Best Samsung Phones In 2021

 

Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra

Camera tests, battery tests, specs and more...

This is the galaxy note 20 ultra I've 

loaded it up with applications I've tested its thermals it's battery even accidentally it's strength I've taken 435 photos with this camera so here's what I think I still remember 

picking the phone up for the first time 

just a few weeks ago and thinking they've done it this is how an ultra phone should feel and even now that the dust is settled every time I take this out my pocket I'm internally nodding my head thinking yeah this feels right it could do with being a bit less slippery and the huge camera module does get in the way a bit when trying to game but I'm nitpicking for me it's almost perfect and I could say that about a lot of things with this phone the size feels just right i wouldn't make it bigger because it only just fits in my hand but i also wouldn't make it smaller 

because when you've used a screen like 

this 

you don't want to go back the thickness 

feels just right 

and though. 

It might not look like it the 

weight is surprisingly evenly 

distributed the bezels have practically 

disappeared 

the s pen has finally achieved its 

original objective of feeling 

truly like pen on paper although I am 

still confused as to why they shifted it 

to the left of the phone 

and the screen is so bright that I 

couldn't even find a lighting condition 

in which it wasn't clearly visible this 

display genuinely is 

a masterpiece you set a good wallpaper 

on this phone and 

it feels like you're holding an edgeless 

digital tapestry 

and interacting with it is a joy too 

because Samsung's haptics 

are amazing plus it comes with some of 

the best news that Samsung has ever 

announced with a new phone 

that these phones are going to get three 

years of guaranteed software updates 

compared to the s20 ultra earlier this 

year they've toned down their marketing 

they've toned down their claims they've 

toned down their price 

while at the same time actually 

delivering more value so what I'm trying 

to say here is that this 

feels like and I don't use this term 

lightly a perfect 

Samsung phone oh and if you're enjoying 

this video by the way a sub to the 

channel would be 

phenomenal take the cameras now 

admittedly it is tough to get excited 

about a camera that's almost the same as 

the one on a phone I ditched a few 

months ago 

but this has one important perk over the 

s20 ultra in that 

the camera feels lighter faster shutter 

speed 

quicker less janky zooming and way 

faster focusing thanks to the new laser 

autofocus module 

not perfect focusing still but far 

better plus 

the phone itself is just physically less 

heavy so that contributes to this 

feeling of lightness 

the selfies are good too aided further 

by the fact that you can now hold your 

phone.

Further away than normal and still take 

a photo by using the s pen 

so these are actually some of the wider 

selfies you can get right now 

it's still not as reliable as the iPhone 

camera when you're taking portraits for 

example 

but 98 of the time that I've taken this 

phone out to capture something 

I've been at least satisfied with the 

result the two percent of times where I 

did have a problem 

were often just because of how this 108 

megapixel sensor 

produces images because it has a very 

narrow plane of focus 

I found myself a few times taking photos 

of things that are closer up 

thinking I got it completely in focus 

when actually a part of it 

is ever so slightly out of focus it's a 

camera system that while I'm sure it 

could be better and one way I'm sure 

they will find ways to improve it in the 

future 

I've got very little to complain about 

in fact probably my biggest complaint 

is just the fact that it doesn't seem to 

know when to switch to the telephoto 

camera 

see when you're zooming into things it 

should switch as soon as you pass five 

time zoom 

to maintain quality but sometimes I've 

had to get to 11 times zoom before the 

phone finally realizes 

oh yeah we should probably change lenses 

now also massively underrated feature 

is the new Samsung depths this went from 

first needing a specialized dock just to 

work 

to then needing just a cable to now 

needing nothing 

and it's probably one of the use cases 

that truly shows the power of the phone 

being able to show your photo album 

while playing a YouTube video and doing 

five other things at the same time 

really is 

quite cool however the reason I say this 

is a perfect Samsung phone and not just 

a perfect phone is that 

I do have problems with it there are 

things I don't like and 

pretty much all of those things are just 

Samsung being Samsung 

like how they choose to add these sharp 

corners on the note phones to 

distinguish them from the s phones 

and they do make the phone a bit jabby 

like how the camera does take amazing 

photos 

but how it insists on smoothing out 

faces when taking portrait mode shots 

like the fact that Samsung software 

seems intent on making you swallow 

every single Samsung service available 

and it just bundles in so much junk 

so much low quality content which can't 

be good for battery life either 

the game launcher has these game 

recommendations and 

they're straight out of 2014 with a lot 

of them not even being available in my 

country 

even for Samsung's internet browser why 

are half the recommendations in 

what I can only assume is Korean also 

Samsung have just made their phones 

quite 

confusing in some regions this is a 4g 

phone 

in others it's a 5g phone in some 

regions you get the snapdragon 865 plus 

chipset 

literally the best that android has to 

offer but in other regions you get the 

exynos 990 

which is about as good as the snapdragon 

from last year for some people the base 

model will have 256 gigs of storage 

great but in others you'll get 128.

I even found out that if you live in some 

regions like Pakistan or if you go for 

the lte variant 

the note 20 ultra starts at eight 

gigabytes of ram in 2020 you can get a 

phone with light in its name that has 

eight gigabytes of ram 

this lineup is so confusing that if you 

want to know how good the note 20 ultra 

actually is 

then you've almost got to make sure that 

you only read articles that are coming 

from the country that you're planning on 

buying the phone in 

otherwise you're kind of looking at a 

different phone so the issue that brings 

to us here in the uk is that the exynos 

chip we get 

is not particularly battery efficient 

day to day I did feel like it was 

lasting a little longer than my s20 

ultra did but 

just to make sure I did do a side by 

side with a brand new exynos s20 ultra 

I set both phones to equal brightness 

and just cycled through applications 

and I mean the note was a head but very 

slightly 

literally one percentage point so the 

battery life is good 

not great then again from what I've seen 

from my friends in the us 

the note 20 ultra over there can last up 

to an hour more 

of screen on time the charging speed is 

fine but does 

slow to a crawl as the battery is nearly 

full so the takeaway of all of this is 

really quite simple here's the note 

versus most of its competition 

and actually right off the bat we can 

get rid of the s20 ultra just because 

of how this is similar but better the 

oppo find x2 pro is actually pretty 

similar spec wise and does charge 

way faster than the note but I would 

side with Samsung mostly because of the 

screen on this bad boy 

I would get rid of the rog phone as well 

because the notes cameras are better and 

the form factor way nicer 

but this is actually quite a close one 

because I really appreciate the mega 

battery on the rog 

in fact the notes cameras are also far 

more reliable than Sony's Xperia 1

2 so let's drop that and we can also 

remove the xiaomi as for the time being 

it's a china only model 

and the Huawei p40 pro plus for most 

users because of the lack of google apps 

so that leaves us with the oneplus 8 pro 

a great pro level phone for less 

the iPhone 11 pro max if iOS is your 

platform of choice 

although it might make sense at the 

stage to wait for the iPhone 12 series 

coming soon 

and the galaxy note 20 ultra as my phone 

of choice right now.

Samsung experience 

the way it takes photos the software the 

slight extra exynos battery drain 

then this really is Samsung's pinnacle 

the culmination of years of redesigns 

and problem fixes 

it does make me dream about what this 

phone could have been had we had clean 

google pixel software and 

Google's image processing algorithm but 

we have what we have 

and actually I'm kind of curious where 

do you go from here what is Samsung 

going to bring us 

next because of our tech there are 

diminishing returns to almost everything 

I couldn't see Samsung increasing screen 

resolution further or making the refresh 

rate higher for quite a long time 

so I guess I'm just kind of curious 

where Samsung is going to take these 

phones in the future 

such that they're still keeping the 

average consumer engaged because this 

feels 

so close to the perfect bar phone that 

we imagined when smartphones started 

maybe it'll be through foldable maybe 

something else entirely but for now 

the galaxy note 20 ultra is a go 

especially if you can get the snapdragon 

version