Galaxy S20 Ultra Review: demanding near-perfection

You can get very, very good smartphones for not a lot of money these days. With a low price, there is plenty of room for forgiveness. If a feature is not perfect, it’s perfect! It was good value for money after all. However, as prices go up, the room for quirks and problems quickly dries up. At $ 1,400, customers are right to expect a phone that is basically perfect and with its Galaxy S20 Ultra, Samsung is trying to do it, but fails in one key area, a key area which also happens to be the main argument marketing.

Hardware |

A super premium but boring brick

First, let’s talk about hardware. Samsung is really good at making huge phones feel good, and the S20 Ultra is no exception! The Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra is great. His really large. With a 6.9-inch screen, it looks like it should be a giant, but thanks to the slim glasses that keep it in your pocket, the S20 Ultra is fairly easy to use.

The build quality of this phone is also excellent. Constructed from metal and glass, it can be a bit fragile on a drop, but its thickness and weight make it look like a tank. Talking about weight is dancing on the line of being as well heavy. At 222g or just under half a pound, the device is something you’ll feel every time you take it out of your pocket. Since I went there, I noticed that I feel a significant difference in weight when I take another smartphone. This is not really a problem, however, as it is a very noticeable observation.

The thickness is rather what I think some people might have a problem with. The Galaxy S20 Ultra has a noticeable bulge in your pocket, and the bump in its camera is absolutely huge. Sitting on a table, the phone rocks more than any other device I have tested in recent memory and, more particularly, produces an extremely loud noise when it vibrates.

Like other Galaxy S20 devices, the Ultra is slippery simply because it is made of glass and, because of the thin glasses, there are contact problems from time to time. Really, this is a device for which you should have a case. Although this is also true because it is so expensive.

The port situation will also be good for some users, but not ideal for others. There is a USB-C port in the bottom center for charging and also for audio output. There’s no headphone jack here and it’s a shame considering how much space Samsung has to work inside this phone, but at this point, this port is just dead on flagship devices and we have to accept it.

There’s also a SIM tray at the top that includes a microSD card slot, and there are only two physical buttons. The default side key turns the screen on / off and triggers Bixby, but it can also open the camera with a double-click. Its functionality can also be changed in the settings.

The base model Galaxy S20 Ultra also comes with 128 GB of storage and 12 GB of RAM, just like the S20 and S20 +. These are great specifications and help create a fast smartphone, but I can’t help but think that Samsung should have used a 256 GB chip in the Ultra instead of 128 GB. After all, it’s a really expensive phone! 512 GB is the next step, but even upgrading to 16 GB of RAM is not worth $ 1600 in my opinion.

The Galaxy S20 Ultra, when you look at its hardware, is not for everyone. It is a gigantic phone which can sometimes seem cumbersome. However, for content creators or those running a business on the go, the larger battery and additional screen space will be useful! It’s really just a matter of personal preference.

What really pisses me off, however, is that it’s just boring to watch. Nothing on the Ultra seems visually interesting. There is a glass plate on the back which is black or dull gray in color, neither has the slightest touch. It’s mind-boggling to me that we have a device here that is clearly aimed at the most hardcore content creators and Samsung fans, but there is absolutely nothing visually exciting about the device.

Display |

Monstrous, but in a good way

The screen of the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra is, as mentioned, huge. The 6.9 inch panel has thin bezels all around and offers plenty of real estate for whatever you want to do. You will love or hate size, but you will find it hard to say that it is not fully described.

As usual for a Samsung Super AMOLED panel, the S20 Ultras screen is very bright with vivid colors and deep blacks. It just looks great for everything from the media to the simple scrolling of social media.

What really makes this screen shine is its 120 Hz refresh rate. It is off by default, but once you turn it on, you’ll immediately notice the smoother scrolling it offers. It really changes the way you look at a smartphone screen and after using it you will have a hard time switching back to a 60 Hz panel. This is especially true if you are playing games that also take advantage of the higher refresh rate fast.

However, something that has frustrated some Galaxy S20 Ultra buyers is that Samsung is blocking the ability to use this screen to its full potential. The 6.9 inch screen is WQHD + or 3200 × 1440. However, thanks to the software, you can only use 120 Hz at 1920 × 1080. In practice, I cannot say that I really notice a difference between 1080 and 1400 on this screen, but it’s still a bit strange and frustrating. Should this prevent you from buying the phone? Absolutely not.

Also of note, Samsung has a perforated selfie camera. The 40MP sensor is quite good! I’m not really a selfie person, but the shots I have taken are crisp with good colors. What is most important to me personally is that the punch hole is housed in the center of the screen rather than on the sides.

Software |

Perfectly predictable performance

Samsung software has improved more and more over the years, and on the S20 Ultra we have One UI 2.1 which is based on Android 10. Our regular review of the Galaxy S20 / + delves more heavily into the software, but on the S20 Ultra, I’d rather focus on performance. The long story, however, is that the S20 Ultra’s software is fairly clean, relatively refined, but also sometimes a little frustrating.

How’s the performance, however? The Galaxy S20 Ultra is based on a Snapdragon 865 with 12 GB of RAM and UFS 3.0 storage. These specifications make an incredibly fast smartphone that is essentially free from performance issues.

In addition, this is only the basic model! If you really want to do it all, there is an upgraded Galaxy S20 Ultra that costs $ 200 more and offers 16 GB of RAM and 512 GB of storage. This model will really be able to take advantage of the memory lock function which also allows applications to run at any time.

Battery life |

5000 mAh. Enough said.

Inside the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra is a 5000 mAh battery. Even with a 6.9-inch screen and power-hungry specs, the battery life is excellent.

In my daily use on the S20 Ultra, I was able to easily and regularly finish a 14-hour day with 40% of my battery, if not more. It’s just average use with a lot of social media, a bit of web browsing and some casual games too. It also represented about 4 to 5 hours of screen time per hour. One day in particular, I also managed a little over 6 hours of screen time, but I still had 35% of the battery left.

Your results may of course vary depending on the networks and applications you use. But for the vast majority of people, it is a smartphone all day and for some people, it could even be a two-day device.

When the time comes to top it off, the Galaxy S20 Ultra has no shortage of charging options. Theres USB-C with a 25W fast charger included in the box. There’s also a 45W charger available for purchase. In addition, you can use any Qi charger with fast charging up to 15 W. The massive capacity of this battery also makes Samsung’s reverse wireless charging function really useful, especially since it can pump speeds of 9 W.

Camera |

108MP of imperfection and disappointment

The Galaxy S20 Ultra is right, but it fails on the face in the camera department if you ask me. I have never been so disappointed with a flagship smartphone camera in years.

On the back of the S20 Ultra is a set of four different camera sensors. There is a 108MP primary sensor, a 48MP camera with a periscope lens that produces a 10x optical zoom, an ultra wide 12MP camera and a ToF sensor. It’s a lot of numbers!

In the right setting, all of these cameras can produce brilliant photos. In good lighting with still subjects, the 108MP camera captures an astonishing amount of detail in the shot. At night, it can even find a lot of light in your environment. The ultra wide camera is also great in these scenarios. I also really like this, because Samsung uses a larger physical sensor, this camera is capable of producing natural bokeh. It’s a great look for portraits and the like, but adds to almost any other photo you take on the device.

What about this 10X zoom lens? At 10x zoom, the images are actually quite good! You’ll get a lot more detail from a 10x shot on the S20 Ultra compared to the same distance on most other flagship smartphones. Even going beyond this with the help of software, shots up to 30x are generally very good! Samsung insists that this phone can hit 100 times hard enough, but really the photos taken at this level are not very impressive.

It’s incredible that the camera can go so far, yes, but the shots produced at this level are a blurry mess. However, it’s commendable that Samsung offers this distance because, after all, it’s a $ 1,400 phone and you should be able to push it to its limits!

Unfortunately, the good sides of this camera system are somewhat overshadowed by the bad.

I’ve found that the main 108MP sensor often fails to capture a decent photo in settings that I don’t expect. Indoor shots, for example, are sometimes good, but sometimes really wrong. A few photos taken at my desk, for example, produced blurry, noisy and over-smoothed photos that are just disgusting to look at. It is also in a fairly well-lit room!

What’s the problem? Frankly, I’m not sure. I use the default settings of the Galaxy S20 Ultra when it is delivered to customers, but with Scene Optimizer disabled. There is a widespread complaint about the autofocus on the Galaxy S20 Ultra which I think may be partly to blame for my problems with this camera, but even then things seem to be at least partially related to software.

To produce a better image, Samsung uses a process called pixel binning on the 108MP camera which takes 9 pixels and turns them into 1. This is supposed to amplify the light in the final image while preserving the sharpness acquired using a such a massive sensor.

Most of the time, this process works well. For others, this is not the case and you will end up with a pretty horrible photo. I’ve also had some hilarious examples of software completely destroying plan data. Problems like these have overshadowed the smoothing issues that still exist on the S20 Ultra compared to the regular S20 and serve to worsen the overall performance of the camera. The two photos below, for example, were taken back to back, showing how a photo can be correct while the previous or later photo can be terrible in the same frame.

Worse, Samsung had previously promised to fix these issues after initial reviews raised concerns about the camera system. A few weeks after launch, this update was released while I was working on this review. After installing and testing it, I found that, frankly, it didn’t really help much! Autofocus is always slow and smoothing issues are just as serious.

Galaxy S20 Ultra post-update

Always pretty pic.twitter.com/Nm5GnV2b5C

– Ben Schoon (@NexusBen) March 26, 2020

As it stands, the S20 Ultra is a device I cannot recommend to people who appreciate the camera above all else and it’s a whole bunch of people! That’s not a wrong camera, but its unreliable when it produces good shots and at the end of the day it can be frustrating to work with.

Really, at $ 1,400, the biggest outlet for a device shouldn’t to be able to take pictures like that. He should produce either incredible shots or pretty good shots. It’s a formula that Google and Apple have found, but a Samsung is far behind. With the S20 Ultra, it seems that Samsung cares more about the numbers than the actual results.

Small pieces

– Haptics

Vibrating motors are often seriously underestimated on smartphones, but Samsung has slowly stepped up its game. On the Galaxy S20 Ultra and the S20 series in general, the haptics are pretty good, but with a catch. With its default setting, the haptics of the S20 Ultra are way too strong. Sitting on a table, the device is extremely noisy to the point of being obnoxious. Fortunately, you can lower the setting.

– Speakers

Samsung’s slim bezels on the S20 Ultra mean there isn’t a ton of speaker space. There is a small speaker at the top which is used to complement the speaker facing down below. This bottom speaker is fairly easy to cover, but it gets reasonably loud and sounds pretty good too.

– Fingerprint sensor and face unlock

The Galaxy S20 Ultra’s fingerprint sensor is integrated under the screen. Its position is good and, for the most part, it works! However, being an ultrasonic sensor, it is always slower than other sensors and sometimes just does not work. It can be a little frustrating, but it works quite well.

When it comes to unlocking the face, don’t bother. Since the system only uses a front camera, it’s just not secure enough to actually lock your device.

– Headphone jack

It’s gone, it’s sad, but it’s the last time I want to talk about it.

Final thoughts |

Most people should not buy this, despite its quality

Here’s the thing with the Galaxy S20 Ultra. Aside from the camera issues, it’s a great phone. It’s basically perfect for what it is. However, it is not what many people want and it is certainly not what most people need. The vast majority of people will fare better with the Galaxy S20 or S20 +, and many more will fare well with mid-range devices from Samsung.

At $ 1,400, the S20 Ultra is simply too expensive to have mass appeal, despite the quality of a smartphone. But if this device is right for you, you won’t be disappointed! You can buy it at , , Amazon, , , , and other large carriers and retailers.

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