Hands On With the Samsung Galaxy Note Edge

Finally, a cool use for a curved screen. Samsung's Galaxy Note Edge takes the curved-screen technology that Samsung and LG have been experimenting with and integrates it beautifully into a top-of-the-line phablet. Coming to all four major U.S. carriers, this looks like Samsung's premiere handheld for the holidays. 

The Galaxy Note Edge looks classy and subtly unique. It's the same size as the Galaxy Note 4, with the same textured plastic back and hardware home button, but instead of a bezel on the right, the screen rolls off the right-hand side down to an edge. Samsung describes the screen as a 5.7-inch, 2,560-by-1,440 Super AMOLED panel with an extra 160-pixel strip on the right, but it's all one panel; the edge only appears to be separate through software.

The strip starts out as a customizable favorite apps bar. Swipe along it and you can view up to seven custom ticker-style widgets. The phone comes with a pedometer, Yahoo Sports ticker, a Twitter trending topics ticker, a customizable photo widget, and a memory game, among other widgets; more widgets will be available from Samsung's app store, the company said.

I gripped the edge a bunch of times to make sure it doesn't launch things when you grab the side of the phone. It didn't - it has software that doesn't respond to multiple-finger grips, only one-finger swipes, Samsung said.

Edge-aware apps shunt their menus and controls onto the edge, leaving the main screen available for the app view. I saw that happen in the camera, music, and S Note apps. Samsung is making an API available so more apps can become edge-aware.

When apps aren't edge-aware, the edge can get a little bit in the way. The edge should default to a reduced size, but I found that when I launched some apps, it popped up and covered a thin strip of the app's UI. That also happened when notifications popped up, as the edge becomes the notification pane. (You can swipe it away to reclaim your screen space.) Samsung reps said the company will work to fix that in the final software release.

The edge's coolest use, though, is its simplest: as a clock. When the phone's main screen is off, you can set the time and date to glow softly along the edge. Something about the phone's sloping shape makes it an absolutely perfect bedside alarm clock.

Off the Edge
Otherwise, the Edge is identical to the Galaxy Note 4. It has the same 2.7GHz Qualcomm processor, 16-megapixel main camera, 3.7-megapixel wide angle front camera, USB 2.0 (rather than 3.0) port, 3220mAh removable battery and MicroSD card slot under the removable back cover. It also has the same slightly upgraded, but still plastic S Pen. I scribbled a note with the S Pen (which you can then collapse down to a 1x1 widget, neat trick) and found it to be even more responsive than last year's model, with no apparent lag.

Samsung said the S Pen functionality has been bumped up, and I found it reliably launching Air Command when I removed the pen. You're supposed to now be able to swipe over phrases to copy and paste.

I tried the wider-angle front-facing camera, but I was underwhelmed. While it does widen the camera's angle from 77 to 90 degrees, it doesn't hold a candle to the HTC One (M8)'s 5-megapixel super-wide-angle front facer, which can easily grab groups. That said, the 16-megapixel rear camera puts the HTC One's to shame, and there's a mode that uses audio cues to let you take self-shots with the main camera.

Too Edgy?
The Galaxy Note Edge grabs me in a way that no Galaxy Note has yet. It isn't just a bigger phone: it's a unique shape with an elegant feel to it. It stands out. And even if no third-party apps ever get written for the edge (as happens so often with these one-device hardware extensions), it's a great alarm clock and a dandy conversation piece.

I'm very curious about pricing here, because the Galaxy Note typically costs more than a standard smartphone. While a Galaxy S5 or iPhone will go for $199 with contract or $25/month, the Galaxy Note costs $50-100 more. Will the Note Edge cost even more than that? Carriers have been very hesitant to sell phones that cost more than $299 with contract in the past. We'll see sometime before Black Friday.

Check out our rundown of Samsung's announcements in the video below.