When the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 was announced, the next question everybody wanted to know was when will it actually be available to purchase. It turns out that it all depends on where you live – unlike the Samsung Galaxy S5 that was all of a sudden available in 100+ countries, Samsung has been slow to ease out the Note 4, although one would wonder why with the new iPhone 6 Plus already being sold and taking possible sales away from the Note 4. Suddenly, Apple people are enamored by this ‘first ever’ large smartphone and the 6 Plus seems to be selling quite well – it is like they discovered fire for the first time?
Samsung has quietly unveiled three dual-SIM versions of the Galaxy Note 4 – all three for the China market. One will go over to the large China Telecom, another will find its way to China Unicom and the last one is a SIM-free release. China has two LTE varieties – TDD and FDD – and the first SIM on all three models covers their LTE capabilities. The second SIM card is for 2G only – the 900/1800/1900 spectrums. The carrier-free Galaxy Note 4 supports all of the TDD LTE bands used by both China Telecom and China Unicom and most FDD bands for roaming – in other words, this model should work on both carriers. The SIM-free variant is running $880, but prices are not available for the other versions.
Samsung always has a lot riding on the Galaxy Note 4 and even though it is their phablet device – not the bread and butter Galaxy S5 – the Note 4 has turned into Samsung’s ‘flagship’ device. Because the Note 4 comes out a few months after the Galaxy S series, it usually has a faster processor and more memory…and for some reason, Samsung chose not to include the QHD display in the Galaxy S5 to compete better with the LG G3. This makes the Note 4 even more desirable with its QHD display sporting a 2560 x 1440 resolution and 515 pixels-per inch (PPI). Couple that display with its Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 quad-core processor clocked at 2.7GHz, 3GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage and you have yourself quite a beast. Samsung also chose to leave out the Optical Image Stabilization (OIS) on the Galaxy S5, but included it on the Note 4 – hence its flagship status.