The leaks were right. Today Samsung has confirmed a new, upgraded version of its three month old Galaxy Note 4 and it blows the socks off its Android rivals.

The ¡®Galaxy Note 4 LTE A¡¯ is a significantly upgraded (though visually identical) version of existing Note 4. It brings cutting edge 4G connectivity capable of reaching speeds of up to 450Mbps along with Qualcomm QCOM +0.1%¡¯s first premium 64-bit chipset, the ¡®Snapdragon 810¡ä.

¡°We continue to set new challenges for the industry and push boundaries to take mobile technology to the next level and deliver the best possible customer experience,¡± said JK Shin, Samsung¡¯s CEO and President of IT & Mobile Communications Division, with the phone¡¯s launch.

The New Galaxy Note 4 LTE-A is visually identical to the original Note 4 ¨C image credit Samsung
Ahead Of Its Time

In many ways the Note 4 LTE-A is a handset ahead of its time. The 450 Mbps speeds quoted come via its ¡®LTE-A Category 9¡¯ compliance, a standard of 4G which will only launch late in 2015. That said it is also Category 6 compliant, a standard currently being rolled out around the world which delivers up to 300 Mbps. Samsung points out this is fast enough to download a 700MB video in 19 seconds.

How Category 6 and Category 9 work is by splicing bands together. Category 6 can lock onto a pair of 150 Mbps LTE signals to aggregate a 300Mbps supercharged network, while Category 9 can converge three signals.

But the Galaxy Note 4 LTE-A will not only be the world¡¯s fastest 4G smartphone, it is also set to be the most powerful.

Category 9 compliance is part of Qualcomm¡¯s impending Snapdragon 810 chipset, the successor to the Snapdragon 805 used in current flagships like the current Note 4, Nexus 6 and Motorola Moto Droid Turbo. Crucially the Snapdragon 810 brings 64-bit compliance which allows RAM in excess of 4GB to be accessed and greatly expands memory bandwidth for 64-bit compatible apps. A switch which should happen quickly.

From a cynical marketing point of view, the Snapdragon 810 also allows Samsung and other Android handset makers to finally tick the 64-bit box which Apple has touted since the iPhone 5S.

In addition to its LTE and memory boosts, the Snapdragon 810 features both a quad-core ARM Cortex A57 CPU and quad-core A53 CPU. The chipset switches between the two, the former for heavy lifting and the latter for low power and idle time, which greatly improves battery life (so-called ¡® big.LITTLE¡¯ technology). There is also an upgraded Adreno 430 GPU which Qualcomm claims is 30% faster than the Adreno 420 in the Snapdragon 805.

Elsewhere the core specs of the Note 4 LTE-A are unchanged from the original Note 4, including its 5.7-inch 2k (2560 x 1440) Super AMOLED display, 16 megapixel rear camera with optical image stabilisation (OIS) and 32GB of storage plus microSD expansion slot. The 3,220mAh battery also remains, but Samsung has yet to quote figures for it using the greater efficiencies of the Snapdragon 810.

Frustratingly Samsung has not said when the Note 4 LTE-A will be released, but the company has pulled this trick before. The Galaxy S5 LTE-A was announced in June and only released in Samsung¡¯s native South Korea while the Galaxy S5 ¡®Plus¡¯ launched in Europe in October.

That said how long the Galaxy Note 4 LTE-A remains top of the performance charts will be determined by how quickly Samsung can get it to market. The Snapdragon 810 is expected to power 2015¡¯s next wave of flagship Android handsets such as the Sony Sony Xperia Z4, LG G4, HTC HTC M9 ¡®Hima¡¯ and Samsung¡¯s own radically overhauled Galaxy S6.

By: DocMemory
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