Samsung Note 20 Ultra
The Samsung Note line-up has always been the biggest flagship they have. The Note tends to take what the S line-up offers and integrates the features into a bigger sized smartphone with an added stylus. Now Samsung started a new tier by adding an ‘Ultra’. The Ultra indicates the smartphone that isn’t holding back and the company is going all guns blazing with its specification. The Samsung Note 20 Ultra starts at £1,179 for the 256GB model or get the 512GB model for £1,279.
Design
First, when you pick up the phone you will notice the huge 6.9-inch screen. The second thing you will notice is the camera bump that houses the three cameras, laser focus sensor, and flash. The phone features minimal bezels, symmetrical front to back and squared-off corners. The back of the smartphone has a matte finish which will do better in hiding fingerprints. The phone comes in three different colour options: Mystic Bronze, Mystic Black, and Mystic White. The S Pen stylus is located on the left side than the usual right side.
Display
The Note 20 Ultra contains the best display panel Samsung can offer on a smartphone. The 6.9-inch display offers the best colour accuracy, viewing angles, and brightness. The quad HD+ OLED display gives fine detail at 496ppi and supports HDR10+. The display can hit 120Hz, however, the display is a variable refresh rate, this means that the refresh rate will auto adjust according to what is on the screen and can go all the way down to 10Hz if nothing is moving. The variable refresh rate feature is to save battery life as running a display at a high refresh rate will drain your battery quickly.
Specification
Under the hood, the Note 20 Ultra has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 865+ processor and 12GB RAM to help with multitasking. The phone features an in-screen ultrasonic fingerprint sensor, wireless and reverse wireless charging, expandable storage, stereo speakers, Bluetooth 5, NFC, and IP 68 water resistance. The smartphone is 5G enabled, ready for when the network becomes available on your carrier network. All these features are powered by the 4,500mAh battery.
Camera
On the back, the Note 20 Ultra has a main 109 megapixel wide-angle, 12-megapixel ultra-wide, 12 megapixel telephoto with periscope assembly. The periscope assembly enables 5x optical zoom but Samsung offers ‘Space Zoom’ which is a combination of optical and digital zoom, the inclusion of a high megapixel camera means that the smartphone offers 100x zoom. For video, the Note 20 Ultra offers up to 8K, the phone also allows you to switch between front mic, rear mic or Omni mic.
S Pen
The S Pen has improved when compared to the previous Note. The S Pen on the Note 20 Ultra is 80 per cent faster due to faster processing, higher refresh rate screen, and predictive machine learning. The latency when drawing and writing has decreased, giving that feeling that ink is flowing out of the S Pen. S Pen has ‘air actions’ that allows you to do several things such as navigate into between apps or activate functions with an app.
Summary
The Note 20 Ultra does offer a premium from its design to the specification it offers. The big bright high-quality fast refresh rate display panel is great for playing video games and consuming media content. The design is elegant even with the camera bump; you may find the camera bump annoying when you type flat on the ground but that can be fixed by a case. The camera is set up to provide high-quality images suitable to its high price point of the Note 20 Ultra flagship status. However, most people may find the price not worth it. You may find the S20 Ultra better suited to your price point or even the OnePlus 8 Pro.