Leak: The Galaxy Note 5 is going to make some people pretty upset

If you want a smartphone with a premium feeling aluminum body, you’re most likely going to have to sacrifice the ability to swap out your battery or put in a microSD card. Unfortunately for smartphone makers, this means that no matter what they do, someone isn’t going to be happy. This will undoubtedly be the case for Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy Note 5, which will reportedly come with the same aluminum body that the company has been favoring recently but without the ability to swap out batteries or microSD cards. 

In the second half of 2014, Samsung officially announced the Galaxy Alpha, the first device in the company’s stable with true metal, albeit just a frame. Shortly thereafter, the Galaxy Note 4 (and Galaxy Note Edge) launched and saw repeated use of the premium material. All these devices, however, shipped with a plastic rear that allowed for battery swapping and microSD card support. This year however, Samsung has gone the full nine yards and produced a pair of products that have won over the media yet angered some longtime supporters. Both the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge feature a unibody design with two slabs of glass sandwiching an aluminum alloy frame, but sans the expandable memory and replaceable power cell. Rumors had initially pointed to a Galaxy S6 Active that would see the return of both, yet such would not come to pass. Now, it seems, the same might hold true of the much-vaulted Galaxy Note series… Courtesy of the folks over at nowhereelse.fr, the same site that brought us early leaks of the Galaxy S6 and HTC One M9 among various other devices, we have what are -allegedly- the first pictures of the Galaxy Note 5. Suffice to say, some people aren’t going to be happy: the render above is missing any semblance of a removable back cover. In fact, it looks just like a larger Galaxy S6, or even the leaked Galaxy A8 but with a cut-out for the S-Pen.