In the last year alone, Samsung has come up with three of the most coveted smartphones of the season including Galaxy Note 4, Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge. Now there is a new kid on the block, Galaxy Note 5, which is expected to hit the shelves in the United States starting Aug. 21.

Comparing the specs of Galaxy Note 5 with its predecessor would help users to gauge what exactly have been added to the older version. Samsung Galaxy Note 5 has become slightly smaller (153mm), lighter (171g) and slimmer (7.6mm). Note 5 heavily borrows the successful design of Galaxy S6.

The South Korean company has completely dropped plastic for a metal and glass make for the Samsung Galaxy Note 5. Both phones have aluminum frames but Note 5 touts a beautiful Gorilla Glass 4 back with sloped edges. Its super sleek premium body and the gently curved rear edges makes the phablet even more stylish. This year Samsung will be selling Note 5 with four different color options including Black Sapphire, White Pearl, Gold Platinum and Silver Titanium, an upgrade from the very limited choice of black and white variants for the Samsung Galaxy Note 4.

Both the devices sport 5.7-inch super AMOLED display with 2560 x 1440 screen resolution. For the Note 5 the Stylus Pen ejects automatically, rather than having to be pulled out as in case of Galaxy Note 4. But the Note 4 has a better choice for storage, as Samsung dropped the microSD slot for Galaxy Note 5. Both the devices sports heart-rate sensors and fingerprint sensors.

One of the key differences between the two devices would be the processor. The newly launched Note 5 has a 64-bit Exynos 7420, an octa-core chip with four fast Cortex-A57 cores at 2.1GHz and four efficient Cortex-A53 cores at 1.5GHz. This will be joined by a bulky 4GB of RAM. On the other hand Note 4 runs on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 805, a 32-bit quad core ARM system-on-a-chip (SoC) clocked at 2.7 GHz. The Note 4 sports 3GB of RAM. Further Samsung is using faster LPDDR4 in the Note 5 instead of LPDDR3 for Note5.

Samsung Galaxy Note 5 sports a 16MP rear shooter with 5MP front camera with slightly wider aperture at f/1.9. On the contrary, the Note 4 houses a 3.7MP front snapper. Users can double tap the home button to launch the camera. Both the devices feature OIS (optical image stabilisation). Surprisingly, Samsung has dropped the battery capacity for Note 5 which houses a 3,000 mAh (220 mAh down from Note 4), reports Android Central.

In terms of battery and quick charging, the Samsung Galaxy Note 5 has its pros and cons. Unlike the Note 4, this year’s Note 5 is no longer removable. However, it does have a built-in wireless quick-charging feature, which can fully juice up the phablet in about two hours, a good addition that was previously lacking in the Samsung Galaxy Note 4.

According to GSMArena, another major highlight for Galaxy Note 5 will be Samsung Pay. The Note 5 can be used as a wallet for making payments via Samsung Pay at NFC (Near Field Communication) or MST (Magnetic Secure Transmission) terminals. Other exclusive features added to the Note 5 includes keyboard cover, screen-off notes and multi-page screenshots.

For the Note 5 performance, storage and camera specs are impressive with the sleek design. But the non-removal smaller battery and the absence of microSD card slot can be a disappointment to some users.

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