Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra review: The right phone for the wrong time By Android Central

This video is brought to you by MA VPN. I've had the Galaxy Note 20 ultra for about two weeks now, and in that time I've been trying to think of all the reasons why you should spend thirteen hundred dollars on this phone. I mean look, it's got the latest snapdragon 865 plus processor. It has 5g support it, shoots 8k video, you can use it to draw and take notes and sign documents. But at some point you have to draw the line and say that 1300 bucks is too much to spend on this phone and for most people you don't have to be sure to subscribe to the channel. And let's talk about the note, 20 ultra, the note 20 ultra has a somewhat controversial, but I think fantastic, looking design with this giant new camera housing lifted straight from the s20 ultra and an otherwise familiar design to anyone.

Who's held a Galaxy Note in the last few years, from the squared off corners to the curved glass and nearly bezel-less display. This phone looks a lot like last year's note.10, plus, though you now have the option of this mystic bronze finish with a frosted matte back that I absolutely love. Not everything is the same as last year, though, the power and volume buttons have been moved back over to the right side of the phone and the s pen has been moved over to the left. It all takes a bit of adjustment, and we'll talk about the s pen more in a bit, but you get used to the changes pretty quickly inside the phone, we're looking at a snapdragon, 865 plus processors, at least here in the states, along with 5g support, 12 gigabytes of ram and either 128 or 512 gigabytes of storage that, yes, you can expand via micros. We should also talk about the display.

It's been sized up to 6.9 inches, and this is the first note to feature a 120 hertz refresh rate, which is great news, though it's a dynamic, refresh rate rather than a constant 120, and you'll still be capped at 60 hertz. If you run the note 20 ultra in its maximum resolution of quad HD plus no surprise here. This is a phenomenal display. Samsung calls it dynamic, AMOLED 2x, it's 25 brighter than the note 10 plus has fantastic colors. It's hdr10 compatible.

If I have one complaint about this display, it's the rounded edges, Samsung's been doing curved displays for years, and it typically doesn't bother me in fact. I usually like how it feels and don't run into many usability issues, but maybe it's because the note 20 ultra has even tighter bezels than before. I've been fighting with accidental touches like crazy on this phone. Of course, most people will put it in a case as soon as they take it out of the box, which should solve this issue, but I brought it up with Samsung anyway, and I'm not the only one who's been having this problem. While I don't think the standard note 20 is worth buying for most traditional note enthusiasts, I almost wish I could bring its flat display to the note 20 ultra.

I also wish Samsung would move on from the same ultrasonic fingerprint sensor. It's been using for the last couple of years. It's just not as fast or consistent as the competition and, at this point, I'd just love to see Samsung adopt face unlock like on the pixel 4, though, admittedly, maybe now is not the right time for that before we move away from the hardware, let's quickly go over the battery specs, the note 20 ultra has a 4 500 William hour battery up 200 William hours from last year's note, 10 plus, but the fast charging speeds have actually dropped from 45 watts. Down to 25. We've got an article breaking down why most people didn't see those full 45 watt speeds on the note 10 plus anyway, the note 20, ultra's, 25 watt charging is fine, and battery life has actually been great.

In my experience, I've had no problems getting through a full day with as much as six to eight hours of screen on time, even with 120hz enabled, which is way more time than I usually spend on my phone. But hey that's quarantine, life. I guess so. The note 20 ultra is running android 10 with Samsung's latest one UI version 2.5. It comes with a lot of minor improvements, including one.

I'm really excited about the ability to finally use android 10s, gesture navigation with third-party launchers, but for the most part it's the same.1Ui 2, look and feel that we've had for the last year or so. Samsung works closely with Microsoft. To bring Xbox game, pass ultimate to the note 20 ultra, which lets you stream and play some of Xbox's the most popular titles directly on the phone, supposedly with low enough latency that it can even handle online multiplayer. That's great, I enjoy gaming, but that doesn't roll out until mid-September. So I don't know.

Let me know in the comments if you want to see a follow-up video on all of that, once it's available now, we obviously have to talk about the s pen for one Samsung is leveraging the new 120hz display to make the s pen feel much smoother, and it really does feel great to write or draw with. If you haven't been a fan of the s pen in the past, this isn't going to suddenly make you fall in love with it. But it is a nice quality of life improvement, they've, also added new air actions. With the s pen called anywhere actions that let you make small gestures with the pen for system, navigation and screenwriting again, it's nothing groundbreaking, but this is the sort of thing that shows that Samsung hasn't forgotten about. What makes the note a note, this video is brought to you by MA VPN, a fast and secure way to browse the internet without being tracked by your ISP or other unwanted parties.

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com thanks to MA for sponsoring this video Samsung tells me that it still considers the s20 ultra to be the ultimate camera experience with a higher res front facing camera and further reaching space zoom, and maybe that explains why the s20 ultra is still priced a hundred dollars higher than the note 20 ultra, but I think this phone has quite a few advantages that actually make it the better overall shooter. For starters, even though both phones share the same 108 megapixel primary sensor, the note 20 ultra features a laser autofocus system. That seems to make a big difference with the s20 ultra. We ran into a ton of focusing issues with the main sensor which relied on phase detect autofocus, but the note 20 ultra locks onto any subject without a problem. It's fast, it's responsive.

It's just been a good camera experience, and you still get really impressive natural depth of field thanks to the huge image sensor. As far as the secondary cameras go, there's no 2 megapixel macro nonsense. Here you get an ultra-wide and a telephoto, both at 12 megapixels and both extremely well calibrated to keep colors consistent across all three cameras in typical Samsung fashion. These cameras have a tendency to overexpose shadows over saturate colors and bring out some haloing around backlit objects, but that's all part of the galaxy look and most people tend to prefer that over a more technically accurate image, even if I generally lean towards the latter. Now, if you want to take matters into your own hands, the note 20 ultra features manual modes for both photo and video, which gives you control over settings like ISO, shutter, speed and manual focus and even the directionally of the mics, while you're filming, oh, and I haven't forgotten about the periscope style, telephoto lens at 12 megapixels.

It's a quarter of the resolution of the telephoto on the s20 ultra, but it has a native 5x perspective that lets it take really great looking zoom shots at up to 10 or even 20x, but even the max option of 50x looks pretty decent, at least compared to the 100x samples from the s20 ultra and the larger individual pixels and wider aperture of the note 20 ultras telephoto allow it to do a bit better in low light as well calling back to the intro of this video. I do think thirteen hundred dollars is too much for the note 20 ultra I mean look for the same money. You can get three pixel 4as that take incredible photos and are guaranteed to get years of updates, just like the note, 20 ultra and still have some extra money left over for cases and other accessories or two and a half OnePlus words, or you could even pick up a Galaxy Z flip for the same thirteen hundred dollars, which won't be nearly as powerful, but gives you a much more unique experience, but that's not lost on Samsung, and they're, offering enormous trading values to make that price more palatable. You can get 400 right now for a pixel 3 from 2 years ago, they're, not even worth that much second hand, they're, also giving you a 150 credit to samsung. com.

If you pre-order the phone which can go towards accessories like the Galaxy Buds live best case scenario, you could walk away with the note 20 ultra for half off at just 650 and at that price. Of course, it's a good deal. Those trade-in values don't necessarily go away as soon as pre-orders are done either and Samsung is notorious for slashing its own prices. Shortly after its phones go on sale. I would say that if you can get the note 20 ultra for a thousand bucks or fewer, you should absolutely go for it.

You should also give this video a like if you enjoyed it and subscribe to the channel, to see plenty more videos like it. Let me know in the comments down below, if you think the note 20 ultra is worth the money or what price it would have to come down to for you to consider it. As always, thanks so much for watching, and we'll see you in the next one, you.

Source : Android Central