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Samsung’s yearly Galaxy S and Note refreshes are always related devices — they share a lot of the same DNA and software features, but this year that has been taken to the extreme. The Note 5 looks more like the Galaxy S6 than expected, and it even has many of the same hardware quirks. This is a strange decision for a phone that has always been seen as an “enthusiast” model. Let’s see how the Galaxy S6 and Note 5 stack up, and figure out what that means for the Note series.

Design

Gone are the days of plastic Samsung flagship phones. Now it’s all about metal and glass. Both the Note 5 and the Galaxy S6 have an aluminum band around the edge and a glass panel on the back. The Galaxy S6 is flat on the back, which is fine considering its size. The Note 5’s rear panel is curved a bit at the edges to make the larger phone easier to hold. They otherwise feel very similar. The flat back on the Galaxy S6 tends to make cases fit a bit more snugly, though. The Note 5’s larger frame means it’s still quite a bit heavier than the Galaxy S6 (176g vs. 138g).

Those glass back panels are not user-removable, so that means the batteries aren’t coming out without a trip to a service center. The Galaxy S6 has a somewhat modest 2550mAh battery inside, and the Note 5 bumps that up to 3000mAh. In both cases this is a slight decrease from the previous generation, but that’s less forgivable in the case of the Note 5. The Note series has always appealed more to enthusiast people who wanted a big utilitarian phone.

On the front of both phones you’ve got Samsung’s usual array of physical navigation buttons under the screen. The back and multitasking buttons are capacitive, and the home button clicks. That’s also where the fingerprint sensor is in both phones. The GS6 debuted Samsung’s new fingerprint tech, and that continues in the Note 5. You don’t have to swipe anymore, just a tap and you’re done.

Display and internals

Both the Note 5 and the Galaxy S6 use Samsung’s latest generation Super AMOLED display technology. They also have the same resolution of 2560×1440. The Note 5 is a little larger at 5.7-inches, which works out to 518 pixels per inch. The 5.1-inch 1440p AMOLED on the Galaxy S6 is slightly sharper with 577 pixels per inch. This distinction is purely technical, though. It’s unlikely you’ll notice the slight difference in pixel density.

The Note 5’s display has special digitizer that takes advantage of the S Pen inductive stylus. This input device docks into the bottom of the phone and can be ejected with a press. Samsung’s Note screens tend to have a slightly odd reflective quality because of the digitizer, but that’s only obvious in very bright light. According to DisplayMate, the Note 5 has the best screen available on a smartphone with accurate colors and high efficiency. The Galaxy S6’s display is similarly awesome, just smaller and ever so slightly dimmer.

There were rumors as we approached the announcement of the Note 5 that Samsung would equip it with the more efficient Exynos 7422 ARM SoC, but it’s still just a 7420 just like the Galaxy S6. The 64-bit Exynos 7420 is certainly not a disappointment — it has a quad-core cluster of high-power Cortex-A57 CPUs and a second group of four efficient Cortex-A53 cores.

The Galaxy S6 and Note 5 both use new LPDDR4 RAM, but Samsung has included 4GB in the Note 5 and only 3GB in the Galaxy S6. It’s worth noting that Samsung’s memory management model in TouchWiz leans toward closing apps in the background rather than filling up all the available RAM first. So, there’s probably not much performance difference based on RAM specs. This probably has something to do with reserving capacity for Multi-Window Mode. More on that later.

Neither of these phones has a microSD card slot like older Samsung devices. They’re on equal footing there, but like with the non-removable battery, this is a greater calamity for Note fans who have always expected a phone suited to power users. In fact, you can’t even get as much built-in storage in the Note 5 as in the Galaxy S6. The GS6 comes in configurations up to 128GB, but the Note 5 tops out at 64GB. A previous listing for 128GB on Samsung’s site was an error. Both phones do use super-fast UFS 2.0 NAND storage, though.

Software and everything else

The Note series refresh is usually an opportunity for Samsung to experiment with crazy features that may or may not work out. However, this year it’s very restrained. The Note 5 doesn’t really introduce anything new, save for a quick way to create a new note while the screen is off. That’s not to say there’s no value to the Note 5 from a software perspective. They both run Android 5.1 with the new version of TouchWiz. The Note 5 has slightly different icons than the GS6 (I think they’re uglier), but both have a theme engine that can make them less ugly.

Samsung’s Air Command pop up is accessible at any time with the S Pen stylus. It offers quick access to the note taking and screen capture tools designed specifically for this input device. These are things you don’t get on the Galaxy S6, but you really only benefit if you’re a user of the S Pen. Some people don’t actually take it out of the holster very often.

Another difference in the software is simply that the Note 5 is larger than the Galaxy S6, which means Samsung’s Multi-Window mode is actually kind of useful. This feature allows you to open two apps in split-screen, but it’s pretty cramped on the Galaxy S6’s 5.1-inch AMOLED. The 5.7-inch Note 5 screen is a bit more spacious, so a split-screen view kind of works. There’s even a way to undock an app and have it in a floating window on Samsung phones. Again, this makes more sense on a Note 5 than a GS6.

Samsung’s attempts to build more premium devices with fewer features might make sense for the market as a whole, but does it make sense for the Note? I think this comparison drives home an uncomfortable truth about the Note series. It has really become a slightly larger Galaxy S phone, and that might not serve its original audience of enthusiasts. In some cases the Note 5 is even less capable — there’s no IR blaster on the Note 5, but there is on the Galaxy S6. I feel like most people who want a big Samsung phone are going to buy a Galaxy S6 Edge+, leaving the stylus fans to settle for the Note 5. And the thing is, most people don’t use the stylus.

How long can it go on like this? I wouldn’t be surprised if Samsung is in the process of pivoting the Note series. In the future, we might just have large or small Samsung phones, then you’ll get an optional Bluetooth S Pen stylus (Bluetooth styluses are supported natively in Android 6.0).

So that’s the GS6 versus the Note 5 — more similar than ever, and that’s weird.