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The Galaxy Note 7 Is Great, But Also Overrated And Overpriced

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If you keep up with tech news, the words you've read most in the past week are probably "Galaxy Note 7" and "ever." The former refers to, of course, Samsung's latest smartphone, and the latter is the qualifier of choice of seemingly every tech site, which have lavished superlative praise on the device. "The most impressive smartphone EVER." "The best big phone EVER." "The sexiest large phone EVER."

The praises go on.

I've been using the Galaxy Note 7 for about four days now, and yes, the phone is indeed great. But it's also overrated and very overpriced.

Before I get to the phone's priciness, I want to elaborate on the "overrated" part, because I've realized in recent year that the concept is mostly used by sports fans in sports talk, and that the real world/other industries don't really use the word. I want to clarify that "overrated" does not mean "inferior" or "not the best." Something, or someone, can be the best while still be overrated. In NBA media circles, Kobe is widely acknowledged as one of the best players of this era, but most would agree he was a bit overrated, precisely because of how much he cost (the monetary kind and the baggage that came with employing him) and that other players are more efficient.

The Note 7 to me is sort of like that. Yes, I love that it is the slimmest/sleekest 5.7-incher ever. And features like waterproofing gives it a unique selling point other phones don't have. But still, at $850 (HK$6,590), it's more than twice as much as the OnePlus 3 ($400/HK$3,090). Is the Note 7 a better phone? Probably, but is it twice as good? No way. Not by a long shot.

Let's address the thing that's gotten the most praise first -- the phone's build quality, which most reviews have made it out to be in a class of its own. Yes, the Note 7 is an amazing piece of hardware, but there isn't this huge gap in quality between the Note 7 and, say, the OnePlus 3 or Huawei P9. There's no way you can hold a Note 7, and then hold a Meizu MX6 and say "Oh yeah, you can tell the Samsung one is better crafted with superior material." The Note 7 hardware is probably the best combination of design, aesthetics and feel, but other phones costing half as much are not too shabby either. Bottom line: every flagship phone of 2016, save for the flawed LG G5, is an amazingly crafted piece of hardware. 

Moving to the internals of the phone, I've used the Note 7 for four days, and while it's by no means slow, its performance is about on par with every other new phone this year. That's because the Note 7 has the exact same muscles as every other 2016 flagship: Snapdragon 820 with 4GB of RAM. So I'm using this $850 phone, and the day-to-day web browsing and Facebooking and Twitter experience is the same as a $280 Xiaomi Mi 5. In fact, the OnePlus 3 is faster than the Note 7, given it has two extra GB of RAM and operates on a much cleaner software. I've experienced minor lag when opening apps and searching for things in settings on the Note 7 -- these actions are buttery smooth on the OnePlus 3. The guys at XDA, a forum of really serious mobile fans, also found the same results, with their tests showing that the Note 7 fell behind the OnePlus 3 in several key areas. (And of course there's that video showing the Note 7 can't even beat Apple's year-old iPhone 6S in a speed test). 

Now onto the two features that the Note 7 is supposedly "hands down the best" in: display and camera. I believe they are debatable too (Joshua Ho of AnandTech shares the same view). I know that DisplayMate hailed the Note 7 screen as the best screen ever after running a series of in-depth tests, but let's be honest here, can the average person tell the difference in real world use? The answer is no. If you show the average person (someone who doesn't follow tech news closely, for example) a YouTube video on the Note 7, then show them the same video on, say, the HTC 10 or LG G5 (or even 1080p phones like the OnePlus 3 or Huawei P9), I highly doubt that person would say "Oh my god, the first one was so much better."

And the camera? The fact is all 2016 flagships are capable of taking excellent daytime shots, even ones that cost 1/3 as much as the Note 7. And while the Note 7 is great at low-light shots, it's not clearly superior to the Huawei P9, or even the LG V10. 

Here are some examples.

How about picking up general details of small items from far away? Here's a side-by-side comparison of the Note 7 and the OnePlus 3.

Here are more comparison shots between the Note 7 and the Huawei P9 Plus.

Note 7.

Note 7.

P9 Plus.

100% crop of Huawei's shot.

this is Huawei's version. Do you see much difference in quality?

This is shot with Huawei P9's "light trail mode."

So if the difference in daytime shots are mostly negligible across 2016 flagships, and the Note 7 doesn't take the best shot in low lighting, and the Huawei P9 Plus can snap certain types of photos the Note 7 cannot. So then why is the Note 7 considered as the gold standard when gauging smartphone camera quality? How is this "hands down" the best camera?

"But what about the iris scanner and the S Pen, huh? Other phones don't have that," you might say.

The iris scanner is a gimmick. That you have to press a button, then swipe up on the lock screen, and then line up your head to unlock means in no situation is it a faster or easier way to unlock than using the fingerprint. If it's without a shadow of doubt the slower way to unlock ... why would you use it? And the stylus-only features are tied to the thing only because Samsung wants to justify its existence. There's no reason why you can't "smart select" and create a gif using your finger.

I will concede that the Note 7 is probably the best package overall. But again, the thing costs $850, while the OnePlus 3 costs less than half. The Xiaomi Mi 5, for that matter, costs almost 1/3 as much as the Note 7. For the price of one Note 7, I can buy a Xiaomi Mi 5 and have enough money to book a long-weekend vacation to Southeast Asia. Or I can buy a OnePlus 3 and a Playstation 4, with a couple of games to boot.

Most reviews I've read (and I've read dozens and dozens) gloss over this price difference, as if four hundred and fifty (!!) US dollars is no biggie. Maybe it's because most of them didn't have to buy the phone, or maybe because they are really die-hard tech geeks who's willing to spend top dollar on the latest. Whatever the case, the fact that you can get a phone that's 95% as good as the Note 7 at less than half the price shouldn't be a footnote. It should be the main story. The average consumer cares about these things.

The way I see it, the only ones to whom I can recommend the Note 7 wholeheartedly are people who really need the stylus -- their job requires making anecdotes to documents, for example -- or people to whom $400 isn't a lot of cash. Otherwise, to the average consumer, it's impossible to justify the Note 7's cost.