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Samsung has issued the first firmware upgrade for their Note 4, and early reports are that it greatly improves battery life. Folks outside of South Korea haven’t had a chance to use the phone yet so any reports of unsatisfactory battery life have gone unnoticed, but this update should ensure no one has any issues once it heads to the rest of the world later this month.
There were no other notable or visible improvements aside from some under-the-hood things Samsung likely worked on. As such, this is a pretty small upgrade that clocks in at just 36MB, small enough for any decent 4G connection or limited data pool to handle. Folks lucky enough to be owning the phone already (one Amazon third-party retailer is selling it unlocked in the United States) should head to the Settings > About Phone menu to get started (you’ll be looking for version XXU1ANJ4).
[via SamMobile]
I hear that a lot of folks are getting their pre-orders today. I’ll be picking mine up this friday at t-mo.
me too lol bright and early!
Is this for Exynos or Snapdragon devices? (or both?)
Somebody asked that in another forum and quite a few people said it was Snapdragon.
That’s strange, considering it seems that the Exynos version is the one with battery issues. Wonder if Sammy will roll the update out to those as well.
Received my Tmobile pre order today. Currently comparing it to the Lg G3 and iphone 6 Plus. Screen is dimmer than 6 Plus but brighter than G3. Looks great overall. Seems pretty smooth so far, but I already changed from davlik to Art. Probably end up selling the G3
LCD brighter than OLED? That’s a bit strange to hear.
then you haven’t seen how dim the G3 is. read the comparison if note 4, g3 and iPhone 6 plus on gsmarena and you will see its true
The G3 is an LCD DISPLAY, not OLED. And actually, LG G3 is brighter than the Note 4, with maximum brightness of 570 nits vs. Note 4’s 399 nits.
GN4’s max brightness can reach 750 nits when auto brightness is enabled.
http://www.displaymate.com/Galaxy_Note4_ShootOut_1.htm
And i’ve only see ~440 nits max brightness for G3.
That’s really interesting. Thank you for posting that, Wolf. I was using these numbers: http://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_note_4-review-1147p3.php
I didn’t realize Auto Brightness had the power to nearly double the brightness level! I’ve never heard of that. I wonder why users can’t push the screen that far manually, and whether this is a new feature? Do other phones do that too? I’ve never used it on my Galaxy S3 because it was jarring and obnoxious when it constantly dimmed and brightened.
Yeah it really is weird. I’m not sure why Samsung implemented it like that, and so far it’s the only phone I’ve heard of doing that. I think the GN4 auto brightness will be pretty good, considering the uv sensor, and they’re always improving software algorithms.
Gsmarena is reliable but I’ve never heard of 570 nits on G3. Everytime I’ve used it it seemed very dim and bland, a side by side vs iPhone or GN4 and those two absolutely destroy it (imo).
Remember that the max screen brightness of the Note 4 is halved when you set it to max manually (keep it at auto).
I have the Exynos version N910U and I got the update this morning. I wasn’t having any battery issues before the update though. The only difference I see so far is maybe a little less lag.
no battery improvements? What screen on time were you getting before the update?
I had it off the charger for 14 hours with 4 hours of screen on time and still had 30% battery left before the update. I haven’t really had a high usage day since the update.
You seem to have Hong Kong version. Did you get VOLTE?
I am in the US, so no LTE for me
A lot of people got burned including some friends of mine when Samsung released 4.3 for the Galaxy S3. It was an absolute trainwreck, glitching out, rebooting, camera issues. Everything went wrong and they refused to fix it because the phone was already close to 18 months old already and they wanted to move on. I was working as a Samsung rep in Best Buy last year and had to apologize profusely at least 3 times a day. I had to defend Samsung to my friends and still do, because of that one disaster that could’ve been avoided or at least repaired later. It made me ashamed to be a Sammy user. Really the only thing that saved me was waiting a bit, and reading the reports online.
I used to hungrily Google for any OTA updates every day, and jump on them the second they were released, but that incident burned me. I will never do that again, too risky. My policy now is to wait a couple weeks to make sure an update is proper and stable.
I used to own a Galaxy S3 and I never had issues on 4.3. Might have been a snapdragon issue because I had the international Exynos variant and I never had issues.
Yep, that’s likely.
I already updated rtoday, but don’t seem to have any improvement. Not even with thebattery. NO VOLTE yet. No changes.