Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra Review: Attack of the Numbers!

samsung galaxy s 20 altra and it is 

samsung's attack of the numbers 

so this is it this huge phone here is a 

Samsung's highest and most expensive 

flagship phone ever and there's a lot of 

word Samsung could have chosen to use 

here they could have gone plus or max 

they could have gone pro but they went 

ultra ultra ultra extremist radical yeah.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra Review                                                                

I think that's that's actually pretty 

accurate so if the question is how can 

you possibly justify a    new phone that 

expensive Samsung's answer is by 

throwing all the hardware at you all the 

specs every single big number they can 

possibly think of that going into this 

phone it looks on paper like a great 

idea 

how could a phone with snapdragon 865 16 

gigs of ram 512 gigs of ufs 3.0 a 

hundred and eight megapixels a hundred X 

zoom 8k five thousand milliamp hours 120 

Hertz 1440p 5g how could this phone be 

anything other than the best well I'll 

tell you but let's start with the design 

though just because I think it's 

actually the least ultra thing about 

this phone and it's pretty simple 

actually 

it's a massive phone glass sandwich with 

a gigantic recognizable double camera 

bump expendable storage at the top 

speaker at the bottom r.i.p headphone 

jack you know on one hand it kind of 

blends in with the smart phones of today 

especially in Samsung's lineup but on 

the other hand there's no mistaking it.

actually remember when smartphone 

displays we're getting bigger and bigger 

and then they first crossed over five 

inches like average and then they sort 

of evened out a 5.3 inch and people 

thought it was kind of getting crazy and 

then Samsung because who else came out 

with the Galaxy mega that's really a 

phone that came out with and named that 

had a 6.3 inch display it was just 

hilarious like no one else would try 

that but this phone was the size of a 

tablet with the form factor of a phone 

it really was the mega phone yet here we 

are now today with galaxy s 20 ultra 

bigger than any galaxy mega or any 

galaxy note even has ever been with a 

6.9 inch display it's huge for me it 

still fits in my pocket and it's usable 

for me but it might not be for everyone 

clearly giant phones aren't for everyone 

I gotta say though for an ultra phone 

the color options of glossy black glossy 

gray are a bit underwhelming 

of course channel sponsor D brand will 

gladly step up and customize a look on 

the back and you can get as wild as this 

robot camo skin but don't let that be a 

cop-out Samsung I'm hoping for a little 

more variety next time till then I'll 

link that skin below one thing you do 

get from a huge phone though is a huge 

display so just to give you the numbers 

6.9 inch diagonal 120 Hertz 1440p and 

stop me if you've heard this before but 

Samsung has once again made the best 

display in any smartphone best 

brightness colors contrasts best viewing 

angles of any smartphone display I've 

ever seen I feel like I'm starting to 

sound like display mate 

it's the highest a plus I've ever given 

just you'll know it when you see it and 

it's not just the high-end spec in big 

numbers                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra Review                                     

they've also flattened out the edges of 

the display so it doesn't spill over the 

sides anymore and I appreciate that 

from a usability perspective and I hope 

they keep that trend up throughout the 

rest of their lineup love that and if I 

have any gripes really it's that the 

ultrasonic fingerprint reader underneath 

the screen is basically the same as last 

year there's no real substantial 

improvements and that's fine it's still 

a decently fast and responsive one and 

once you learn where it is with muscle 

memory its kind of quick but I was 

hoping these would get bigger and faster 

from generation to generation and that 

hasn't happened yet now it is worth 

noting you don't get all the big numbers 

straight out the box this phone is 

actually 1080p 60 Hertz out the box 

pretty basic and you can either notch it 

up to 120 Hertz or 1440p but not both at 

the same time personally I'm picking 120 

Hertz every single time I was waiting 

for or asking for the high refresh rate 

from Samsung and we finally got it and 

it's great the difference between 60 

Hertz and 120 Hertz in like a 90% of 

what you're doing on your phone which is 

scrolling it's fantastic and then the 

display also has a 240 Hertz touch 

sensor refresh so no matter what 

resolution you're in it keeps it feeling 

snappy and responsive as expected which 

is just what we've seen in these gaming 

phones that came before it now do I wish 

they would let us use this phone at 120 

Hertz 

1440p full resolution at the same time 

yeah I wish they would allow it right 

now that's disabled I originally thought 

it might be a snapdragon 865 limitation 

but it turns out it's not they just 

don't enable it because they probably 

think it would crush battery but I say 

if you're paying fourteen hundred bucks 

for this phone and you know what you're 

getting yourself into you can still put 

it at 60 Hertz 1080p out the box but let 

us enable it if we really want to maybe 

they can enable that with a software 

update and you know just put a little 

disclaimer hey you turn these both on 

it'll crush your battery but you paid 

for the phone so you get to turn it on 

alright so let's talk about that battery 

5000 milli amp hours on the s20 ultra and 

this is one of those specs that usually 

translates pretty well from paper to 

real life the bigger the battery the 

better and this one's getting too big 

thumbs up from me we know five thousand 

milli amp hours is huge but I was just a 

tiny bit worried about how well it would 

do powering a giant bright six point 

nine inch 120 Hertz display turns out 

it's perfectly fine I've been getting 

consistently six plus hours of screen on 

time at the end of every day easy with 

battery to spare 

heavy stuff gaming a lot of navigation 

while driving and I've never killed it 

in a single day so I don't even worry 

about it anymore to be honest I was 

thinking that I was gonna have to take a 

few extra days of testing to flip it 

down to sixty Hertz and see how much 

battery that saves me but yeah I don't 

have to this is an all-day phone at 120 

Hertz which is dope but alright let's 

just face it the big numbers that you 

guys are probably most curious about and 

how well they translate is around the 

back of this phone and that's the 

cameras so that's that hundred and eight 

megapixels 

that's 8k video and that's even printed 

on the back of this phone the 100x 

spaced zoom but as we've hopefully 

learned by now 

numbers on the spec sheet for cameras 

don't always translate super well to 

real-world performance I've seen about a 

million 64 megapixel cameras that are 

worse than the 12 megapixel cameras in 

the pixel and the iPhone so for me 

seeing how hard Samsung was leaning into 

this camera upgrade for the s20 ultra my 

real question at the beginning of this 

was hey can Samsung actually make the 

best camera in any smartphone I have a 

lot of thoughts about this camera so 

right off the bat I'm gonna say this is 

better in some ways 

their previous cameras but worse in 

other ways actually so it's still fall 

solidly in third place for me I still 

prefer photos from the pixel and the 

iPhone more often than images coming 

from Samsung but that doesn't mean the 

numbers mean nothing by default this 

main camera is doing binning that kicks 

out a 12 megapixel photo and it is the 

sharpest most detailed 12 megapixel 

photo out there which I love 

that's one of the things that's my 

favorite about it and these are classic 

Samsung bright and colorful usually 

bring up shadows and smoothing out faces 

the whole thing that hasn't changed 

there's also the ultra wide camera which 

is the softest of the three cameras but 

I'm still glad it's there it's giving us 

that first-person the fun perspective 

and it even has Samsung's much improved 

night mode in ultra wide which some 

others just straight-up don't do and 

then there is of course the full 108 

megapixel mode that can be toggled on 

and yes that did produce a bit more 

detail which is useful especially if 

you're planning on zooming in and 

cropping after you take that big photo 

but for the difference in file size and 

the inconvenience of always having to 

turn it on I ended up not really feeling 

like I needed it most of the time I was 

happy with the 12 megapixel shots but if 

you pay a little bit more attention to 

that main camera especially with 

close-up subjects there's a little bit 

more to notice there so keep this in 

mind the main hundred eight megapixel 

camera is massive like it's physically 

much larger than most other smartphone 

camera sensors and for the most part 

it's a general rule the larger the 

sensor the better you're letting in more 

light you get bigger pixels it's just a 

typical good thing to have a larger 

sensor and that's fine but for those of 

us familiar with large sensor 

photography and video larger sensors 

have a look like that's when you start 

to get this naturally blurry foreground 

and background and this shallow depth of 

field in this case the sensor on this 

phone is so big and that dual aperture 

feature that they've shipped in a couple 

previous Samsung flagships is now gone 

so it is wide open at F 1.8 all the time 

these things combine to make a razor 

thin plane of focus and so things that 

aren't in that plane of focus by even a 

couple of inches or 

so when I took photos of closer up 

subjects which I do I guess more than 

normal but enough to notice this you 

would not only see that the background 

was naturally blurred without portrait 

mode but really only part of the subject 

is actually in focus and you can see the 

rest is falling out of focus but in this 

smeared fringe bad looking bokeh 

normally this isn't such a weird thing 

because with a big high quality sensor 

and glass that's just the background 

falling naturally out of focus but on 

these tiny smartphone optics the bokeh 

just isn't quite as beautiful and you 

really do start to notice the fringing 

and unnatural looking blurred background 

now and I also think that this may have 

contributed to the autofocus issues you 

may have heard about on the s20 ultra 

autofocus on this phone for me has been 

unusually jumpy and kind of 

unpredictable and actually missed focus 

a few times especially with closed focus 

and closed subjects and I just haven't 

had a flagship phone have issues like 

that in a long time and I was trying to 

figure out why I think the razor thin 

plane of focus from not having dual 

aperture mode and probably some not 

perfectly optimized software has made 

auto focus on the s20 ultra feel kind of 

buggy now Samsung has already promised 

some software updates that should fix 

these issues and I believe they can 

probably mitigate a lot of these auto 

focus issues with software but at the 

end of the day you can't beat the 

physics of having a larger sensor and 

not-so-great optics so I think that 

fringing and that very sharp fall-off of 

the razor fin depth of field will 

continue okay 

galaxy s 20 ultra will also shoot 8k 

video that's a new feature these 

snapdragon 865 phones are getting and 

that should be right up my alley so of 

course I go to test it and I am very 

impressed with the images you can get 

off a smartphone sensor the stills you 

can take from the video at 33 megapixels 

there's some test Clips out there I've 

shot some of my own just for kicks and 

it's fun but it's not just simply a 

higher resolution version of the already 

pretty good 4k video there's like a 

laundry list of trade-offs here number 

one 8k is locked at 24 frames per second 

max can't go above that and since we all 

know 30fps is a correct framerate that's 

just a limitation of the snapdragon a 65 

it just can't quite cranked out 30fps 

number two it punches in a lot so at 4k 

a normal video mode it could shoot 

pretty wide without binning for 8k but 

they use an 8k window in the middle of 

the sensor so when you switch to 8k mode 

you see it punch in a ton which really 

limits what you can frame with it number 

three focus tracking turns off with 8k 

video again this is a limitation of the 

processing you get with the snapdragon 

865 but it was already pretty bad 

without dual pixel autofocus to begin 

with so now it's let's be real really 

really bad for me is if you don't have a 

clear or far enough away subject it's 

gonna be hunting all the time and that's 

really distracting it just doesn't look 

good on video then number four because 

of how much data is being processed the 

amount of time it takes to process from 

the top line to the bottom on that chip 

it takes a little bit of time and that 

creates rolling shutter and to me it's 

super obvious and any footage where 

you're moving or turning at all just 

turns into jelly I've never seen rolling 

shutter this bad in smartphone video in 

my life and then five the file sizes 

it's a K video it's going to be huge 

it's about ten megabytes per second so 

if you take a 60 second video you're 

looking at about 600 megabytes which is 

kind of a pain to upload so all that 

combines so 8k video on this phone it's 

great it's it's really cool for like 

sitting still and maybe capturing some 

slow moving or not so much turning 

subjects in high resolution and if you 

look around that's what most people are 

shooting their test clips of but other 

than that as soon as you start to move 

around or have to chase focus at all 

I'll pass I think I'll have another year 

or two of measly 4k video on my 

smartphone and be fine I didn't think 

I'd be the one saying that but that's 

the truth 

oh and you almost let me forget to 

mention the zoom the thing that's 

printed on the back of the phone the 

100x base zoom comes from the 48 

megapixel periscope camera sitting in 

the side of this phone okay just because 

you have 100x zoom 

doesn't mean 

should use 100x zoom all the time so my 

typical smartphone photo-taking behavior 

is I almost never zoom i zoom with my 

feet or I just switch to the ultra wide 

but the s20 ultra having this periscope 

zoom has made it easier than ever to 

just like punch in on subjects further 

away and take crisp photos that's 

definitely true this phone takes these 

sharpest images at 30x zoom I've ever 

seen from a phone next to Wow way really 

impressive stuff everybody really wants 

to focus on the 100x like when you zoom 

all the way in and it's a cool demo but 

photos clearly don't look good at a 

hundred X you're not supposed to zoom 

all the way into a hundred every time 

honestly you'd have better luck just 

taking a 30x zoom photo and cropping in 

later no seriously just just zoom in 

later it's basically the same thing but 

then there's of course just people 

trashing the hundred X zoom because hey 

you don't need a hundred X it looks bad 

why they even put this on the phone but 

here's the thing if you're trashing the 

hundred X zoom because it looks bad at 

100x and you don't think people need it 

but ignoring the 30x that's like 

trashing a new speaker that comes out 

that goes up to a hundred decibels 

because it sounds bad at a hundred 

decibels and no one needs it that loud 

but you're forgetting that speaker will 

sound better at 50 decibels because it's 

in the middle of its range then the 

others that are maxing out at 50 so 

there you go we can appreciate the good 

tech when it's there I didn't mean to 

turn this whole video into a camera 

review but hey it's one of the most 

important parts of the phone so the more 

you know the better so as far as numbers 

go the 108 megapixel number it's there 

but it's not quite there but it helps 

the 100x number it's not really there 

all the time even though it is I guess 

printed there all the time and the 8k 

number I actually recommend against 

using it so despite all this hype 

Samsung I think is kind of in the same 

place they left off last year with their 

camera in third place and maybe a 

software update away from closing the 

gap but third place and then the rest of 

this phone is really Samsung doing 

Samsung things if you use the Galaxy S 

before you 

won't be shocked by anything here one UI 

and it's one-handed optimizations are 

more important than ever because of how 

big this phone is but really it's still 

the super familiar throw in everything 

but the kitchen sink strategy there's a 

ton there's a there's a million features 

on this phone the one new feature I 

found really interesting was the ability 

to pin apps to the massive amount of RAM 

so in the multitasker if you tap the 

icon at the top you can keep the app 

open for quick launching that loads it 

up into the RAM permanently and I messed 

around with this a bit I tried it with 

Spotify tried it with the camera app 

tried it with my tasks app that I 

launched all the time I didn't really 

see much of a big difference in battery 

so that's nice and the app really is 

truly forever open in the background 

ready to launch instantly so having that 

much more RAM on the phone is quite 

useful also I feel obligated to mention 

yes this is a 5G phone but you shouldn't 

buy this phone just for the 5g I'm on 18

T I haven't had a single second of 5G 

experience on this phone but you know if 

you're on t-mobile or any of the mid 

band or millimeter wave using carriers 

your mileage may vary 

so the strategy of throwing all the 

numbers at the phone did it work well I 

think it mostly worked I mean this is an 

excellent phone best-in-class in several 

ways the display being the most 

incredible one and with the battery 

falling right in step behind it but as 

we've learned the numbers aren't 

everything and the question a lot of 

people seem to like asking is do you 

need it and no of course not most people 

will do great with a phone half this 

price you don't need this phone but as a 

fan of tech I am happy when stuff at the 

highest end is pushing things forward 

and it's at the bleeding edge and for a 

lot of that stuff I do like the s20

ultra a lot and some people who use 

their phone a lot won't have a big 

problem spending a lot extra on it now 

shouldn't a $1400 phone be pretty much 

perfect out the box yeah probably 

and this clearly isn't perfect but 

there's a lot of really great things 

about it and this is the phone I will be 

pocketing personally until further 

notice and I guess crossing my fingers 

for some software updates.