Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Galaxy S20 Ultra Review: Mega Phone, Ultra Price”.
Back in 2013, Samsung released a phone called the Galaxy Mega. And aptly named. It was huge for the time. Bigger even than the Galaxy Note., Aimed at what then was a small niche of customers who wanted giant screens in their pocket..
But today every phone screen is of course mega, but as impressive as that sounds a quick click on WikiDiff shows that it just means very large. When you really want to convey extreme fanatical and uncompromising in 2020. Well, you need to call something’Ultra’ ( upbeat, music, ).
I’Ve spent seven days using the Galaxy S20 Ultra on Verizon’s network from Brooklyn to The Boonies.. It’S the biggest phone I’ve reviewed since the monster iPhone 11 Pro Max. And it needs every cubic millimeter to pack in its glut of features.. It also includes enough 5G hardware to work on a high, mid and low bands here in the States. So if you carrier offers it, the Ultra can pick it up. Now.
My attitude about 5G is best summed up by Admiral Chekov from Star Trek Irrelevant, Irrelevant, Yeah, powerful speaker phone on this phone., But hey. If you have 5G coverage, where you live, it’s nice that the Ultra has it., Especially given the large file sizes of the photos and videos you can shoot which I’ll show you in a second.. First, let’s talk about the practical benefits you get out of the box. Samsung has pared back those flashy waterfall curves on the sides, which is good because makes inadvertent taps with your thumb, meat, less likely., And then my favorite part the battery.. I think this is the largest battery of any phone I’ve reviewed., I stress, tested it with a weekend drive from upstate Roxbury back to Brooklyn a track of about 160 miles.. I used to turn by turn directions for almost six straight hours., With pit stops along the way to see roadside Rocket Ships lean on the occasional tugboat propeller and get to know the local wildlife RIP. Add in two hours streaming podcasts over Bluetooth. Another two and a half hours rocking on Spotify and for an hour in the backwoods we had no cell service at all..
Despite that, I still had enough power for 90 minutes of Twitter Facebook and YouTube on the couch. When I got home., That’s what I call heavy use and the Ultra lives up to its name. Here. Quick word on charging I’ve given Samsung guff for including only a 25 watt plug in the box instead of the 45 watt charger sold separately, but thanks to Sasha Siegen at PC mag.
We now know that you should save your 50 bucks.. There’S almost no benefit in speed to the more expensive charger., And now this is important. For that battery test. I left the phone in its default settings with the display resolution limited to full HD and the refresh rate locked to 60 hertz.. Personally, that’s probably where I’d leave those settings.. I’Ve never been great at noticing.
Super high resolution displays, and even the scrolling smoothness is subtle., But when you’re spending as much as this thing costs for the kind of specs, this thing boasts leaving those toggles in the out of box setting. Just I don’t know it’s kind of like buying a professional racing bike and then bolting training wheels to it.. If you do run the phone at 120, hertz or quad-HD you’ll see a battery handicap of between 20 and 30 %. According to my buddy Andrew Martinek and Andrew Central., Alright, let’s slap down some stones. There’s a reason. It looks like someone taped it domino to the back of a brick here..
This camera is the most ambitious optical upgrade I’ve seen Samsung attempt.. I think the most important upgrade is night mode.. Finally, there’s a Samsung phone.
You can use in a dim mountain tavern or a moody theme hotel and actually do those settings some justice.. Now this night mode has the same hinky hangups as others. It takes forever to capture, so it doesn’t work well with moving subjects and the processing really over states the colors in the final product..
This needs to be tweaked., But it’s such a huge improvement over anything Samsung’s offered before., And it also helps improve the output from cameras other than the primary.. You all know I love using that ultra wide camera and in zoom mode. Just look at the added detail on that blind label. For shooting sharper you’ve got a primary camera weighing at 108 megapixels.
Capable of 8k video. For contact that’s four times as sharp as a 4k TV is capable of displaying.. You might think that means shooting video at 8k is impractical and largely you’re correct., But having that much information in the frame, when you do shoot an 8k means you can crop in much further without losing so much quality. Same goes for the 108 megapixel still shots.. It can mix down nine pixels into one that kicks out a 12 megapixel final photo with more detail than you could otherwise get.. Finally, there’s shooting far away..
The telephoto camera is another monster. 48 megapixel camera mounted sideways alongside this prism and that allows for zoom levels. I haven’t seen since I used a Huawei phone.
Now I think Samsung made a strategic mistake, painting 100X on this phone.. Well, you can digitally punch in that far. You don’t want to., But zoom levels up to around 10X, very impressive compared to the 2X or 3X telephoto shots, most phones produce.. Now the huge asterisk floating over this whole camera situation is that it feels half baked. Samsung effectively admitted as much when it replied to some earlier reviewers saying that an update was coming soon to quote improve the camera experience..
Now, as this video was being cut, I was informed that an update is already hitting ultra units in Korea thanks to Max Weinbach for the shout out and letting me know. I’ll, be tracking this closely. So follow me on Twitter for updates, there. (, upbeat, music ). Let’S talk performance. With a spec sheet like this, you should basically expect perfection. And I got ta say the ultra brings it. Well. 12 gigs might seem like a preposterous surplus of RAM..
Remember that this phone can stand in for a desktop computer using Samsung decks. Plus, you can now manually pin apps in memory to force them to stay open. So you don’t lose work when multitasking., So for once I’m grateful for the ram overload.. As I said before, the speakers are loud. Phone calls are great really day to day.. The only frustrations I keep running into are the slow and finicky fingerprint sensor, and that design., Though it seems to me that when you build the biggest and baddest phone on the block, some of that ambition should be reflected in the ID.. Instead, the Ultra seems like it wants to blend into the background instead of stand. Out., If you just said well, you’re gon na put a case on it anyway. You’Ve beaten me to my own sponsor spot.. This video was brought to you by dbrand maker of the best vinyl smart phone skins and also the grip case. Sure it gives you advanced shock protection and a much better grip.
Get it. But it’s also totally customizable to get some color onto your Ultra. And it’s a crafty way to banish that camera bump too. Hit the link in the description to get yours and thanks to dbrand for sponsoring this video.. So here’s the S20 Ultra worth the asking price.! Well, I’m not a fan of telling people they shouldn’t spend their money on something.
If you really want the best Samsung can offer you’ll probably enjoy this., But to try to get a sense of the actual value. Let’S take a look at last year’s Samsung flagship., The company wanted $ 999 for the entry level Galaxy S10 Plus in 2019, and it wants $ 400 more for the Galaxy S20 Ultra.. Now I don’t really feel like I’m getting 40 % more smartphone here, unless I’m standing out of scale. Some say the better comparison is with the Galaxy S10 plus 5G, which was 1300 dollars last year., But this year you don’t even have the option of buying a Non 5G model.. So maybe you start to understand why I said this: in my Galaxy Z, flip review. Personally, that war between the Galaxy Z, flip and the S20 Ultra, I might pick the Z flip.. That’S the real ( mumbles ), this whole situation..
This isn’t one of Samsung’s crazy, foldable devices., Where the sheer ambition goes a long way toward explaining a high price tag.. Instead, the ultra is an iteration on a product family. That’S now, 10 years old.
And when you’re asking people to pay $ 1400, you’ve either got a nail. Every fundamental or you’ve got to bring something transformative.. But while this phone is super in some ways and even mega and others, the sum total falls somewhat short of Ultra..
If you’re down in the comments wondering why I wasn’t so hard on the iPhone 11. Allow me to suggest that you actually watch my iPhone 11 Pro Max review, which is available at the Mr Mobile on YouTube., And if you liked that video please subscribe to my channel, so I can keep producing reviews like this one.. It was made possible thanks to a review sample provided by Samsung, but I don’t produce paid reviews. Samsung was not given editorial input or copy approval rights, which means they’re, seeing this video for the first time right alongside you..
Nevertheless, I’m continuing to ask Samsung for comment and clarification on all these issues, as the company responds I’ll drop, those responses in the description and or the comments.. Some of the footage in this article is courtesy. My friends at Android Central.. Please go visit them and check out there S20 and S20 Ultra reviews. Until next time, thanks for watching. And stay mobile, my friends.
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