Samsung’s Note series has always stood out in the crowd — and earned a fan following of its own — thanks in large part to its oversized ‘made-for-productivity’ display and the inclusion of the S Pen stylus. Cut to 2015, and the competition has matched and even outdone Samsung’s large screen, so is a refreshed design and the stylus enough to keep the Note 5 relevant and command its price premium?

Let’s cut to the chase about design. This is the most attractive and comfortable-feeling Note yet — no shocker since it’s the first Note to speak the new S6-inspired glass-and-metal design language. It’s still not small, but thanks to the slimmed-out design, doesn’t feel quite as much of a handful as earlier Notes. The rear curved edges somewhat counter the slippery glass back and, to be fair, the Note 5 manages to pack in that gorgeous 5.7-inch, 2,560 x 1,440-pixel screen in a frame that would ordinarily fit in a 5.5-inch screen, which makes it an acceptable tradeoff in my mind.

Of course, the seamless sealed design means there’s no provision for a microSD slot or a removable battery — both hallmarks of the Note series — which may be a deal-breaker for some. Honestly, as with the S6 and the iPhone long before it, I think both of these are overstated in their importance — for most folks, at least.
 

Looking beyond design, Samsung’s done well outfitting the Note 5 with top-notch internals. There’s that phenomenal 5.7-inch quad-HD display, and while some may prefer the more natural palettes of the iPhone, the vivid colours and bags of detail on this screen are a sight to behold.

As with the S6/ S6 Edge, the camera is difficult to fault and quite often trounces the current iPhones, especially in terms of low light performance. And Samsung’s own Exynos 7420 octa-core chip coupled with the massive four gigs of memory and Samsung’s lighter TouchWiz skin atop Android 5.1.1 means it’s a beast to use on an everyday basis, no matter what you throw at it.

And no, I haven’t forgotten about that S Pen. It pops out eagerly and lets you annotate your current screen, take screen grabs, and take memos (even without unlocking the screen, making it a lot like a pocket notebook). There’s enough in it to tempt non-believers into giving the S Pen a shot, but that said, the Note 5 is perfectly usable with or without it.

This uncompromising approach to building the crème de la crème for Android flagships comes at a hefty price, but you get what you pay for with the Note 5.

♦ Rating: 9/10
♦ Price: Rs 53,900 (32GB), Rs 59,900 (64GB)
♦ URL: bit.ly/TT-Note5

Price pressures

Motorola has one of the most sorted approaches to building phones — they pack in competent hardware and then score the winning runs with an intense focus on user experience. The Moto X Play is built on a similar ethos, but has Motorola ventured into dangerous territory price-wise? Let’s find out.

On the face of it, the Moto X Play looks like a refreshed version of the Moto X from last year. It offers a large 5.5-inch screen in a curved chassis with a removable rubberised-finish back panel, one that makes the phone well built and nice to hold. It feels hefty, which is due both to the Play’s compact frame and to the sizeable 3,630mAh battery, the latter ensuring well over a-day-and-a-half of juice for most users. The display is a bright little full HD number, and like any other Motorola phone offers a near vanilla Android 5.1.1 experience along with the thin layer of useful Motorola apps and baked-in functionality. There’s an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 chipset and 2GB of memory, standard mid-range specs that will handle everyday tasks well but will show the occasional lag when you have too many apps running. The rear 21-megapixel camera shoots images that are a marked improvement over what I’ve come to associate with Motorola phones, but low light situations and those with moving objects still let the camera down.
 

It’s tricky to outright recommend the Play. Sure, it ticks all the right boxes, particularly with the software experience and battery life, but it exists in a market where some great phones from Asus and OnePlus are getting a lot of attention, while a much improved Moto G budget smartphone makes a strong case for much less..

♦ Rating: 7/10
♦ Price: Rs 18,499(16GB), Rs 19,999 (32GB)
♦ URL: bit.ly/TT-MotoXPlay

technocool@kanwar.net; follow me on twitter @2shar