Ryan reviews the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra: the most expensive mainline phone ever from Samsung and a merely OK camera -- why not!
Listen to the Note 10+ review from roughly 6 months ago!Pricing$1399 base price, there’s another config for another $200Preorder trade-in with an S10+ brought that down to $799 (-$600)SpecsFor full specs, read GSM ArenaCPUSD 865Allegedly the Snapdragon 865 is tied together with the 5G modem, so the cost of the entire device is increasedRAM12GB; matching Note 10+Higher config has 16GB total thoughStorage128GB baseHigher config has 512GB thoughA real shame this “Ultra” tier didn’t have 256GB to match the Note 10+ out of box experienceSD Card slot still present thoughDisplaySize6.9’’ !20:9 aspect ratioIt’s really tallUnlike the old Nexus 6 Moto, it’s not too wideSpecial features2020 screen process120hz refresh rate. 240hz input rate1440p is exclusive of 120hz at release time thoughaybe a future update enables it at battery life lossPhysicalsLook and feel, build qualityFootprintWeightBattery5000 mah; the biggest ever!ChargingAllegedly 45w compatible again, but not included, and who caresPortsSpeakersInitially impressions would say they’re worse than the Note 10+’s speakersButtonsAlas, the Note 10+ had perfect button placement on the leftside, S20U moved to the rightNo bixby button – Samsung has learned5GOf no consequence to me at this timeIt’s identical to LTE in everyday experienceS20U has the mmWave modem so if T-Mobile somehow pulled a Verizon it could be ultra fast in the park with line of sightCamera3 real back cameras (time of flight / depth sensor also but not a real camera)How is itIt’s remarkably averageInitial impressions were concerningAny subject movement (a dog, for example) would cause blurThe depth of field of the primary camera made taking typical shots difficultThe default settings leave a lot to be desired (scene optimization)JPEGSpecial modes100X zoom!An example of practical zoom5x zoom ends up “grainy” and looking digital, because the optical zoom kicks in at 10xYou can see an Ian from 5 rows away108mpThe pixel binning (can you say HTC ULTRA PIXELS?) is back and it’s still mediocre sometimesNight ModeNight Mode has been available on previous Samsung phones, but it’s still remarkably good40mp selfie cameraCool, I guess? VerdictDon’t buy this for the camera, I’d sayThe S10+ or the Note 10+ had sometimes better camerasThe S10+/Note10+ lines shared cameras and the camera “modules” line had been used in other Samsung devices over time; you could think that this is a first gen-use of a module-line and the software hasn’t caught up yetThe ultra-wide camera module is 12mp – give me more on that one – I love ultra-wide shots and I rarely zoomI find predicting which of the cameras the phone will use in a given mode too confusing to even try to understandPhysical camera bump, alignment is weird and an ergonomic disasterSoftwareOSWe’ll get Android 11 on this phone next February or so when the next S-model comes outKind of Samsung’s fault, kind of Google’s faultThe thirdparty launcher support for the new gestures is still forthcoming allegedly in One UI 2.5 – unfortunatelyUpdatesA camera update came 3-weeks into ownershipIt fixed some camera issues but there’s still work to be doneHoping there are many more meaningful updatesPerformanceNo jitter or lag for meFinal thoughtsDon’t buy this at full priceIt’s a big, heavy phone, consider the S20+ insteadLet’s conclude with a funny storyI’ve been buying phones YoY since 2016 and I bought the Pixel XL 1 with extra-storage at the time, and somehow it came out to ~$950S20U is $1399 but with a trade-in, it was still cheaperAttributions
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