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

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