Samsung has just announced its fastest-ever smartphone, the new Galaxy Note 4 phablet with built-in 4G LTE Advanced capabilities that can allow users to get download speeds up to 300M bps, which is four times the speed potential of existing LTE smartphones.
The new Galaxy Note 4, unveiled by Samsung on Dec. 28, comes just three months after the original Galaxy Note 4 was announced back in September.
The latest Note 4 gets its higher speed capabilities through Tri-Band Carrier Aggregation (CA), which allows the phone to receive three different signal frequencies over different bandwidths and then combine them together, giving users the combined speed potential for their needs, according to Samsung. By boosting the speed, users will be able to get faster downloads and Web browsing using their devices, as well as faster content streaming and improved performance for data-intensive applications.
“The LTE-A Tri-Band CA smartphone is a meaningful advancement in mobile and telecommunications technologies, and demonstrates Samsung’s long-term commitment to providing innovation within the telecommunications industry,” J.K. Shin, CEO and president of Samsung’s IT and mobile communications division, said in a statement. “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.”
The LTE-A Tri-Band CA-enabled smartphone will automatically select the optimal bandwidths that are available to users over three different frequency bands, the company said. The combined single connection supports Category 6 network service with speeds of up to 300M bps. That means that users can download a 700MB video in about 19 seconds or a 40MB file in about one second, the company said.
The development of the LTE-A Tri-Band CA Galaxy Note 4 will continue to evolve to offer download speeds of up to 450M bps sometime later in 2015.
No pricing or release date has yet been announced by Samsung for the new faster Galaxy Note 4.
The device will continue to feature a 5.7-inch quad HD Super AMOLED display, 32GB of internal storage, a 16MP autofocus rear camera, a 3,220mAh Li-ion battery and more. It will continue to run on Android 4.4 KitKat and will look just like the existing Note 4 device that it replaces.
The new device will include the latest 64-bit Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 chipset, according to a report by Forbes. The Snapdragon 810 features both a quad-core ARM Cortex A57 CPU and quad-core A53 CPU, which can be used as needed by the device, according to the story. Also included is an upgraded Adreno 430 GPU, which Qualcomm claims is 30 percent faster than the Adreno 420 in the Snapdragon 805, the report stated.
The original Galaxy Note 4 was announced by Samsung in September for preorder as a cross between a smartphone and a tablet. The Note 4 includes a stylus that can be used to “write” on the screen.
In November, Samsung followed the Galaxy Note 4 with the Galaxy Note Edge smartphone, which features a dramatic screen that curves around the right front edge of the phone, giving users a bit more screen real estate. The Galaxy Note Edge features a bright, sharp 5.6-inch quad HD Super AMOLED screen and the ability to display notifications on the curved part of the display. The scrollable Edge menu panel can be customized by users to display their favorite apps for quick access.