Samsung Galaxy Note 5 32GB (Black) $794 Delivered @ eGlobal

Just noticed that eGlobal have dropped their price for the Galaxy Note 5 again(!) to a new low of $794 delivered, potentially $786.31 with 1% cashback via cash rewards. This is even cheaper than the free shipping weekend last week.

Use the long term discount code WB10 to get $10 off to get this price.

This is obviously for grey stock with 12 month back to HK warranty (you need to cover postage) if something goes wrong.

This is the lowest it's been for any stock and definitely under the $800 barrier now. As usual you need to weigh up the cost and convenience 24 month local warranty is worth to you. I suspect there will be at least a repeat of the $880 from mobileciti (local stock) as time goes on in the next month or so (even better if you claim GST on TRS). I'm a huge fan of grey importing but usually set an arbitrary value of a 10-15% premium for local warranty, which this deal currently hits.

This is the SM-N920i version so covers all the LTE bands for Telstra, Optus and Vodafone including Band 28 (700Mhz) and Band 5 (850MHz) which is great for metro areas and indoors.

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Mentioned this in the last deal, but it's all still relevant and I've updated it :)

If I can be self indulgent, here are my thoughts about the Note 5 vs. upcoming the Nexus 6P:

Hardware
The Note 5 will undoubtedly have superior hardware.
The 14nm Exynos 7420 is miles ahead of the SD810 both in terms of speed and efficiency. Early benchmarks of the SD820 which is also 14nm are actually comparable to the 7420 which is a huge kudos to Samsung for having this chip out there 12 months before Qualcomm in the chipmaking world which runs on 6/12mth cycles. The SD810 in the 6P (even v 2.1) is going to get hot and then throttled as the system underclocks it to compensate. Its just a matter of when, which depends on Huawei's cooling. The SD808 even shares the same problem to a lesser extent.
TLDR: Exynos 7420 chip is miles ahead of the SD810 and has a degree of future proofing.

-NAND storage UFS 2.0 in the Note 5 vs. eMMC in the 6P. Yes its proprietary, but UFS gives much higher read/write speeds.

-4GB RAM vs 3GB. More is better. The aggressive app closing that people have complained about in Galaxy's can be fixed to maximise the use of this for multi tasking.

-Best in class camera – the 6P sounds like it's going to have the best camera ever in a Nexus, but it's still below the S6 edge according to DxoMark, which is going to be below again the yet to be reviewed Note 5. OIS with manual settings is something else altogether if you know what you're doing. Eg http://i.imgur.com/LLp4WQS.jpg – I took this beauty with a super slow shutter speed whilst resting the phone on someone's head lol.

-Best in class screen – there is no way the 6P is going to get the Note 5's screen which has been rated best in class by displaymate and anandtech. Best case scenario is maybe the Note 4's screen which is better than the Nexus 6, but still 40% less efficient compared to the current gen Note 5 (http://www.displaymate.com/Galaxy_Note5_ShootOut_1.htm)

Build – I'm not a huge fan of the slippery glass back on the Note, but kudos for the screen to body ratio and tapered edges to help with one handed use, while maintaining the same screen size as the note 4. I use cases for all my phones, so in a way build materials don't really matter. The aluminum build on the 6P also looks nice, but the bezels top and bottom bezels are huge (for the front facing speakers?) and is reflected in the relatively poor screen to body ratio (71.4% vs. 75.9%)

True compared to the Note 4, the omission of the mSD card, IR blaster and replaceable battery are disappointing. There are ways around lack of mSD (see below) and sadly it's a trend that a lot of other smartphone makers are adopting as well. The battery although smaller actually provides more juice compared to the Note 4 thanks to processor and screen improvements in efficiency. If you decided to keep the device for 3+ years, the sealed battery is actually replaceable – not super easy to do, but there are guides online. It's not as if the Nexus 6P has any of these features either.

The Note 5 also has wireless fast charging for a sacrifice of 0.3mm of thickness, which was the main reason Nexus 6P engineers have given for its omission.

Software
I'm the first to admit that I'm a huge pure android and nexus nut, but Marshmallow may be the first new version of android that I really can't get excited about. The touted features in Marshmallow are not ground breaking and represent disappointing incremental features which already exist in Lollipop with xposed and even 3rd party apps. True it's giving people who don't root their phones access to them for the first time, but for the power user there really isn't much there. See: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/10/android-6-0-marshmall…

TLDR:
Doze – can still be bypassed by developers of apps. Only affects standby time so will make no difference to the biggest drain which is screen, app usage and cellular reception quality. Can do similar already with greenify, amplified and other similar apps.
On tap – very hit and miss. More miss than hit
Permissions – nice and about time I guess, but already doable with 3rd party apps (AppOps) / a firewall
Google launcher changes – had these for months already with nova launcher
In context voice commands – nice if you use voice commands often. I don't know many people who do.
Xposed won't work for a while and there will undoubtedly be new bugs as always until 6.1.

All up, the maturity of android is making the latest and greatest pure android updates less mandatory.

My last experience with Touchwiz back with the Note 2 were pretty negative. However, with a dark material theme from the theme store, nova launcher and xposed, the gaudy bits of touchwiz are no longer as bad as they once were. Samsung have really pulled it back and you can do the rest with a simple debloating app or a modded stock ROM. With the dark material theme, it really isn't too disimilar to stock android.

I'm not a huge stylus person, but some of the TW features like signing PDFs and better hand writing recognition seem genuinely useful. Multi window which was touted in the developer preview of Marshmallow but disabled at launch has been around in TouchWiz for years.

The cons of the Note 5 would be that updates are 4-6 months late and there will be no AOSP custom ROM support given it runs on exynos. This means updates for only 2 years at most. However, the maturity of android as an OS has meant that there are less "essential" features to upgrade to or problems for custom ROMs to fix. Xposed framework is a miracle in allowing a degree customisation that only customs ROMs used to be able to offer.

Samsung is also committed to monthly security updates for android, which is huge as you're no longer reliant on a nexus for this. http://www.androidcentral.com/samsung-plans-offer-new-securi…

Price
Local RRP for the 6P is $899 which call it what you want (gouging, Australia tax, market factors) is a huge increase in the $499 US that US customers pay.

Unfortunately I think it will be harder to source cheap grey Nexus 6P stock this time around, as all countries except for North America (with the US Bands version) got done over by the international pricing model. Hong Kong/Asia where a lot of grey stuff comes from is not significantly cheaper than Australia (+27% vs +21%) and that's without a GST. You can probably get one for $840 delivered from Clove/Handtec at launch, but at these similar prices I'd personally pay an extra $50 for excellent 2 year playstore warranty. Historically, Nexus devices have had stock supply issues initially and thus haven't always had cheap grey stock prices for 3+ months after launch.

Either way, it's going to be more expensive than the Note 5 in the foreseeable future.

I note that Kogan have put up a placeholder for the Nexus 6P at $729 + delivery for the 32GB. Unfortunately it's Kogan - read this very informative insider whistleblower leak about their horrible business practices, which means the place holder price may have have nothing to do with the actual sale price. Also they won't have stock for 1+ months while they keep your money. If I remember correctly, last year DWI did not have significantly cheaper than Playstore stock for a while as well. Its definitely something to keep an eye on though :)

Samsung has pretty good price retention as well. Brand new Note 4s still retail for $650-$700. Resale value used is ~$500-550 on ebay compared to the Nexus 6 which is $400-450. When I got my Nexus 6 in December, I remember it actually cost more than the Note 4 (paid $765 via Amazon France, Note 4 was ~$720 on a ebay sale).

TLDR
The Note 5 has undoubtedly miles better hardware and will be cheaper than the Nexus 6P at launch. The benefits of pure android and the latest android updates are no longer as important as they once were given the maturity of android as an OS as evidenced by only minor incremental updates in Marshmallow. Advancements in TouchWiz and xposed framework have made non pure android much more tolerable than it once was.

The only other major con I see with the Note 5 is the absence of a 64GB version in Australia, and if it does come it'll be ridiculously expensive (+$300 over the 32GB currently from grey imports and no stock as well). There are ways around this with cloud storage. I uploaded my 20GB music collection to Google music and can stream it free. I run a networked storage drive at home for media streaming. You can also get USB OTG dongles for your mSD card which work well when you want to carry extra media locally.

I'll wait for reviews of the 6P of course while the Note 5 price gently trends downwards, but at this stage call me a heretic but I might be going back to Samsung and getting a Note 5.