The phone fits within the VR headset so the size for that purpose isn't relevant, only the picture quality.
I'm speaking ergonomics.
IIRC, Oculus uses a Galaxy Note 3 screen in their developer modules? Seems to work fine for then, no? None of the reviewers complained about the screen in it.
Also, the picture quality on the Note 3 is fine. I never said the Note 4 wasn't better, either.
The person above said that the understated selling point of these devices is that they are great media hubs... Yay! He just described basically every modern flagship device.
The only thing that makes the Note 3 better than other devices at certain tasks, like watching video, is due chiefly due to its design and not due to some specific targeting by Samsung. HTC deliberately put their speakers in front of the device and made them give big sound for that reason, Samsung makes no efforts like that on their Note smartphones.
Yes, they want people like Artists, Musicians, Students, Journalists, etc. to use their phone. For this, they have to make improvements in all the expected places that any device has to make improvements: Color Accuracy, Brightness, Fast Auto-Brightness Adjustments, Sharpness, Saturation, etc.
But most of the features on the note are geared primarily towards productivity. The S Pen features they announced had nothing to do with gaming. The Microphone features have nothing to do with gaming. S Note isn't a game. You don't multi-window games.
People who do a lot of mobile gaming, not so ironically, tend to prefer smaller devices not bigger ones. Large phones are an ergonomic disaster for devices that require a lot of tilting and panning for gameplay, as well as those that lay controls out across the display canvas.
Samsung didn't showcase any games in their Gear VR announcement either, not in the staged event I seen, unless I fast forwarded past it (which means it couldn't have lasted that long since I was only skipping a couple minutes at a time). The VR headset also won't come with the phone, and will likely cost a pretty penny. It will also require developers to modify games to utilize its abilities,
and if the S Pen and Multi-Window/Data Sharing SDK usage among the most popular applications are any indication... LOL! Okay...
And, even in its intended niches, that was an issue with the Note 3... There are some things that are done well in it from a productivity standpoint (like being able to drag and drop data from one app to another), but application support is extremely volatile. A lot of developers are ignoring those SDKs and not implementing support for them in their applications.
Since the functionality in 3rd party apps depends on developers implementing support, you end up with a device with cool "potential functionality" that is dormant in most of the 3rd party apps you have on your phone, which makes it seem more like a "gimmick" than useful functionality (and can be quite frustrating as it makes the UX seem rather fractured).
I wish Samsung (or Google?) would focus on these types of things.
This is mostly a hardware refresh so I don't have any real qualms with the device itself, mind you. I already have a Note 3 so I just can't justify spending $700+ on a Note 4 when I can diversity and get a bit more value for my purchase by branching out at this point.