Out of this world: Why the blazingly fast new Galaxy Note 4 is simply light years ahead of Apple's iPhone
Samsung Galaxy Note 4 £599 ★★★★★
Despite Apple’s best efforts, iPads are still the best tablets in the world.
Last week, the company took the best of the bunch, iPad mini, and shot it through the foot with an update where they added a fingerprint sensor and little else, and whacked £100 on the price tag for the mini 3.
Even so, I’d still buy iPad mini over any rival – albeit while cursing Apple underneath my breath.
The Samsung Galaxy Note 4 is blazingly fast, bright, colourful, and the ‘Back’ button and home button are located off the screen, which gives you more space to do stuff
There are some fields, though, where Apple is the still very much the new boy at school – namely, big phones, an area the fruity tech giant dipped its billion-dollar toes into earlier this year with the giant six-inch Apple iPhone 6 Plus.
Sadly for Apple, the school bully, Samsung, has swaggered up and walked off with its lunch money without even making an effort.
Next to the Galaxy Note 4, iPhone 6 Plus looks like a bodged-together mess.
Samsung has been making huge phones for years – greeted at first with ridicule, then grudging acceptance, before finally being granted the ultimate accolade of Apple producing its own knock-off.
But the 6 Plus really isn’t fit to shine Galaxy Note 4’s bovver boots.
There’s always a Marmite element to really big phones – maybe more so than there is to the brown sludge itself.
I’ve spent the last fortnight having people looking at me like I’m holding a flatscreen television as I ostentatiously doodle on the Note 4’s six-inch slab of a screen. God only knows what people are doing behind my back as I talk on it.
It weighs 176g, and is 8.5mm thick, which at least ensures it won’t bend into a boomerang shape in your pocket, unlike those (slightly laboured) videos of bendy iPhones, where desperate bloggers destroy their pride and joy in the hope of a few microseconds of fame.
But if you can overcome your quite natural human revulsion at the thing’s size, it’s a delight.
The screen is the first bit I’d wave at Apple fanatics who dare to opine that their Johnny-come-lately phone is in any way a match for the great-grandchild of the phone that invented the ‘phablet’ market.
Apple’s iPhone 6 Plus’s jaded HD screen isn’t fit to hold a candle to the eyeball-searing 2560 x 1440 pixel screen here. This thing is sharper than most 60in televisions, but it fits in your pocket.
OK, it only just fits in your pocket, but if you keep trying, you’ll get it in there. If you’re looking for a big, detailed screen for browsing proper websites on (not the cut-down mobile versions), there’s really little that can beat this.
It’s blazingly fast, bright, colourful, and the ‘Back’ button and home button are located off the screen, which gives you more space to do stuff.
Fish out the built-in stylus, and you can instantly take a screenshot, doodle notes over it then email the result to Apple fans saying, ‘Nyah nyah nyah’. Or something equally childish.
Add to that a truly splendid, metal casing (a first for Samsung), a blazingly fast processor, and built-in pedometer and heart-rate monitor, and you have, for my money, the best phone on Earth at the moment. Apple’s 6 Plus doesn’t come close.
I’d really nearly caved in and bought an iPhone for the first time in half a decade. But having tested this giant metal beast, I won’t.
Apple’s iPhone 6 Plus might keep the fanboys happy –but if you bother to put it side by side this one (which Apple fans won’t), there’s only one winner.
GAMES
LEGEND OF GRIMROCK II
£14.99,PC
Legend of Grimrock II is even-paced, like a board game, to compensate for the sluggish reactions of older gents as they explore an island filled with escapees from the Lord Of The Rings films
Middle-aged gamers are the target market for this retro fantasy. It’s even-paced, like a board game, to compensate for the sluggish reactions of older gents as they explore an island filled with escapees from the Lord Of The Rings films. ★★★★★
F1 2014
£35, XBOX, PS3
Petrolheads will find the latest version of F1 – which faithfully reproduces all of this year’s cars, circuits and drivers in exquisite detail – difficult to resist
The annual update of the F1 simulation game has become something of a routine event, but petrolheads will find the latest version – which faithfully reproduces all of this year’s cars, circuits and drivers in exquisite detail – difficult to resist. ★★★★★
PEPPA PIG THEME PARK
£3.99, iPAD
Four pounds is pretty steep given the sheer simplicity of the games on offer here – one of them revolves around the challenge of, er, buying candyfloss. But in terms of the hours of pure, it’s an absolute bargain
Four pounds is pretty steep given the sheer simplicity of the games on offer here – one of them revolves around the challenge of, er, buying candyfloss. But in terms of the hours of pure, blissful silence this will buy, it’s an absolute bargain. ★★★★★
APPS
SEASONAL CITIES
FREE, iPHONE
This clever spin on city guides is updated every three months and suggests activities according to the season – ie, indoor ones for chilly, rainy London.
SYGIC
FREE, IOS/ANDROID
Proper sat-nav style, turn-by-turn navigation for your mobile, with offline maps so you don’t have to rely on a phone connection on the motorway.
SLEEPIO
FREE, iPHONE
An app promising to help you drop off without pills or potions. Includes a dose of cognitive behavioural therapy, delivered by an Oxford sleep expert.
