Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra | A Year in Review By ATR

The galaxy s20 ultra a smartphone with everything, a big screen, big camera, big battery, a full stocked spec sheet, so did it hold up in 2020 and does it qualify this year? Yep we're back in February when the s20 ultra was announced, everyone had big expectations for it, the overkill of a smartphone, the one that had it all and with the hefty price tag of 1400 at launch, it seemed like it would bring everything you wanted and some unique features something new. It would be the perfect phone well, not quite so, bear with me until the end, because this is interesting unboxing the phone was pretty regular, nothing exciting the phone had a printed 5g s20 ultra along with the phone specs open, the box and voil? see the phone, and, quite frankly, it felt heavier than I expected it's quite big, but not annoyingly and easy to hold until Islamic case to it starts to feel more bulky even for bigger hands. It's a glass and metal sandwich feels premium, and with that big camera bump showing 100x zoom, you immediately want to switch on the phone and try it out. Furthermore, it comes with a 25 watt, fast charger and a type c charging cable, along with the black AKG type-c earbuds. Oddly enough, some versions of the phone comes with a clear case and some doesn't. The phone design seems to be quite normal: nothing flashy, it's subtle! The back of the phone looks nice with that gray background, which I think looks much better than the only other option you have, which is black.

Still. This is a glossy bag, so you easily get fingerprints all over it and beyond the size of this thing, overall design looks good, Samsung equipped this phone with a magnificent display, a 6.9-inch quad HD amulet, with 120 hertz, refresh rate covered with a gorilla glass 6, which still provides the same scratch resistant as the previous version. So it's a high-res with a fast refresh rate and very bright at around 1 342 nits at peak brightness. The colors are vibrant and has a very good contrast. So although this phone marketing focused more on the cameras which we'll talk about in a bit the display by far the best thing, this phone has that high resolution enhances your watching experience, whether you're watching your favorite stream, a movie or YouTube.

With that awesome clarity and punchy colors, it really takes it to another level, a plus side of 2020 smartphones and, like I said before, it's a huge phone, but not in an annoying way. To put it in perspective. This screen is a little taller than my OnePlus 7t pro screen. So it's still within the acceptable range. This display feels lightening fast with that 120hz refresh rate combined with a 240hz touch response.

What you'll have to enable by yourself since this phone comes zipped to 60hz out of the box, this new high refresh rate enhances all other aspects from browsing, your menus to going through your feeds and, of course, gaming Samsung mastered the display edges. This time it's flattened a bit making that edge perfect. So there's no annoying reflections and, quite honestly, it was weird seeing it because it looked like an edge but not edgy. At the same time, if I'm making any sense, I would describe it as a perfect level of edge curve, and it really showed with time since I experienced significantly fewer accidental touches. This curve received much good feedback that Samsung took it further onward, like we saw on the note, 20 ultra and most likely on the upcoming s21 ultra and yes, we still have Samsung's ultrasonic fingerprint sensor, which is more secure than other average sensors.

It's fast and with an always-on feature that you can unlock the phone, even if the screen is off as long as you can remember where it's located so what's not to like here, nothing really except the fact that Samsung did not enable the option of running 120 hertz while having the resolution set to 44 TP you'll only have one of those two options running it's not bad or anything, but having that choice to unlock that screen, full potential is quite thrilling, especially for gaming, and with that price stack limitations doesn't sound very convenient. On the other hand, when you set the screen to 120 hertz, it locks onto it, even if you're consuming content with lower refresh rate, such as YouTube videos, while other flagships are using valuable refresh, which adapts accordingly, saving you some battery and that hole punch. I mean yeah nothing major to complain about here, it's small, but I found it a bit distracting since it was positioned in the middle. You notice it especially when you're watching videos with a wide view or a bright background with time you get used to it. You forget it's there, but for sure, if it's positioned on the side, it'll be less distracting until we see a Samsung good, under screen camera moving forward to the battery.

The five thousand Williams battery in the s20 ultra is good to last. You almost two days on average use, especially when you're not using the 120 hertz or the high resolution. But when you're pushing this phone, let's say: you're watching YouTube for hours playing games or taking videos heavily, especially with high refresh rate on you might squeeze around six and a half to seven hours of screen on time, which is not what you would expect from a big battery like this one. But since the screen is very demanding, it's almost acceptable. The phone has also reversed charging capability called power ship, which is super useful.

If you want to charge another device, wirelessly like your earbuds or smartwatch, and even other phones, that has a wireless charging feature but remember it's low at almost 4.5 watts, so more ideal for small accessories and with the included Samsung, 25 watt fast charger. You can charge this phone up to 50 in almost 30 minutes and fully in 70, which is okay. But if you want a faster charging option, you can buy a separate Samsung, 45 watt charger for almost 50 bucks, more capable and can deliver around 74 in just 30 minutes. I can't think of any reason why they did not include the 45 watt charger with the phone in the first place. After all, this was a 1400 product, but hey they're, not the only ones trying to get more money from consumers, plus the time for being Ricky is gone because this year, we'll be more than lucky.

If we get one included in the box with upcoming flagships with more companies going green spec sheet for this phone is packed with many goodies, you have two ram options and three storage capacities. Depending on your region, you can get 16 gigs of ram with 512 gigs of internal storage or 12 gigs of ram option, with either 256 or 128 gigs of internal storage, which is the version I have, of course, with the option of an external SD slot which supports up to one terabyte. The one that I have is a US version, so it has that Qualcomm, snapdragon, 865 and performance on the ultra is top-notch. Games in heavy apps are smooth with zero lag and keeping many apps running in the background is not an issue. You have the option to lock one or more apps keeping them running in the background, always so they're ready to go whenever you need them.

One thing I would complain about here is overheating playing games for extended periods of time would heat up the phone's map, mostly the part near the cameras where the chipset is located, even if you're shooting videos or using the camera constantly it gets hot, and you start feeling that uncomfortable sensation in your hand, when holding the phone for long, you also would expect performance to take a small hit, but not significant. This might be due to lack of thermal pace on the chip which helps, reduce and regulate heat better, and it's something you would expect to have in any high performance. Smartphone such as this one overall performance is 10 out of 10, but there's a twist you see for the US and Korean versions, you get the Qualcomm snapdragon 865 chips and for the global version you get the exercise 990, so the processors and GPU differ between the two versions and therefore there are capability differences between the two. It seems you're getting better performance from the equal conversion, plus better boundary consumption, where the examiners have slower performance and would produce more heat, which may affect your experience and extend the camera's picture's quality. And when you check the phone specs on Samsung's website, it doesn't really have anything to say about the chips.

It just gives you what processors you have and that's it. Although the performance on the upcoming exhaust chip looks promising, we'll have to wait and see if it has any thermal limitations. So let's talk about the elephant in the phone cameras. Most of the hype about the ultra was around these cameras, which said to bring big numbers and new capabilities. So what do we have here? We have a 108 megapixel main camera with 1.8 aperture, an ultra-wide 12 megapixels, with 2.2 aperture, a 48 megapixel periscope telephoto with 3.5 aperture and a 4.3 megapixel depth sensor. So we get a big sensor with a decent group of glasses.

What's not to like here right. Well, I have mixed feelings about these cameras, because looking at these numbers, I thought there will be a big leap in picture quality. Don't get me wrong! This camera setup is versatile and can take some really decent shots. The ultra-wide lens is very good, as always with a wider field of view and a night mode which uses the same lens and adds a new perspective to night shots and that periscope zoom is something else. Even though it's produced from a 10x telephoto lens with digital enhancements, you can bump the zoom to reach 30x and take very good and sharp images and even go further, all the way up to 100x, but then you're compromising quality for zoom still at 100x.

It enables you to see things far that your eyes can really get in details. So it's definitely a zoom king. No doubt and sightseeing with this camera has been a wonderful experience. You can also shoot video up to 8k 24 frames per second, so, like I said, very capable and since 8k on a smartphone is not there yet 100. There will be a few downsides like that huge crop in the video frame which limits your field of view.

Quite a lot and compromises stabilization a bit so best keep movement at a low when shooting 8k, but nevertheless it's something to admire, not to mention that 108 megapixels yeah, it can take really detailed pictures. I mean pinching in one of those pictures makes it feel like a multiple good quality pictures stacked together. If I'm making any sense and of course you have a pro mode, which is awesome and always useful to counter any dynamic range issues in certain lighting conditions. We also have a 40 megapixel selfie camera, which shoots by default at 10, megapixel processing, more details in your background, but with fewer details on your subject and vice versa. If you switch to 14 megapixels, the qualities of those pictures are okay, you get nice, selfies and depending on which mode you use the amount of detail of your background changes, but keep in mind not to use any screen protector.

That uses any type of clear adhesive, because it creates a thin film between your selfie camera and your screen protector, which highly affects your camera performance and the quality of your shots. But with that huge list of things, these cameras can do. Unfortunately, you still don't have a macro option. Samsung tried to compensate by adding a software feature called ultra macro, which basically uses zoom in taking close-up shots, but results are far beyond a dedicated macro lens which provides more details. And surprisingly, the camera struggled at first with autofocus, especially on close-up objects.

This kept going for some time till Samsung pulled out an update to fix this issue after updating it kind of felt better, but sometimes it's still a hit-and-miss so that update did not solve the issue 100 and on that 108 megapixels, I mean yeah, it's nice to have, but looking at the size of that file is its massive for a single shot, we're talking over 30 megabytes. The overall quality of these pictures is perfect but, like I said, unfortunately, there's not a huge, leaping quality, although we have the 8k and that zoom, I see nothing really mind-blowing about these cameras, like we saw with the Huawei P30 Pro, which is something we hope to see again with the new chip this year. This version of one UI feels faster, responsive and coming from a near stock version. I can say it looks a bit close. It's based on android 10, upgradable to android 11, with one UI 3.0 and with the equipped hardware it feels smooth and delivers a nice experience. I mean comparing it to Samsung's older skins.

I definitely prefer this one. A lot and being a Samsung phone means it has tons of additions and more security features. Most of these can be found in the advanced setting, but, as usual, some of Samsung's default settings does not make any sense. First. This is a big phone with a big display, so few simple gestures to ease navigation would be awesome.

Yes, you have the option to swipe down to access notifications, but that's not enabled by default and, quite frankly, I had to use the phone for some time with that option off and had to use both hands each time I want to access top screen tap while Samsung had another accessibility feature called one-handed mode, which you can use through a gesture to minimize the overall size of the screen, making it easier to access anything that shows in the upper part of the screen, but it doesn't feel as convenient as a single swipe and that's not. The only setting Samsung is trying to force on users out of the box. The power button activates big speed instead of showing power options. So if you want to switch off the phone, you'll need to access notification. Tab which was confusing at first I mean.

Luckily, you can set the button back to its original purpose and I hope they stopped messing with smartphone essentials and not to mention the included Samsung apps, which you may not use, but still a minor thing, since this phone is capable and won't be affected by some apps sitting idle in terms of specs. It wins with plenty of ram a fast chip, huge battery 5g capability all come into play, making this phone one of the best and most powerful smartphones of 2020, but considering the launch price, which stayed for almost 4 months before it went down. It wasn't easy to recommend this phone, since other companies produced phones with competitive prices and even more features. Samsung should have included some new features that no other phone has like an under screen: selfie camera, faster storage, a new material, something unique like their iris scanner or OnePlus, filter camera or lg's second screen capability and flip screen. They also should have made the camera near perfect from the start, with no autofocus issues, they should have provided the same performance across all the ultraversions, because it's definitely not fair to provide different performance levels to different regions, since they almost pay the same price, if not more and get lower performance than other quad competitions, but like apple, there will be Samsung fans and for them, I say the upcoming s21 launcher is expected to be expensive as well.

So if you want to get a good overall experience from a Samsung phone, the s20 ultra would be your best option, since it costs right now around 800, which seems about right and still, in my opinion, a better option than the Samsung fan edition, since it has more ram and provides a higher resolution and, of course, a better camera setup. Considering price will even go lower with the launch of the new s21 lineup this month, and since big companies are now in the business of charging prices like one thousand two hundred dollars and one thousand four hundred dollars for their high tier phones, which is literally laptop territory and, at the same time, taking stuff away instead of adding them in even if they provide a 5g capability. I think it's not fair to pay double and only get around 25 increase in overall performance compared to the older model. So we should always consider value for money and keep an open mind about exploring more options which may provide a better experience depending on what department you're looking for in a smartphone. Let me know in the comment section below what new features you'll be excited to see this year.

Hope you enjoyed this one see you in the next video stay safe. You.

Source : ATR