocks on. After time, I'd say it's the same as you describe, 3rd day so so. But it's way better than as people described on the forums "horrible Exynos battery". It scared me away from buying for a good month.
tixooo said:
What bloat are you reffering too, do tou have a contract pgone or sim free? I have sim free and the only bloat i have is the odd sammy software that i occasionally rven use.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
well there was a link to debloat. Of course, Samsung is still the leader in bloatware. Heavily bloated like always.
tixooo said:
Ps. OneUI is not an OS but skin.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
let's not nitpick. We could say the same about Linux distros etc. The whole user facing solution is the OS.
tixooo said:
Re speed i am an owner od s10, note21 and s21 and i see verry little differrnce between thr s10 and note21, although i do not play games but i use photoshop, lightroom, drawing software and some other similar there is not much difference to say it is massive. There is, it is normal but not massive for sure and all 3 phones feel snappy as hell. Started using sammy with the s7 again and from that point on one from each generation and all felth at their time spanny and very goos.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Had S7 to S10, but it wasn't snappy at all. This is first time it feels that way, thou vanilla OSes like Oxygen are snappier and stutterless. Sure enough i will like newer CPU on newer models, but I just did a sanity check - it is quite snappy.
tixooo said:
The only bad thing i have expirianced with my s10 is wifi connectivity, it was poor compared even to my older phones, and with the note 20 ultra 4G is very VERY poor. Or the regular pgone signal. I constantly loose wifi or 4G in places where my other friends do not on all 3 of my phones since the s10 including my note 20 ultra.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hmm, that was one problem fixed with Note20. No more moaning from my family about Wifi once upgraded S10->Note20. Connectivity good overall.
tixooo said:
As a previous one plus owner i can tell you that the only difference in quality for comparing Oneplus and samsung is thr camera. Nothing else. Onepkus makes solid phones, and they are getting expensive to a point where you comoare them with the top hitters of samsung but the camera is light years behind, there are not even in the same ballpark to compare there.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, that's only one difference. The main difference for me is the software. This is where OnePlus saves money, by not inveting a penny to enrich the experience and add some productivity gains. This is where OneUI OS shines.

You made a good choice.
The only other one I would consider is the N10+.
I use the SD card as a data drive. You need a V30 rated card for top transfer speeds.
Sorry Sammy, no SD card, no sale

blackhawk said:
You made a good choice.
The only other one I would consider is the N10+.
I use the SD card as a data drive. You need a V30 rated card for top transfer speeds.
Sorry Sammy, no SD card, no sale
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Click to collapse
i have an SD card, in one of Note20 and Ultra, and it's slow just like in every other mobile (apparently there's no device/appliance with higher speed than 90MBs UHS1 cap other than PC/DSLR - e.g. Sandisk Extreme a.k.a. UHS1+ or UHS2). I mean V30 is very slow to me, both sequential and random access. Given the terrible latency a.k.a. 4K speed, i wouldn't use the SD card for anything but backups and static dead files like music/videos. SD cards are a complete joke versus UFS. Also 60Hz screen, not for me, but OK for the person who received Note20 after S10 and never experienced the 120Hz heaven))

doggydog2 said:
i have an SD card, in one of Note20 and Ultra, and it's slow just like in every other mobile (apparently there's no device/appliance with higher speed than 90MBs UHS1 cap other than PC/DSLR - e.g. Sandisk Extreme a.k.a. UHS1+ or UHS2). I mean V30 is very slow to me, both sequential and random access. Given the terrible latency a.k.a. 4K speed, i wouldn't use the SD card for anything but backups and static dead files like music/videos. SD cards are a complete joke versus UFS. Also 60Hz screen, not for me, but OK for the person who received Note20 after S10 and never experienced the 120Hz heaven))
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
For the N10+ the V30 is around it's top transfer speeds, the N20 is probably good for more.
The N10+ comes with Pie so no scope storage or the other Q nasties.
Lol, 60hz is 30hz faster than I was raised on being a 60's TV child... I'm not greedy

doggydog2 said:
well..that's a rumor agains rumor
yeah im also lightly using the phone.. but it's nonstop connected to PC and watches, VPN, location tracking, all typical wakelocks on. After time, I'd say it's the same as you describe, 3rd day so so. But it's way better than as people described on the forums "horrible Exynos battery". It scared me away from buying for a good month.
well there was a link to debloat. Of course, Samsung is still the leader in bloatware. Heavily bloated like always.
let's not nitpick. We could say the same about Linux distros etc. The whole user facing solution is the OS.
Had S7 to S10, but it wasn't snappy at all. This is first time it feels that way, thou vanilla OSes like Oxygen are snappier and stutterless. Sure enough i will like newer CPU on newer models, but I just did a sanity check - it is quite snappy.
Hmm, that was one problem fixed with Note20. No more moaning from my family about Wifi once upgraded S10->Note20. Connectivity good overall.
Well, that's only one difference. The main difference for me is the software. This is where OnePlus saves money, by not inveting a penny to enrich the experience and add some productivity gains. This is where OneUI OS shines.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Where are you from, and is your phonr sim free or not?because my pgone is sim free and i have close to zero bloat (except the odd sammy rmail, web browser etc. That i do not consider bloat). For me personally everything google is bloat that you cant remove (i do not like google as you can see )
Unless you are not sim free the phone it self was pretty clean when i purchased it no adds, no usless software (except 1-2 samsung things that i do not use and cant remove) but that is their pgone... It is to be expected to see their software on it.
Re the battery... To be fair i stopped listening to reviewers and people on the net lomg time ago, turns out many are biased towards this or that and tou cant really get the true story. I am extreamly happy with my battery and my camera, two points that are heavily criticized on the forums anywhere and by reviewers.
I still own s7, s8 and s10... And even now if they are not packed with software they hry are not that bad, but during their prime time they were as snappy as ever dor me. Might be a sim free vs not i do not know. All my phomes are sim free.

tixooo said:
Where are you from, and is your phonr sim free or not?because my pgone is sim free and i have close to zero bloat (except the odd sammy rmail, web browser etc. That i do not consider bloat). For me personally everything google is bloat that you cant remove (i do not like google as you can see )
Unless you are not sim free the phone it self was pretty clean when i purchased it no adds, no usless software (except 1-2 samsung things that i do not use and cant remove) but that is their pgone... It is to be expected to see their software on it.
Re the battery... To be fair i stopped listening to reviewers and people on the net lomg time ago, turns out many are biased towards this or that and tou cant really get the true story. I am extreamly happy with my battery and my camera, two points that are heavily criticized on the forums anywhere and by reviewers.
I still own s7, s8 and s10... And even now if they are not packed with software they hry are not that bad, but during their prime time they were as snappy as ever dor me. Might be a sim free vs not i do not know. All my phomes are sim free.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
From EU, we don't have any locks by law. Still even such Samsungs are full of processes that waste memory, batter, keep connection, and kill privacy. It's not just what you see as icons. It's Bixby, Samsung Cloud, Find, Galaxy Friends, Pay, push service, logging, debugging, location tracking, knoxx, wifi snitching, Phone assistance, and finally sponsored vendor crap with boosted battery priorities. Can't believe you didn't notice until now There must be tons of threads about this.

doggydog2 said:
From EU, we don't have any locks by law. Still even such Samsungs are full of processes that waste memory, batter, keep connection, and kill privacy. It's not just what you see as icons. It's Bixby, Samsung Cloud, Find, Galaxy Friends, Pay, push service, logging, debugging, location tracking, knoxx, wifi snitching, Phone assistance, and finally sponsored vendor crap with boosted battery priorities. Can't believe you didn't notice until now There must be tons of threads about this.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Half of those i use, if not more. So do my friends. As i said define bloat. To me bloat is google everything and thr inability to get rid if it easily. To me bloat is not something you buy and you get the brand services, but other services you do not want likr carier services or others like microsoft/google etc.

It_ler said:
Thanks for sharing.
Keep in mind that it's just your personal opinion, and other users might have different opinions.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That response,

doggydog2 said:
From EU, we don't have any locks by law. Still even such Samsungs are full of processes that waste memory, batter, keep connection, and kill privacy. It's not just what you see as icons. It's Bixby, Samsung Cloud, Find, Galaxy Friends, Pay, push service, logging, debugging, location tracking, knoxx, wifi snitching, Phone assistance, and finally sponsored vendor crap with boosted battery priorities. Can't believe you didn't notice until now There must be tons of threads about this.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Indeed, that's why a Samsung 4500mAh battery will never be as comparable as lets say a OnePlus' 4500mAh.
First thing one must do, ADB uninstall the hell out of all the Samsung garbage apps and such. For every Google spyware on ONE UI there is also an equivalent Samsung process running.

I was considering getting this phone but Samsung screwed up with the CPU heatsink big time on some of the same variant and it's random, unpredictable. Only observation of abnormal poor heat dissipation or a tear down can reveal which heat sink is used.
Russian heat sink roulette, perfect
I don't have the patience for this kind of poor quality control. It's getting to be a hallmark of Samsung. Why the hell didn't Samsung use only the copper vapor cooling solution on all of it's models? A sick, expensive joke that can't be easily retrofitted or cure by firmware.
Really?
If yours is running hot this may be why.
Here’s Why Some Galaxy Note 20 Phones Have Overheating Problems & There’s Nothing One Can Do
This is unacceptable.
www.mensxp.com