Note 20 5G Review - Good Phone, Terrible Value! By TechFocus

Now, I don't think I've ever been as conflicted about a device, as I am with this. The Samsung note 25g the non-ultra variant. On the one hand, it's an incredible device featuring some outstanding cameras, almost every top of the line piece of internal hardware possible and the full unencumbered Samsung user experience. But then, when you look just a little closer, it becomes clear just how much Samsung wanted to make the ultra variant even remotely worth considering and what's left is a device that is awesome in almost every way, but also simply too expensive for what it is and a difficult phone to recommend. Overall, a big thanks to Vodafone for sending this phone out to me to review, see don't be mistaken here. The note line is a very special series of films.

It's the people who are always on the go, trying to manage business and personal life in the most convenient way possible and who want a hybrid tablet or laptop type experience from a phone, and for that I think this device is fine. If you're willing to give up a few niceties that the ultra variant has to offer and that's where this fund's problems begin for me, but before we get into that, I wanted to take a moment to talk about skill share the sponsor of today's video. Now, I'm sure that at some point you've already heard about the thousands of inspiring classes, skill share has where you can learn anything from videography to creative writing all from experts who teach because they love their craft. I've been using skill share for the past few months and watching classes like their creative breakthrough class, which has taught me to embrace my own style and avoid creative block through good habits. Whether you want to learn a new craft or turn your current one into a profession.

Skill share can take you where you want to go no matter what your current skill level is, and now more than ever is the perfect time for it with the amount of remote everything that we'll be doing these days, whether that's remote learning or remote business calls or whatever you're doing chances are you're going to be at home behind a computer, because coverage sucks and for the first 1 000 of you guys to click. The link in the description down below you'll get a two-month free trial of the premium membership. So you can explore all your creativity and master. A new skill today check it out at the link down below to master that new skill that you've always wanted to learn when it comes to the build quality. Samsung have made a few weird choices here: plastic isn't necessarily a bad material on a phone as it's certainly more forgiving than glass for accidental damage, but considering its price and who it's aimed for it's not unreasonable to ask for something just a little more premium, despite its plastic, feel.

The note 20s rear design actually looks great, especially in this bronze color. The subtle diffused reflections and the negative of the Samsung logo, all mixed with the mirrored camera highlights this phone honestly looks great in every situation. It's just unfortunate that it doesn't feel quite as good as it looks. The display is pretty awesome on this phone. It's only 1080 by 2400, which is a bit disappointing, but it still looks more than good enough on this phone's 6.7 inch size with its nice and uniform bezels, the punch, hole, camera and a perfectly flat panel. This display is among the best experience, you'll find on any phone with a hdr10 plus certification.

Any type of viewing experience is great, and it has an incredible brightness range as well, but with its 60hz refresh rate, it seems just that little too far cut down, and I don't understand it. I would have liked to have seen even just a 90hz display at this price point. After all, going into the future. A high refresh rate is a nice addition to have on any device, and it adds a subtle hint of smoothness and polish that you may not notice all the time, but still feels nicer overall than 60hz does this phone can also shoot video in a HDR, 10 plus certified format, and that is a really nice feature to see. In fact, the cameras on this phone are so fully fledged that I would go as far as to say it is the most advanced camera system on any phone that I have personally ever seen, even though the ultra is better, it's still incredible.

It's ultra-wide 0.5 times lens with a 12 megapixel sensor. Behind it shoots some pretty nice looking photos and can be great for those situations where fitting a group of people or a vast landscape into the frame is a must. I'll be honest. I don't use the ultra-wide very often, but it's nice to have nonetheless, the telephoto camera, which is actually a wide lens with a 64 megapixel equivalent sensor is the one you'll probably find yourself falling in love with thanks to its natural photogenic character of both and color representation, mixed with the option for those 64 megapixel photos. Furthermore, I took this phone with me on a mountain walk the other day, and I was just blown away with the detail level in the 64 megapixel modes and just with every other camera mode out there.

It's genuinely incredible- and I wasn't expecting it- I'm always a strong believer that the pixel phones are my go-to for a phone camera, but this phone. This could replace that. The third of the three cameras here is another wide-angle camera, just like the 64 megapixel, but it has a 12 megapixel sensor instead, and I'll be honest, I think this is just a little of a waste of resources. I mean they could have put a macro camera or a better telephoto than just the 64 with the crop. The only thing that would make sense is using this.

For low light photography because of its larger pixel size, but that is just speculation, Samsung's pro photo mode is pretty good, but it's nothing out. The ordinary we've seen this kind of thing before what I haven't seen before is a pro video mode. That's quite as fully fledged as this you can use your mic input from an omnidirectional to separate front and back use an USB input or even use a Bluetooth microphone. You can set your manual exposure compensation, ISO, shutter, speed and white balance. Utilize manual focus with peaking, but most of all shoot.8K video at 24 frames a second that's 7680x4320 holy. You can choose to record any CinemaScope aspect: ratio right out of the gate, choose from a variety of resolutions and frame rates, ranging all the way from 8k to 1080p at 120 or even choose 720p at 960 frames, a second for ultra slow motion, playback, all of which will give you some incredible footage to work with once you're finished, shooting most of my time with it has been spent shooting at 4k, 24 or 4k 60, purely because the lack of stabilization when shooting in 8k but don't get me wrong.8K is absolutely incredible for a phone to shoot, and it looks amazing too. It's not just some low nitrate showpiece.

It genuinely looks incredible. You could use it comfortably for YouTube or getting into filmmaking. However, you choose to use it. The cameras are simply incredible, and they certainly won't be a bottleneck for your creativity. The specs inside this phone are weirdly awesome, especially when you consider the rest being stripped back for the lower cost, with eight gigabytes of ram, an Enos, 990, CPU and 256 gigs of storage.

There's nothing short of the highest end specs here and as you'd expect from this setup. It's fast not exceedingly fast, just exactly what you'd expect from the slower of the two variants that exist of this phone. Besides the game, these days is more about software than just shoving. Internal hardware in and animations are the one bit of polish that can make or break a software experience. It's slick to close an app with the subtle return to position animation, it's great to multitask and do everything in between the only things that seem a little jarring here are the always on display animations and the occasional jump during gesture navigation.

Apart from that, the animations on this phone are pretty awesome, and they round off the experience as a whole really nicely for intense multitasking between notes, music, YouTube and whatever else. The performance of this phone is just great there's, not many phones with a custom ROM like Samsung's one UI that can execute every aspect of the software. Quite as well as Samsung. Does itbe not stock android? That's clear! It's definitely not stock android, but neither is it a disjointed blend of some custom bits and some stock bits: Samsung's skin of default, apps, the stock launcher the notification shade and everything fits really nicely together, making it almost like the iOS of the android world. You may not like it all the time, but you can rely on it to get the job done in a fuss-free way.

This is the very thing that makes the s-pen so practical for this device being stored perfectly within the base of the phone. You can pull it out and write on the screen in an instant without even worrying about unlocking the phone and opening an app choose. A color write whatever you want and then pin it to the lock screen, it's as simple as that, and that is the primary use for me with the s pen, it's the most practical time that I'd ever want to use it. Screenwriter is also a useful feature allowing you to annotate any screen and save an image from it and features like handwriting conversion zooming by hovering and smart screenshots. All just work so well.

Customization is evenly spread throughout all the expected areas, and they make a nicely balanced software experience throughout as stock the always on display isn't enabled. But if you choose to enable it, you can schedule it to be on only at certain times of the day choose between a variety of clock: styles, including ones with the calendar, international clocks or even animated gives. The possibilities are just incredible, and you can make it look exactly as you want. One complaint that I have is to do with the default wallpapers and how they differ from the lock screen to the home screen. The default wallpapers for the home screen aren't all that varied in style as they're all the same with just different color options: they're still nice enough for built-in wallpapers.

But what I'm a massive fan of is the lock screen options with the dynamic wallpaper enabled it will change with each pickup, and it really brings a fresh feel to your phone each time you pick it up to use it, but for some reason that's not an option for the home screen. You can only have still images, and you can't use the dynamic wallpaper service and I can't work out why it always ends up being less nice to look at the home screen as a result of this option being missing. Thankfully, despite the wallpapers being a bit disappointing, the rest of the home screen is easily customized and can be made to fit whatever your needs are. Samsung daily, the news page to the left of your home screen can be enabled or disabled. The grid size can range all the way from 4x5 to 5x6, and the app drawer can be disabled altogether.

It's seriously well implemented with the rest of the system, animations and styling, and it's one of those reasons why I absolutely love one UI now this isn't a comprehensive review of one UI at all, but I would like to raise the fact that the software on this phone is one of the most complete packages in the entire android world. In my opinion, one UI makes Samsung devices feel like a whole new OS one where everything is organized well and customization is evenly spread around the device, and this is what gets me about this phone. The software is just so damn good that you'd want it to be matched by hardware. That is equally good, but it's not. The software can't be a massive selling point for this phone, where you can get it on literally any other Samsung device released this year, like the s20 Fe, which is two-thirds of the price and has pretty much all the same hardware.

Ask yourself this: is the s-pen really worth 300 pounds if it's the only advantage that getting this phone offers.

Source : TechFocus