So I just bought a Note 5

I went to the T-Mobile store with the intentions of jumping my roommate's line to the cheapest offering and finding something cheaper for myself since we were making 58 bucks a month in phone payments... Walked out with an LG Leon and a Note 5.

I have to say... I said I would never go back to Samsung... But I just couldn't help it... And I'm still saving 20 a month on my bill and the Leon is only 149 total to pay off which would knock off another 6 and some change.

This phone is awesome... I haven't put it down... Now to figure out how to root it... That's always the joy of Samsung devices, every single SKU has different ROMs and kernels and T-Mobile always gets the short end of the stick but I really just want a stock ROM with root so I can put my Google and Battle.net authenticators on...

And that shutter speed on the camera... Its crazy fast!

 

Congratulations brah! After owning my Galaxy S6 edge+ 64GB, I swore I would never buy a Samsung phone again.

Problems:

1- Crazy battery drain even if I'm not touching the phone and no app refresh in the background/all apps closed
2- Poor cell reception in comparison with other phones, I can confirm that because my previous BlackBerry phones and now my iPhone 6S in the same area get better signal
3- At first when I used it, it was the snappiest phone ever, then it starts to lag

My tip to you is, if you ever start noticing that the phone kinda hangs / doesn't respond when you have left it for a while and want to unlock it, which is a very common problem for both the S6 edge+ and Note 5 as seen on the Android Central and XDA forums, the solution is to install the Google Now Launcher and get rid of TouchWiz, after I installed the Google Now launcher I didn't get that random freeze. It doesn't happen immediately only like about 48 hours.

On the positive side though, the Note 5/S6 edge+ have the best camera out there hands down. The best thing is when you see something you wanna shoot, simply double tap on the home screen button and within less than a second the camera is up and ready to shoot! Priceless feature!

Enjoy brah!

 

Yeah I'm already really remembering why I hate Samsung...

The hoops you have to go through to get a working custom recovery that the system doesn't flash over is bad enough but then the root kernel through me in a bootloop so guess who gets to spend the next 2 hours downloading the stock image from SamMobile to try again? -_-

When will Samsung get it? We want to do whatever we feel like doing, when we feel like doing it, with our own devices?! Its been this way this the S3 for Christ's sake!

 

Sweet, someone made a mirror... So that saved me an hour and fifty-five minutes... Anyway, first chance I get I'm flashing a stock debloated ROM. This stupid overwriting custom recovery crap is ridiculous though.

Oh and the radio on this thing blows away my Nexus 6, I'm not worried about that at all.

 

Don't get me wrong, their phones are great (minus the bloat), best cameras. Great hardware, but what the heck is up with them and choosing poor antenna technologies that doesn't give optimal signal at this day and age, it's appalling. Furthermore, their phones if used without the bloatware are awesome, but man the bloatware they preinstall is beyond scary......

Ant+ Radio service (4 or more services)
Market Feedback Agent (really?)
SapaMonitor (What the heck is this)
Beaming service (useless junk that I never use)
Profile Sharing
Paper Garden
Flipboard

those are just some of the stuff I can still remember off the top off my head.

The good thing in the US/UK is you can use a phone for a while and see if you like it to keep or not. So you can give it the benefit of the doubt,, here in Dubai, the moment you buy it, its yours to keep so I got screwed now the S6 edge+ 64GB is lying here in the box in brand new condition for 2 weeks and noone from where I posted it in the local shopping website is buying it

 

I sounds like your frequency support is different than mine... Its working fantastic in the basement on a weak T-Mobile signal that my Nexus 6 constantly dropped to no bars on... Could still make calls but they would be a mess for the first few seconds. This thing has no signal issues anywhere in the house and on top of that, it supports carrier aggregation on all the bands my T-Mobile uses... I saw a spike to 70Mbps before, never seen anything above 30 until today. Unfortunately the towers here are all band 4 so it doesn't do me any good but downtown it will work wonders.

Battery actually doesn't seem that bad... I could watch my Nexus 6 drop 1% every few seconds of the screen being on.

I was going to buy the Note 4 before I realized that it was a Snapdragon 805 like my Nexus 6 so it wouldn't have been an upgrade (although that would have been reflected in 5 dollars a month less in monthly installments)... 32GB is not a lot to work with but luckily I've downsized my apps like crazy. I can't wait to dive into the S-Pen features and all the other stuff but yeah, bloat has to go.

I am officially running a custom ROM and I didn't lose my IMEI (which I backed up anyway) - I'm about to try a custom ROM that actually boosts the volume a bit because I think its too quiet.

And yeah, I've already mastered the three finger combos... its insane you still have to go through the same hoops the S3, S4, S5, and S6 and all the Notes needed... At least the S3 wouldn't overwrite a custom bootloader!

 

Yeah so after tweaking the OS and the stock speaker volume, I can honestly say this is the best phone I have ever used by a very wide margin. There is no typing input lag, there is no gaming lag, the battery temperature stays low despite the Exynos being thrown under a huge load... The battery life is between 5 and 6 hours screen on time which is more than enough for me and the calls are totally crystal clear. Reception is much better than my Nexus 6 had as well and don't get me started on the amazing camera. This thing takes (and processes) photos faster than my PowerShot G16 and the quality of the pictures that this thing takes on auto are extremely impressive both front and back.

The only complaint I have with it besides the hassle I went through to get it unlocked is that the WiFi chip sucks. My Nexus 6 had no problem pulling 126Mbps in another room and this one can't seem to muster over 70 standing next to it. For reference, my laptop pulls 170Mbps with peaks of up to 300 (we only pay for 150) in the same location. Yes 70 is fast but not fast enough for large downloads like custom ROMs and the inability to expand the storage without a stupid USB OTG is a bummer.

The removable battery isn't a big deal to me. This thing gets twice the screen on time of my HTC M7 and M8s with me actually having it at a comfortable brightness instead of turned all the way down and about 20% more than my Nexus 6 did, again with lower brightness.

The screen is incredibly responsive which can actually be annoying when you float your finger like I do when I'm thinking but that's because of Air View and S-Pen so I'm just adjusting to it.

I honestly thought that going back to a single speaker design wouldn't be possible for me but I've already tested the speaker on calls and with videos and music and it is more than adequate. The build quality is phenomenal as well. Highest quality of aluminum I've seen on a smartphone and Corning Gorilla Glass 4 plus raised edges around the glass actually make me confident that if I had a spill without a case that the phone would most likely survive unless it was a high drop or face down.

I wish I would have gotten it sooner!

 

I've owned a few Samsung phones (ok a lot) and I just love their screens. I'm also still not a fan of the on-screen navigation buttons - I don't want to waste precious screen real estate on buttons, so I like that Samsung has kept the physical home and the menu/back capacitive buttons.

And those screens. That Note 5 display is probably the best I've ever seen on any phone.

 

It took some getting used to in order not to hit the back button when I wanted recent apps but I agree that keeping the buttons is the way to go.

I still have zero buyers remorse which is incredibly unusual for me. I got 6 hours of SoT yesterday even using the GPS for 35 minutes and unlike every other phone I've had this one picks up GPS satellites in the house... And I'm in the basement!

I don't know if it's the custom kernel I'm using right now or what but Adreno chips put the smack down on the Mali chip in here under GFXBench but otherwise it's a solid benchmark performer as well.

Oh and its nice to be able to use my T-Mobile internet again. My Nexus 6 signal was so poor here that I couldn't get even 500kbps most of the time, now I'm averaging 4-6Mbps.