Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra Hands On - Why I'm Worried... | The Tech Chap By The Tech Chap

Hey guys I'm tom and tech chap- and this is the new Galaxy Note 20 ultra now, I've had a couple of hours to play with it, along with its little brother, the standard note 20, which I'll come back to in a minute. But while I will of course wait for my review sample to properly test and compare it well first impressions, I have to say I'm a little worried and that's not just clickbait. I promise. But first let me show you what's new and side by side with last year's note, 10 plus you can see, it's had a pretty big design, refresh they've, basically tweaked and well notified the s20 ultra design. We get the usual note style, squared off corners, the bigger screen, the s pen. Make no mistake, though this is a big phone, and we also get the choice of three new colors mystic, bronze, mystic black and some markets.

Mystic white. I think the note 20 ultra in this bronze color may be the best looking phone I've ever seen. What do you think and if you fancy going all in on Samsung's ecosystem and have very deep pockets, you can get matching Galaxy Buds, live and watch three now the note 20 ultra is also one of the first phones to use gorilla glass, 7, aka, gorilla, glass, Vitus, which I'm told is twice as scratch resistant as version 6 and designed to survive a drop from head height up from previous waist height, but we'll see how this holds up in real life? Now, let's talk about this screen with the ultra we're getting a 6.9 inch, quad, HD, plus 120 hertz screen, but unfortunately, just like the s20 series, you can't have both it's one or the other, either full HD, plus at 120, hertz or quad HD plus at 60. , and since my current phone, the OnePlus 8 pro, can already do both at the same time, it's a little disappointing, but the good news is the ultra is using Samsung's, dynamic, AMOLED 2x panel, which not only gives us quite possibly the brightest phone ever peaking at a whopping 1500 nits, that's not from 1200 on the note 10 plus, but, more importantly, we're also getting adaptive 120hz. Essentially, the screen will adjust the refresh rate based on what you're doing so reading an article is between 1 and 11 hertz, video 30 to 60 and gaming is 48 hertz and above, so that should help improve battery life.

Now, sadly, there's no sign of that battery saving laps display, which was heavily rumored, and also that 3d sonic max fingerprint reader, which Qualcomm showed off back in December last year, didn't materialize either. So, as always with those rumors and leaks, videos, including my own, do take them with a pinch of salt. We don't get everything right. Then we have the s pen, a staple of the note series, and this year they've reduced the latency on the ultra's pen. So it's more responsive than ever and makes your doodles and drawing feel well instant.

Then there's the five new air actions for going home back smart select screen right. You know stuff, you could do just by tapping on the screen much faster. It does work, but it's still not as reliable as you would expect, and quite honestly, beyond trying it for my review. I can't see myself ever actually using these they've also overhauled the Samsung notes app with better handwriting to text conversion, and you can now straighten it, so not the most exciting stuff, but it all adds up to make the s pen a more useful tool so far so good, then. So why am I getting my knickers in a twist and saying that I'm worried about the note 20 ultra well? Firstly, the processor in the UK and Europe, the note 20 series will get Samsung's own Enos 990 chips where in the US and North America and some other regions, it gets the brand-new snapdragon 865 plus.

Now, if you'll allow me to rant for just a minute, the exodus 990 is the same chip that we get in the s20 series, including the s20 ultra here in the UK, and Europe, which is already about 20 slower, gives us significantly worse battery life and often the camera quality isn't as good. Basically, the Enos version of the s20 ultra is fundamentally inferior to the snapdragon version that my North American friends get. So I was crossing my fingers that we get the rumored Enos 992 in here to improve things, but no. Instead, we get the exact same chip, while America and other regions get an even better snapdragon 865 plus. So the disparity between the phones in the different regions is going to be greater than ever.

I made a whole video about snapdragon vs Enos. It did pretty well. Actually, I think a lot of you guys were equally infuriated or frustrated uh at there's. You know fundamental difference in the device that you're buying, even though it's marketed and priced the same way. It just feels like we're getting a bad deal here, but either way the new note, 20 ultra, is still an incredibly fast phone with 12 gigs of ddr5 ram and 256 or 512 gigs of storage, along with micros card support.

So to be fair, I don't think the average consumer gives a monkey about quark on vs snapdragon, but if I were to tell them that this you know a thousand pound phone they're buying the one in that country gives you two extra hours of battery versus the one that you can buy. Well, I think it's a pretty big deal, which is why I'm also worried about the battery life. In the note 20. , the ultra gets a 4 500 William hour cell, which is up from 4300 last year, but it's 500 less than the 5 000 million power s20 ultra and the icing on the cake is Samsung's, actually dropped. Support for the fast 45 watt charging that we got with the s20 series.

The note 20 now is just 25 watts. It's not the end of the world. I did test the higher speed plug on the s20. It didn't make much difference at all really, plus we are still getting 15 watt wireless charging and four and a half watt reverse wireless charging to top up other devices. So that's not really a big deal, but a smaller battery paired with a slightly bigger and also brighter screen with the same Enos 990 chips in the UK, and Europe at least, does not feel like a good combination.

However, Samsung are confident their adaptive refresh rate will make a big difference, possibly matching or even exceeding the s20 ultra's battery, and I get they had to make room for the s pen, so we'll have to wait and see I'll test all this properly. In my full review and I'll try my very best to get an American version of the note 20 ultra as well and test it and do another Qualcomm versus Enos to see if I'm just ranting over nothing, or it has got worse so make sure you do hit that subscribe button below. So you don't miss those videos. Now then, let's talk about this camera, and it's a similar setup to the s20 ultra with a 108 megapixel main lens, a 12 megapixel ultra-wide and a 12 megapixel telephoto lens, but they have added a new hybrid laser autofocus to the ultra, which hopefully will fix those focus issues that some people had on the s20s and also the telephoto lens now gives us five times: optical zoom, up from three times, which should go some way to improving the quality of the space zoom, which now tops out at 50 times rather than 100 times on the s20 ultra. I think.

Maybe they realize that having photos with the quality of an abstract painting wasn't that useful. We also now get a 10 megapixel selfie camera in the hole punch cut out around the front, which is actually down from the 40 megapixel sensor on the s20 ultra, which is an interesting change. But it's not just about the hardware Samsung's added a whole suite of pro video tools. So not only can you shoot in up to 8k, including in cinematic 24fps or 21x9 ultrawide, but you can go pro with histogram readouts tinker with exposure, zoom speeds lighting and, of course, customize. The audio with new multi-source mic controls, and you can cut out background noise.

They really have put a lot of effort into the video side of things with the note 20, and you can now also adjust the length of single takes from 5 to 15 seconds, although I still haven't actually used this in real life outside of making these review videos. So that's the big stuff, but there's a few little extras that I'm pretty excited about too. Firstly, they're working with Xbox game pass and although it wasn't available to test on these phones, they have been optimized for gaming with low response times, low, latency 5g and, I believe they'll be bundling a three-month subscription with pre-orders. We also now get wireless decks, so you can use your phone like a desktop PC on your TV without having to plug it in which is pretty cool, and another first is support for USB or ultra-wide band. It's similar to NFC, but should give us much faster file, transfers between this and other USB devices, apple's actually teaming up with BMW to use iPhones with USB as a wireless car key.

So it's got some interesting uses and, along with all that, we're also getting nice to haves like ip68 water resistance, Wi-Fi 6, stereo speakers, micros, dual sim and 5g support. So the note 20 ultra does take a lot of boxes. But what about the standard note 20? Well, the most noticeable difference is the use of glass stick in the build. It's certainly not ideal for an 850 pound phone, but it's okay, and it comes in three colors, mystic, bronze, green and gray. It's also a little smaller at 6.7. Inch has a flat screen, uses gorilla, glass, 5 and a slightly different panel.

So it's not as bright peaking at a thousand nits, although that's still plenty. To be honest, we also get eight rather than 12 gigs of ram no micro SD card support, and we miss out on the higher res and the higher refresh of the ultra. The main and ultra-wide cameras are also different. Plus we don't get the new laser autofocus, and it's three times rather than five times telephoto zoom. The battery is also a touch smaller at 4 300 Williams, there's no USB, but of course it all comes down to price.

With the entry level note 20, starting from 849 pounds versus 1179 pounds for the note 20 ultra, which, if my quick math is right, is 330 pounds more expensive. Surprisingly, though, the ultra is actually 20 pounds less than the s20 ultra-right. Now, maybe we'll see a price cut, but it's interesting as usually the note comes in at a premium over the s series. So, despite my earlier rant, I am still excited about the note 20 ultra. I can't wait to get my review sample and test it and compare it properly for you guys, but I am concerned about battery life and also a little frustrated about the disparity between the 990 and the 865 plus, but maybe I'm just making too big of a deal of it.

So let me know what you guys think in the comments below. Is it a big deal? Am I just getting my? As I say in a twist and going over the top, let me know what you think, as well as which phone you'd go for the note 20 or the ultra, or maybe the s20 or now on the above. Thank you so much for watching guys and if you could help me get to that, one million subscriber mark I'm not too far off right now. That would be amazing thanks for watching, and I'll catch. You next time right here on the tech chat.

You.

Source : The Tech Chap