Galaxy S20 series that Samsung announced globally in February. In addition to standard support for 5G, it was also noted that it was equipped with advanced camera functions. The Galaxy S20 Ultra, the highest version of the series 3 models, is equipped with a 4-lens camera centered on a 100 million pixel (108 megapixel) sensor, and has advanced camera functions such as 100x zoom. In this article, we will deliver the Galaxy S20 Ultra review by American Engadget reviewer Cherlynn Low.
[Galaxy S20 Ultra] Score: 80 points / 100 points Pros ・Powerful performance ・Vivid display ・Abundance of camera functions Cons ・Too heavy ・Expensive
There are so many things to see and do with the Galaxy S20 Ultra. A large screen driven at 120Hz, an in-camera for sharp selfies, and support for high-speed 5G. And the main camera is equipped with 3 cameras and a ToF sensor, which allows you to take clear photos with 108 million pixels (108 megapixels), 8K video, and 100x digital zoom. On the other hand, the software of the camera is not very good, and the size and weight of the body that does not fit in the pocket is also a bottleneck. And while it's definitely a smart phone with great features, it doesn't seem to have the impact it deserves for its $1,400 price tag.
Size
The first thing to consider is whether you can tolerate the size of the Galaxy S20 Ultra. With its large 6.9-inch screen and extremely densely packed parts, the weight of this phone made my left hand fingers and arm hurt after just one day of testing.
To be fair, the Galaxy S20 Ultra is only slightly larger than the iPhone 11 Pro Max and weighs only 4g more than the iPhone. And it has a much larger screen than the iPhone 11 Pro Max's 6.5-inch display. However, at 222g, this smartphone weighs 24g more than the Galaxy Note 10+ 5G (198g), which has a slightly smaller 6.8-inch display, and can be said to be a heavyweight build.
High resolution and super zoom camera
The first thing to notice about the S20 Ultra is its camera capabilities. It is a triple camera (+ quad camera with depth sensor) equipped with a 108-megapixel (108-megapixel) main camera and a 12-megapixel ultra-wide-angle camera with a viewing angle of 123 degrees. Most interesting, though, is the 48-megapixel telephoto camera, which folds up into a ledge on the back of this giant phone.
Photos taken with the S20 Ultra are brighter, more colorful, and sharper than past Galaxy flagships, thanks to its larger, sharper sensor. However, the Galaxy's unique image processing algorithms remain unchanged, resulting in fairly aggressive imagery and lack of detail.
By default, the 108-megapixel camera records 12-megapixel images using a process Samsung calls "Nona Binning." This technology increases the amount of light captured by each sensor by treating nine adjacent pixels as one large pixel. In principle, you should be able to take bright pictures with little noise, but there is not much detail regardless of the resolution you shoot. At most, it's a small improvement over the Galaxy S10. The quirky image processing can also be seen in Live Focus and Night Mode. The former is the ability to add artificial blur to the background of an image, but this approach lags behind the competition. Even Google's Pixel and iPhone are starting to recognize people and add a more realistic and natural blur. Low light shooting and night mode are improved compared to the S10, but the Pixel excels in noise reduction ability and shooting performance in darker places.
▲ S20 Ultra live focus shooting example In addition to the high-resolution camera, the main feature of the Galaxy S20 series is the zoom function that Samsung calls “Space Zoom”. The Galaxy S20 and S20 Plus allow you to zoom in on your subject by 30x. On the other hand, the S20 Ultra achieves a maximum zoom of 100x by combining optical zoom, digital zoom, and a little AI processing.
At the time of review, I tried zooming mainly on buildings and distant signs, but there is a tendency for the image quality to deteriorate significantly when it exceeds 10x. Also, when zooming, even a small amount of camera shake can change the focus position significantly, making it extremely difficult to aim accurately without a tripod, especially at high magnifications such as 100x. The only saving grace will be that when you zoom in, you'll get a frame with little guides that show you the whole and what you're photographing. Even if you've worked hard to take a high-magnification zoom photo, if it exceeds 10x, it will look like a poorly made painting full of noise.
▲ S20 Ultra zoom example There is also an argument that implementing a high-magnification camera on a smartphone may be abused as a tool for voyeurism. Let's be honest. I felt a little spooky with the high magnification zoom. Once, I focused on a woman on the phone while walking down the sidewalk in front of her apartment building. Her face then filled the entire screen with just a 10x zoom. Even though I can't see her face with my eyes, I can feel her gaze through the preview on my smartphone. I felt uncomfortable and immediately put my phone down. High-magnification zooms on smartphones, such as Space Zoom, have room for ethical issues. If you believe that everyone will use it just to zoom in on sights from afar, like the example Samsung showed at its Unpacked event, then we consider it naive. Whether the person who got this smartphone will not abuse it or not can only rely on the good sense of the person.
▲10x zoomLet's change the subject. The S20 series also features a new feature called "Single Take" mode that makes the camera even more fun. When you press the shutter button in this mode, all cameras work simultaneously for up to 10 seconds to record various photos and videos. You need to keep holding your smartphone while shooting, and sometimes a guide may be displayed to advise you on composition. After a few seconds of shooting, you'll have around 10 recommended photos and videos.
Photos and videos that can be taken in a single take include variations never seen before in a camera function, such as black and white versions and looped videos decorated with cheap soundtracks. However, although this function is best suited for moving subjects, it may not make much sense if you do not have many opportunities to shoot such subjects. Parents of babies, for example, will enjoy using Single Take. The S20 Ultra also has a high-resolution in-camera of 40 megapixels. I was worried that taking a selfie would result in a sharp depiction of everything from scars on my face to hair loss in my eyebrows, but the default setting saves at about 6.5 megapixels. Even with 40 megapixel recording enabled, there's a beauty mode, so don't worry. However, the selfie that was drawn down to each hair was a word of surprise. I don't think there are many people who want to take sharp selfies this far. Nonetheless, regardless of which resolution you choose, you can be sure that it is an in-camera that can be used conveniently, with accurate colors. However, it is important to note that high-resolution photos take up a lot of storage space. By taking a lot of photos during verification, I used up a lot of storage space and immediately got a warning. In terms of putting pressure on storage, the 100 million pixel photo of the rear camera is the same.
Clear and smooth video
I didn't think that another feature of the Galaxy S20 series, 8K video recording, was a useful feature. Like the Space Zoom, this is a feature that Samsung exists to make the difference: "Impressive new technology!" Thanks to the powerful chipset Snapdragon 865 in the S20 series, you can keep recording ultra-high definition footage as long as you have enough storage and battery life. However, this comes at some cost. When I was shooting the streets of New York in 8K, my smartphone started to get slightly warm in about a minute.
The problem with 8K video is playing it, not shooting it. The S20 Ultra's display is QHD+, which isn't enough to play 8K at full resolution. What Samsung prepared was a mechanism to easily transfer videos to an 8K TV. However, this 8K TV is as rare as a wild panda. You can upload to YouTube in 8K resolution, but you'll still need an 8K display to appreciate this quality. On the other hand, the camera shake correction tool when shooting movies was highly practical and desirable. Even when walking on uneven sidewalks and tripping, the results are extremely smooth. Other reviews have reported errors like focus errors and frame drops during video testing, but I didn't encounter any of those glitches in my testing. However, again, it was difficult to get an 8K display, so it was not possible to play the recorded video in 8K.
■ 120Hz drive display with smooth display
Watching 8K video on the S20 Ultra is absurd, but the 6.9-inch OLED EK display is still a nice canvas. The display brightness is high and the display is adjusted according to the ambient light, so the cityscape I shot looked clear and colorful even in the sunlight. 4K HDR videos and Instagram posts shot by friends were more immersive thanks to the almost full front display. One of the highlights of the S20 series is the 120Hz-driven display that draws faster than previous smartphones. This frame rate of 120Hz is only installed in many AQUOS smartphones, as well as some gaming phones such as ASUS ROG Phone II and Razer Phone 2. High frame rates are getting a lot of attention, such as the Pixel 4 with a 90Hz display, but it's not a popular feature.
It should be noted here that the S20 Ultra's 120Hz drive is not applicable at full resolution. When driving at 120Hz, the screen resolution is limited to full HD (1080p). Conversely, when you want to display at 1440p resolution, the frame rate cannot be raised above 60Hz. A frame rate of 120Hz makes motion look smoother when displaying games, videos, etc., but that's not all. Another advantage is that every scrolling movement is smooth. Whether it's an Instagram or Twitter feed or a bulletin board like Reddit, scrolling is necessary everywhere on smartphones, so a display that doesn't make you feel stressed will lead to a big improvement. However, for the smoothness of scrolling, the Pixel 4's 90Hz drive had a sufficient improvement effect for me.
■ 2020 level 5G
Speaking of high speed, the S20 series supports both sub-6 and mmWave in 5G (the standard model Galaxy S20 only supports sub-6). In particular, the latter millimeter-wave band is a frequency band where significant speed improvements are expected. However, millimeter waves are vulnerable to obstacles. I checked it out with some trepidation. Technologies such as beamforming and beam tracking are used in 5G to improve the reliability of mmWave communications, but as far as I tried in New York, it was easy to block mmWave communications. The review machine used Verizon's mobile communication, which is building millimeter wave-only 5G. This ultra-high-speed network has a fairly limited area, and in order to test ultra-high-speed communication, it was necessary to search for the base station on the map and go all the way to the range within sight.
On Verizon smartphones, the "5G UWB" icon is displayed only when 5G mmWave communication is actually occurring on the network. When I walked around the base station in Brooklyn, it was a situation where 5GUWB and LTE were constantly switching. However, when I managed to connect to 5G, the speed was solid. According to the Speedtest app, download speeds reached a maximum of 800Mbps. A 4K video that took 13 minutes to download over 4G LTE took just 13 seconds over 5G. On the other hand, the upstream communication remained at about 50 Mbps. That's because Verizon doesn't use mmWave for uploads, it's all done over 4G LTE. So if you're trying to upload an Instagram Stories or a YouTube video, it won't get any faster (on Verizon, after all).
* Reference article about 5G: Why is communication faster with 5G? Possibilities and Limitations Exploring from Mechanisms
■ Battery life and performance
There is a concern that millimeter wave 5G and 120Hz driven displays will shorten battery life. To ease that fear, Samsung packs a whopping 5000mAh battery cell into the S20 Ultra.
In our review, we set the screen to 120Hz on the S20 Ultra, took tons of photos, browsed Instagram, and exchanged tons of messages. With this usage, the battery lasted for a day and a half. In the battery test under standardized conditions, the battery life was recorded for 11 and a half hours. This is shorter than the Pixel 4 XL, but on par with the Galaxy S10+. It can be said that the battery life is better than the iPhone 11 Pro Max.
The S20 Ultra is equipped with Qualcomm's current generation chipset Snapdragon 865. The chipset continued to perform well even when switching between messages, Instagram, Twitter, etc. and taking a lot of photos and videos. However, it only freezes once when I switch camera modes while saving the video after recording. Other than that, I had no issues playing Call Of Duty Mobile while recording the screen, and when I tried to edit the recorded footage straight away, it handled everything just fine.
Only the flagship model of the Galaxy S series has suppressed the functions that have been installed so far, such as an ultrasonic in-display fingerprint sensor, wireless power sharing (charging Qi products from a smartphone), and Bixby routines. .
■ Conclusion
The Galaxy S20 Ultra is an ambitious device with big numbers, including a 100-megapixel camera, 100x zoom, 8K video, a 120Hz display, and 5G support. It incorporates the best specifications available in today's smartphone cameras, displays and mobile networks. And for those who are only interested in getting the best (camera aside), the S20 Ultra is a great device.
On the other hand, there are numbers too big to ignore. The price is $ 1400 (about 150,000 yen). It is set to be more expensive than the pioneering model Galaxy Z Flip, which uses a folding screen "foldable" organic EL display. At this price point, Samsung should offer something close to perfect in every way, but the S20 Ultra doesn't. The camera's deficiencies and heaviness jeopardize its position as one of the best on the market. For those who don't need a top-of-the-line smartphone, the S20 Ultra is clearly over-engineered. It's hard to imagine an inadequate scene on the S20 or S20+. If you're just happy to have top-notch specs, the S20 Ultra is the perfect choice.
Related article: Galaxy S20 series is a smartphone that "faces 5G firmly" (Junya Ishino) Galaxy S20 Ultra is a smartphone that will influence the fate of Samsung in the camera game (Dr. Yamane) New smartphone "Galaxy S20" 3 Official release of the model. What is the difference between the Galaxy S20/S20+/S20 Ultra with 5G standard support and the world's first 8K30fps shooting? Check the size and main functions "Galaxy S20" series, how is the camera different? Galaxy S20 Ultra disassembled by iFixit Reported a defect in the 100 million pixel camera of "Galaxy S20 Ultra", Samsung is dealing with it
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