Hands-on: Samsung Galaxy Note Edge [VIDEO]
We trotted to New York City today to get our hands on Samsung’s latest products. One such product was the Samsung Galaxy Note Edge, a new device that Samsung hopes will change the way folks use their phone. The difference between this and the Note 4 that we also got hands-on time with? It has a flexible display that folds over to the right, and that little sliver can be lit up independently of the main portion of the display.
What does this enable? Many interesting different things. For starters, at night time you can have it dimmed and use the phone as an always-on alarm clock. The phone will sip battery overnight so you can always see the time without having to turn the bright display on. The display might also be used for music controls, camera settings and shutter buttons, news, sports and weather info and more.
For some reason, it just doesn’t quite excite. It sounds like a slightly better version of Samsung’s Continuum, a smartphone that had a ticker display that served many of the same functions. The Continuum didn’t really take off for a couple of different reasons:
- It didn’t really bring considerable savings in the battery department
- It wasn’t intuitive
- It wasn’t open to developers
It seems at least two of those areas — intuitiveness and openness — have been addressed, but we wonder if it’s still just another gimmick that Samsung hopes will sell them a few more phones this year. The Note Edge doesn’t offer many advantages over the more traditional Note 4. But it’s there, and it’s coming to all of the United States’ major carriers later this fall.
We think it’s a decent device for what it is (the internals basically match up to what we have in the standard Note 4), but there doesn’t seem to be much reason to consider this over the other star of today’s show. Be sure to check out our hands-on video above.