Please don't buy a Galaxy S20 Ultra.
The Samsung S20 Ultra: A Camera and Software Powerhouse with Some Room for Improvement
With its impressive specs, the Samsung S20 Ultra is undoubtedly one of the top smartphones on the market today. The device boasts a 6.8-inch Dynamic AMOLED display, a large 5000mAh battery, and a powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 865+ chipset. But what really sets it apart from other high-end devices is its camera system.
The S20 Ultra's camera system is undoubtedly one of its standout features. With three cameras at the back, including a 108MP primary sensor, a 40MP front camera, and support for 8K video recording, this device can capture some truly stunning images. The camera app itself is also highly customizable, with options to switch between different modes and access various settings.
However, despite its impressive specs, I found myself somewhat underwhelmed by the actual experience of using the S20 Ultra's camera system. For one thing, Samsung's assertion that you can pull 33 megapixel stills out of their 8K video is laughable. Even the example they show on the web looks like hot garbage due to the inherent motion blur in video capture. Why would anybody do that? Especially when the camera app support just taking a still while recording video. I also didn't find myself using the 108MP mode at all. Under ideal circumstances, in direct sunlight, it might be worth switching to, but you better hope there's absolutely no shadows in your shot because its dynamic range is much worse compared to when you allow all of the camera to work together even though both modes support HDR.
On to software, Samsung's Android skin has improved so much that people rarely complain about it. And in fact, when we did our recent video highlighting the top new features of Android 11, the comments section got absolutely flooded with people who apparently didn't realize that yes, I get it, those features are already built into your Samsung phone, but they are not yet part of the Stock Android experience.
I've actually been uncharacteristically happy with the software support that I've gotten on my daily driver Note 9, which is coming up on two years old now. However, notifications have been and continue to be a problem for me. Samsung in general needs to expose notification order controls either via allowing app prioritiesto be manually tuned or by enabling an option to just put everything in reverse chronological order because I am constantly getting pings on my phone that are for like, my garage door opening, and I need to scroll all the way down through a list of messages people have sent me to find out what buzzed my phone. Not to mention that most of the notifications don't have a timestamp on them for some reason.
Also, nothing that I did made my Microsoft Teams notifications come through on the S20 Ultra. This could easily be Microsoft's fault since Teams is a hot pile of steaming garbage. But it does mean that I'm gonna have to dump this phone immediately no matter how much I like it because I use that for work.
The Bottom Line
In conclusion, the Samsung S20 Ultra is great in a lot of ways. The quality of the materials, the specs, the performance, all top-notch. And I'm not usually one to complain about a price. Customer service for anything remember? But the thing is it starts at $1400. That is $300 more than the base model and just $50 less than the top spec iPhone 11 Pro Max with four times the storage. Remember guys, I defended the Fold. But it's not, and it doesn't. At this price, where literally anything else is in play, if you want a head-turner, get a Fold. If you want a status symbol, buy an iPhone. If you wanna take pictures, get a Pixel or an iPhone. If you shoot a lot of video, get an iPhone. If you actually work for your money, here's the thing.
I didn't notice a significant day-to-day difference in experience between this and my old daily driver, Note 9, if however you're a rich kid and you wanna play with the zoom, something I can pretty much guarantee you'll get bored of within a few days. Hey for you though, there's the S20 Ultra.
Dbrand Grip: A Game-Changing Accessory
The dbrand grip is super grippy, you will never drop your phone again. Even if you're me haha, see that'll show you dbrand. What where'd it go? It includes military-grade impact protection, absorbing technology, it's ultra low profile, and at just two millimeters thick, it's got super tactile buttons with their spree polymer, and full compatibility with dbrand's skins. Hey, check this out dbrand, I improved your skin, I put a Linus Tech Tips sticker on top of it, so check out dbrand.com/LinusDropTips, we're gonna have that linked below, so check out their lineup.
If you want to see what the S20 Ultra is capable of, be sure to check out some of our hands-on shots and videos.
"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: en- I know this title concepthas been done to deathbut I have actually never done itbecause I believe that if a productpretty much does what it says on the boxthere is someone outthere who will love it.Otherwise, why would they make it?And there's a lot thatI have found to likeabout the Samsung Galaxy S20Ultra over the last two weeks.Not gonna skip over that stuffbut the truth of the matteris I'm gonna be shelving this phoneas soon as I am done filming this video.Let's talk about why.Today's video is brought to you by iFixit.iFixit's Mahi Driver Kit includestheir quarter inchaluminum screwdriver handleas a magnetic bit socket, neural grip,and swivel top, plus 48 driver bits.Check it out at the linkin the video description.(upbeat music)My immediate impressionof the S20 Ultra 5Gwere mostly positive.It's generally chunkierthan the iPhone 11 Pro Maxdespite being a little bit lighter.But it is superbly balancedas all things should be.And the slimmer 20 by nine displaymakes it easier for me towrap my fingers around it.The materials are alsogreat and remind me moreof an iPhone 10 or 11series than anything elsethat I've held today.But with all the rightSamsung flare added to it.The bezels are much thinner than Apple's.And I think Samsung has finally perfectedboth the curve of the edge of the displayand the width of theirbezels so that distortionand reflections around theedges of onscreen contentare nonexistent and I almostnever manage to accidentallyactivate the touchscreen with my palmwhile I was reaching across it.Even the hole punch display,which I still hate and would immediatelytrade for a popup selfie cameralike OnePlus' Pro Series,is obviously better than Apple's.Now very dated looking forehead nudge.I did miss having the earpiecea little bit lower down.I find it more comfortableto hold against my ear.But if the mandated Samsungis maximum screen coverage,I'd prefer a proper grilleven if it's a weirdlypositioned one to a vibrating screenlike on the LG G8.Even though I normally usemy AirPods Pros these days,when I do wanna listenout loud like in the bathit makes a big differencefor watching moviesand videos on the go tohave an amplified earpiecespeaker that doesn't vibrate your phone.As a quick aside by the way guys,I get a lot of flack forconstantly bringing upthe movie watching experiencein my phone reviews.And I'm finally at the point whereI'm just not gonna take it anymore.I've gotta defend that.Look guys.Not everyone has the income,or the lifestyle toallow them to settle downfor two hours at time on the couchwith their big screenHDR TV and watch a movie.So yeah, the phone is small and there'sgonna be directors andfilmmakers out therethat are giving me a hard timefor watching their movies on itbut given how awesomephones screens have gotten,this one in particular,I don't think it's much of stretch to saythat a Galaxy S20 Ultra isprobably going to be the bestHDR display in the houseof most of the peoplewho end up buying one.The white point of the natural modeis a little warm for my preferencebut after a short adjustment,the S20 Ultra screen looks greatunder basically any conditions.At night in bed all the wayto under direct sunlight.So yeah, if your closeup vision is still goodI see nothing wrong withthrowing on a pair of,like, Drop + THX Panda's,and firing up a movieon your phone.I had no difficulty evenstreaming my heaviestBluRay rips from my plex server over wifi,and the good news about thescreen gets even better,120 Hertz support is basicallythe icing on the cake here.Sweet, delicious, long awaited icing.It was actually kind offunny seeing the reviewerswho obviously mostlyuse main stream phones,heralding 120 Hertz as the next big thing.Guys, it was the last big thing.To be clear, it's great,but here's some kid back in 2011,explaining how it improves the smoothnessof game animations and makesyour device feel snappierand more responsive,but hey, at least wefinally got there, right?So gamers and performanceenthusiasts, rejoice.I have seen some complaintsabout poor battery life,particularly with 120 Hertz enabledand especially on the Exynos models,as well as about the lack of supportfor high refresh rate atthe native resolution,but Samsung's Flachy plusmode didn't bother me at all,and I managed to getthrough the last two weekswith everything enabled.No dark mode, everything at 120 Hertz,always on display, and thatincludes one really long daywith over seven hoursof screen time, love it.The only thing I ended upnot loving about the screenis the in screen ultrasonicfingerprint sensor.It's much better thanwhen it first launchedon the S10 series and most peopleprobably won't notice or care,but when it comes toraw, quick draw speed,Apple's Face IDand competing fingerprintunlocks, are still a hair faster.Something people arenoticing and caring aboutis the significantdifferences this time aroundbetween the Exynos and Snapdragon versionsof the S20 Ultra.I have seen outlier results for both,with users reporting more than10 hours of screen on time,with various optimizations,but for the most part, theones who are complainingabout really bad batterylife are only Exynos users.As for how to explain the difference,Andrei Frumusanu's preliminary reportingon anandtech.com seems tocontain some strong clues.Users who predominantly watch video,which uses efficient fixedfunction decoding hardware,or who browse the web might see justa 10% deficit while users who occasionallyrun heavier apps, couldfall behind by 25% or moredue to Exynos's inferior power efficiency.Now I get it, there's areason everyone does it,but cost saving and supplychain management rationalesbehind dual sourcing partsfor a high volume product like thismake a lot of sense but the issue isthat they have to bebuilt to the same spec,and right now, with thestate that things are in,if I'm a customer who'sin an Exynos region,this kind of battery life performancemakes Samsung's entireS20 lineup a no go for meright out of the gate anddownright embarrassing honestly,when you consider Samsung'sall day battery marketing.As for the camera, it's cool.No, it's super cool.It's still a Samsung camera so the colorsmight lean a little alittle on the cooler side,especially side by side against an iPhone,which tends to lean warmer,and their over sharpening is ever present,but at reasonable zoom levels,like 5X, there is nodoubt that you're gonnaend up with images thatcontain a lot more detailthan if you were justtrying to use softwareto punch in on a 2Xzoom shot on an iPhone.Combined with the 12 megapixel wide angle,you've got a lot of shooting optionsand I think most peopleare gonna find somethingto love about it.I do wish they hadn't quitehyped it up as hard though.Video recording qualityis still way behind Apple,and some of the touted features,like the 100X zoom and 8K recordingare honestly useless as anythingother than a party trick.The 100X zoom adds so much processingthat I would rather movemy face closer to my phoneand let my brain do the guess work,and the 8K video recordingmode isn't so much bad,it gets fine, it's justentirely unnecessary.With the sensor and the processing powerthat can be crammed into a cellphoneyou're just better offwith decently encoded4K than with 8K.And as for Samsung's assertionthat you can pull 33 megapixel stillsout of their 8K video, that is laughable.Even the example they show on the websitelooks like hot garbagebecause of the motion blurthat's inherent in video capture.Why would anybody do that?Especially when the camera app supportjust taking a still whileyou're recording video.I also didn't find myselfusing the 108MP mode at all.Under ideal circumstancesin direct sunlightit might be worth switching to.But you better hope there'sabsolutely no shadowsin your shot because itsdynamic range is much worsecompared to when youallow all of the camerasto work together even thoughboth modes support HDR.On to software.Samsung's Android skinhas improved so muchthat people rarely complain about it.And in fact when we did our recent videohighlighting the top newfeatures of Android 11,the comments sectiongot absolutely floodedwith people who apparentlydidn't realize thatyes, I get it, thosefeatures are already built into your Samsung phone,but they are not yet part ofthe Stock Android experience.I've actually even beenuncharacteristically happywith the software support that I've gottenon my daily driver Note 9,which is coming up on two years old now.However, notificationshave been and continuedto be a problem for me.Samsung in general needs to exposenotification order controls either viaallowing app prioritiesto be manually tunedor by enabling an optionto just put everything inin reverse chronological orderbecause I am constantlygetting pings on my phonethat are for like, my garage door opening,and I need to scroll all the way downthrough a list of messagespeople have sent meto find out what buzzed my phone.Not to mention that mostof the notificationsdon't have a timestampon them for some reason.Also, nothing that I didmade my Microsoft Teamsnotifications come throughon the S20 Ultra.Now, this could easilybe Microsoft's faultsince Teams is a hotpile of steaming garbage.But it does mean thatI'm gonna have to dumpthis phone immediately nomatter how much I like itbecause I use that for work.Bottom line then.The S20 Ultra is great in a lot of ways.The quality of the materials,the specs, the performance, all topnotch.And I'm not usually oneto complain about a price.Customer for anything remember?But the thing is it starts at $1400.That is $300 more than the base modeland just $50 lessthan the top spec iPhone 11 Pro Maxwith four times the storage.That would be fine ifit was utterly flawlessor if it had some space age new technologythat needed an early adopter subsidy.Remember guys, I defended the Fold.But it's not, and it doesn't.At this price, where literallyanything else is in play,if you want a head turner, get a Fold.If you want a statussymbol, buy an iPhone.If you wanna take picturesget a Pixel or an iPhone.If you shoot a lot ofvideo, get an iPhone.If you actually work for your money,here's the thing,I didn't notice a significantday to day differencein experience between thisand my old daily driver,Note 9, if however you're a rich kid,and you wanna play with the zoom,something I can pretty much guaranteeyou'll get bored of within a few days,hey for you though, there's the S20 Ultra.And it's brought to you bydbrand, dbrand is making me say this.The dbrand grip is super grippy,you will never drop your phone again.Even if you're me haha, seethat'll show you dbrand,what where'd it go?It includes militarygrade impact protection,absorbing technology,it's ultra low profile,and at just two millimeters thick,it's got super tactile buttons,with their spree polymer,and full compatibilitywith dbrand's skins.Hey, check this out dbrand,I improved your skin,I put a Linus Tech Tipsticker on top of it,so check out dbrand.com/LinusDropTips,we're gonna have that linked below,so check out their line up.If you want my impressionsof the Z Flip by the way,check out our Short Circuit channel,where I unboxed it, I am notgonna do a full review on here'cause I didn't wannause it for that long,so I sent it back to dbrandas soon as I was done,I'm gonna link that video down below,make sure you subscribe by the way.\n"