Samsung Galaxy S20+ 5G unboxing and first impressions By Neowin

Hey guys I'm rich from Neal on, and today we're unboxing the Samsung Galaxy s, 20 + 5 G. So this is the five G model. It's got a snapdragon 865 processors, rather than the Enos that's sold in some other markets where they're not selling a 5g model, they do have a 4G model, and we actually have a video up already on that 4G model. If you want to check that out, we also have a first impression up on Neo in net right now, where you can check out first impressions of the s20 ultra okay, so, like I, said snapdragon 865 and that's one of the big things about this phone. Obviously I have the S 20 plus here the S 10 plus. Here the names are gonna, get confusing.

This one's got a snapdragon 855, so Samsung is always one of the first to use Qualcomm's new flagship processor and this year. Obviously it's a snapdragon 865. The processor was announced at Qualcomm snapdragon technology summit in December and that's always an event that you want to pay attention to. If you care about Samsung's newest flagship, because it's almost like a preview of the new device where that's when Qualcomm announced new chipset features such as 8k video, recording and then of course that feature comes to this- the new Samsung Galaxy series- you know it's, it's all a lot of new chipset features. So a couple of things about this device, I'm really interested in the camera.

Okay, this might be the sweet spot I, you know, I, don't have an ultra, but obviously the ultra is the one that we've all out in the camera. With that hundred x, space zoom, you know um and people have had some problems with it. Early reviews, and they're supposed to be software updates. Whatever the thing about the plus is that it's got better 5g than the regular s 20 the camera that goes up to 30 X, which we'll get into that. But the 5g is better because the regular s 20 only supports sub 6, the F 20 plus and the s 20 ultra support, sub, 6 and millimeter wave.

Now that's kind of important if, if you're, if you're buying a phone for 5g, what you really shouldn't right now millimeter-wave is superfast. We're talking, gigabit speeds, but it's all. It only works outdoors, and you need direct line-of-sight to an antenna like a window. Could block your signal. It's you know you have to be in the right spot to get it.

So 5g eventually is going to be a combination of Subsection, millimeter, wave and really low band, mid-band and millimeter wave. So T-Mobile has rolled out nationwide low band 5g on the 600 megahertz spectrum and that's what I'll mostly be using, because that's what I have where I live and that's important. You know it's. It's important that 5g, where you live and T-Mobile's really the only one doing that millimeter wave is available in select cities and I will be testing out. Millimeter waves as well I'll, be taking a little road trip to New York City.

To do that so really 5g is gonna, be a combination of those things then, of course, T-Mobile's going to acquire spreads and though they'll have their mid-band. So, and the other thing that you have to consider is that the antenna might be strong enough to send that powerful, millimeter wave signal to your phone, but your phone might not be powerful to powerful enough to send a millimeter wave signal back to that tower. So there are some limitations. There are limitations to the hardware honestly, a lot of this stuff's going to be solved next year and that's why when I say that you shouldn't buy a phone today because you want 5g, you know that, like that stuff's going to be selling extra, it doesn't mean you shouldn't buy a phone today doesn't mean you shouldn't, buy a 5g phone today, because still no matter what that 5g phone is probably gonna, be faster than that 4G phone on a 5g network, but the 5g networks are gonna, improve. The hardware is gonna, mature and honest honestly, we're not there yet the thing about future proofing yourself is its like if you're buying a new phone- and you want a future-proof yourself- sure you buy an S 20 instead of an S 10, because the chipset inside is a whole year newer than the chipset in the S 10.

That makes sense your future-proof that that's iterative future proofing. You know the other. The other thing about future proofing is that if your, if you don't know what the future is, you run the risk of buying something? That's not going to be the future. You know millimeter-wave is not proven yet. Hopefully it will be.

You know, but there are issues that have to be worked out so yeah there's my little rant about 5g. So this is the galaxy s 20 plus okay, so we got that that rectangular camera module here, there's a 12 megapixel main sensor and that is f 1.5 and then there's a 64 megapixel telephoto lens. So that's interesting! That's such a high resolution, telephoto lens! So there's a lot of digital cropping. That's going on to get you that zoom, it's a lot out, there's a lot of hybrid stuff going on and then by the way. We also have a 16 megapixel ultra-wide sensor, but yeah there's a lot of hybrid stuff going on to get you zoom.

It goes up to 30 X. Now you don't actually want to zoom up to 30 X I. Don't know why Samsung did this during their event, especially when they showed off the ultra. They showed off that 100x, zoom and they made it seem like this is a feature that you're actually gonna used to take pictures, and it's not it's really not why we did this well. While it was a little more realistic about this when they introduced the p30 and the P30 Pro last year and I think it was 30, X and 50 X, and they're like it can go up to 50 X.

Just so you know like you're, like that's what you can crank it up to you know it's like phones have always had this ability to zoom well past, where you can get a decent photo. It's its always been there and like that's just that, it's just increasing the max you know, but at the same time you know a 10x zoom is gonna, look pretty good, whereas you know a year ago, 10x did not look pretty good. So, like I said here's the phone, you could take this little piece of plastic off nice right. You know it's. It's a got that that little rainbow is reflective color to it, I mean you know.

Yeah, looks great. We got a little piece of plastic in here. Superfast charging all right. It is a USB type-c charger. It loses 25 watts, so it should charge it up.

Nice and quick I mean thing about fast charging. By the way it does use power delivery too. So you know you can, you should be able to use any 25 watt charger, which is nice? It's a problem with like OnePlus phones. They have warped charge, 30 T, and it's a 30 watt charger, but you have to use one pauses, 30 watt charger, here's the cable going to be type C to type C. Obviously well, I didn't want to take that out.

I shouldn't have taken that out because I'm not going to use it there we go alright, and here they are appears to be just a piece of empty cardboard. Alright and then we have headphones and then, of course, these are going to be USB, type-c, headphones, USB, type-c, headphones and, of course, that's because Samsung finally got rid of the headphone jack this year, which is a move that I'm not thrilled with, but I mean everybody's doing it except LG is the only company left, that's that's putting a headphone jack on headphones, and you know they make a great headphone jack. So if you, by the way, I need I mean it. That's not. That sounds kind of like a dumb thing to say it actually is a perfect headphones jack.

Alright, so there you have it I put my own sim in there. Although I did not set up my Google account, yet I'm going to have to run our factory reset on this. It just kind of came set up. We could put this next to the oh. It looks like it as a screen protector.

I, don't which is weird put this next to the s10 plus and just kind of put them side-by-side. You can see. Obviously the s20 plus is bigger. It has a bigger display at you know. The resolution is 1440 by 32 3200 now and then, if we look at the devices, the differences is are, of course subtle.

So the s20 plus is actually a little thinner, so it should fit in the hand a little better, although it is a little taller okay, so you can see that if I mean it's not going to be a huge difference in how it fits in the hand. Obviously, but yeah it's a little thinner. The hole punch for the camera has been moved to the center and, of course, there's only a single lens camera now and Samsung really does make great displays. It's HD like I, said, but it's 120 Hertz now, but you do have to go into settings to turn that on by default it's set to 60 Hertz, which is annoying. Of course, you want that 120 Hertz super smooth display, and I'll tell you.

It's gonna look nice. You can change the resolution, though yeah. If we change this I, don't know if we can do both yeah high refresh rate isn't supported. If you want who plus, which is a bummer, you got to choose between the high refresh rate and high and high refresh rate and high resolution, which is which that is definitely a bummer, but I'm going to choose that and of course dark theme, because we're civilized here, I haven't gonna, choose that high refresh rate, because I've used several phones with high refresh rates, usually 90. Hertz, though, which is like the know, the pixel for series, the 1 plus 7 series and- and it is worth it'll see those just smooth, animations I'm, not even sure if you can see the difference from watching the video.

But if you don't go to a know a T-Mobile store or Verizon store whatever and just, just check it out, because it makes a difference, and you'll, you'll be able to see it if you're using it in person. You can see. I do have that 5 G icon. Now there's been some controversy over T-Mobile, 5 G and the fact that you might not actually be on 5g, but hey. That's really! Honestly.

If you ask me, that's neither here nor there. T-Mobile did send me this phone just to be clear, but that's also an issue apparently with AT&T Robin. Apparently it's its. If it's connecting to a tower where 5g is available, it's going to show us 5g. Even if you're not connected 5g.

The truth is what matters is the performance of what you're actually doing right. You know I've, had discussions with people about 5g and what they've said to me is well I mean my I'm happy with the way my phone works anyway. So why am I? Why am I worrying about this? You know, so you know if your phone is okay, then I think you're good to go. You know if you're, if you're on T-Mobile, and you're, not showing 5g, you can go into mobile networks and make sure that network. My network mode shows that you can connect to 5g I've seen people with that issue where it is had.

LTE is the top option there, and obviously you definitely want 5g, because also you might be in a place in a city where there is a millimeter wave, and you're going to want that speed there because. Why not? You know the display is closer to being flat than it was before, which is nice, I have to say this is something that I've never really cared for and Samsung phones with these edge displays. It makes it harder to use, in my opinion at least one hand it I do have to reverse the navigation. Samsung is still using button navigation for some reason, I take a look at the back. There's that camera buff again- and you know it's like it's rectangular with rounded corners- seems to be the way that the market is going this year, I have to say compared to the ultra, though this is a very small camera bump, and not just that, because not only the ultra is wider and bigger, but it's also it stands out a lot more okay.

So if you're worried about a big camera bump you're worried about a big talking, foam and I do feel. Like the s20 plus is going to be the sweet spot for this phone, but the phone is a glass sandwich. Obviously, as Samsung has used since I believe the s6 they're, not 15 generations they're. By the way they skipped from s 10 s 20, just in case you weren't following along power. Button volume, rocker no Bixby button, which is very nice I, do not I, do not want a big speed button, USB, type-c port for charging on the bottom and, of course, no headphone jack.

Now, there's no headphone jack. What I would suggest is that you pick yourself up some of these. This is the Galaxy Buds, plus and I have to, say I've been using them for a while with different devices ever since unpacked, where they gave them out, and they're. Quite nice Samsung daily, okay, yeah Samsung makes a great display, though, and, and you know, I- don't always get excited for Samsung phones, but I did this time because, frankly, I booted up my s10 plus a couple of weeks ago, and I was just I forget about how impressed I am with these devices. Yeah, I am super excited to try.

This and I know I, say I'm super excited a lot, but you know the obviously, the Samsung Galaxy S series is probably you know the second most popular flagship, smartphone lineup in the world behind the iPhone. So a lot of people get very excited about it, and you know the thing is that like sometimes it's like? Okay there's another because they do it twice a year. You know so as someone who's constantly involved in this, it's like okay, another one, but one snapdragon, 865 right, I'm pumped for that, because its new silicon, what's new over last year, performance improvements, big-time camera improvements that we're seeing in the snapdragon 865, so I'm excited about that camera improvements. I'm excited about that you know. Optical zoom is something I care about.

Lossless zoom is something I care about coming from that Windows Phone era of 40 megapixel sensors for that purpose, and we've come so far beyond that. Now it's just the last year or two with secondary lenses and high resolution residences, so optical zoom, in hybrid zoom and that stuff working together. You know that that excites me because we've all had that moment where we're far away from something we pinch to zoom, we end up taking a kind of crappy photo. You know so. Lossless zoom is something I care about and then of course, the display Samsung really does make the best displays if you've used I mean like the s10 plus or something before that those Super AMOLED displays are nominal, so adding a hundred and twenty Hertz to that equation.

Nice, you know, I do wish it worked at HD, but I, don't think it's going to matter that refresh rate will affect the battery. It do I mean this is like physics, you know higher resolution effects battery. You know, there are more pixels equals more dots and more GPU power and whatever and then high refresh rate is means you're, refreshing it twice as much. So by default it's set to the full HD 60 Hertz, and then you could turn it up to HD. That's going to affect the battery, or you could turn it up to 120 Hertz and that's going to affect the battery, so it is what it is.

I think Full HD is fine in a smartphone I've said this many times before fully like you know, there was a time when Full HD was fine for a 40-inch TV. So why wasn't it good for a 6 inch, 5 yeah, it's one of those things so anyway, guys I'm gonna, have a review on this and probably about a week, so stay tuned for that I'm rich from Neo in have a great night.

Source : Neowin