Samsung Galaxy Note Edge (T-Mobile)

The Galaxy Note Edge ($870 up front, or 24 monthly payments of $36.25) is the latest experiment in a long line of curious one-offs.

While I applaud the brazen break from convention, the eponymous curved Edge screen really serves no must-have purpose.

The Note Edge is otherwise the same phone as the Editors' Choice Galaxy Note 4, so it's not a complete write off, but you'll pay a premium over the original for what amounts to a cool tech demo.

At 5.96 by 3.24 by 0.33 inches (HWD) and 6.14 ounces, the Note Edge is shorter and lighter, but noticeably wider than the Note 4.

You get the same faux-leather plastic back and coated-metal frame, but the polished chamfering is limited to the front side. It feels a bit too plasticky to me, but Samsung assures me that they're made from the same material.

The Note Edge's battery is slightly smaller than the Note 4's (3,000mAh to 3,220mAh) and it's also technically driving more pixels, even though the display has a smaller area. In a battery rundown test, where we streamed a YouTube video over LTE with screen brightness set to max, the Note Edge lasted for 6 hours, 15 minutes. That's still a positive result, but not nearly as impressive as the Note 4's 7 hours, 56 minutes.

Samsung lists the display as a 5.6-inch, Quad HD+ Super AMOLED panel, but that requires some more explanation. First, the Quad HD+ refers to the resolution of the flat area of the display, 2,560 by 1,440 pixels; the curved Edge screen adds an extra 160 pixels of width. The 5.6-inch spec refers to the entire display, including the curved Edge screen.

Any discussion of the Note Edge will revolve around the unique, curved screen, but from every other side, it looks nearly identical to the original Note 4