Samsung Galaxy Note 3 and Samsung Galaxy S4 are two of the hottest, most powerful smartphones available on the market today. Samsung is perhaps the only company in the world right now who's got not just one, but two flagship smartphones released. But how do these two phones fare against each other? We'll let this comparison review give you an idea which one's the better smartphone.
Design
Samsung Galaxy S4 uses a plastic design that’s light, but not very premium-looking. The back picks up fingerprints fairly quickly. Samsung Note 3 is also made of plastic, but has a more refined look; it offers a faux leather rear panel meant to simulate a paper notebook, complete with a stitched leather aesthetic around the edge.
If you’re looking for a handset that will easily fit into one hand, Samsung Galaxy Note 3 is not the phone for you. At 6.0 x 3.1 x 0.33 inches and 5.9 ounces, Samsung Note 3 has quite a large footprint, but at least it’s lighter than competing phablets.
Samsung Galaxy S4 measures 5.3 x 2.7 x 0.25 inches and weighs 4.6 ounces. That’s considerably smaller and lighter than Samsung Note 3, making the Samsung Galaxy S4 fairly easy to use with one hand. Both phones also feature removeable back panels, something we’re always happy to see on a smartphone.
S Pen
One feature that you won't find on Samsung Galaxy S4 is the S Pen stylus. Samsung Note 3's S Pen is pressure sensitive, enabling it to precisely know how much pressure is being applied. Therefore, strokes will have either more or less emphasis depending on how much pressure is applied. Additionally, the S Pen works in conjunction with the smartphone’s various Air View functions – something that comes in handy with the web browser. Although it doesn’t entirely replicate the pen/pencil & paper experience to the teeth, it’s as close as we can get with a smartphone at the moment.
There are also some more “advanced” functions with Samsung Note 3's S Pen. First, the device recognizes when it’s removed/inserted from its slot. Secondly, there’s a new feature with the S Pen called “Air Command.” Air Command is automatically activated when the stylus is removed from its slot – or manually by hovering anywhere on the screen with the S Pen, and then clicking on the button on its body. Once activated, this fan looking thing pops up on the screen of Samsung Note 3, thus, giving us access to five additional functions – Action Memo, Scrap Booker, Screen Write, S Finder, and Pen Window. You can learn more about those in our Samsung Galaxy Note 3 review. The main point you should take home is that you want to do a lot of handwriting and drawing on your mobile device, you should consider Samsung Note 3 and its S Pen stylus.
Display
If you just can't get enough screen, then here's a good reason to seriously consider getting Samsung Note 3. With its massive 5.7” Super AMOLED panel, the Note 3 features considerably more real estate that will make almost everything you do on the device a bit more pleasant and easier on your eyes. The 5” screen of Samsung Galaxy S4 is by no means small, of course – it's still quite large, but as we said, if size isn't an issue for you and you want as much screen as you can get, Samsung Note 3 can offer you just that – more. And, in this case, we actually mean “more of the same,” as both screens utilize Samsung's Super AMOLED technology. Resolution-wise, both are 1080 x 1920 pixels, which means that pixel density is a bit higher on Samsung Galaxy S4, but the difference in clarity is negligible. Actually, it'll be easier to read stuff on Samsung Note 3, due to its bigger size.
As far colors and overall image quality goes, there isn't a substantial difference between the two. When set to the 'Standard' screen mode, the display of Samsung Galaxy S4 tends to be a bit better with its color temperature of 7800 K (kelvin) and Delta E (average color error) of 5.96. These figures are by no means good, but still, they are a bit better than SamsungNote 3's 8100 K color temperature and Delta E of 6.34. Both displays lack quite a bit of red in this mode, with the one of the Note 3 being the worse. If you switch to the much more natural 'Professional Photo' mode, which we recommend that you do, in case you have one of these devices, things get way better. The color temperature of the Galaxy S4 drops to the much more natural 7100 K (the reference point is 6500 K), while the one of the Note 3 hovers around the 7000 K mark. The Delta E figures also get better: 4.78 for the GS4 and 4.33 for Samsung Note 3. In this mode, these AMOLED screens also prove that they know what 'red' is, and even though blue and green are still dominating, the balance between these three primary colors is much better than what we observe in the Standard mode.
Audio
The Galaxy Note 3’s external speaker is positioned on its bottom edge. By contrast, the Galaxy S4’s speaker sits on the bottom of its rear panel. Between the two phones, the Galaxy S4 provided the loudest audio, offering 73 decibels of sound, while the Note 3 came in at 71 dB.
Overall, audio sounded slightly better on the Galaxy S4, with the handset focusing more on higher notes. The Note 3 seemed to focus on lower, bass-heavy notes. While listening to TV on the Radio’s “Will Do,” bells and high-pitched guitar riffs rang out on the S4, though bass was a bit lacking. The opposite was true for the Note 3, with guitar riffs lacking and bass hits coming through clearly. In the end, neither handset provided particularly high- quality audio.
Processor and Memory
There are a bunch of hardware configurations for the GS4 and Note 3, but the main difference is that the most widespread version of the Note 3 will sport the newer and more powerful Snapdragon 800 chipset, while the S4 is featuring the Snapdragon 600. Both are still wonderful chipsets, but the Note 3 is going to have an advantage performance-wise. There also seems to be less lag when using the general UI on the Note 3. There are also Exynos 5 Octa versions of both phones, but we can imagine those will be harder to find.
The Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 chip on the Note 3 also packs the newer Adreno 330 GPU, which should, in theory, deliver up to 50% faster performance compared to its predecessor, the Adreno 320, which is found in Samsung Galaxy S4. Right now, you'll hardly notice any performance improvement in games and other apps, but as more resource-demanding apps start to populate the Play Store, the extra punch of the Adreno 330 will surely be appreciated.
Samsung Galaxy S4 will give you a bit more flexibility when it comes to internals storage, as it's available in 16, 32 and 64 GB flavors, whereas the Note 3 only comes in 32 or 64 GB variants. Both, however, feature a microSD card slot, easy memory expansion is just a walk to the store away. The Note 3 comes with the healthy 3 GB of RAM, while the GS 4 has 2 gigs. Seeing that the phablet is a bit more multitasking-friendly, considering its bigger screen and S Pen, that additional gigabyte of system memory will probably come in handy.
Performance
The Galaxy Note 3 is a processing behemoth, packing a 2.3-GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor and 3GB of RAM. The Galaxy S4 features Qualcomm’s last-generation Snapdragon 600 processor and 2GB of RAM. Both handsets proved snappy during everyday use, with neither showing noticeable signs of lag.
That kind of horsepower lets the Note 3 easily run the latest and most demanding Android games, including “N.O.V.A. 3” and “Riptide GP 2” with ease. The Note 3 also opened its Camera app a tick faster than the S4 (2.5 versus 3 seconds). We saw a larger differential when opening “N.O.V.A. 3,” with the Note 3 taking just 13 seconds and the S4 taking 15.
That said, we didn’t see any differences between the Note 3 and S4 when exiting apps to the home screen or changing screen orientation in the Web browser.
The Note 3 transcoded a 204MB, 1080p video file to 480p using the VidTrim app in just 5 minutes and 15 seconds. The S4 and its older processor took 7:25 to finish the test. Both handsets, however, beat out the smartphone category average of 8:26.
Camera
The Galaxy Note 3 and Galaxy S4 both offer 13-megapixel rear shooters. And while Samsung representatives said the company doesn’t comment on specific camera sensor hardware, they did let slip that they may have different image sensors.
Despite that, the handsets offered incredibly similar images in both low light and normal shooting situations. A low-light photo of a young woman taken without flash with the Note 3 offered better focus than the S4, which captured a grainer image. Neither photo looked particularly good, though.
A photo of a flower looked colorful and sharp when taken with both the Galaxy Note 3 and S4, though colors were a bit more vibrant in the Note 3’s photo. Conversely, in an image of a busy intersection, the S4 offered slightly more vibrant colors than the Note 3. We noted the same kind of results across multiple images, with one phone’s shots looking better than the other’s by the slimmest of margins. In truth, you’d have to study photos taken with both handsets very closely to notice the difference.
Because of its Snapdragon 800 processor, the Note 3 can shoot 4K video while its little brother maxes out at 1080p. Also known as Ultra HD, 4K video is a sharp 3840 x 2160, more than double the pixels of full HD. There are already a number of high-end TVs that support the standard with less expensive models sure to come soon.
Messaging
The Samsung Galaxy S4 offers a standard smartphone typing experience. Its keyboard is definitely not among the most comfortable out there, but of course, you can always get a nice third-party one from the Play Store. On the other hand, while the landscape QWERTY keyboard of the Note 3 isn't really comfortable to use, due to its excessive width, the regular portrait QWERTY keyboard is great for two-hand typing. If you prefer one-handed typing, though, there's the option to tweak the keyboard's size and position so that all of its keys can be easily reachable with a thumb.
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