Editors' note: Samsung will be revealing the Galaxy Note 7 at an event in New York City on August 2. The company is skipping the Note 6 moniker in order to bring its product line in sync with the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge, which were released earlier in 2016. This review was updated to reflect the availability of those latter two models in March.
Samsung's Galaxy Note 5 is the smoothest, sleekest stylus-equipped jumbo-screen smartphone that the company has ever made. On the plus side: a slim, shiny, large-screened luster; strong camera; retooled stylus; and killer battery life. But these assets are subverted by two key omissions; the Note 5's battery is not swappable and there is no expandable storage slot ( though there is free cloud storage) .
The Note 5 is the least distinctive of the Note line. It's Samsung's only 2015 model to come equipped with a stylus - and a good one at that - but it otherwise looks pretty much the same as the Galaxy S6 Edge , featuring the same dual curved-edge screen and nearly identical specs. And the Note 5 and S6 Edge are basically supersized versions of the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge models that Samsung debuted in March 2015.
