Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra Review: The Only Thing It Doesn't Do Is Fold By MrMobile [Michael Fisher]

- Remember back in the days of cable TV, where you'd wait all day for your favorite show to come on only to tune in and discover that it was a repeat? That could be a real bummer, unless it was a show that you loved so much that you'd tuned in and watched that rerun anyway. Well, for the past few years, that's what Galaxy Note launches have felt like to me. (upbeat music) See, prior to 2015, the Galaxy Note was the phone you bought if you wanted the most egregiously over-equipped Android that money could buy. It wasn't just about the S Pen stylus. It was the huge display and the commensurately colossal battery you got with it. But ever since Samsung started offering super-sized versions of its flagship phones, beginning with the Galaxy S6 edge+ five years ago, those differentiators have been diluted.

And now that the Galaxy Fold has taken its place as the pinnacle of ambitious smartphone design, what is the Note really? Where does it fit? And most importantly, is it worth its high asking price? I'm Mr. Mobile. Let's uncover the answers together on a 10-day test drive from Manhattan to Montauk with the Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra. (upbeat music) I jump-started this script as I sometimes do by turning to my fellow phone geeks on Twitter. I asked Galaxy Note owners why they kept coming back to the Note year after year, and alongside the number one most predictable response, I got a few small but significant pieces of feedback.

First, many folks said that because the Note launches later in the season than the Galaxy S, it ends up being the more refined model for a given year. And that's certainly true when it comes to the camera, the Galaxy S20 Ultra launched back in the spring pushed the boundaries, sure, but its camera suffered from a focus hunting problem that not even multiple software updates could fully correct. The Note20 Ultra fixes that flaw through the addition of a laser autofocus module, and you'll see the results when we head out to Montauk for the camera test in a moment. The Note also course corrects on what I consider to be the S20 Ultra's criminally dull design. Those wide radius curves and forgettable pallet are replaced by sheer-sided end caps and sharp corners for a more aggressive look.

And then of course, there's the color. - You guessed it. It's their signature Mystic Bronze. - For the subtler customer, there's a Mystic Gray option shown here on my Galaxy Z Flip 5G, and the top layer on both colors is a subdued satin that does a great job of keeping fingerprints at bay. Naturally, my own review unit has been decked out with my sponsor dbrand's Swarm skin for the duration of my testing, and given how many times a similar skin has saved my Galaxy Fold from scratches, I can't see myself going nude again anytime soon.

Skin your Note20 Ultra or whatever device is keeping you mobile at the link below. And thanks as always to dbrand for sponsoring channel. Now predictably, it was the S Pen that got the most love from team Twitter. This smart stylus has anchored the Note since its introduction in 2011. And while Samsung keeps tacking on features like the Bluetooth camera remote or the magic wand air gestures, I think the S Pen is still at its best when you're using it for its core purpose: marking up screenshots, highlighting text, signing contracts, quickly sketching out a design that pops into your head.

These things are all possible when you pair any smartphone and a fingertip, sure, but the S Pen makes all of them easier and the end results much better. And while it seems like every year Samsung claims reduced latency between pen and screen, the 120 Hertz refresh rate of this new display combined with clever AI that predicts where your pen strokes are gonna go gives this model a whopping 80% latency improvement over the Note10, and yeah, that's a change you can really feel. It's as close to one-to-one pen on paper as you can get. The S Pen also amplifies and enhances other features like the historically underrated Samsung DeX. This feature that turns your phone into an approximation of a PC no longer requires a clunky dock or a cable.

If you have a smart TV from 2019 or later or pretty much any TV with Miracast, you can just hit the next button and turn it into a TV PC. I'm not gonna say it's a game changer because we live in a world of Chromecast and Apple TVs, but it's already come in handy during my review period when my roommate David wanted me to help improve a video he cut of our friend's wedding. I just popped his thumb drive into the phone's USB port and fired it up on the big screen. Later, when it came time for the wedding reception on Zoom, because COVID, we joined that on the TV too. And to bring it back to the S Pen, you don't need it to navigate DeX, but using it in hover mode really drives home the analogy I've been hammering for years.

It's a mouse for your phone. Yeah, occasionally a couple days will go by where I sort of forget it's there, but I'm always happy the S Pen is around when I do need it, and more importantly, I always miss it when I use a phone that doesn't have one. Just don't try doodling on a table without a case. With a camera bump big enough to cause corner crashes like this, those cameras better be worth that inconvenience, right? Well, I'll let the Note20 Ultra's optics speak for themselves for a few moments on a road trip from Manhattan to Montauk and points between with David Cogen and David Imel. (shutter clicks) (upbeat music) Okay, a couple of things to point out here.

On the bright side, now that we have this laser auto-focus, the primary camera, which the Note20 Ultra inherited from the S20 Ultra, is a joy to shoot with. These might look like fake portrait mode shots achieved with software, but no, they were taken in standard mode. All this delicious depth of field is naturally occurring in camera. Also shooting on other phones for the past few weeks have reminded me just how much I cherish a proper telephoto lens. Just look at how many times I pop into 5x just to see how many coasties can fit on a motor lifeboat, or to see how many panels are falling off Montauk Air Force Station's world FPS-35 search radar that may or may not have been involved in mind control experiments, (machine zapping) or to finally decide what I'm gonna name my first boat.

Oh, they named it after me. - I gave it a bunch of B-roll. - Hey, look, it's a fish pig. (David laughs) - Hey, you shut your mouth. (David laughs) - That was nice.

- You can go past 5x all the way up to 50 if you want, but you really start to feel the quality drop off from that digital crop as you get much past 20, so 5X is kind of the sweet spot. And to close out the camera, you ready for a surprise? After sunset, the king of low light, the Google Pixel 4, still edges out the Note, but just barely. That's not something I expected to say. Now don't go thinking the Note camera is perfect. You can see the focus issues are not entirely resolved in video mode with either the impact of my footfalls or possibly lens flare causing the camera to focus hunt severely on these night videos, at least until I stopped walking.

And it's frustrating that some features like Super Steady stabilization aren't available in all shooting modes. But folks, when my criticism gets that specific, you know it's a solid shooter. Factor in the refinements to color science that finally toned down Samsung's historically cartoonish oversaturation and the new features in the Pro video mode that lets you use Bluetooth headsets, like the Galaxy Beans as an input, which I will demo right now. And it's a photo and video tour de force. Look, if you asked me what the best mobile video solution is, I'm probably still gonna say the iPhone 11 Pro.

If you asked me what the best mobile still shooter is, I'm probably gonna say the Google Pixel 4. But if you asked me to draw a line between them, find the perfect middle ground, that'll probably be this. That should come as welcome news to consumers and a wake up call to the competition. The problem with a camera that good is you end up wanting to use it all day, and sadly, the Note20 Ultra just doesn't have the stamina for that. On my heaviest day, I used an hour of navigation, hopped between Twitter, Telegram, and Slack all day, shot an immense number of stills and video samples, and took a half hour a Google Meet call, that all by itself took up 10% of my total charge.

Through it all, I had the display set to HD and 120 Hertz and had brightness maxed out, because it's NYC in August and I had to. That's a very atypical amount of usage, but folks, the Note was never made for the typical user. I've been reviewing these thing since 2012, and I can't remember the last time a Note gave up on me before sunset as this one did on the day I just described. In a world where some phones offer 6,000 milliamp hour batteries, 4,500 just doesn't measure up to the workloads that power user is likely to put it through. Yes, I know the S Pen silo soaks up a lot of room, and yes, I understand Samsung didn't wanna build a big, heavy brick, but I'd wager most Note owners would tolerate the boosted bulk in exchange for enhanced endurance, especially on a device that calls itself "Ultra.

" Let me know in the comments if you agree or disagree on that. There are other snaggles yes, the curved screen, like all curved screens creates the occasional palm rejection problem, and I think it's about time we admitted that these were a bad idea. Also, the fingerprint sensor, while improved, is still not as fast as optical solutions and lacks any kind of haptic feedback. And as much as I love the S Pen, there are features that have screamed for system-wide integration since 2011, like hover scrolling on every app. If Microsoft can force Amazon to build a Kindle app that works right on dual screen phones, I feel like Samsung should be able to convince Twitter to let me scroll with the pen.

Come on. Should you put up with any problems on a phone that costs $1,300? Probably not. But do any of those complaints constitute a showstopper? Definitely not. If you're shopping the Note, you already know you're in for a whopper of a phone payment every month, and in exchange, you're getting the biggest feature list there is. It's not as flashy as a Z Flip or as groundbreaking as the Z Fold2 is bound to be, so for the second video in a row, I won't be cracking open the special bottle of wine I teased in my Galaxy Watch 3 review.

But truly, no other device combines phone, tablet, and what we used to call pocket PC into such a consistently capable communicator. If I weren't all-in on foldables, the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra is the phone I would carry. Of course I am all-in on foldables, so if you don't wanna miss my forthcoming review of that Galaxy Z Fold2, please subscribe to theMrMobile. I'm also running a whole series on foldable displays called "Into the Fold" and the next device I'm gonna hit there is the Galaxy Z Flip 5G. That's coming very soon.

This video was made possible by a Galaxy Note20 Ultra review sample provided by Samsung. But as always, Mr. Mobile works for you, not the manufacturers. The opinions contained herein are my own and Samsung provided no compensation or copy approval and was given no early preview of this content. Special thanks to David Cogen, David Imel, Hayato Huseman, and Android Central for filming assistance.

And thanks to everyone on Twitter for allowing me to use their excellent artwork. Until next time, thanks for watching and remember to stay safe and wear a mask while you stay mobile, my friends.

Source : MrMobile [Michael Fisher]