There
are three big newthings about the Galaxy S20 that you need to know about. First
is the new camera system, the second is that they support 5G, and third, it has
a nicerscreen with 120Hz refresh rate. There's also a bunch of little stuff
too, like they got rid of the headphone jack. They also added a bunchof
Samsung-y features to the software but beforewe get into any of that, let's
just not takethe design for granted. It looks a lot like what allGalaxy phones
have looked like for a few years now. There's curved glass inthe back and metal
rails and a screen that isalmost perfectly bezel-less but seriously though,
compare this phone toany other Android phone on the market, your Pixels, your
OnePluses or even your Huawei's and I think the S20 is just plain nicer. I
actually think it's nicerthan the iPhone 11 Pro, just from a hardware
perspective. Also the small one, it comes in pink, whichis the best color
option. The camera module on the backis this big oblong rectangle that's off to
the side. The screen is only interruptedby a tiny little hole for the selfie
camera instead of having a big old notch or a forehead or whatever. It uses an
in-screen finger print sensor which I have to admitis a little bit slower than
other biometric methodsbut I do just fine with it. Now this thing starts at
1000 bucks and the Plus version is 1200 bucks and so I know that you can get
most of these features for cheaperon other android phones, but the Galaxy S
line just usually manages to feel more like a complete package. Samsung is charging
a lotof money for this phone and for that money, you deserveto get a really
nice object and yeah, Samsung delivers. Don't take it for granted. Okay, enough
gushing.
Let's
talk about the camera, which is the first big newthing you need to know about.
Okay so, actually with the Galaxy S20 Ultra, I had to go into this biglong
complicated story about how high megapixel cameras work, but with the S20 and
the S20 Plus, it's a lot easier, mostly. So the main camera is a
moretraditional 12 megapixels and so is the wide angle camera. The telephoto
though is 64 megapixels. Samsung says that itneeds all those megapixels to
improve the zoom on its telephoto and that actually works. You can get a better
shot zoomed in at three or four X thanyou can with an iPhone or even a Pixel.
It's still not great, but it's a step up. Now it also can theoretically go up
to 30X but it looks really badand it definitely loses to the S20 Ultra at that
zoom, but the S20 Ultra costs 400 dollars more and I really don't think it's
worth it to get decent 30X zoom shots. Now I was really hardon the Galaxy S20
Ultra for auto focus problems and for how it did weird stuff to faces. The
regular S20 though,it's better for that stuff but it's not perfect. Focusing is
improved and maybe that's because it's using that more traditional 12 megapixel
sensor which uses a more traditional dual pixel auto focus method. It still
hunts for focus just a little bit in video but it's not awful. Now as for
faces, I do think that this phoneis a little bit chiller than the Ultra with
the sharpening and the smoothing butit's still doing it more than I would like,
it's a Samsung phone so it wants to smooth faces. You should never ever turn on
Bixby scene detection though if you want the white balance to be any good at all.
What kills me is that ifyou turn on the Pro mode on these cameras, everything
looks great and if you use the selfie camera and turn off all the smoothing
there, everything looks great. Basically I feel like ifSamsung would just get
out of it's own way with the camera, the whole camera systemwould be right
there with the iPhone 11 Pro and the Pixel 4 but as it is right now, it'sstill
a third place finish. As a whole package, I do actually like thisbetter than
the Pixel 4 because you get an ultra wide and you get way better video
performance. All right. There are some otherfeatures to talk about. So you can
take 64megapixel photos with this, but even if you do itin really bright light,
when I crop in, I didn'tsee enough clean details to make it worth it. I think
night mode is pretty good, it's right in there with the iPhone and about to the
level of the Pixel, better than I expected. And video quality of course is very
good, it's Samsung quality video. It's not quite up to the level of the iPhone
Pro though. Oh if you were thinking you wanted to get the S20 Plusinstead of
the smaller S20 because it has that time offlight depth vision camera, honestly
don't bother. I didn't see any improvementin portrait photos because of that
extra lens.
The
second thing to know isthat these phones support 5G and I have to be honest, I
didn't get a chance to really test 5G because I'm here in San Francisco where I
don't have 5G networks to test on with the carriers that I have. I did test 5G
on theUltra back in New York and it was great but I still think that you
shouldn't buythis phone just because it supports 5G, I just don't think the 5G
networks are there yet. One thing you should know is that the Plus
modelsupports the millimeter wave version of 5G while thesmaller S20 doesn't,
but unless you love standing on a particular streetcorner to download videos,
who cares about millimeter wave.
Now
one reason you mightwanna get the S20 Plus besides the biggerscreen, is battery
life. I mostly tested the smaller S20 which has a 4000 milliamp battery and
after everything settled down from the initial setup, I was getting aroundfive
hours of screen time with the high refresh rate turned on. Brennan tested the
S20 Plus which has a 4500 milliamp battery, he got a little bit more. I think
either one canget you through a day and both really embarrassthe Pixel 4 for
longevity, but neither one is like stellar. As for performance, I mean it's
great. The only Android phone that's faster than these phones is probablythe
Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra. There's plenty of RAM andthe Snapdragon 865
processor, it seems like the real deal. Still Samsung is doing Samsungstuff
with the software, I could complain about this all day but rather than do that,
I actually wanna tell you what I do to corral Samsung's worst tendencies. I
clean up quick settings first of all, second I install thisapp called Side
Actions which lets you reprogramthe power and volume buttons to do the stuff
that you actually wanna do like launch you know, the Google Assistant and set
up Bixby. Next I install this appcalled Edge Calendars which is awesome, it
lets you swipe in to see your calendars right away. I turn off Samsung Daily
and I also move the brightness slider up to the top so it's easier to access.
Oh there's one more setting that I turn on everytime with the Galaxy S20, the
120Hz screen. I don't know if I everwanna buy a phone again that doesn't have a
highrefresh rate screen, it's just, it's so much better. The animations are
better, the scrolling is better, it just, it feels better.
There
is a trade offfor battery life though, it is worse if you havethe high refresh
rate on and Samsung just locks at 120Hz, it doesn't try and vary it. So on the
small one, if you definitely need it to last all day, you might wanna ratchet
it back to 60Hz. Samsung also knocks downthe screen resolution when you're at
120Hz but I think that trade off is totally worth it on both sizes of the
phone. Again, it just improves the experience of the phone so much. And of
course the screen isa typical Samsung screen, which means that it's, it's
great. I do think Samsung's default colors are a little bit too garish, but you
can set it to natural and then it just, it just looks good. Anyway, that's it.
That's the third thing to know about the S20. The screen is awesome. And I
don't think you shouldever spend 1000 dollars on a phone again without ahigh
refresh rate screen. Samsung decided to callthis the Galaxy S20 instead of the
Galaxy S11 because it has those three things. The new camera system, support
for 5G and thehigh refresh rate screen. But I think the camera is only a minor
evolutionary upgrade over the S10. The zoom is really nice, but otherwise it
fundamentallyacts like the Samsung cameras that I'm used to. Good, but not the
best. I think 5G is a wash becausethe support really isn't there in most cities
and although I dearly lovethe 120Hz refresh rate screen, I understand that
that's a nice to have, it's not an actual functional improvement. So yeah. In
my book, this is more of an S11 than an S20. It's not a whole new generation
but with fundamentals this good, I'll take it. Call it what you want Samsung.
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