Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra review: Big, Beefy and Bombastic By Engadget

We're about two months into 2020 and the first major phones of the year are already here this year is Samsung unleashed a trio of new flagship sin: it's s 20 series and for the first time it introduced a souped-up ultra variant alongside the regular s 20 and s 20, plus the s 20 Ultra is big and beefy, although with a starting price of fourteen hundred dollars, it's also hello expensive. It does offer intriguing features, though, like a triple camera setup, they can shoot at a hundred and eight megapixels and also zoom up to a hundred times. The s20 ultras feature and specs list is long and impressive, but are the updates useful enough to justify dropping all that money? There are a few things you should consider, the first of which is the ultras size. Holy crap is a huge, as my colleague Chris Velasco, so eloquently put it. The s20 ultra is a chunky boy, thick with seven C's, with a six point. Nine-inch screen and a very dense build.

The ultra is the largest of the s20 family and feels almost excessively big after just a day of testing it. My left thumb felt sore my arm ate too, and I could never last more than 10 minutes of furious scrolling through my favorite sub reedits on the ultra, and it's a lot of phone to be fair. The s20 altar is only slightly larger than the iPhone 11 Pro max, which has a 6.5-inch screen at 222 grams. The ultra is noticeably heavier than the OnePlus 70 Pro, which is 206 grams. Even the note 10 plus 5 G, which has a slightly smaller 6.8-inch screen, weighs a lot less at 198 grams. All I'm saying is: if you're already used to a big phone, you might not mind the S Sony alters size and have so much, but if you prefer smaller devices and are considering the s20 ultra, you might want to weigh your options carefully.

If you are considering the ultra, it is probably because of its cameras there, the most notable thing about the new flagships. The s20 altar has a try camera setup with a primary 108 megapixel sensor and a 12 megapixel ultralight option that captures a 123 degree field of view. The most interesting of the lot, though, is the 48 megapixel telephoto lens folded into the chunky bump. On top of this already giant phones behind thanks to the bigger sharper sensors, the s20 ultra should take brighter more colorful and clearer pictures than Samsung's previous flagships, but the company's image, processing algorithms, are still pretty aggressive and seems to soften details. Edges of buildings lack the definition you'd find on pictures taken with a pixel for or in the iPhone 11 Pro by the phone.

The 108 MP camera snaps pictures at 12 megapixels using a technology Samsung calls no no bidding. Basically, it combines nine pixels into one on the sensor level to make them much bigger. Technically, that should result in brighter shots with less noise, but whether it's due to Samsung's algorithms or something else in the processing, the images just weren't very crisp, whether you shoot at 108 or 12 megapixels. Ultimately, the s20 ultras pictures don't look that much better than the SM pluses. The improvements are minor at best.

The aggressive software also models up shots and live focus and night modes which are meant to improve your portraits and low-light photos respectively. I've been spoiled by my pixel, so the artificial floor that Samsung apply. It's, and live focus just looks bad Google and even Apple are far better at recognizing outlines of people and applying bouquet that looks more realistic and natural, though I do see an improvement in low-light, photography and night mode on the s20 altar compared to the s10 plus I still prefer Google's, offering, as it is more effective in noise reduction and in darker conditions. Besides the sharper sensors, the standout feature of the s, 20s is what Samsung calls space zoom on the s20 and s 20 Plus. This lets you get up to 30 times closer to your subject on the Ultra.

You can go in up to 100 times, which honestly is hard to find useful unless you're, an amateur or a paparazzo I've used the ultra, mostly to zoom in on buildings or a faraway sign, and when you go beyond ten times the image quality drops drastically. As with any other camera, every tiny movement is magnified when you're that much zoom in and at a hundred times it isn't nearly impossible to frame up a shot without a tripod and have it be still that makes it hard to aim. Although Samsung includes a helpful visual guide at the top right or left corner of the viewfinder, that shows where you are in the scene when you finally do line up a shot and take the picture. Almost anything captured at beyond ten dimes is a muddy, noisy mess. People have debated the ethics of such a feature and its potential for becoming a tool for a snooping.

I will say that in my time, testing the ultra I'm zoomed in on countless windows and high-rise buildings and I, haven't seen anything incriminating, mostly I've encountered potted plants, curtains or random ornaments, but once I shot up from the sidewalk into an apartment where a woman was having a conversation on the phone and looking out her face, filled up the entire viewfinder at a mere 10 times zoom and while I'm sure that she didn't know I was that up close. It felt like she was staring right at me: I immediately felt uncomfortable when I put the phone down yes, space doom is potentially creepy should Samsung have made it I'm, not sure, since the quality of the resulting summed and pictures aren't that great. But ultimately, whether this becomes an invasive feature boils down to how you use it, and the most persistent, stalkers and paparazzi are going to find ways to snoop whether the ultra exists. Moving on to a more fun addition to the camera experience the new single take mode. When you press the shutter button in this mode, the s20 captures a variety of shots and videos from all the cameras.

You'll have to hold the phone for a few seconds and on-screen alerts will prompt you to move around to get more interesting angles when you're done voil?. The Sony spits out about ten variations of your show. I, like that single, take serves of options that I wouldn't have otherwise thought to take like monochrome version or a looping video set to a cheesy soundtrack. But it's not something I'd use all the time since its best for moving subjects and I don't shoot those a lot. Parents of human and fur babies, for example, might find this more worthwhile.

Another thing I didn't find that useful was 8k video recording like space zoom. This is another feature. That's really there for Samsung to say: hey. We did this technologically impressive thing. Thanks to the S 20s snapdragon 865 processors, it can record the super high-res footage without limits so long as your device has enough.

Storage and battery I took some 8k clips of NYC streets and the ultra started it heat up after about a minute. It wasn't too hot, but the temperature difference was noticeable. The problem with 8k video isn't so much shooting it as it is trying to find somewhere to play it back in that resolution, the s20 altar screen is just 2k so watching it on that display, won't give you the full impact and edges of buildings. Just look distorted because they're, so sharp Samsung's solution is to make it easy for you to cast your video. It's one of its 8k TVs, which are about, is easy to find in the wild as a panda bear.

You can also upload it to YouTube, but again you will have to find a super high resolution screen to watch it on after to really appreciate the quality. This is a more future-proof feature than a really useful tool. Today, I did like the improved super study. Stabilization, though my footage ? not very smooth, despite me, tripping, while walking on an uneven sidewalk, although watching 8k videos on the Estonia ultra is a silly idea. It's still a lovely canvas, the cityscapes I shot looked crisp and colorful on the alters 6.9-inch screen, even in sunlight I, also enjoyed watching a couple of 4k HDR videos, as well as endless Instagram stories about my friends, exciting lives, scenes of exotic destinations in episodes of The Bachelor, also popped. The ultras almost all screen front made the viewing experience more immersive and inviting one of the highlights on the SOE series is their 120 Hertz displays, which allows them to refresh much faster than other folks, since so much of my TV online involves scrolling, whether it's my Instagram or Twitter feeds or a random Reddit.

Binge I thought this new feature would be a huge improvement, but my eyes quickly, adjusts it to the updated refresh rate and, although I appreciated the smoother scrolling, I didn't find myself missing it. When I went back to my pixel 3, the pixel 4, with its 90 heard screen, was more than fast enough for me. Still. If I wanted a sharper resolution or to save my battery, I could revert to 60 Hertz speeds. The s20 ultra only supports 120 Hertz at 1080p.

I've been a big believer of millimeter wave 5g since I learned about it in 2015, because the promised beats weren't seriously impressive. When I did manage to latch onto a signal here in New York, the rewards were huge: I hit up to 800 megabits per second download speeds according to speed test. When connected to a 5g node in Manhattan, a 4k video that took me 13 minutes to download over 4G LTE came through in just 13 seconds on millimeter-wave uploads, on the other hand, hits slower speeds of about 50 Mbps, since Verizon is still using its LTE network for all uploads. That means posting your Instagram stories or YouTube. Videos on the carrier won't benefit from the speed boost just yet one of the biggest concerns about technologies like millimeter, wave, 5g or a screen that refreshes faster is their impact on battery life.

To allay our concerns, Samsung stuff, a whopping five thousand William power cell into the ultra and honestly I, don't know we needed that. I set my screen to a hundred and twenty Hertz and use the s20 ultra for a ton of photo taking and Instagrammer. Along with my usual slew of messaging and the battery lasted about one and a half days on our battery test. The s20 altar lasted 11 and a half hours, which is surprisingly shorter than the pixel for Excel. It does line up with the S 10 plus and outlast the iPhone 11 Pro Max on general use, though, and mostly use the S 20 ultra for messaging friends and co-workers scrolling through and posting to Instagram and Twitter, as well as taking a ton of photos, videos, the snapdragon, 865 chipsets, held up well in general, and the phone only stalled once when I was trying to switch camera mode, while the video was still saving to push the Estonian ultra harder I played a couple rounds a fortnight while recording the screen and then quickly try to edit that video that went smoothly, as is to be expected of a brand-new flagship, since it is a galaxy s flagship.

After all, the ultra also offers features from older, stable means like and in this play fingerprint sensor, reverse wireless charging and Bixby routines. You know in case you found that useful you'll also get the standard set of preloaded apps from Samsung, Google and Microsoft, but for some reason Netflix and Facebook also came installed. That's fine. Most people use these apps, but for those who don't or if you're against Facebook on principle, like I, am the bad news, is you can't uninstall either of these? Your only option is to disable them, which removes them from your app drawer and silences notifications. That's a relatively minor gripe about a phone that is otherwise very impressive.

The s20 ultra is proof of what we can get in a premium smartphone, if all we cared about were crazy, specs and for people who care only about getting the best of the best. The s20 ultra is an excellent device. The rest of the world might be more concerned about practical questions. Like is this a worthy upgrade for my two-year-old phone. Do I need something: I can easily use with one hand or can I stand using something this heavy to read on the plane, for those looking to upgrade from an older device? Bear in mind that Samsung cut the prices for the SN series, which are still a big jump up from older flagships.

The s20 ultra starts at $1400, which is the same price as two Galaxy S 10s, with some change for comparison, the smallest s, 20 starts at $1000, which is what the iPhone 11 Pro costs at the same level, if you don't need the most advanced phone available, the s 20 ultra is almost certainly overkill. Few of us need anything. This overpowered is hard to imagine sister, where the s 20 or s 20, plus, wouldn't be enough. If you have the cash to burn you're, getting plenty of everything that matters. Just remember that you don't need to spend this much for a great smartphone for reviews and analyses on all the other, smartphones to end devices you could possibly buy make sure to subscribe to in Gaza.

Source : Engadget