AT&T customer receives first Galaxy Note 5 shipping confirmation

Samsung announced yesterday on stage that Galaxy Note 5 pre-orders would start in the US the same day, at 3PM. One customer took up the challenge and placed his pre-order, only to have already received his shipping confirmation. The document below shows the 64GB Black Sapphire Galaxy Note 5 that’s now on its way to Phoenix, Arizona. As you can see, AT&T’s wasting no time on shipping Samsung’s “hottest potato” to anxious customers.

While we wish this individual well and certainly hope he enjoys his Galaxy Note 5 when it arrives at his residence, keep in mind that Samsung expects to release the Galaxy Note 5 and Galaxy S6 edge+ worldwide on August 21st. The Galaxy Note 5 is expected for release in Asia and the US, with countries like the UK expected to get the Galaxy S6 edge+ right away and the Galaxy Note 5 in early 2016.

Have you pre-ordered your Galaxy Note 5 yet? If so, please feel free to share with us. What color and storage model did you order?

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Dual-SIM Galaxy Note 5 with microSD card slot confirmed

We here at SamMobile have kept our ears to the ground about the dual-SIM Galaxy Note 5 featuring a second SIM slot that could double as a microSD card slot upon the phone’s release. Nothing was confirmed then, but it has been confirmed now. The dual-SIM Galaxy Note 5 will feature a second SIM slot that has microSD card compatibility, according to a picture leaked by site ePrice.

The picture of the dual-SIM Galaxy Note 5 shows “SIM1” and a “SIM2/MicroSD” slot labels, confirming the presence of the feature for Chinese consumers.

A number of Galaxy Note customers will examine the photo below and wonder why Samsung could not produce this feature for US customers who were interested in the Galaxy Note 5, but keep in mind that the presence of two SIM slots doesn’t jive with what has been carrier contracts in the past, as well as carrier exclusivity desires.

Samsung has already gone on record months ago stating that it will play nice with US carriers and not violate their wishes, since carriers are one major factor of the Korean manufacturer’s success in the US. Even if most customers would use the second SIM slot for storage expansion, carriers want complete exclusivity of a customer under contract. Not only that, but carriers are known for locking their devices to the carrier network until a person’s two-year obligations have been paid in full – and leaving an additional SIM slot to allow an obligated customer to flirt with a competing carrier is out of the question.

Outside of the US, however, and apart from devices under contracts or traditional agreements, Samsung’s decision to remove the microSD card slot has much to do with the company’s faster UFS 2.0 flash storage and greater security for the overall smartphone experience.

What can be learned from this? Varying geographic locations play by different sets of rules in the wireless space, and Samsung needs carriers as much as customers do.

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Samsung China announces Snapdragon 808 flip phone with 6MP front camera, 16MP back camera, dual display

Remember the rumor about how Samsung would craft a smartphone running the hexa-core, Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 processor? Well, the Galaxy S6 edge+ that Samsung announced yesterday packed the company’s homegrown, octa-core Exynos 7420 processor, but a new flip phone announced today by the Chinese branch of the company bears the Snapdragon 808.

The new smartphone has a Chinese name that’s hard to understand unless you’re Chinese, so the wisest thing to do is go with the model number: SM-G9198. This new flip phone has some specs that make it one of the best flip phones money could buy: a 16MP back camera with f/1.9 aperture and a 6MP front camera (that’s right; a 6MP, as opposed to the 5MP front camera of the Galaxy S6, S6 edge, S6 edge+, and Galaxy Note 5). Other specs include dual 3.9-inch, Super AMOLED displays with a screen resolution reminiscent of the Nexus 4 (1280 x 768). Both displays contain Corning’s Gorilla Glass 4, the same durable glass found in the Galaxy Note 4 (the first smartphone in the world to feature Corning’s Gorilla Glass 4), Samsung’s Galaxy S6 series, and the Galaxy Note 5.

The Snapdragon 808 flip phone has 16GB of onboard storage with a microSD card slot that can provide an additional 128GB of storage. Keeping the lights on is a 2,020mAh battery that Samsung says can run 189 hours on standby.

This seems like a happening flip phone (including the futuristic dual displays), particularly when you consider the idea of a flip phone housing a hexa-core processor and a 16MP back camera with a trendsetting 6MP front camera. At the same time, it’s highly unlikely that anyone else will see this flip phone except China customers. Sometimes, what is old can be made new again.

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Clove UK launches petition asking Samsung to bring the Galaxy Note 5 to Europe

The Galaxy Note 5 might not be a dream come true for every Galaxy Note fan thanks to its lack of expandable storage and a removable battery, but it’s still a great device that probably everyone wishes wasn’t limited to only a few markets. If you’re among those that wish the Note 5 would come to Europe (including the UK, where Samsung has confirmed the device won’t launch any time soon), there’s a petition launched by UK retailer Clove that you might want to sign.

Well, these petitions don’t usually work out, and we’re not sure Samsung will be affected enough to do the work required for launching a device in a huge region like Europe. One can always hope though; it is just too bad that Samsung thinks the Galaxy S6 edge+ can be a replacement for the Galaxy Note 5, and petitions like this might have a slight chance of pushing the Korean manufacturer towards making the device available for a larger section of its user base.

Head over to the source link to check out the petition and sign it.

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Samsung, please don’t carry out your experiments on high-end products

After a series of mostly accurate leaks over the past few weeks, including our own exclusive reports, Samsung has finally unveiled its high-end phablets for 2015, the Galaxy Note 5 and the Galaxy S6 edge+. Both these devices feature almost similar specifications – a 5.7-inch QHD Super AMOLED display, 64-bit octa-core Exynos 7420 processor, 4GB of RAM, 32/64/128GB of internal storage, 16-megapixel primary with OIS, 5-megapixel secondary camera, and a 3,000 mAh battery – with only the presence of an S Pen and a curved display differentiating them.

Yes, Samsung has improved a lot in terms of design and build quality, and it can now proudly claim that its smartphones are second to none. However, you must have noticed that Samsung has been moving away from luring hardcore smartphone users. Samsung has removed the ability to hot swap a battery or to expand the storage capacity using a microSD card, at least in its recently released high-end smartphones, be it the Galaxy S6 or the Galaxy Note 5. Those were the features that won Samsung its loyal fan base of hardcore users.

Samsung has used its 2015 smartphone lineup for experiments. No, it’s not a bad thing to do, but it wasn’t necessary for Samsung to use their flagship smartphones as test beds. Instead of removing things like a microSD card slot or a removable battery in a high-end smartphone like the Galaxy Note 5, the company could have done those experiments with some of its mid-range smartphones, except it didn’t. Samsung didn’t even care to check if its customers are okay with the exclusion of some of these features. What’s funny is that mid-range smartphones like the Galaxy A7 actually have a microSD card slot in spite of keeping all the positives of having a metal unibody. Okay, so the UFS 2.0 storage is one reason why the microSD card isn’t there on this year’s flagships, but for many of the end users, it doesn’t make up for the fact that they are limited to the inbuilt storage.

The current situation of Samsung’s smartphone lineup is that buyers who are willing to spend the most are getting screwed the most. Shouldn’t the customers paying the most get their hands on the best devices? The last time I checked with other brands, be it smartphone brands or otherwise, the most expensive products are the most feature-packed. It’s like a car brand telling its customer that they will get a super car but with a small fuel tank, and if you want a slightly bigger fuel tank, you’ll have to pay more on top of what you’ve already spent. Why can’t they test these experiments on less important products, and then repeat those tried-and-tested experiments (if they were successful) on flagship devices? Samsung did this with the Galaxy Alpha, and look how it turned out. The device was discontinued well within an year from its initial availability.

There was this rumor that the Galaxy Note 5 could sport a 4,100 mAh battery, and the 3,500 mAh battery on the Galaxy S6 Active had certainly given some consumers hope, who were ultimately disappointed during the official announcement. With the Galaxy S6, Samsung promised that newer technologies like a 14 nm processor, newer Super AMOLED panels, UFS storage, and LP-DDR4 RAM would compensate for a smaller battery, and for some time, we believed those claims. However, in real-world performance, those claims fell flat on their face. My Galaxy S6 edge doesn’t even last till the evening on a single charge. Heck, it can’t even run smoothly after the latest update. In our experience, the Galaxy J5 (which we will review soon) had a smoother and more reliable performance than the Galaxy S6 edge.

I am not even going to get into the physical storage vs. cloud storage debate or the removable battery vs. quick charging debate. If I did, the former will always triumph. If Samsung continues to carry out these fatal experiments, it will not be long before its once loyal fanbase jumps ship to other brands like LG or Motorola who are willing to do what consumers demand from them. Why should consumers face the undesired outcome of the company’s experiments, even more so when they pay increasingly premium price tags?

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128GB Galaxy Note 5 listed on Samsung’s website

Samsung’s official announcement of the Galaxy Note 5 only talked about 32GB and 64GB storage models, but it seems a 128GB option could also exist and go on sale sometime in the near future. Samsung’s US website is listing the three storage options for all four major carriers in the country, though there’s no mention of a release date. If the 128GB variant does indeed come to market, it will probably be launching a few weeks after the two lower-end versions.

Given the Note lineup’s focus on power users and the lack of a microSD slot on the Galaxy Note 5, a 128GB model is certainly very important. But as we have seen with existing devices in the mobile industry, smartphones with 128GB internal storage are often quite hard to obtain thanks to the low number of units that manufacturers produce. Samsung is already limiting launch markets for the Note 5, so we aren’t too hopeful that it will make the 128GB Galaxy Note 5 widely available.

While we’re waiting for official information on whether the 128GB model is coming or not, why not go ahead and check out our hands-on experience with the Galaxy Note 5 and the Galaxy S6 edge+?

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Did Samsung make a mistake by not releasing the Galaxy Note 5 worldwide?

Samsung just announced the next device in its Note lineup, the Galaxy Note 5, a phablet with a lot of potential and impressive features. Unfortunately, the Galaxy Note 5 will only arrive in a select handful of countries starting with the US and some Asian markets in August, which could be a big mistake for Samsung, as their customer base is very widely spread out. If we take a look at their history, we can see a pattern here. Some markets, like South Korea and China, usually get Samsung flagships before other regions, but this time around the Korean manufacturer has no plans at all to expand the availability of the Note 5 anywhere outside a very limited set of regions. Even the UK isn’t getting the device, at least not until next year.

The fact that the Galaxy Note 5 isn’t available in every market isn’t Samsung’s biggest mistake, but it would certainly be better if more customers had access to the handset instead of what could be a few months’ wait. India is one example of this case, where Samsung claims to have a 40 percent market share. In these circumstances, it could be a mistake not releasing the device in this region. On the other hand, India has always been a huge market for mid and low-tier devices, and the Note 4 didn’t sell too many units in this region which could explain why the phablet isn’t available here yet. Samsung could concentrate its effort on regions where high-tier devices like the Note series sell well, especially given the steep price of this lineup.

It’s going to be interesting to watch the Galaxy Note 5 sales during the first month, but Samsung is most likely making a mistake in restricting its release to a handful of countries. We will just have to wait and see how well the Galaxy Note 5 ultimately does, and keep our fingers crossed that the restricted launch is only a temporary thing. Pre-orders for the Galaxy Note 5 and the Galaxy S6 edge+ are available as of today in the US, and they are going to be available in Canada starting with the 21st of August. Samsung has yet to give a release date for any other market other than US and Canada, but we should learn more in the coming weeks.

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