I bought every Galaxy Note ever.

welcome to the ultimate galaxy note comparison from the original note to the galaxy note 20 ultra so the very first note in 2011 was a real wtf moment the packaging is pretty standard for 2011 because i mean at this time phones were still seen as tools as opposed to items of luxury just simple things inside like a micro usb cable and of course a removable battery after years of palm-sized smartphones samsung was one of the first companies to be like you know what screw it we think there's room for something bigger the galaxy note was more of an experiment than anything else so samsung didn't invest too much in creating new distinct features for it it was essentially a big hd galaxy s2 with a larger battery and an s pen but it really was big the 4.3 inch display on the s2 became 5.3 inches and even though with today's screen numbers that sounds like a piddly figure because of how wide the aspect ratios on phones used to be it still feels quite chunky anyways the media was torn some people said this was exceptional and groundbreaking other people said you'd look like a fool when trying to use it but the fact of the matter is the note sold well for a new product category with 10 million units being shifted so with the galaxy note 2 the next year samsung was confident they knew it was going to sell well so they decided to make the note better the box looks basically the same to be honest the phone first made of plastic just like the first note with accessories underneath the note 2 took the pebble inspired design language of the galaxy s3 released earlier that year but this time as well as sizing up their s series phone the note overclocked the chipset from 1.4 gigahertz to 1.6 gigahertz and they doubled the ram to 2 gigabytes instead of one this was quite a lot of ram also i would say that it was with this phone that the s pen became more than a stylus air view allowed you to peek inside folders and you could now select an area and take a screenshot of just that something about the note 2 really appealed to me whether it was the clean white finish or the feather-like wallpapers i just felt like this was a really elegant phone and as a result the note 2 is actually the first note that i bought admittedly way after launch when i could actually afford it but i loved it and so did a lot of people compared to the roughly 10 million sales of the first note the note 2 shifted 30 million units so it's a bit of a shame that the note 3 from 2013 didn't really do it for me this was the same year that samsung made the galaxy s4 and with these phones i feel like samsung got a bit carried away with their past sales figures they felt like oh look everyone wants samsung phones maybe they also want samsung services too so these phones were just packed with bloatware in fact the t-mobile version of the galaxy note 3 came pre-installed with 62 applications think about that number that's more apps than i think three phones put together should have this was also actually the first year that samsung really started pushing their eco-friendly agenda hence the pretty garish fake wooden box bloatware aside though the note 3 was actually a really good phone this was really samsung cementing the note as their powerhouse phone it was one of the first phones with 4k video recording it had three gigs of ram instead of two for the galaxy s4 and they'd even fully upgraded the chipset from that phone plus the catalog of features from this s pen just kept growing you could already take screenshots with it on the last phone but now you could scribble all over them and the stylus became a more suitable alternative to typing with better handwriting recognition and integration with the rest of the software now the 2014 galaxy note 4 is a phone that i would say i almost forgot about the note 4 stuck with a very similar body and 5.7 inch screen size to the note 3 and i guess just because of how externally similar it was this never really stuck out to me i will say this it's way nicer packaging than the note 3. they've gone white and a much cleaner white with a simpler design than their early white boxes to be honest i'm just glad that the fake wood is gone i will say this though i love the matte chamfers around the edges of the phone and even though it was less visually exciting than some of the past note phones the note 4 was probably the biggest jump over the s series that came before it versus the s5 the snapdragon 801 became the snapdragon 805 16 gigabytes of base storage became 32. gorilla glass 3 became gorilla glass 4 and they introduced optical image stabilization in the camera and samsung shot straight from a 1080p display to a quad hd one the note 4 was very much a phone that deserved to exist plus it was around this time that samsung started cleaning up the way their touchwiz skin looked because let's be honest before this its reputation wasn't very good this software looks a mile better than what we saw on the note 3. also this is kind of wacky but alongside the galaxy note 4 samsung also unveiled their first ever phone with an outward curved display this is the galaxy note edge and i remember really wanting one of these even if it is kind of weird because of how that curve is only on one side 2015 was a turning point it felt like before this every year the note was becoming more and more impressive and more and more separate from the s series before it but the note 5 was an afterthought packaging wise this was the first year that samsung started putting sleeves on their boxes which makes sense because it's probably easier to mass print and then transport sleeves as opposed to the boxes themselves now the reason i say this phone is an afterthought is actually not at all because the note 5 was a bad phone i used this as my main phone for a while and i really liked it it's more just that this was the year when samsung started doubling down on their s series earlier in this year they released not just a galaxy s6 but a galaxy s6 edge and samsung gave those phones everything all the perks that the past note phone had the optical image stabilization the gorilla glass 4 the higher resolution quad hd display samsung gave those features to its wider reaching s series of phones so just as a result of that the note felt like what it did right at the start a bigger s phone with a pen only that this year it wasn't even bigger in a weird turn of events at the same event where they launched the note 5 samsung also dropped the galaxy s6 edge plus which had an identical 5.7 inch screen size only that that was kind of the more premium phone because it had the fancy new curved sides on the bright side though the s pen now clicks into place within the phone and every samsung flagship released in this year was made of glass so this definitely feels more premium than any note before it okay 2016 was the year of the galaxy note 7 and this was a very interesting phone for a lot of reasons for starters they jumped to number they went straight from the note 5 to the note 7 because for the longest time the galaxy note series had lagged one number behind their s series the note 1 came out just after the s2 the note 2 came out just after the s3 etc so they finally fixed it in 2016 they had the galaxy s7 phones and now the note 7. good decision but actually as well as jumping in numbers they also jumped in price if you've been paying attention to the prices of the last phones they were all pretty much around 700 this thing was 850. now in order to charge more for their phones they had to position them as luxury items hence the complete packaging redesign to this all-new black theme which they've actually stuck with since they also started giving their earphones in a box because i guess that makes it feel more special we still kind of had the same issue as last year in that now that we had an s7 and a bigger s7 edge this note was still struggling to find its place it didn't feel as differentiated as a note lineup once was but as a phone as a prospect as something a customer would consider buying this also felt like the best bits of samsung coming together at once it took the edge displays of the galaxy s7 edge and integrated them by default they brought back micro sd cards which would ditch the year before and double the base storage of the s7 to 64 gigs it's also the first note that's ip certified against water and dust which is actually quite tricky to do with these phones because they have that removable pen oh and also this phone is where samsung first integrated iris scanning that didn't age well oh and of course there was a bigger problem with the note 7. the first five days of this phone going on sale were glorious it was doing great numbers the reviews were fantastic but then all of a sudden out of nowhere they started exploding first one report and to be honest when i saw that a galaxy note 7 had exploded for the first time i didn't really think much of it after all when a new phone is released people often try to find problems with it but then there was another and another and another and within 12 days of the phone being on sale every single unit sold 2.5 million galaxy note 7s were recalled samsung then tried to fix them claimed they had fixed them sent them out again only for them to start exploding again the fallout from this was ridiculous it got to the stage where even airlines had notice boards telling you not to board the plane if you had one of these phones it was like a suicidal ad campaign for samsung so given that the note 7 was recalled you might be wondering what this phone i have here is well this is the note fan edition samsung obviously couldn't sell the galaxy note 7 anymore but they still had a factory full of parts that they'd ordered for those phones so they basically used those parts and built a phone that is basically the galaxy note 7 but it's rebadged as the fe on the subject of explosions though 2017 was the year that screen sizes exploded and it's not that phones got bigger in particular it's just that the bezels got shaved dramatically so much so that the 5.7 inch display on the galaxy note 7 became 6.3 inches on the galaxy note 8. this phone's box is pretty much just an evolution of the all black theme they introduced last year it's very premium all accessories have their place as opposed to just sitting loosely inside and samsung has also leveled up the earphones thanks to a partnership with akg like the last few years the note8 was pretty similar to the plus sized s phone just before it same chipset similar display size both went up to six gigs of ram but this was the year that samsung finally figured out the direction they wanted to take their note phones in the note 8 was where samsung cemented their design language pebble-like curves for s writing padlight boxiness for the note and this establishment of a new identity was helped by the removal of the home button and a new space theme for their entire galaxy range this definitely felt like a futuristic rebrand even in terms of marketing this is the year when samsung finally started framing their s phones as the fun ones for social media and the note phones as the professional phones for people who mean business and this separation makes total sense see in the early days of smartphones samsung could just take one of their s series phones add in a bunch of features that we're missing and be like look guys we've got a new phone but as this smartphone market has matured and as pretty much all flagship phones have become good with no obvious missing features samsung has realized that this isn't a sustainable strategy it's much harder now to add features that create a noticeable improvement so instead samsung's just shifted to framing their s series and their note series in different ways the one thing the note 8 did have though was two cameras this was actually the first samsung phone ever with a dual camera setup one normal and one two times optical zoom but all that said i liked but i didn't love this phone those dual cameras were okay samsung shrunk the battery in trying to be extra careful and so endurance wasn't great plus the fingerprint scanner was way too higher i just couldn't get used to it oh yeah and it was even more expensive at 930 following on from that phone 2018 brought us the galaxy note 9 which was basically just samsung fixing a few problems and doubling down on their newfound direction for the note for the packaging pretty much the only change is that the outer sleeve has been swapped from showing the name of the phone to just showing the s pen the note 9 is on top and apart from that it is practically identical the note 9 was basically a bunch of small improvements that made the phone a lot better to use but just not hugely exciting they brought the fingerprint scanner further down they whacked the battery up to a very respectable 4 000 milliamp hours they added bluetooth to the s pen so it could take photos remotely and added in a dual speaker setup bringing samsung's audio from one of the weaker phones to one of the stronger phones they also i guess to try and visually differentiate it created this two-tone finish which i remember at the time describing it a bit like when you break the door of your car and the replacement doesn't quite match i stand by it but a cool touch this time was that the writing ink would now be the same color as the pen you got with your phone i used the note 9 for quite a long time and i really liked it 2019 was a big year for the note in fact it was the first time ever we had not just a galaxy note 10 but a galaxy note 10 plus but we'll focus on the note 10 plus because i would say this is the actual successor to the galaxy note 9. in terms of the box samsung's definitely operating on a if it ain't broke don't fix it policy it's pretty much identical to the last few years but that's okay it's nice now i would argue 2019 as well as being a big year for the note was just generally probably the biggest change samsung has ever made to its phones starting with the galaxy s10 series earlier in the year they ditched the space theme entirely and went for minimalism with their new one ui skin their phones gained these radiant color changing finishes and they became super lightweight considering that their screens and batteries had actually gotten larger so just naturally when samsung released the note version of this redesign it was a big improvement from last year the bezels all but disappeared and we now had a phone that was both slimmer and lighter there was yet another price hike now to eleven hundred dollars but this felt more worth it the note 10 phones reminded me of the elegance i first noticed with the galaxy note 2 which i feel was somewhat lost along the way and that leaves us with 2020 where samsung has just dropped the galaxy note 20 ultra and again the unboxing experience is kind of the same and this one i was a little more disappointed with because yes it is another year of the same thing but also just the fact that this is an ultraphone this is the phone that samsung's biggest fans and longest supporters are going to buy it would have been cool to see something special i've already done a full review of this phone which i'll link somewhere up here but for the sake of this comparison the note 20 ultra represents two things number one the biggest price hike in the history of the note series from eleven hundred to thirteen hundred dollars and if we have a look at what that does to the notes pricing over the years it represents an almost alarming pricing trend but also two 2020 has seen samsung's biggest jump in ambition samsung didn't take this ultra name lightly like how a lot of companies just slap the word pro on the end of their phone to make it sound cool in almost every regard cameras display dimensions the note 20 ultra is an extreme phone all right so now that we've got all of these notes as well as a camera comparison i want to take a look at how the s pens have evolved over the years also it's literally taken me a year to collect all of these phones for this video so if you're enjoying it a sub would be brilliant so fun fact the pen on the first galaxy note was rounded after which samsung quickly realized they could eliminate rolling by making it squarer so the note 2's s pen were squarer and also the chunkiest s pen they ever made almost the size of an actual pen the note 3s was a further refinement with a design that was now symmetrical so you could put it into the phone either way up the note 4's s pen was very similar but with the note 5 at the same time that samsung went all glass on their phones the s-pen got a huge redesign way slimmer and it now looks like metal although actually it is still plastic and to be honest from this point onwards they did very little to it they shifted the button a little further up they eventually ditched the big samsung logo on it but really at its core the note 20 ultra's s pen has the same design as the note 5s but the latency and its software features are miles better plus from the note 10 onwards there's almost zero friction the s pen sort of glides in and glides out it's also tough to describe just how much the feel of these phones has improved too the note 1 can scroll through pages fine but almost every action feels slow and the phone just generally quite unresponsive the note 2 took that dual core chip and made it a quad-core chip so that phone is noticeably lighter you can also see though that even though the note 3 is more powerful than the note 2 it just does feel a bit bogged down by the sheer amount of software samsung's thrown on it and also notice how between the note 3 note 4 and note 5 the front of the phone has barely changed but from the note 4 onwards samsung started to understand how to make software look clean and the first thing they did was just to get rid of the thick obnoxious widgets with the note 5 they read their design language entirely to something more minimalist the icons retained elements from their earlier phones but now with a paper-like flatness which i liked but a lot of people thought was too childish so the note 7 took that aesthetic and made it a little less playful and a little more stock looking and this phone was also when samsung really stepped up their haptics from the note 7 onwards samsung's phones felt really premium to use now the note 8 is probably the biggest jump in design it's when the phones got bigger screens got much bigger and this is when samsung completely ditched any kind of coloured bezel and made all their phones black from the front they also introduced a space theme on this generation of phones which they then decided was a mistake and proceeded to move away from it the note 9 looks almost identical even the wallpaper is pretty much the same but the note 10 plus was a huge overhaul an impressive refreshing design and a phone that just feels light both in terms of how fast that is and its lack of physical weight and so it's no surprise that the note 20 ultra basically takes inspiration from that phone but it packs in even more display a smaller hole punch camera and twice the screen refresh rate at 120 hertz making it so smooth okay so in case you're wondering yes i built this rig and also yes it's a completely excessive idea that serves little purpose but hey i wanted this to be a special video so taking a look at the phone's cameras the camera app started very basic there was a phase when it became cool to have all the menus disappear to make the phone seem like a borderless window samsung tried to make the camera app cleaner and cleaner as they progressed but as more and more features got added it just made sense to start categorizing them so the camera app kind of went back to its original bordered style you can also see how samsung slowly added more cameras to their phones to start with it was an extra telephoto camera and soon after also an ultrawide now in terms of how the actual photos turned out here's the note 1 all the way up to the note 20 ultra and actually in all of this time photo resolution barely changes it's 8 megapixel on the very first note and 12 on the very latest but the quality of those shots improves with almost every generation whether that's through a larger sensor or just improved software processing it is genuinely a night and day difference all right if you enjoyed this video as i mentioned a sub to the channel would be brilliant my name is aaron this is mr who's the boss and i'll catch you in the next one [Music] you

Channel: Mrwhosetheboss

Views: 6,151,096

Rating: 4.9321032 out of 5

Keywords: Samsung galaxy note, galaxy note, samsung note, galaxy note comparison, samsung note comparison, samsung unboxing, galaxy note unboxing, note 20 ultra, note 20, galaxy s21

Id: EL-UCUAt8DQ

Length: 18min 13sec (1093 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 27 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/cloudsdale]

Aww, got me missing that goofy back of the Note 4. I had a white one and I loved popping that thing off and switching the battery.

[u/TheMatic]

I had them all as well, except the 1st one. I really liked the 7, wish I could have kept it. Mine never overheated or had any issue whatsoever. One Note he left out though... Galaxy Note Pro 12.2

[u/phantomdreamwalker]

So the Note 7 is in there? 🤔

[u/PresidentZer0]

Gz

[u/redglitch_2]

Note 7 was too sexy man. Shame they had to recall.

[u/SebOno1234]

The video has no ads or sponsorships either!

[u/Keanuisawesome69]

I was waiting for this video

[u/Keanuisawesome69]

Note 9 ftw!!!