Top 5 defects of Galaxy Note 5

Galaxy Note 5 vs Galaxy Note 4: 

what are the missing features? 

No Micro SD card support, non-removable battery, no IR blaster, smaller battery, and missing Lollipop features.

Update 1: Galaxy Note 5 S Pen is another design defect.  If you accidentally insert the Galaxy Note 5 S Pen in wrong direction, Galaxy Note 5 will not be able to detect whether the S Pen is in the slot or not. There are no solutions except visiting service center. Please read this page for details.

As detailed in this post, Galaxy Note 5 comes with some new or improved features, for example, new design with curved glass back, fast wireless charging, improved S pen features, improved camera, more RAM, faster CPU, better fingerprint sensor.

You will surely enjoy these features and the new Galaxy Note 5.

However, it seems Samsung  failed to get some user feedback of the defects or design flaws of Galaxy S6  and Galaxy S6 edge.  Galaxy Note 5 share some similar defects.

This post will try to summarize the top 5 defects in Galaxy Note 5.

Top 5 defects of Galaxy Note 5:  1. No micro SD card support

All previous generations of Galaxy Note devices, including Galaxy Note tablets (Galaxy Note 8.0, Galaxy Note 10.1, Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 edition and Galaxy Note Pro), have a micro SD card slot for you to expand the storage or to transfer files.

But Galaxy Note 5 stops this trend. Galaxy Note 5 does not support micro SD card. There is no micro SD card slot.

As micro SD card has similar size to SIM card,  micro SD card slot does not necessarily reside inside the phone.

If you have a SIM card slot, then technically, there is no problem to put a micro SD card slot.

One of the excuses of missing SD card slot is that Galaxy Note 5 is using UFS 2.0 storage, which is 3 times faster than eMMC storage. The micro SD card is too slow to match the performance of UFS 2.0 storage.

The truth is in your PC, you very likely have a very fast SSD drive, together with traditional, slower mechanical hard disk. It does not make sense you should throw away your old mechanical disk because of the new SSD drive. They can co-exist and serve different purposes:  SSD for fast access and old disk for storage.

This is same for UFS 2.0 and micro SD card.

Another commonly cited excuse is that most Galaxy Note users do not use SD card at all, based on some stupid market studies.

The truth is you should still buy medical insurance although you haven’t made any claims in last 10 years. 

One of the major factors we choose Samsung Galaxy Note devices is the “choices”.

The reality is Samsung made a wrong decision by removing micro SD card support. They hope they can get enough Galaxy Note 5 users who do not know what they want.

But Galaxy Note 5 will lose many existing Note users who know what choices mean.

Top 5 defects of Galaxy Note 5:  2. non-removable battery

Removable battery is now a luxury for high-end smartphones.

Apple enjoyed the success of embedded non-removable battery in all their devices. The non-removable battery can give them more freedom in internal design.

Now, more and more Android vendors follow this strategy.

But they forget that Apple has an extensive service network with acceptable service standard all over the world.

This means Apple fanboies can replace the battery easily in almost all places. The cost will be relatively similar in all regions. So, it is predictable.

So, how about Samsung? How many Samsung service centers in your area?

Do you know how much they will charge you for replacing the battery 2 years later?

You have no answer, Samsung has no answer.  Nobody has the answer. Maybe, the part is always out of stock and they will suggest you buy a newly released Galaxy Note 7.

Even worse, in some regions, Samsung relies on local distribution agents. Why do they have interest to stock parts for more than 20 different smartphones  that are 2  years old?

Of course, the non-removable battery is due to glass back cover design. It is hard to design a removable glass back cover.

So, the question is whether the glass is a good choice over plastic as in previous Galaxy Note devices.

Although many Galaxy Note owners criticized the plastic back cover. But what they complained is the poor-quality plastic Samsung used.

If you try Motorola or Nokia phones, you will know plastic is not created equally. Motorola even shows us you can customize your $180 Moto G with all-plastic construction.

The reality is that Samsung made another wrong decision to go to glass for the back cover, instead of using better plastics.

Metal is not a good option if wireless charging is needed.

Top 5 defects of Galaxy Note 5:  3. No IR blaster

Surprisingly, Galaxy Note 5 removed the IR blaster, which some of Galaxy Note 4 owners have enjoyed.

Very likely, “most” of Galaxy Note 4 owners never used it. And removing it can save about less than $1 in each device.

And therefore, Samsung decided to remove this feature from Galaxy Note 5 to cater for the mass market who do not know what they want.

As mentioned, this means Samsung slammed the doors to users who know why choices matter.

Top 5 defects of Galaxy Note 5: 4. Smaller battery

Galaxy Note 5 has an identical screen size (5.7″) to Galaxy Note 4.  But the battery capacity is reduced from 3220mAh to 3000mAh.

Probably, Samsung’s home-made 14nm Exynos processor in Galaxy Note 5 may be more power efficient than the 28nm Snapdragon 805 processors in Note 4.

But you should not expect longer battery life than Galaxy Note 4.

This is really bad for heavy users who have problems to access the wall charger often, although you can charge Galaxy Note 5 batteryfaster

For Galaxy Note 4 owners, you can just prepare a spare battery.  For Galaxy Note 5 owners, you have to learn to save battery and reduce the usage.

Top 5 defects of Galaxy Note 5: 5. missing  Lollipop features

Android allows all sorts of customization.

This makes a colorful Android world. HTC Android phones may have some unique features. LG can customize it to get some unique features.

Samsung is infamous of adding too many useless (sometimes also unique) feature to Android phones.

But the backlash of many half-baked unique features in Galaxy S4 dragged Samsung “back to basics” in Galaxy S5.

Now, Samsung is heading to another extreme. |

They trimmed many useful features in the TouchWiz. Now, they also trim some Android features.

Some excellent Android Lollipop features were removed in Samsung Galaxy Note 5 as they did for Galaxy S6.  This is surely another defect of Galaxy Note 5.

Here are a few examples:

• no guest user support. Android Lollipop offers guest user mode and multiple users in smartphones. This makes device sharing easier and safer. But you cannot find these features in Galaxy Note 5.
• no multiple user support.
• messed notification and interruption system. AlthoughAndroid Lollipop notification and interruption system received some negative feedback, it is still the best notification system compared to iOS, Windows phone. In Samsung Galaxy Note 5, Samsung implemented a hybrid of new notification system and the old one. It simply makes more confusions for new users.