Galaxy Note 20 Ultra: Hands on first impressions By CNET

The Galaxy Note: 20 ultra is finally here, so let's take it for a spin. When you first take the note 20 ultra out of the box, there is no doubt that this is Samsung's flagship phone for a reason. It just looks and feels incredibly premium ahead of our full review. I wanted to share with you some thoughts and first impressions after having used the note, 20 ultra everything from the s pen to the camera tricks and the display. So, let's dive in the note 20 ultra shouldn't, provide too many surprises. If you're coming from an earlier note device a few things that I did notice compared to last year's note, 10 plus, which, incidentally, is one of my favorite phones of all time, so this phone definitely has a lot to live up to.

In my eyes, the configuration of the buttons was the first thing I noticed so instead of being on the left hand, side as they were on the note 10 plus, they are now on the right-hand side. So they fall really easily on the thumb. If you are right-handed, I prefer them on the right hand, side. The next thing, you'll, probably notice, is where the s pen is located. It's no longer on the right hand, side as it was on all the previous notes.

Now it is, on the left hand, side underneath the screen. It's actually advantageous, I think for left-handed users, because I'm actually right-handed and when I'm not using the s-pen. The phone is usually in my right hand, but when I need to use the s-pen I take it out, using my left hand, swap the phone over to my left hand, so I can have the s-pen. In my right hand, it's just a little of extra muscle memory that I know I'm going to have to get used to, given that the pen has changed locations. The other thing you're really going to notice, is the camera bump on the back, which is significantly larger than any other note phone that we've seen in the past, it's more on par with the galaxy s20 ultra from earlier this year, which also had a much larger camera bump and there's a reason for that.

It is housing, a lot more camera. It has got five times. Optical zoom, which then goes out to 50 times, digital, which I will talk about in a little in the camera section overall, the bump itself is not really make the phone feel too heavy one way or the other. I didn't find that it was like counterbalanced, oddly, when I was holding it at all. The only thing that I did notice about the camera bump was that if I was lying the phone on a flat surface, it did cause the phone to be a little uneven if I was using it while it was lying flat or using the s pen to right without holding the device to get around that.

Obviously you can put a case on, and I did find a case provided a little of a better balance on a flat surface. But if you put a case on it, you are going to lose the nice effect of whatever color you choose either the mystic bronze or the black. The mystic bronze actually looks really, really nice in person, and I found that it was much less of a fingerprint magnet than last year's note, 10 plus, which really looked like a crime scene any time I used it. So I'm really grateful to see that there's less fingerprint residue left on the note 20 ultra. The other reason why you might not want to put a case on this is because it's covered in gorilla, glass, Vitus on the front and back now.

This is the first phone to use the brand-new gorilla glass which promises drop resistance from heights up to 6.6 feet. That is two meters, so we are yet to do our durability and drop tests on this phone stay tuned, because it's going to be fascinating to see how this new glass performs and whether that camera bump is going to be affected at all. Let's talk display because that flagship feature of the 6.9 inch dynamic AMOLED is the 120 hertz refresh rate, and it looks great on the note 20 ultra if you've used a high refresh rate phone before you'll know what I'm talking about. Unfortunately, I can't really show it to you on camera, but you'll see incredibly seamless scrolling going through menus reading articles, social media and especially gaming. It all looks great on this phone and the screen is bright and dynamic.

It's set by default to the 120hz or adaptive screen, which is in the settings. You can actually switch it back to 60hz if you want- and it is interesting that Samsung clearly says in that menu item- that using 120hz will detract from battery life. Now this is just a preview. This is not our full review, so do stay tuned. We will be doing full battery tests and performance analysis for you really soon all right time for the s pen, because that is the big reason why you want a Galaxy Note.

So, first up the actual s. Pen itself is not any different to the s pen that we saw on the note 10 plus from last year. It is pretty much exactly the same. What is different is obviously with a higher refresh rate. There is slightly more accuracy and more realism when it comes to using the s pen.

Now what I mean by that is that when you're using it to say, take notes, it is so like there's so little latency. It feels like you're, actually almost riding on a real piece of paper. Air actions are also a new feature of the s pen this time around. So what that means is you'll, be able to press and hold the button and then move the pen in a certain direction. To do things like navigate back forward, make a scribble in order to take a screenshot, and then you can annotate over it, and you can also navigate between music and media apps and also use the pen in the camera to do things like take selfies or start the remote shut off when you are got the phone sitting on a bench, and you want to start shooting remotely using the s pen.

So I really like those extra bits of functionality, although whether they are a little gimmicky, only time will tell. I have so far found that I have to be very deliberate with the air actions. So by that I mean I can't just furiously press and hold the button down and just like conduct an orchestra virtually I actually have to be very deliberate and slow with the action in order to get it to register. There are also some tweaks to the notes, app, so you'll be able to attach and time sync recordings using your voice and then playing back and seeing them play back in real time with the notes that you've written you'll also be able to change the style of the text after you've written it with the s pen, just tap the icon, and then you can do things like change. The color and the stroke width as well, and you'll also be able to straighten your handwriting too, just tap the icon with the arrow and the lines, and it should straighten your very crooked handwriting all right camera time, one of my favorite things to talk about when it comes to new phones.

Now the camera bumper as you've probably imagined, means that there's a lot of new camera functionality available. But really the thing that you're interested in probably is the 108 megapixel wide angle, camera. Now, that's very similar to what we saw on the s20 ultra from earlier in the year. Essentially, what it means is, yes, you can take 108 megapixel shots, but really the key is the pixel binning to be able to get the most detailed and less noise in the image when you are shooting at the 12 megapixels by default on that main rear camera. The other important thing about the still images is the zoom functionality.

So we did see the s20 ultra have that 100 times space zoom. I think Samsung realized that that was a little too out there, and it wasn't particularly good quality at 100 times either, as you would expect now on the note 20 ultra. It is now 50 times, maximum zoom, that's digital and five times optical zoom and really for me, the sweet spot in my limited testing that I've done just recently with the note 20 ultra, is that 10 times zoom. That is just seems to be like a really nice compromise between the hybrid of optical and digital zoom. Now you might also remember that the s20 ultra used a phase detection autofocus system and that had some problems when it first rolled out, namely it just wasn't getting the focus right in a lot of situations.

There was a lot of hunting. The note 20 ultra is hopefully going to fix this with its laser autofocus system. I've done a little of testing alongside the s20 ultra. I think it has been improved significantly so more testing to be done. Obviously, but I think it is off to a perfect start, there's also a pro video mode on the rear camera that gives you lots of extra control over your video recording.

I'm actually shooting this right now.4K 30 frames a second using pro video mode. You get full exposure, control, there's also a live histogram and live level monitoring. You also can change the direction of where the audio is coming from the built-in microphone. So it's either omnidirectional coming from the front or the rear of the camera. I have it set to coming from the rear camera, so take a listen and see what it sounds like.

Apart from all those controls, it's also about resolution and frame rates. So the note 20 ultra also gives you the ability to shoot in 8k if you want to at 24 frames a second. I can't show you what that looks like right now, because this has been rated out to 4k, but you can also shoot 8k, and I'll show you lots of samples of that later on the frame rates and aspect ratios you also get are quite exhaustive. There is 21x9 16x9 lots of different frame rates within that, whether you're shooting 4k or 1080, but I really like the fact that there is a 1080 at 120 frames, a second, it's going to open up a lot more possibilities for some cool slo-mo effects, so looking forward to diving into that more now, let's touch on the things that you can't see, but are still incredibly important. The first is android updates.

Samsung has promised that the note 20 ultra will receive three generations of updates. The next is android 11. We know that the note 20 ultra is going to receive the update once it's rolled out. The phone also is ready to go with android nearby share straight out of the box, so you'll be able to use that, and also it has the ultra-wide band or UV chip. It's the first Samsung phone to have this.

Basically, it's going to make transfers wirelessly to other USB devices. Really easy, except the caveat. Is that there's only one Samsung phone with USB at the moment? That is the note 20 ultra, so unless you're sending to another friend. That also has a note, 20 ultra you're, really not going to be able to make the most of that just yet. There's also a lot of other features that I haven't even touched on, including DEX, Microsoft, support and so much more.

But don't worry because everything like that, including battery life and performance, we are going to cover off in our full review thanks for watching. If you have questions about the note 20 ultra or if you want to find out more information, you can check out a bunch of our other videos. Leave me a comment, and let me know if you are upgrading to the note 20 ultra.

Source : CNET