Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra 5G review

Announced August 5, 2020, the Galaxy Note20 Ultra 5G is the latest flagship of Samsung reach the market. After about 3 weeks of heavy use, and as the main phone, it is time to make our review for this smartphone from the South Korean manufacturer available.

For those who have already used the Galaxy S20 Ultra, the differences will not be that many and I consider this Note series equipment as another update and this excellent equipment, and with a different design.

Hardware and performance

It is a device with a 6.9-inch AMOLED screen and QuadHD + resolution for a total of 496ppi. It has a variable refresh rate that can reach 120Hz, which Samsung’s software can handle very well. This speed dynamically adapts to the needs of use and always with the aim of preserving the autonomy of the equipment. So when it’s needed, the phone uses really fast speeds and when it’s not needed it drops to just 10Hz.
That same screen supports HDR10 +, and in terms of quality it is the best the market has to offer, from color accuracy, viewing angles to brightness, everything is excellent and best of all, we don’t have any problems using it at all. ‘open under strong sunlight.

Galaxy Note20 Ultra 5G it has the best screen the market has to offer

Of course, and being the best smartphone screen, I had never experienced such a good screen, also protected by Corning Gorilla Gall Victus.

Inside, we have a Samsung chip manufactured with the 7nm process, the Exynos 990, which has an octa-core processor that runs at a maximum of 2.73 Ghz. If we add this chip to its GPU, the Mali-G77 MP11 and its 12 GB of RAM, we will have a real “combat smartphone”. You will not find an application that does not work quickly and effectively on this smartphone. We are facing a real top of the range, and the best that the market has, so in terms of performance nothing will fail.

As always, I leave here the Antutu tests that demonstrate the excellent performance of the equipment.

It has a 4500mAh battery which, while short in theory, the truth is its performance is impressive. With intensive use I managed to get almost 1 and a half days of use. The whole system seems to be very well prepared not to overuse the battery. And when it comes time to recharge, moreover, there are no problems, it has support for 25W wire charging, which makes the battery recharge from 10 to 100% in about 65 minutes. With around 30 minutes of charging, we were able to get around 60% of the battery, which is a good result.
While charging is still one of the spots where Samsung seems to lag behind the competition, the truth is that it has 15W Qi / PMA fast wireless charging and 4.5W wireless reverse charging. Wireless charging can charge the battery from 10 to 100% in just over 80 minutes.

Note 20 Ultra also has support for 5G networks, which as you might imagine it was not possible to test because it is not yet available on the national territory. Its ultrasonic fingerprint sensor is directly embedded in the screen and works quickly and accurately.

One of the highlights of the Note line is its S-Pen and this Galaxy Note20 Ultra 5G is no different. However, this S-Pen is getting better and, compared to the Note10’s S-Pen, is 80% faster, as Samsung has reduced its latency to 9 ms. With this S-Pen it finally feels like we’re writing with a pen on a sheet of paper, but in a much smoother way. I am not a huge fan of the S-Pen, but in this Note20 I have used it a lot, and a lot more than I thought I would use it, as two or three days after starting to use it, you will find that it is much more comfortable to use the same , compared to the virtual keyboard.
Regardless of the angle you type, this S-Pen is very well connected to this phone’s screen, it’s like a perfect marriage if it is.

I can’t complete the hardware details without disclosing that it has stereo speakers, Bluetooth 5, NFC, MST, IP68 certification, and support for wireless DeX on Miracast.

Software

The arrival of this equipment marked the arrival of OneUI version 2.5, the latest version of the Samsung operating system, which is based on Android 10. This will likely be the latest version of this system, as South Korea is already working on Android 11, which will arrive on devices in the form of OneUI 3.0.

There is not much to talk about the software since it has everything that Google has made available with Android 10 and with many improvements that can already be seen in many of the company’s devices, even in the top of the 2019 range and in the smartphones of the Galaxy S20 series.

However, I can’t help but reveal that Samsung is promoting Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass Ultimate service. Although I hadn’t used it in my tests, when this equipment was officially presented in Portugal, I got to test the service, and it seemed to be going very well.

The truth is, Samsung has lost some discipline lately when it comes to software design. The company is always tempted to throw strange resources, which we often end up not even realizing what they are for.

As for Bixby, it is increasingly tuned to Portuguese, but is still far from having a good experience using the Portuguese language. It has responded to many requests in the Camões language, but it still has to work hard to deliver a Samsung-worthy experience.

Room

This is a strong point of this Galaxy Note20 Ultra 5G, even if it is visual, as it has a great “impact” on the back that I confess to hate, and is far from functional in terms of design (see photo below). For what it takes, the DxOMark staff tests speak for themselves, this is one of the best smartphones ever made for photography. In addition to their tests, mine reveals exactly the same result.

And let’s start by talking about the front sensor, which is a 10MP sensor that uses and abuses Artificial Intelligence to “retouch” photos. In practice, this retouching is much more, as selfies made with this equipment often make us look like real wax dolls. Of course, you can change the settings, but there is a clear exaggeration on the part of the AI ​​that urgently needs to be addressed by Samsung.

As for the rear sensors, the story is different and in this equipment we have three cameras. The first is a camera with a 12MP ultra wide-angle sensor, a 12MP telephoto lens with periscope lens, and the primary is a 108MP wide-angle sensor.

Overall, the ultra-wide sensor on any phone is the weakest of the bunch, and this phone is no different. However, the results obtained with it are very satisfying.
The telephoto lens, which has a periscope system, can do a true 5x optical zoom. Samsung also has something it calls “Space Zoom” which allows you to combine optical and digital zoom to reach 50x. Interestingly, the S20 Ultra has a higher megapixel count and offers 100x zoom, which means Samsung has cut it down on this note. And we can say that this sensor does nothing wrong, the photos are very good, even when we are at maximum zoom.
Finally, we have the 108MP sensor, which is the flagship of this phone, were it not for the sensor designed by Samsung. The focus works very well, the colors are excellent and the accuracy is something that is only really possible with the best phones on the market.

Low-light photos are truly impressive, and unlike other equipment, we don’t have to hold the equipment too long to take photos in the dark.
As for the video, we have the possibility to record in 8K and this explains the quality of the sensors and the Samsung software. However, I think 4K is still the best solution to use on this phone. 4K recordings with image stabilization have truly impressive results.

Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra 5G review: final verdict

The Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra 5G, regardless of the price, is guaranteed to be one of the best smartphones money can buy. It offers the best screen we can have on a smartphone, a truly impressive S Pen experience, as it has a wealth of new features for work and leisure. Their cameras are fantastic, correcting some problems that arose with the Galaxy S20 Ultra. In terms of performance, it is at the top of what we can have in a device of this kind, even for all those who love to play with the smartphone.

The only negative point that I have to point out, apart from its price which is close to 1150 €, is precisely the protrusion of the module that contains the rear photographic sensors. It’s not bad … it’s awful. Many will say that to solve this problem it is enough to buy a cover flush with the sensors. This is still true, but the phone is not produced with a cover and this solution hides the beautiful color of this equipment.

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