Introduction
It's Galaxy Note season and this year the best one is the Ultra. Samsung's mixed things up a bit atop the lineup and the one you want in 2020 is the Galaxy Note20 Ultra. We have it right here.
Last year, in a one-off effort Samsung put out the Note10 and Note10+ - a relatively closely-specced pair where size was really the key factor for picking one over the other. Not so this time around. The Note20 Ultra and Note20 are both big and feature parity is out the door - in a similar fashion to how the S20 Ultra is above and beyond the S20+, only even more so.
Pounding on the Note20 in absentia isn't what we're here for and we'll deal with its shortcomings and limitations when one shows up at our doorstep. For now, let's focus on the Ultra.
First appearing on the other S20 Ultra, the oversized camera hump makes a return on the Note20 Ultra. Most of the bits inside are the same, including the main 108MP cam and the 12MP ultra wide. Bbut the periscope telephoto that's in part responsible for the sheer size of the assembly is now 12MP, swapping out the 48MP unit of the S-series phone - we'll have to see about that.
Galaxy family shot: S20 Ultra • Note20 Ultra • Note10+
The display is a nice marriage of Note-style geometry with some high refresh rate coming in from the S20s, now supposedly made even better with adaptive refresh rate adjustment. Oh, and spoiler - it's bright.
The S Pen is here, of course, now relocated to the left side. It's improved too, getting a 9ms latency (down more than 4 times compared to the Note10), more Air actions, and a Notes app to make you forget Google Keep.
All this comes in a redesigned package featuring a stainless steel midframe where once was aluminum and the brand new Gorilla Glass Victus for improved durability. For improved looks, meanwhile, the matte finish on the back will ward off fingerprints, though only the Mystic Bronze color option gets that treatment, sadly.
Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra 5G specs
- Body: 164.8x77.2x8.1mm, 208g; Glass front (Gorilla Glass Victus), glass back (Gorilla Glass Victus), stainless steel frame; IP68 dust/water resistant (up to 1.5m for 30 mins); Colors: Mystic Bronze, Mystic Black, Mystic White.
- Display: 6.90" Dynamic AMOLED 2X, 1440x3088px resolution, 19.3:9 aspect ratio, 496ppi; HDR10+, Always-on display, 120Hz@FHD/60Hz@QHD refresh rate.
- Chipset: Exynos 990 (7 nm+) - Global, Qualcomm SM8250 Snapdragon 865+ (7 nm+) - USA: Octa-core (2x2.73 GHz Mongoose M5 & 2x2.50 GHz Cortex-A76 & 4x2.0 GHz Cortex-A55) - Global, Octa-core (1x3.00 GHz Kryo 585 & 3x2.42 GHz Kryo 585 & 4x1.8 GHz Kryo 585) - USA; Mali-G77 MP11 - Global, Adreno 650 - USA.
- Memory: 128GB 12GB RAM, 256GB 12GB RAM, 512GB 12GB RAM; UFS 3.1; microSDXC (uses shared SIM slot).
- OS/Software: Android 10, One UI 2.5.
- Rear camera: Wide (main): 108 MP, f/1.8, 26mm, 1/1.33", 0.8µm, PDAF, Laser AF, OIS; Telephoto: 12 MP, f/3.0, 120mm periscope, 1.0µm, PDAF, OIS, 5x optical zoom, 50x hybrid zoom; Ultra wide angle: 12 MP, f/2.2, 13mm, 1/2.55", 1.4µm; LED flash, auto-HDR, panorama.
- Front camera: 10 MP, f/2.2, 26mm (wide), 1/3.2", 1.22µm, Dual Pixel PDAF; Dual video call, Auto-HDR.
- Video capture: Rear camera: 8K@24fps, 4K@30/60fps, 1080p@30/60/240fps, 720p@960fps, HDR10+, stereo sound rec., gyro-EIS & OIS; Front camera: 4K@30/60fps, 1080p@30fps.
- Battery: 4500mAh; Fast charging 25W, USB Power Delivery 3.0, Fast Qi/PMA wireless charging, Reverse wireless charging 9W.
- Misc: Fingerprint (under display, ultrasonic), accelerometer, gyro, proximity, compass, barometer; NFC; FM radio (Snapdragon model only; market/operator dependent); Samsung Wireless DeX (desktop experience support), ANT+, Bixby natural language commands and dictation; Samsung Pay (Visa, MasterCard certified); S Pen Stylus, 9ms latency (Bluetooth integration, accelerometer, gyro).
Some other points on that list raise questions, however. Like the battery capacity that's less than on the S20 Ultra, and the axing of the 45-watt charging. The increasing gap between the Snapdragon and Exynos platforms is another less than ideal reality that users in half the world need to come to terms with.
Speaking of, we'll be reviewing the Exynos version of the Galaxy Note20 Ultra, in 5G spec. That's one of few times you'll hear 5G mentioned in the review, however, as we'll be dropping it for the sake of clarity.
Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra 5G unboxing
A rather typical Samsung presentation, the Galaxy Note20 Ultra's two-piece black cardboard box features the S Pen printed on the lid. A slightly glossy 'N20' contrasts against the matte material while the side edges of the top surface have striped patterns to allude to the curved display inside.
As part of the package, you'd be getting a 25-watt charger that adheres to USB PowerDelivery with the PPS bit of the standard supported as well. A USB-C-to-C cable is included as well. A pair of AKG-branded in-ear headphones are included too, if you're not getting a pair of Galaxy Buds Live as part of some pre-order bundle.
This being a review unit and not strictly a retail-ready package, it was missing the usual spare S Pen tips and tool for replacing them. Different sizes of tips for the earbuds were nowhere to be found either. We can't imagine Samsung's skipping either of these things and commercially available units will likely have them.
Design
The Galaxy Notes have their own distinct design language to set them apart form the more mainstream S-series phones. The Note20 Ultra respects that principle and adopts the striking sharper corners we've come to expect from the lineup - in contrast to the easier-on-the-eyes, more rounded look of a Galaxy S20 Ultra.
Galaxy Note20 Ultra (middle) looks more like the Note10+ (right) than the S20 Ultra
The evolutionary refinement can be seen when looking at the two notes side-by-side. The bottom bezel is a hair thinner, the selfie camera cutout is smaller and... that's about it - there wasn't much to shave off the older model to begin with.
Galaxy Note20 Ultra (right) next to the Galaxy Note10+
The display remains slightly curved - enough to annoy flat screen die-hards and to make glass protectors a pain to install, at best. The Note20 Ultra is where Gorilla Glass Victus debuts, offering improvements over GG6, so hopefully screen protectors shouldn't be needed. Having said that, the phone does ship with a sheet of plastic foil for some extra peace of mind, though in the past we've been unable to get official replacements for those.
The Note20 Ultra is not just a Note, but also an Ultra and there's no chance you'll miss that even at a passing glance at its back. A camera assembly so big and prominent we haven't seen before. With the Note20 Ultra now thinner than the S20 Ultra, the bump is raised higher - out the calipers go and we measured 2.6mm on the Note, 2.2mm on the S model.
The usual practical consequences of that involve wobbling on flat surfaces and the phone does suffer from that - not ideal if you want to be drawing on it. A case is the only obvious solution.
Having said that, the design of the Note20 Ultra's camera cluster is a lot more sophisticated and classier than on the S20 Ultra. For starters, there's no sign of the Space Zoom 100X branding - we still can't fathom how that made it to a flagship Galaxy. The otherwise rectangular opening for the periscope's prism has gotten a circular outline to match the other two, and the three cams have the same brushed metal looking rings around them, in a matching color to the phone's paintjob.
Our review unit is in this year's hero color, Mystic Bronze. It comes with a soft touch matte finish that is about as slippery as they come, but hey - with a camera bump this big, you can use it for extra grip. The greatest upside to the finish is that it's nowhere nearly as accommodating to fingerprints and your Mystic Bronze Note20 Ultra will stay relatively clean.
That is not the case with the other two color options. Mystic as they may be in the promo materials, the Black and White variants come with the usual glossy glass. Matte or gloss, the back panel of the Note20 Ultra is made of Victus too, so at least there's that. Note20s are all IP68 certified, as expected.
The two sheets of glass that cover the internals are held together by a metal midframe, which has historically been made of aluminum. Samsung intimated to us that it's used stainless steel on the Note20 Ultra, a statement we have no reason to doubt, nor are we equipped to verify. It's metal alright.
The frame is nearly flat on the top and the bottom, making you think the phone could stand upright on its own. Well, the slightly protruding S Pen prevents it on the bottom. It almost works with the top, though the device is never stable, instead swaying gently back and forth, waiting for you to look the other way so it can come crashing down. Just reviewer things, nobody needs to have their phone standing upright.
USB-C port, loudspeaker, mic and S Pen on the bottom • Card tray with hybrid microSD slot up top
On the sides, there's not even 2mm of the frame exposed, except on the right where the power button and volume rocker are and the frame is widened to accommodate them. Indeed, the power button has returned to the right side of the phone where it should be - on the Note10s Samsung experimented with a left-side power button, and couldn't hear the end of it. We know, we complained ourselves.
We were debating whether the button placement on the Note10s was somehow related to the position of the S Pen silo on the right side of the handset and if the ever-thinning sides made their coexistence impossible. Well, the buttons are on the right now, and the S Pen is on the left - adding two and two together...
Let's put it this way - it requires some getting used to. Long time Note users will poke at the lower right corner of the handset and wonder why there's no click from the stylus' butt end. The clicky bit is on the S Pen all the same, only the entire S Pen has moved. Perhaps less than ideal ergonomics for right-hand users though people have adapted to some more dramatic changes, one would think. And then, left-handed folks might finally have a Galaxy Note to love.
The S Pen has the exact same physical dimensions and weight as the one on the previous generation and it looks identically. Samsung quotes 24 hours of standby battery life out of the stylus' lithium titanate battery, up from the 10 hours of the Note10's specs. Judging by the lack of physical changes, that's likely due to optimization rather than new battery.
The Galaxy Note20 Ultra measures 164.8x77.2x8.1mm and weighs 208g and that's 0.7mm thinner than the S20 Ultra, as well as 14g lighter. The Oppo Find X2 Pro, Huawei P40 Pro+, and Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro all hover around the 9mm thickness mark and the Find is the only one lighter around here at 200g for the leather version. Meanwhile, the Mi matches the Note for weight and the Huawei stands at 226g, as much as the iPhone 11 Pro Max, which also happens to be as thin as the Note. What we're trying to do is give context to say that the Note20 Ultra is, in fact, relatively thin and light.
It's also the widest handset of this bunch, save for the iPhone (bezels out of 2017 don't help don't help Apple's device). At 77.2mm it's not a phone for single-handed operation, that much is clear. But with the S Pen around, two-hand use is sort of assumed, right?
6.9-inch Dynamic AMOLED is now Adaptive too, also ultra bright
The Galaxy Note20 Ultra features what could possibly be the pinnacle of display technology available to the public right now. It has the resolution, the refresh rate, the brightness, the color reproduction, and, being a Note, the nuanced pressure detection for the S Pen.
Let's unpack a bit. At 6.9 inches in diagonal, the 20 Ultra is the biggest Note to date, a mere 0.1" difference giving it the edge ahead of last year's Note10+. Resolution is 1440x3088px, which comes in an odd 19.3:9 aspect ratio - in between the Note10's 19:9 and the S20s 20:9. The pixel density works out to 496ppi.
It's Dynamic AMOLED 2X - it may not have a particularly nice ring to it, but that's Samsung's branding for its 120Hz refresh rate displays. This one comes with 240Hz touch sampling too for speedier detection of touch input. What hasn't changed since the S20 family, where Samsung introduced 120Hz panels, is the limitation that going for the 1440p resolution locks the refresh rate at 60Hz. To have the HRR you need to run the Note20 Ultra in 1080p resolution.
What's different this time around, is that the 120Hz setting isn't dead set - instead, if you opt for the Adaptive mode, the one where the Note will up to 120Hz, it will dynamically adjust it depending on what you're doing on the device. We've seen such behavior from other HRR phone displays and it should help with endurance - after all, you don't need your phone to refresh 120 times a second when watching a 30fps video, but you'd be paying a battery life toll if it is.
Mind you, the Note20 Ultra won't do it in 1Hz increments. Samsung Display claims that the used refresh rates are 10Hz for still images, 30Hz for text-heavy apps (like email), 60Hz for video, and 120Hz for games, respectively. However, it's more of a 120-60 type of thing in our experience, most of the time.
We have an in-house app that reads the current resolution and refresh rate as reported by Android and overlays it on the screen for us to keep an eye on. Apparently, the Note20 Ultra will base its choice of refresh rate on a number of factors, and we can't claim that what will follow is an exhaustive list.
For starters, if you're actively tapping and swiping on the screen, it'll maintain 120Hz. Leave it on a table or even just stare blankly at it while holding it for a few seconds and it'll go down to 60Hz, only to crank the RR back up once you touch the screen. Oddly enough, there's no spike, based on the accelerometer reading, though when picking up the handset from a table you are likely to touch some part of the display, thus triggering the touch-based spike to 120Hz. That's the usual behavior you can expect across the UI, as well as in most apps including Instagram, Facebook, and browsers (we checked Chrome, FireFox, and Samsung's own).
Then there are app-specific peculiarities. Games are neither here nor there or, as a colleague put it recently while reviewing the ROG Phone 3, 'High refresh rate gaming on Android is still the Wild West.' Pac Man, Sky Force Reloaded, 1945 Air Force and Dead Trigger 2, for example, kept the Note's display in 120Hz. The HRR-capable v1.01 of Alto's Odyssey (as confirmed in both our Razer Phone 2 review and more recently on the ROG Phone 3) - that's 60Hz on the Ultra. Mortal Kombat, which did 144fps on the ROG Phone 3, was stuck at 60 on the Note20 Ultra. Same with Real Racing 3, which ran in 144fps on the nubia Red Magic 5G. PUBG and Call of Duty don't really go above 60fps normally, and Fortnite is capped at 30fps, so the Note20 Ultra had its screen run in 60Hz for these two.
The camera viewfinder is stuck at 60Hz (even for the 120fps 1080p video recording mode), while the camera settings menu, as all other menus, got us 120Hz. Having said that, 1080p 120Hz videos recorded on the Note do, after all, trigger the 120Hz refresh on the screen. That is also the case for 120fps videos you can find online - mostly gameplay clips, because who records normal speed 120fps videos anyway (slow-mo is a different thing).
Outside of that, video playing apps introduce a variable of their own - HDR. In the native player, YouTube, Netflix, and Amazon Prime Video, if you're playing SDR videos, the phone respects the touch-based switching detailed above, all the time, so that even when you're watching a full screen video, if you tap on the screen, it'll spike to 120Hz - so you can enjoy the smoothness on the onscreen controls, maybe. Play an HDR video, however, and the phone is locked in 60Hz for as long as the clip is showing on the screen - even in YouTube for the tiny thumbnail-sized view on the bottom of the screen.
Then there's the proximity sensor. If you were to engage it, the phone will go up to 120Hz and more often than not stay in that state indefinitely. To reenable the auto drop to 60Hz, you need to touch the display and it will then go back to the 'wait for 5 seconds of inactivity' behavior. This whole thing sounds more like a bug than a feature and it could probably be resolved with an upcoming update.
There were only a couple of instances when we managed to spot the Note20 Ultra's Adaptive refresh rate go below 60Hz. The first one is for the intermediate period right after the screen timing out - for those 2 or 3 seconds when the display goes dim, but the phone isn't yet locked, the refresh rate is 15Hz. The other scenario is when opening YouTube in a browser. In that case it's business as usual at 120Hz when your tapping on things, but when you're playing a video it drops to 48Hz. For who knows what reason.
Display settings
Back to some of our more ordinary testing. There's nothing ordinary about the Galaxy Note20 Ultra's brightness, though, that's for sure. With Adaptive brightness turned on and the phone under direct light, we measured 1024nits in our usual testing scenario - that's mightily impressive. The result is a good 130nits more than what we got on the S20 Ultra, 150nits more than the Find X2 Pro and 200nits brighter than the iPhone 11 Pro.
When you're adjusting the slider manually, the Note20 Ultra is capable of outputting 500nits, a new development for Samsungs, which typically top out at or below 400nits.
| Display test | 100% brightness | ||
| Black, |
White, |
||
| 0 | 504 | ∞ | |
| 0 | 1024 | ∞ | |
| 0 | 381 | ∞ | |
| 0 | 794 | ∞ | |
| 0 | 398 | ∞ | |
| 0 | 894 | ∞ | |
| 0 | 820 | ∞ | |
| 0 | 536 | ∞ | |
| 0 | 871 | ∞ | |
| 0 | 425 | ∞ | |
| 0 | 531 | ∞ | |
| 0 | 455 | ∞ | |
| 0 | 760 | ∞ | |
| 0 | 511 | ∞ | |
| 0 | 622 | ∞ | |
| 0 | 391 | ∞ | |
| 0 | 422 | ∞ | |
| 0 | 607 | ∞ | |
Samsung's promo materials speak of 1500nits peak brightness and we don't doubt that's achievable for lit up areas smaller than our standardized test swatches. For kicks and giggles we tried using a white rectangle covering 10% of the display (as opposed to our usual 75%), and we measured 1360nits. The extra nits will come in handy in HDR video playback, though clearly you'd be getting crazy high brightness from even mostly white apps.
As for color accuracy, the default Vivid mode returns an average dE2000 of 3.0 for our set of DCI-P3 test swatches - not super accurate, but decent. More importantly, the white point is fairly precise with only the slightest blue shift. That can be alleviated by bumping the 5 position Cool-to-Warm slider to the mid-warm setting - dE2000 of around 1 on the white, 2.9 average. Going to the warmest settings quickly nudges white to yellow (some 6 units off the mark) and the overall dE2000 gets an increase to 3.8.
Natural mode, on the other hand, is tuned for faithful reproduction of sRGB content. It's very accurate and we measured an average dE2000 of 1.2.
Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra 5G battery life
The Galaxy Note20 Ultra is powered by a 4,500mAh battery, a 500mAh downgrade compared to the S20 Ultra for otherwise mostly similar hardware. The S20+, meanwhile, with a slightly smaller display than the Note's, has the same capacity as the S Pen flagship. The Note20 Ultra's Adaptive refresh rate mode should supposedly help with battery life by only delivering as many Hz as needed for the task at hand. Once again, we are reviewing the Exynos version of the Note20 Ultra.
We tested the phone in both modes, but some clarification is needed. In Adaptive mode, our browser script kept the screen at 120Hz constantly - we believe that more closely resembles real-life use, since you're likely to more often be scrolling, than staring blankly at a page. As for the video test - that one was left to drop to 60Hz since videos seem like a reasonable type of content to stare blankly at.
In this Adaptive mode, we clocked 11:31h of web browsing - an hour more than the S20 Ultra, and some 40 minutes longer than the S20+, with both S-series phones set to 120Hz - pretty good then. Video playback returned an unexciting 13:05h on the Note20 Ultra - in line with the 12:55h on the S20 ultra and the 13:30h on the S20+, but those do loop videos at 120Hz with no adaptiveness to speak of. We expected more. The one full day minus 5 minutes of 3G call time is similarly comparable to what we squeezed out of the S20U/+. In the end, with the Note20 Ultra's display to Adaptive mode, the math worked out to an Endurance rating of 88h.
We then switched the Note20 Ultra to its Standard refresh rate (but kept the resolution at 1080p to isolate the effect of the refresh rate) and we got more mileage - 3 more hours of web browsing and 4+ extra hours of video playback. While we did run the tests at 60Hz on the S20U and S20+, the results we have for them are for 1440p resolution. Having said that, the video looping longevity on the Note20 Ultra is broadly comparable to that of the S20U/+, but in web browsing the Note20 Ultra does have an advantage.
For the sake of thoroughness we also ran the two screen-on tests in the maximum 1440p resolution. Here, we got 13:40h for web browsing, closer to the 1080p/60Hz Standard result than to the 1080p/120Hz Adaptive. That's 1:32h more than what the S20 Ultra posted under the same conditions and some 40min better than the S20+ too. The 15:01h figure in video playback is, on the other hand, about 2 hours than what the S20s can do in 1440p/60Hz.
Our battery tests were automated thanks to SmartViser, using its viSer App. The endurance rating above denotes how long a single battery charge will last you if you use the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G for an hour each of telephony, web browsing, and video playback daily. We've established this usage pattern so that our battery results are comparable across devices in the most common day-to-day tasks. The battery testing procedure is described in detail in case you're interested in the nitty-gritty. You can check out our complete battery test table, where you can see how all of the smartphones we've tested will compare under your own typical use.
All of this goes to say that the Adaptive refresh rate mode on the Galaxy Note20 Ultra doesn't make a world of difference in our testing, tried as we might to simulate its effect while still adhering to our methodology. Real-world results will inevitably vary.
Moving on, in our experience, charging the Galaxy Note20 Ultra missed the mark Samsung promised. We got 43% in a 30-minute session with the supplied 25W adapter (as opposed to 50%). The OnePlus 8 Pro, for example, will be at 63% 30 minutes into a charge from 0%, while the Mi 10 Pro 5G will get you 77%, 80% on the Huawei P40 Pro. In as much time, the Find X2 Pro will be nearly full at 95%. On the other hand, the Xperia 1 II only gets you to 43%, but even the iPhone 11 Pro will be half-way to 100% in half an hour. A full charge from flat required 1:23h on the Note20 Ultra and in that race it does beat the Xperia (1:51h) and the iPhone (2:00h).
The Note20 Ultra doesn't support the 45W charging that the Note10+ and the S20 Ultra have. Seeing how it wasn't a massive improvement in speed over the standard 25W brick, we gather it won't be missed, nor would it be making a return.
You can also charge the Note20 Ultra wirelessly. Samsung says it supports Fast Wireless Charging 2.0 with compatible pads that can output 10W or more - up to 15W if previous Galaxies are any indication. As per the Wireless Power Consortium listing, the Note20 Ultra is certified for the Basic Power Profile (4.4 watts), but that's been the case with previous Galaxies that supported fast wireless charging as well.
Wireless PowerShare is available too, so you can charge other devices off of the Note20 Ultra's back. That should work at up to 9W, and only if the Note's battery is above 30%.
Speaker test
The Galaxy Note20 Ultra has a stereo speaker setup made up of a dedicated loudspeaker on the bottom and the earpiece up top. The earpiece doubles as the left channel when the phone is held in portrait but the two channels will switch if necessary to respect the orientation of the phone in landscape. They're not entirely identical in their output either, with the earpiece lagging a bit behind in loudness and low frequency response.
The Note20 Ultra earned a 'Good' mark in our test for loudness, one notch below the Note10+ and the S20 family. It has a more balanced frequency response with toned down vocals and highs next to the S20s and a slight boost in the lower region too.
Use the Playback controls to listen to the phone sample recordings (best use headphones). We measure the average loudness of the speakers in LUFS. A lower absolute value means a louder sound. A look at the frequency response chart will tell you how far off the ideal "0db" flat line is the reproduction of the bass, treble, and mid frequencies. You can add more phones to compare how they differ. The scores and ratings are not comparable with our older loudspeaker test. Learn more about how we test here.
Audio output quality
We've recently discontinued our audio output quality test.
The reason for that is that most phones that arrived for testing were already excellent in this regard and whatever difference there was, it was marginal and probably indistinguishable to anything but our lab equipment.
OneUI 2.5 and Android 10, 3 OS updates too
The Note20 Ultra introduces an updated version of the company's OneUI - this one stands at 2.5, while we've only seen up to 2.1 on previous Galaxies. Not that we witnessed major differences going from one to the other. In any case, there's Android 10 running underneath the in-house overlay.
Samsung has announced it will be offering three OS version updates for the Note, among other high-end and mid-tier devices - a most welcome development. So when Android 11 drops in the coming weeks (and the Note gets it in, say, March 2021), that will count as the first major update. And then the OS update cycle for the Note20 Ultra will end with Android 13 sometime in late 2022 (or, more realistically, early 2023).
OneUI has been a favorite around the office. Things like the system-wide dark mode and the gesture navigation we're already taking for granted and we debated even mentioning them. What tipped the scales was the fact that neither comes enabled by out of the box - perhaps we've reached a point, when gesture navigation should be the go-to method?
System-wide dark mode • Navigation options
Biometric security on the Note20 Ultra comes in one of two shapes - fingerprint authentication and facial recognition. Even if this one reviewer insists he's having no issues and has used it happily on an S20+ and a Note10+ before it, and now on the Note20 Ultra, consensus around the office is that Samsung's ultrasonic fingerprint sensor isn't quite as fast or reliable as competing optical solutions.
If it doesn't work for you, the face recognition will offer a more convenient (if not as secure) access to your homescreen, leaving the fingerprint reader for just password managers or banking apps.
Biometrics
As we mentioned, spotting differences in OneUI 2.5 when it comes to the basics is a tall order - we'd essentially call it identical to what you'd get on any other Samsung rocking One UI 2 and very similar to One UI One ones.
Homescreen • Folder view • App drawer • Notification shade • Quick toggles • Task switcher
'Edge panels' is a well-known, long-standing feature that's gotten yet another redesign on the Note20 Ultra - that's a OneUI 2.5 change right there! Icons in the panes are now larger, the pane names have been moved to the center of the screen, and... that's about it. Functionality hasn't changed - It gives you quick access to apps, actions, tools, etc. with a single swipe from the side. You can choose which side the handle is located on, as well as adjust its position along the edge of the phone. In the Edge screen sub-menu, you will also find Edge lighting - a feature that can light up the outline of the UI in an ever-growing selection of glow types to gently alert you of any new notifications.
Edge screen
Nearby Share, Google's universal sharing feature for Androids announced a couple of weeks ago can be found on the Note20 Ultra - also theoretically available to every Android phone running Marshmallow and up. It's just that the releases coincided (or they were meant to coincide) and Samsung is making it a point to promote the feature. Its so far unique take on it is that the Note20 Ultra is using UWB (ultra wideband) radio to help it find other compatible Galaxies more quickly.
Pre-existing Galaxy-only sharing features are still here. Quick Share is Samsung's latest name for the company's sharing solution based around Bluetooth for device discovery and Wi-Fi direct for actual data transfer that works with Samsungs only - last time we checked it worked all the way on the Note 3 where it's called Quick Connect. Another, more intriguing sharing feature is Music share. Enabled by Bluetooth 5, it lets you connect the Galaxy to a BT speaker and use the phone as a hub for other phones to connect to the speaker.
Sharing is caring: Nearby Share • Quick Share • Music Share
With the Note20s, Samsung is also making a big push with Notes - its... well, note-taking app and platform. Annotation of existing PDF is one of the key features, but you can also export your own notes into PDFs as well as PowerPoint presentations or regular doc files. A new addition to the feature set is the ability to sync voice recording with hand-written notes. Handwriting recognition is as good as ever, but Notes can now also Auto Straighten your scribblings. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Samsung Notes will now sync between all your devices, Windows 10 PCs included and that's been a pain point for a lot of users, we hear.
Samsung Notes
Synthetic benchmarks
In typical fashion for Samsung top-tier smartphones, the Note20 Ultra is made in two main versions when it comes to the chipset inside. North America, South Korea, Japan and China now get the Snapdragon 865+ SoC - the souped-up fall version of Qualcomm's high-end chipset for 2020. Other places like Europe, India, Brazil or Australia receive the Exynos 990, the same Exynos that spring models had. A lot has been said of this regional divide with customers in Exynos territories complaining they're getting an inferior product at the same or even higher price. A philosophical 'it is, what it is' is all we can muster.
There's a further split from there - 5G-enabled and LTE-only versions exist too. Our review unit is an Exynos version with 5G, 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.
Benchmark performance on the Note20 Ultra in this trim is... flagship-grade but low-to-average for the class. In single-core GeekBench, the Note with Exynos inside is ever so slightly slower than Snapdragon 865 devices, while adding a plus to the Snapdragon means a more noticeable bump in the score. The Note does post a 13% higher score than the Kirin-powered Huawei P40 Pros, for what that's worth.
GeekBench 5.1 (single-core)
Higher is better
- Apple iPhone 11 Pro Max
1332 - Asus ROG Phone 3 (144Hz)
975 - Samsung Galaxy Tab S7+
959 - LG V60 ThinQ 5G (new run)
910 - Motorola Edge+
910 - Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro 5G
905 - Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G (120Hz, 1080p)
904 - OnePlus 8 Pro (120Hz, 1440p)
902 - Oppo Find X2 Pro (120Hz, 1440p)
900 - Sony Xperia 1 II
897 - Galaxy S20+ (120Hz, 1080p)
886 - Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra 5G
880 - Huawei P40 Pro+
781 - Huawei P40 Pro
780
It loses that advantage in the multi-core test, however, where all Galaxies are trailing behind. Even the Snapdragon 865+ Tab S7+ isn't up to its chip's standard - there could be some artificially imposed limitations here. It's worth noting that the Note20 Ultra posts ever so slightly lower numbers than the S20 Ultra, a trend we'll be seeing in more benchmarks to follow.
GeekBench 5.1 (multi-core)
Higher is better
- Apple iPhone 11 Pro Max
3503 - OnePlus 8 Pro (120Hz, 1440p)
3374 - Asus ROG Phone 3 (144Hz)
3357 - Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro 5G
3331 - Sony Xperia 1 II
3318 - Motorola Edge+
3295 - LG V60 ThinQ 5G (new run)
3289 - Oppo Find X2 Pro (120Hz, 1440p)
3269 - Huawei P40 Pro+
3203 - Huawei P40 Pro
3197 - Galaxy S20+ (120Hz, 1080p)
2703 - Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G (120Hz, 1080p)
2697 - Samsung Galaxy Tab S7+
2690 - Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra 5G
2603
Here's Antutu to prove that point, with the S20U posting a whopping 6K points better score than the N20U. This inconsequential difference aside, the Galaxies we've tested (all Exynos) occupy the lower end of the chart. The ROG Phone 3 with an S865+ inside does markedly better, but so do some S865 overachievers.
AnTuTu 8
Higher is better
- Asus ROG Phone 3 (144Hz)
601858 - Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro 5G
595246 - Oppo Find X2 Pro (120Hz, 1440p)
593717 - Motorola Edge+
574155 - OnePlus 8 Pro (120Hz, 1440p)
573276 - Samsung Galaxy Tab S7+
566786 - Apple iPhone 11 Pro Max
536883 - Sony Xperia 1 II
534701 - Huawei P40 Pro+
529687 - LG V60 ThinQ 5G (new run)
527612 - Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G (120Hz, 1080p)
514485 - Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra 5G
508760 - Galaxy S20+ (120Hz, 1080p)
500114 - Huawei P40 Pro
496356
In GPU-focused benchmarks the Note20 Ultra posts respectable, though entirely unexciting results and is never withing a fighting distance for the top spot.
GFX 3.0 Manhattan (1080p offscreen)
Higher is better
- Apple iPhone 11 Pro Max
179 - Motorola Edge+
128 - Galaxy S20+ (120Hz, 1080p)
127 - Samsung Galaxy Tab S7+
126 - Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G (120Hz, 1080p)
124 - Oppo Find X2 Pro (120Hz, 1440p)
124 - Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro 5G
123 - OnePlus 8 Pro (120Hz, 1440p)
123 - Asus ROG Phone 3 (144Hz)
123 - Sony Xperia 1 II
120 - Huawei P40 Pro
118 - Huawei P40 Pro+
118 - Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra 5G
116
GFX 3.0 Manhattan (onscreen)
Higher is better
- Asus ROG Phone 3 (144Hz)
111 - Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G (120Hz, 1080p)
101 - Motorola Edge+
89 - Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra 5G
88 - Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro 5G
88 - Galaxy S20+ (120Hz, 1080p)
84 - Samsung Galaxy Tab S7+
67 - Huawei P40 Pro+
67 - Apple iPhone 11 Pro Max
60 - Sony Xperia 1 II
60 - Huawei P40 Pro
59 - OnePlus 8 Pro (120Hz, 1440p)
58 - Oppo Find X2 Pro (120Hz, 1440p)
58
GFX 3.1 Manhattan (1080p offscreen)
Higher is better
- Apple iPhone 11 Pro Max
120 - Asus ROG Phone 3 (144Hz)
92 - Motorola Edge+
89 - Samsung Galaxy Tab S7+
88 - Oppo Find X2 Pro (120Hz, 1440p)
87 - LG V60 ThinQ 5G (new run)
86 - Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro 5G
86 - OnePlus 8 Pro (120Hz, 1440p)
86 - Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G (120Hz, 1080p)
85 - Galaxy S20+ (120Hz, 1080p)
85 - Sony Xperia 1 II
84 - Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra 5G
80 - Huawei P40 Pro+
76 - Huawei P40 Pro
75
GFX 3.1 Manhattan (onscreen)
Higher is better
- Motorola Edge+
83 - Asus ROG Phone 3 (144Hz)
82 - Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra 5G
76 - Galaxy S20+ (120Hz, 1080p)
75 - Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro 5G
75 - Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G (120Hz, 1080p)
74 - Apple iPhone 11 Pro Max
60 - LG V60 ThinQ 5G (new run)
59 - Sony Xperia 1 II
59 - Huawei P40 Pro
52 - Huawei P40 Pro+
52 - OnePlus 8 Pro (120Hz, 1440p)
43 - Oppo Find X2 Pro (120Hz, 1440p)
43 - Samsung Galaxy Tab S7+
40
GFX 3.1 Car scene (1080p offscreen)
Higher is better
- Apple iPhone 11 Pro Max
67 - Asus ROG Phone 3 (144Hz)
56 - Samsung Galaxy Tab S7+
54 - Motorola Edge+
52 - Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G (120Hz, 1080p)
51 - LG V60 ThinQ 5G (new run)
51 - OnePlus 8 Pro (120Hz, 1440p)
51 - Sony Xperia 1 II
51 - Oppo Find X2 Pro (120Hz, 1440p)
51 - Galaxy S20+ (120Hz, 1080p)
50 - Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra 5G
50 - Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro 5G
50 - Huawei P40 Pro
44 - Huawei P40 Pro+
44
GFX 3.1 Car scene (onscreen)
Higher is better
- Apple iPhone 11 Pro Max
57 - Motorola Edge+
48 - Asus ROG Phone 3 (144Hz)
48 - LG V60 ThinQ 5G (new run)
44 - Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G (120Hz, 1080p)
43 - Galaxy S20+ (120Hz, 1080p)
42 - Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra 5G
42 - Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro 5G
42 - Sony Xperia 1 II
39 - Huawei P40 Pro
31 - Huawei P40 Pro+
31 - Oppo Find X2 Pro (120Hz, 1440p)
25 - OnePlus 8 Pro (120Hz, 1440p)
24 - Samsung Galaxy Tab S7+
24
Aztek Vulkan High (onscreen)
Higher is better
- Motorola Edge+
32 - Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro 5G
29 - Asus ROG Phone 3 (144Hz)
27 - Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G (120Hz, 1080p)
26 - Galaxy S20+ (120Hz, 1080p)
26 - Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra 5G
20 - Sony Xperia 1 II
20 - OnePlus 8 Pro (120Hz, 1440p)
17 - Oppo Find X2 Pro (120Hz, 1440p)
17 - Samsung Galaxy Tab S7+
16 - Huawei P40 Pro+
16
Aztek OpenGL ES 3.1 High (onscreen)
Higher is better
- Motorola Edge+
33 - Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G (120Hz, 1080p)
32 - Galaxy S20+ (120Hz, 1080p)
32 - Asus ROG Phone 3 (144Hz)
32 - Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra 5G
31 - Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro 5G
29 - Sony Xperia 1 II
27 - Huawei P40 Pro+
23 - Oppo Find X2 Pro (120Hz, 1440p)
18 - OnePlus 8 Pro (120Hz, 1440p)
17 - Samsung Galaxy Tab S7+
16
3DMark SSE OpenGL ES 3.1 1440p
Higher is better
- Asus ROG Phone 3 (144Hz)
7645 - Motorola Edge+
7409 - Oppo Find X2 Pro (120Hz, 1440p)
7159 - Sony Xperia 1 II
7138 - OnePlus 8 Pro (120Hz, 1440p)
7127 - Galaxy S20+ (120Hz, 1080p)
6819 - Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G (120Hz, 1080p)
6713 - Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra 5G
6543 - Huawei P40 Pro+
6065 - Huawei P40 Pro
6062
3DMark SSE Vulkan 1440p
Higher is better
- Motorola Edge+
6666 - Oppo Find X2 Pro (120Hz, 1440p)
6526 - OnePlus 8 Pro (120Hz, 1440p)
6425 - Galaxy S20+ (120Hz, 1080p)
6354 - Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G (120Hz, 1080p)
6308 - Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra 5G
6248 - Sony Xperia 1 II
6167 - Huawei P40 Pro+
5641 - Huawei P40 Pro
5637
The Note20 Ultra heats up significantly with prolonged heavy load too. Thermal throttling is pronounced as well, resulting in progressively lower scores after repeated benchmark runs. We ran a CPU throttling test and witnessed a gradual decrease in performance in the first 20 minutes to about 80% of the maximum and then a drop to around 70% of its peak results, a level that the phone could then sustain.
CPU throttling test
Overall, we're hardly enthusiastic about the Note20 Ultra's performance, in the Exynos trim that we got to review it in. Yes, it's fast and smooth and fluid and all that, and it won't leave you waiting. But it's also not the best that's available right now, and the Note should be the best that's available. The Snapdragon version is closer to that ideal, making the chipset divide we need to live with an even more bitter pill to swallow.
Same, but better - the S Pen
The S Pen on the Galaxy Note20 Ultra is the same one you'd find on the Note10 family. That is to say - the stylus itself is unchanged, but the experience has gotten better. Samsung made a big deal of the improved latency on the Note20 Ultra - the 9ms here vs. the Note10's 42ms may sound like arbitrary numbers with little meaning behind them but in reality the difference is seen and felt in the responsiveness when using the S Pen. It's a combined effort between the new display's 120Hz high refresh rate and 240Hz touch sampling, and what Samsung calls 'AI point prediction' - based on the trajectory of your pen input the phone anticipates where to draw the next point.
The Note20 non-Ultra isn't as great in this respect, its latency standing at 26ms. So probably just the AI thing is at work there, since the hardware doesn't seem any different than on the Note10 family.
The other new S Pen bit on the Note20 Ultra (that's also present on the stripped down model) is Anywhere actions. With the Note9, Samsung made the S Pen 'active' by fitting it with a capacitor, a gyroscope and an accelerometer, thus enabling gesture input from the S Pen at a distance. You could use the stylus to operate the camera, the Gallery app, the music player, even PowerPoint (because 'productivity'). But those gestures and S Pen button presses only worked in select few apps on the Note9 and Note10 to do select pre-determined actions - so 'somewhere' actions. With the Note20 you get actions that work anywhere. Not that you'd necessarily want to use them.
Anywhere actions
Of the five newly added actions, three are there for navigation - Back, Recent apps, and Home. We're struggling to see the use case in which you need to navigate your way around the phone by waving the S Pen, but it could just be us refusing to think outside the box. Then there's Smart Select and Screen Write, two S Pen features that are readily available from the Air command menu which pops up as soon as you pull out the S Pen, or is a press of the stylus' button away.
On the other hand, you can assign each of these new Anywhere actions to a function of your choosing, or you can set it to launch any app on the phone and that could come in handy. Additionally, you can disable each action individually.
Which brings us to another point - in our attempts to use the Anywhere actions we also got some misinterpreted gestures when trying to navigate the camera app with the S Pen - perhaps the one app where the Air actions are actually useful, fiddly or not. The way we're seeing it, Anywhere actions will be a gamechanger to a handful of people who have their specific use cases for it. So far, we're not seeing one.
Back to basics. Screen-off memo is available, letting you just pull out the stylus when the phone is in standby and go right ahead and write a note, which you can then pin to the always-on display or save for later reference.
When you pull out the S Pen with the phone unlocked, the Air command menu appears (that's the default setting, you can turn it off). There are pre-set shortcuts here, which you can customize, and those can be either S-Pen features or shortcuts to apps.
S Pen settings • Behavior upon removal • Air command • Screen off memo
Advanced screenshot capture is one of the S Pen's main uses cases. Smart select allows you to take differently shaped screenshots, extract text from them, or pin them on the screen. Alternatively, you can create short GIF animations. Then there's Screen write that takes a fullscreen snap that you can write on with the full set of different pens and brushes (and then crop, if you will). See - there are so easily accessible that Anywhere actions for them seem like a solution in search of a problem.
There are numerous other smaller use cases for the S Pen as part of the Air view set of actions. For, example, you can hover over an image in the gallery for an enlarged preview, or over a calendar entry for more details. You can also scroll up and down by hovering the S-Pen over the edge of the screen.
Air view
DeX goes wireless
Samsung's phone-based Desktop eXperience feature has gotten a new twist with the Note20 Ultra - it now works wirelessly. Theoretically, all Miracast-compatible smart TVs should work, but Samsung, being Samsung, recommends using a Samsung TV released in 2019 or sooner. Well, we had an LG B8 OLED on hand for testing purposes - rather obviously not a Samsung and released in 2018, and it worked just fine. Well, it did complain that the TV wasn't optimized for the task, to no practical consequence.
Speaking of, the LG Magic remote functioned as a mouse within DeX - its pointer served as the cursor, a press on the scroll wheel worked for clicks, scrolling the wheel worked for scrolling. We connected a wireless mouse into the TV and that worked like a charm as well. Apparently, Miracast has a provision for a return channel, a realization that had us moderately astonished and questioning our previously held beliefs.
Okay, enough with LG in this Samsung review, let's get back on track. Wireless DeX has a toggle in the quick settings, you tap on that and the Note20 Ultra will search for compatible TVs. A couple of confirmations to avoid casting your Note's photos on your neighbor's TV and you're good to go. On this particular TV, DeX showed up as a quarter-sized window in the lower right corner, but maximizing it was a matter of a button press on the TV's end.
DeX: Connecting • LG TV not optimized, of course • A ton of notifications • Instructions
You're then greeted by a Windows-like UI with a task bar on the bottom and a desktop of sorts where shortcuts to some of your apps live. In the lower left corner, you have buttons that take you to your 'app drawer' and task switcher, as well as a home and a back key. The opened apps are in the middle, while a status area is the right of the task bar.
DeX: Desktop • App drawer • Task switcher
Apps while in DeX mode open up in a window that can be moved around and can be maximized. We couldn't readily find a way to resize the windows or get two apps in a split-screen fashion - the task switcher offered no such option.
The settings menu said that the contraption was running in FullHD resolution and that can't be changed for wireless DeXing.
DeX: Windowed app • Full-screen app • Resolution is set to FullHD
If you don't have a Magic remote (one of LG TV's greatest features, some say) or a mouse handy, you can use the Note20 Ultra itself as a touch pad. Numerous gestures are supported, with up to 4 fingers, and you can set the touch pad mode to engage when launching DeX as opposed to enabling it manually every time. You can also use the S Pen for pointing in one of two modes - pressing on the screen, or just hovering.
Touch pad gestures
Our experience with the touch pad was a bit frustrating, however - it's that extra bit too laggy. Surprisingly, the remote or wireless mouse gave us a much more responsive behavior, which is counter-intuitive since in this scenario signal needs to travel both ways.
For keyboard purposes, you have several options too. The default one is to use the phone and its keyboard pops up on its screen whenever text input is required. An alternative is to have an on-screen keyboard on the TV, though that's a much less pleasing typing experience, Magic remote or not. The third option, which we didn't try, but we see no reason why it wouldn't work, is to have a keyboard attached to the TV - if it supports a mouse, why not a keyboard?
Anyway, that's how it works, though it does not answer the one pressing question - what are you going to do with it? The most obvious answer is to share your photos with a roomful of people - for that there's hardly an easier way. For productivity, on the other hand, you're better off with good old wired DeX, which will give you more pixels and less lag. Even so, wireless DeX is pretty cool, here's hoping it makes it to more Galaxies with future updates.
DeX: Gallery • Play Store • YouTube
Camera hardware
Instead of straight-up reusing the S20 Ultra's camera system on the Note20 Ultra, Samsung's made a few tweaks, even if the main premise is the same. The basics are as follows - a big-sensor high-res main cam, an ultra wide angle cam, and a telephoto with a periscope lens.
The main camera is borrowed directly from the spring-time flagship. It uses the 108MP 1/1.33" Nonacell sensor that bins 9 0.8µm pixels into one huge 2.4µm one and outputs 12MP images - nonabinning Samsung calls it. The lens in front has a 26mm equivalent focal length and an f/1.8 aperture and is stabilized. We lamented the disappearance of the dual aperture on the S20 Ultra, and it's the same f/1.8-only situation on this Note.
There's no fancy omnidirectional PDAF like you'd find on the Oppo Find X2 Pro or the OnePlus 8 Pro - instead, autofocus relies on plain phase detection and is aided by a laser at closer distances. That's perhaps the moment to mention that the ToF camera from the S20 family is gone on the Notes.
The ultra wide angle module is apparently the same as on the S20s. It's based on a 12MP 1/2.55" sensor with 1.4µm pixels and uses an f/2.2 aperture lens that should deliver a 120-degree field of view. There's no autofocus on this one, an omission we're finding increasingly difficult to justify.
The telephoto, on the other hand is entirely different than the one on the S20 Ultra. For one, it's got a 12MP sensor where the S20 Ultra used a 48MP one. It's got bigger individual pixels at 1.0µm vs. the old one's 0.8µm ones, but that's a misleading comparison - the 4-in-1 binning on the S20 Ultra means 12MP 1.6µm pixels, and that's 2.5x the area. The new sensor is in fact smaller, quite logically, at 1/3.0" next to the S20 Ultra's 1/2.0"imager.
The optics have different parameters this time around too. The Note20 Ultra's periscope lens now sits at a 5x native zoom level (or a 120-ish mm equivalent) where the old one was at 4x. This lens also has a lower f-number, with the aperture specified at f/3.0 as opposed to the old one's f/3.5. It's really a minor difference in lens light gathering capability next to what appears a much smaller sensor. This lens is stabilized too, and autofocuses through phase detection.
Over on the front, the Note20 Ultra doesn't get the S20 Ultra's 40MP Tetracell (or Quad Bayer if you prefer Sony speak). Instead, it's the regular 10MP selfie cam found on the S20s. It has a 26mm focal length and an f/2.2 aperture. Samsung's been fitting autofocusing front-facing cameras on flagships since the S8, and this one even has Dual Pixel AF - on Samsung selfie cams since the S10.
Camera interface
Samsung's been refining the Galaxy camera app over the years and the version found on the Note20 Ultra will be immediately familiar to anyone who's picked up a recent Galaxy. This one does have some peculiarities you won't find on lesser models, and a few new features are being introduced - as usual.
The basics will be familiar though - swiping left and right will switch between available modes, and there's an option to re-arrange, add or remove some of the modes from the viewfinder. Vertical swipes in either direction will switch between front and rear cameras.
The familiar tree designation for zoom control is here too - three threes for ultra wide, two trees for man cam (moderately wide) and single tree for telephoto. What's a welcome change on the Note20 Ultra when compared to the S20 Ultra is that the telephoto tree takes you to the periscope's native 5x zoom level. On the S20 Ultra it would be 5x too, only that would come with a small digital zoom since its periscope was at 4x natively.
As before, once you hit the one-tree toggle, an extra set of buttons show up, with additional preset zoom levels at 2x, 4x, 10x, 20x and 50x (100x is gone, thankfully). It's still a bit finicky in that if you want to get to these other presets, you need to tap on one of the trees first thus switching to that zoom level first, but at least the trees now mean direct access to each cam's native focal length.
Camera UI: 1x • 0.5x • 5x • 108MP • Live focus • Single take
Selfie zoom levels remain a sore spot the way we see it. By default, you're getting a cropped in view equivalent to a 32mm focal length and 6.5MP resulting images. To get the full coverage of the camera, you need to tap on the zoom toggle. We guess that's our life now. There's the small compromise on Samsung's end that the phone offers a toggle in settings to enable an automatic switch to wide mode if it detects more faces in the frame - that one's been there since the S20s and it's the definition of a tiny victory.
Anyway, the viewfinder has the customary set of icons with the settings cog wheel located in the upper left corner of the screen. The usual stuff like video resolution, grid lines, location data, etc., can be found there, as well as the ultra-wide lens correction, tucked in under the 'Save options' category. You can also turn on and off the Scene optimizer on a global scale. HDR is handled in the new way we got with the S20s - it's Auto HDR on or off, but it's missing a forced on setting.
Camera UI: More modes • Pro mode • Settings • Save options • More settings • Selfie zoom
There's a Pro mode too and as a high-end model the Note20 Ultra gets the full-featured real pro version. You can select ISO (50-3200), push shutter speed around (1/12000s-30s), focus manually (with peaking), and select the white balance (by light temperature, with icons next to the number corresponding to a common light source). Metering mode and AF area options are available too, as well as a set of picture controls for contrast, saturation, and whatnot. As usual, there's no live histogram, which is all the more weird now when the Pro video mode has one - that just makes no sense. Another suboptimal bit about the Pro mode is that you can only use the main cam when in it, and that's not very pro, is it.
Samsung remains one of few makers that give you the option to launch the camera app, switch cameras (rear/front) and take a photo all with mechanical controls and no touch input - the power button does the launching and switching, the volume rocker serves as shutter release.
On the Note20 Ultra, this being a Note, you also get to operate the camera with S Pen actions. If you pull out the stylus, a small window with instructions will pop-up briefing you about the available actions and gestures. You can snap photos, switch between modes and even zoom in and out. Now, zooming is fiddly at best, and there is no way to switch straight to the wide, regular and telephoto cams, which we believe should be addressed with a software update. The other gestures, however, work great even if with a slight delay.
With the addition of Anywhere actions on the Note20s you may end up in the task switcher when trying to zoom, or get some other gesture misread, so we'd keep it simple and only use the stylus for shutter release or maybe front/rear toggle.
Ah, we almost forgot - Single take has gotten a duration selector in 1s increments between 5s and 15s (the default is still at 10s). We've grown to appreciate this mode in the months after it was introduced on the S20s and the extra setting is also to our liking.
Daylight image quality
The Galaxy Note20 Ultra's photos have what can best be described as 'that Samsung look'. It's most easily characterized by the colors - almost universally appealing, with a bit of warmth and saturation added to the not so enthusiastic real world's rendition.
Daylight samples, main camera (1x)
Samsung's typical overprocessed and oversharpened rendition of random textures like grass has been toned down significantly and the Note20 Ultra draws these in a more natural way now. To be fair, such is the case with the S20 Ultra, as shot with its present-day software. What's not changed is the near total absence of noise in these photos - Samsung is in a league of its own when it comes to noise reduction.
Daylight samples, main camera (1x)
The Note Ultra exposes a smidgeon brighter than the S Ultra (in its current state, some 6 months after release) producing livelier midtones, particularly noticeable in greenery. An ever so slightly contrastier tone curve means it'll leave a few more pixels in the shadows black, but dynamic range is nothing short of excellent on both Ultras.
1x comparison: Note20 Ultra • S20 Ultra
The 108MP 'native' resolution of the main cam's sensor can be put to use in some instances. We've so far found it can deliver mainly for patterned subjects (diagonals work best), at close range and in well lit scenes - ideally all of these together, but at least a subset of them - think a studio test chart. In real-world scenes the 108MP shots do offer improved detail compared to 12MP ones, but don't think you'd able to just crop a 12MP portion of them and have 12MP of actual detail in there.
Daylight samples, main camera, 108MP
The ultra wide cam offers similar color performance to the main module - you won't be starved for color, that's for sure. It also does admirably at fitting the inevitably wide dynamic range of wide scenes into a single shot, something we couldn't quite say on the Galaxy S20 Ultra (that too, has since improved). Detail is decent, but definitely not class leading - there are sharper ultra wides on competing phones.
Daylight samples, ultra wide angle camera (0.5x)
Once again, the lack of autofocus on the Note20 Ultra's ultra wide cam, and the fact that its focus is fixed at infinity deprives you of one key use of an ultra wide cam - exaggerating perspective and emphasizing a nearby subject. What good is the sharpness in the poster on the wall, when you clearly want to make the Tab S7+ the centerpiece here.
Daylight samples, ultra wide angle camera (0.5x), no close focus
Lens correction is enabled on the ultra wide angle cam by default. The lens itself appears reasonably well corrected already, though it's generally a good idea to leave the software correction on - otherwise, straight lines along the edges of the frame will bend outwards at the corners.
Ultra wide angle camera, lens correction: Off • On
On to the star of the show, the telephoto. At the 5x zoom setting the Note20 Ultra takes sharp pictures, sharper than the S20 Ultra's at 5x. That was to be expected, given that the native zoom level on the S-series phone is 4x and some upscaling is needed. Once again, you're getting signature Samsung colors and great noise processing.
Daylight samples, telephoto camera (5x)
Here's a quick comparison against the S20 Ultra.
5x zoom comparison: Note20 Ultra • S20 Ultra
A bit more surprisingly, the Note20 Ultra performs as good as, maybe even better than the S20 Ultra at the 10x zoom level - we were sort of expecting that the extra data from the 48MP Tetracell sensor would be giving it an advantage over the conventional 12MP one on the Note, but we were proven wrong.
10x comparison: Note20 Ultra • S20 Ultra
The 4x setting in the Note20 Ultra's viewfinder will typically give you a composite image, made of the telephoto's capture for the middle of the shot, with the main camera contributing the periphery. You can then expect the middle of your shot to be sharp, with the periphery noticeably less so. It's a valid strategy, since your subject is more often than not in the center of the frame.
Oddly enough, sometimes what will not work as expected - check out the snail shot that's clearly upscaled from the main cam. And it's not like the tele couldn't focus this close - the 5x shot above proves it's within its range.
Daylight samples, telephoto camera (4x)
The 2x zoom setting is entirely in the main cam's domain in the Note20 Ultra. That, meanwhile, has become the S20 Ultra's behavior as well for this 'focal length' - back when we reviewed it, the image used to be a center-periphery composite too, but our present day samples show that's not the case anymore. These photos look good at fit-to-screen magnification, but don't stand up well to pixel-level examination.
Daylight samples, main-telephoto camera (2x)
Low-light image quality
The Note20 Ultra builds on the S20 Ultra's already great low-light performance and delivers even better image quality at night with improvements across the board. Dynamic range is wider, color saturation is even better preserved, and there's finer detail. Now, that last bit might be a result of less aggressive noise reduction, as the Note's shots do have more noise than ones from the old model, but that's a constant battle and we're leaning towards the 'more detail, more noise' approach adopted here.
Low-light samples, main camera (1x)
Here's a comparison between the two phones' primary cam images.
1x comparison: Note20 Ultra • S20 Ultra
Fire up Night mode and the pseudo-long exposures will deliver improved development in the dark areas and better contained highlights with less haloing around light sources - the usual stuff, done right.
Low-light samples, main camera (1x), Night mode
The Note20 Ultra maintains a sharpness advantage here over the S20 Ultra, but there are other differences too. One that's very important when it comes to the usability of Night mode is that the Note will take its shots quicker than the S in the same scene, sometimes twice as fast and that's no small advantage. On top of that, the Note20 Ultra's Night mode photos are contrastier, next to the flatter S20 Ultra shots. It's safe to say we'd pick the note.
1x comparison, Night mode: Note20 Ultra • S20 Ultra
The ultra wide angle cam of the Note20 Ultra takes very similar shots to the S20 Ultra's. If we stare long enough, we might spot another instance of the 'more detail, more noise' principle at play, but it's a barely noticeable difference and it varies from scene to scene. Possibly a more visible bump in saturation is what we're seeing and that's appreciated. Overall it's a decent effort, but it's not quite up to the main cam's standard.
Low-light samples, ultra wide angle camera (0.5x)
And a few side-by-sides for you to judge with your own eyes.
0.5x comparison: Note20 Ultra • S20 Ultra
Night mode makes a dramatic difference here, filling in detail where photo mode paints voids of blackness. Greenery livens up really nicely, noise disappears, and, as a pleasant surprise, you're not sacrificing much detail in the lit up areas either.
Low-light samples, ultra wide angle camera (0.5x), Night mode
Shooting with the ultra wides in Night mode, as we observed comparing the main cameras, the Note20 Ultra captures images faster than the S20 Ultra and produces photos with more contrast.
0.5x comparison, Night mode: Note20 Ultra • S20 Ultra
Which leads us to the one entirely new piece of kit on the Note20 Ultra, the telephoto. It's in the dark that we expected it to perform worse than the S20 Ultra, despite the slightly brighter aperture - its sensor is much smaller. It turns out we were right to be skeptical, though perhaps things aren't as grim as they were in our collective head.
For starters, the Note20 Ultra in Photo mode will switch to its main cam in scenes where the S20 Ultra will happily fire away with the periscope module. The Note will go for the tele too in brighter scenes, but it has reverted to a behavior we thought was behind us. In our experience the S20 Ultra would never not use the telephoto for zoomed in shots and it's an honesty we really respect.
So the photos taken from the actual telephoto camera (2, 3, 5) look good - they are sharp and detailed (if a little noisy), colors are lively, dynamic range is reasonably wide. The ones that end up captured on the main cam (1, 4, 6) are soft and blotchy, even at fit-to-screen zoom level - we'd go ahead and call them unusable.
Low-light samples, telephoto camera (5x)
In Night mode, on the other hand, it's the periscope back at it for every 5x scene. It makes a world of a difference in the scenes otherwise shot on the main cam, making the photos usable, dare we say, going on good. There's hardly an improvement in those other scenarios where the phone would have used the periscope in Photo mode anyway.
Low-light samples, telephoto camera (5x), Night mode
In a side-by-side Photo mode comparison between the two Ultras it's really no contest in particularly dark scenes, where the Note defaults to the main cam - the S20 Ultra is simply superior. Even in those instances where the Note does opt for the tele, the S20 ultra will get you cleaner images.
5x comparison: Note20 Ultra • S20 Ultra
In a Night mode vs. Night mode scenario, the Note20 Ultra saves its face and delivers shots that are generally as good as the ones from the S20 Ultra. We wouldn't really call it a victory when you match the performance of an older model, but it's something. Perhaps the fact that the Note's Night mode capture is about twice as fast at these focal lengths should count in its favor too.
5x comparison, Night mode: Note20 Ultra • S20 Ultra
Ah, the 4x zoom level isn't doing the Note any favors, either. At this focal length and in these light conditions it's main camera only here and the photos just don't look any good, not in Photo mode and not in Night mode. The S20 Ultra, meanwhile, with its native 4x zoom telephoto clicks decent photos.
4x comparison: Note20 Ultra • S20 Ultra
4x comparison, Night mode: Note20 Ultra • S20 Ultra
Things are looking for the Note at 2x. Since these shots are taken with the main cam on both phones, and the Note already proved superior at that, it's no surprise that its lead extends to this magnification as well.
2x comparison: Note20 Ultra • S20 Ultra
2x comparison, Night mode: Note20 Ultra • S20 Ultra
Portraits
The Galaxy Note20 Ultra's Life Focus mode is where you go for portraits with blurred backgrounds. Typically on Samsungs you get two magnifications, one corresponding to the main cam's 26mm and another around the 50mm equivalent focal length, with a tree designation in the viewfinder to switch between the two. On a Note10, those shots would be taken by the main cam and the 2x telephoto respectively. However, on the Ultras with their much longer teles, that's not the case and the Note20 Ultra takes portraits at both zoom levels using its main cam.
The Note defaults to that zoomed-in 50-ish mm mode when you open Live Focus. It's better in terms of perspective and shooting distance from your subject, not so great when it comes to detail rendition - these shots appear softer than the wide ones.
Live focus samples, crop mode
The wide mode switches this short pro-con list and delivers sharper shots, albeit at the expense of less flattering perspective. It's the one to use for self portraits with the rear cam too, since the 2x setting makes for a hard time trying to fit an entire head in landscape at arm's length distance.
Live focus samples, wide mode
Regardless of zoom level, the Note20 Ultra delivers spectacular subject isolation even with this particularly complex subject's messy hair - easily better than the S20 Ultra, possibly the best we've seen. Bokeh rendition is also very nice, the default 5/7 setting could just as well be the only one.
Live focus mode shots have exposure biased to get the faces as well exposed as possible. They also benefit from HDR processing and have wide dynamic range, something that wasn't necessarily true in our experience with the S20 Ultra.
As usual, Live focus mode can also be applied on non-human subjects with much the same success. Now, while the street sign is very well defined, the outline of the building in the background does look a bit too sharp itself.
Live focus samples, non-human subjects, wide mode
Another less that ideal result is the aloe plant (it's aloe, isn't it?) with blurred leaves that should be sharp, and sharp areas that should be blurred in between leaves. That's really a torture test and more of an outlier when it comes to the mode's performance.
Live focus samples, non-human subjects, crop mode
Selfies
The Galaxy Note20 Ultra takes okay selfies. We prefer the wider view both for group shots and selfies alike - it's just better when there's context around your mug. Detail is good on a pixel level, there's simply less of it if you respect the phone's default crop to 6.5MP. Colors are a bit bland and slightly cold-ish-green-ish after coming off the rear cam's much more appealing look. As with most photos with a face in it, the phone will try and expose for that, with the HDR handling the tonal extremes in high-contrast situations - dynamic range is excellent too.
Selfie samples, wide mode, 10MP
Here's how these shots would look if the Galaxy would have its way with cropping.
Selfie samples, crop mode, 6.5MP
Live focus mode on the selfie cam isn't quite as capable as it is on the main one, but for a single-camera solution it is very good. It will occasionally leave in focus small portions of the background alongside the border with the subject, but not quite as often as we saw on the Galaxy S20 Ultra. Here we encountered another peculiar glitch, where the phone will leave in focus objects it reads as human-colored (or at least that's our best guess) - like a coworker just at the edge of the frame or a car far in the background.
Selfie samples, live focus
Video recording
Video recording is a big deal on the Galaxy Note20 Ultra with an array of resolutions and frame rates supported and an enhanced Pro video mode to top things off.
The star of the show, 8K recording, was introduced on the S20 series and is supported on the Note20 Ultra as well, still in 24fps only. 4K and 1080p capture is available on all cameras at 30fps, while the main cam adds 60fps recording in both resolutions.
Resolution options: Regular Video mode • Pro video mode
Switch into Pro video mode, and that will add 24fps modes for both resolutions for that cinematic look. Continuing the cinematic theme, 21:9 aspect for 8K, 4K and 1080p joins the list of options. But there's more - you also get 1080p at 120fps, non-slow-mo, real-life speed, for dizzying action videos to enjoy on that 120Hz screen. Realistically, the only other major source of 120fps clips would be gameplay videos off the internet.
Pro mode: Histogram and audio levels • Zoom speed • Mic settings
You can record zoomed-in footage at 2x, which comes off the main camera. You get 4K30 there, as well as 4K60, and 1080p in both frame rates. Going into 5x zoom and beyond, it's the actual telephoto camera that takes over the 30fps modes in both 4K and 1080p.
As on the S20 Ultra, 60fps is also available if you switch to 5x first and then change the resolution and frame rate, but the zoom trees disappear if you change settings first. Seeing how the 5x 60fps footage is, again, actually captured by the main cam and it's best not to look at it, Samsung is effectively trying to prevent you from doing zoomed-in 60fps by little weird UI methods.
The ultra wide-angle camera, having a field-of-view you can't replicate with the main unit, has the 60fps properly grayed out in the menu.
Stabilization is available in all modes, except 1080p at 120fps. That includes 8K24 and 4K60, which is nice. You can also disable it if you wish, which is also nice as some makers don't let you do that.
The Note20 Ultra gets the Super steady implementation from the S20 Ultra with both zoom levels being captured on the ultra wide cam. The alternative - wide mode on the ultra wide angle cam, less wide mode on the main cam - is available on the S20s, the Note10s, and the S10s. It appears that the 108MP module is the common denominator in the Ultras and we're speculating something along the lines of insufficient readout speed on the big sensor.
The selfie camera itself is plenty capable - it does 4K and 1080p, 60fps and 30fps, with autofocus, and stabilization in all modes.
You have an option to record HDR10+ video, which you can then view on compatible devices (all flagship Galaxies since the S10s, for example) or upload to YouTube. Additionally, you can set the Ultra to use the space-saving h.265 codec as opposed to the default h.264. 8K is encoded in h.265 regardless.
Daylight video quality
8K footage, just like on the S20 Ultra, comes in at 80Mbps or some 600MB per minute. The crop too is familiar - about 1.5x, so that the phone can directly use the center 7680x4320px portion of the sensor. Zooming in to a pixel level, we can see more detail resolved than in 4K clips, that much is true. The large file size and relatively cumbersome to work with h.265 codec, plus the fact that 8K TVs are few and far between (because of, you know, their price tags), still makes this mode look more like a novelty than a really useful feature. That's not say we don't value the push for improvement, it's just we don't think 8K is ready yet.
4K is more our cup of tea. 4K30 (38Mbps) and 4K60 (70Mbps) clips are virtually indistinguishable in quality - save for the added smoothness of the 60fps mode, of course. The extra bit of warmth and saturation on top of the rear world colors that we saw in stills is here and we like that. Dynamic range is nice and wide without going into 'flat' territory. Detail levels are high, though we're not strictly fans of the grittiness and heavy handed sharpening of random textures. As usual, noise is barely seen.
Indeed, most of the above holds true for 1080p30 (14Mbps) and 1080p60 (21Mbps), with the exception that sharpening isn't quite as obtrusive here - even better then.
The ultra wide cam will deliver a minor bump in saturation while dynamic range remains wide. 4K is not super sharp on a pixel level, and there is some noise here for a change, while in 1080p the sharpness is good, and noise has been processed out.
The digitally zoomed in 2x magnification looks perfectly usable in 4K until you look up close when you can clearly see it's been upscaled. 1080p at this zoom level is, on the other hand, very good.
Still in digital zoom territory, at 4x magnification 4K is properly bad. 1080p, while hardly likeable, could pass as usable.
At 5x zoom, the tele cam kicks in to save the day. 4K is sharp and detailed, perhaps a notch below ideal, while 1080p is downright excellent. At 10x zoom, 4K is usable though not spectacular to look at from up close, while 1080p holds up well.
Stabilization on the Note20 Ultra is very dependable too. Shooting on the main cam, even in 8K, you can count it will stay planted on your subject if you're not moving, it will iron out walking nicely, and it won't hint for focus, ruining the impression of steadiness, like we saw on the S20 Ultra. Pans, too, are handled without abrupt transitions from stationary state to motion and the other way around. For the most part, that is - 1080p at 60fps in particular was a bit temperamental in these transitional moments.
Footage from the ultra wide angle cam is even smoother - the already excellent algorithms are aided here by the shorter focal length, inherently less prone to shake. True, this one doesn't have OIS, unlike the main module, but aren't we at a stage when EIS is all you really need?
Super steady mode (only in 1080p) in its wider form is perhaps a bit steadier, but with the already excellent results from regular stabilized ultra wide clips we're hardly seeing the point. The zoomed-in mode makes for softer videos, too soft to be likable regardless of how steady they may be. Not to mention at this level you're looking at a tighter field of view than out of the main cam.
At 5x zoom level, you'd better have a tripod. The phone will help out a lot, but it's still a long focal length to reliably stabilize. It gets even worse at 10x when the shaking will also cause the phone to start hunting for focus, further messing up the image. The tripod-mounted 10x clips have no focusing issues.
Pro video mode's new addition is the ability to control the zoom speed, in theory letting you do slow and smooth transitions or dramatic pulls. In practice, the slower speeds result in this visibly stepped zoom action - tiny steps, but steps nonetheless. Additionally, with no access to the tele cam in Pro video, anything further than about 2x looks bad. Having said that, you probably wouldn't want the abrupt switch from main cam to tele at the 4.9x-to-5.0x transition. But then, the inability to access the tele camera or the ultra wide angle one in Pro video mode is limiting in its own right, slow zoom aside.
1080p clips shot at 120fps can only really be appreciated on a high refresh rate screen - which, conveniently, the Note has, of course. They have a very... unusual look with a certain dizzying effect to them. We find this mode best suited to hand-held capture with dynamic motion, both of the camera and of the subject in front of it. Our sample below has nothing of that, but then YouTube only goes as high as 60fps anyway, so we're showing it here just for you to judge the quality of the footage, not so much the content. To our eyes, in such good lighting conditions, there's not much of a difference between 120fps and 30fps clips. In dimmer settings you will be able to see deterioration as the phone cranks up the ISO to be able to get fast enough shutter speed in order to fit 120 frames in one second. A minor crop can be observed in 120fps mode too, so minor as to be largely inconsequential.
Selfie videos were excellent on the S20 Ultra, but now even more so on the Note - nicely detailed, with wide dynamic range even in backlit situations (though with some loss of contrast) and skin tones that we like more in videos than we did in stills.
The Galaxy Note20 Ultra enhances the S20 Ultra performance in selfie video recording by adding stabilization in the 60fps modes - previously only 4K30 and 1080p 30fps had EIS. Mind you, a selfie stick becomes almost mandatory when stabilization is enabled, as the relatively narrow field of view will only barely let you fit your head when shooting with the phone at arm's length.
Low-light video quality
When the Galaxy S20 Ultra came out, we were stunned to see the video quality it was capable of in low light, particularly in comparison with the next best phone Samsung had at the time, the Galaxy Note10+. The Galaxy Note20 Ultra we have here now remains an excellent choice for low-light video capture.
8K is already quite mushy at dusk and really bad at night, let's get that out of the way and not look back.
4K out of the main cam remains good-looking as dusk falls, and usable at night - given some light to work with of course.
Night hyperlapse is not new on the Note20 Ultra - the S20 family introduced it and it was later brought to the Note10 and S10 with software updates. What it does is take Night mode shots with exposures long enough to produce light trails, and uses these images as frames for a video. You need stable support and time - a minute of shooting gives you a second of video. Regardless of lack of novelty, it is a personal favorite mode for at least one reviewer here so you get sample.
We focused a little effort on a head-to-head between the teles of the two Ultras. The smaller sensor in the Note20 Ultra already proved to be a bit of a downgrade for stills in some scenarios, so we wanted to see how video performance is affected. Color us surprised - the Note20 Ultra's periscope actually outperforms the S20 Ultra at both 5x and 10x zoom level at dusk, though we wouldn't really like to have to show someone the 10x footage from either phone.
Screengrabs, dusk: Note20 Ultra, 5x • S20 Ultra, 5x • Note20 Ultra, 10x • S20 Ultra, 10x
At night, the Note is mostly on par with the S, though things are looking pretty bad at this stage. The point is, for recording video of distant subjects in low light, the Note20 Ultra is as good or better than the S20 Ultra.
Screengrabs, night: Note20 Ultra, 5x • S20 Ultra, 5x • Note20 Ultra, 10x • S20 Ultra, 10x
Here are the complete videos if you are so inclined.
Competition
If you want the ultimate smartphone with a stylus, available now, the Galaxy Note20 Ultra has no competition even at its steep price of $1300/€1300, it's simple as that. If you're willing to compromise in one direction or another, a world of options opens up to you.
If you're dead set on the S Pen, but the Ultra is too expensive, you have a couple of options - a plain Note20 or a Note10+. The newer model will get you a next-gen processor and camera setup as well as longer software support. It will come in at $1000/€1000, however, and you won't be getting a high refresh rate display in the process, and we're not yet ready to forgive it for its plastic back either.
The Note10+ is glass on both sides all right, and while it too refreshes at 60Hz, at least it's got the 1440p resolution unlike the Note20. The Note10+ is, admittedly, a generation behind in camera technology, but it still has an easily good enough tri-set. Best bit about it is the price, though that does vary wildly from region to region - a little over half the Note20 Ultra in Europe at about €800, but a less enticing $1100 in the US. It's actually more expensive than the Note20 in India at current rates, so that's easily settled there.
Pick a Note: 20 Ultra or 10+
If, on the other hand, the S Pen is little more than a nice-to-have to you and you're willing to sacrifice that, but want to keep the camera system, the Galaxy S20 Ultra is just the one for you. If you're in you're in Europe that is - while the S20U is a good €250-300 less than the N20U there, for some reason it is $100 more in the US and about the same price as the Note in India. A minor hit in battery life is also part of the deal in the Eurozone, but it's hardly consequential and you'll probably live just fine with the S20 Ultra's 'only' 1200nits of peak brightness instead of the Note's 1500nits.
Samsung Galaxy Note20 5G • Samsung Galaxy Note10+ • Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G
That's just the Samsungs, though. Oppo will sell you a Find X2 Pro for €1100 through official channels and a case could be made it's a better deal. It's a different camera system on the Oppo with its own pros and cons, but it's a very capable one nonetheless and offers similar coverage, plus the all-important (if only to select few) autofocus on the ultra wide cam. It's mostly a tie in battery life with the Find charging twice as fast. The Find's display is nearly as good as the Note's too - arguably even better in a way because it can run in 1440p at 120Hz. You'll be sacrificing memory expansion (is it an issue with 256GB of base storage on the Oppo?) and the selfie cam tops out at 1080p30 which could be limiting if you're one to vlog.
Another entrant from China is the Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro - since Xiaomi's Ultra isn't leaving its home market. We're seeing deals for the Mi 10 Pro for as low as €800 and the €500 that you'll get to keep in your pocket can justify a lot of trade-offs - not that you'd have to make a ton. The Mi's display isn't quite up there with the Note's but refreshes at a sensible 90Hz and is as bright as a Galaxy from the spring. A true quad-cam setup can give the Note20 Ultra a hard time in most conditions, but this one too is underpowered on the selfie video front. Perhaps the Mi's biggest downside is the lack of an IP68 rating.
If you're eyeing the Note20 Ultra for its zoom power, maybe Huawei could interest you in a P40 Pro+ that can do 10x optically (sort of). That one has no Google services and no stereo speakers, yet is even pricier though at this point does an extra €100 really count? It matches the Note20 Ultra for selfie video capture, for a change, adding 3D face mapping in the process. Battery life is a toss up, the display is very good on the Huawei if not quite as good and the 990 Kirin is a bit behind the 990 Exynos. But 10x zoom, though. Okay, 8.5x, technically, but still 8.5>5.
Oppo Find X2 Pro • Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro 5G • Huawei P40 Pro+
Verdict
With the bulk of smartphones at most price points, some careful examination is needed to establish if they are a good deal or if the competition offers better bang for your buck. It's rarely so when it comes to Galaxy Notes thanks to the lineup's practically exclusive feature set - yes, the S Pen is a big chunk of that, but it's about the entire full-featured package. Taking that a level up to Ultra in 2020, the concept of value almost becomes irrelevant.
The Galaxy Note20 Ultra is not twice as good a smartphone as the Note10+ that you can find for half its price in some parts of the world. Dropping this much money on a phone in these... unusual times is irresponsible. This phone or that phone will give you 90% of the experience at 60% of the price - or randomly cooked-up numbers of the sort. The Note20 Ultra itself isn't perfect, not to mention it's even less perfect in half of the world.
Perhaps all of that is true. But the Note20 Ultra is the most complete Galaxy and very likely the most complete smartphone you can buy right now. If your latest bank statement signs off on it, so do we.
Pros
- The best display on the market.
- Surprisingly good battery life for the display/battery combo.
- S Pen is a joy to use, wireless DeX is a nice addition.
- Incredibly versatile and well-performing camera system.
Cons
- The camera bump could be unsightly depending on who you ask.
- Performance divide between versions, Exynos variant isn't up to the same standard.
- Unimpressive charging speed.
- Either 120Hz or 1440p, why not both? Questionable effectiveness of Adaptive refresh rate mode.
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