The S20 Ultra: A Comprehensive Camera Comparison with iPhone and Pixel

This photo of a restaurant at dusk showcases the camera capabilities of the latest smartphone releases. The S20 introduces a slight magenta tinge, similar to what was observed in some dynamic daytime shots. In contrast, the iPhone and Pixel will come away with better-looking and more accurate pictures in this scene along the boardwalk. Along the boardwalk, we see the same divergence with the S20 taking on a more purplish hue, while the iPhone produces a warmer image, and the pics are a colder but slightly more accurate rendition. I'd say that somewhere between the Pixel and iPhone was the most accurate to my eyes in the moment.

The dedicated night mode on the Samsung S20 Ultra is where it needs to make some improvements. First, let's start with the good. In this picture behind the glass carousel, you can see that the S20 picks up sharp details and colors with a lot of character. This is easily my favorite version of this picture, as the iPhone comes off rather yellow, while the Pixel is again in the middle with probability of most accurate colors but some grain to it too.

In this photo of a statue, you still see sharp details and popping colors on the S20 but it's also quite yellow. A statue itself is actually out of focus. The iPhone 2 is a little yellow though not nearly as bad, and it has the best details of the statue with proper focus. The Pixel cleans up all yellow discs and produces the most accurate colors but details aren't quite as sharp as we see on the iPhone.

In this shot of the pier, we see a similar situation but the iPhone this time is the most yellow. The S20 still captures some excellent details though. In very dark situations, the S20 Ultra really starts to struggle with producing a balanced photo. For reference, here's the shot without any night mode enabled. This is pretty much how it looks across all three of these phones without the night modes on.

Of course, any night mode comparison wouldn't be complete without testing some selfies. Thankfully, Samsung's over-beautifying and over-sharpening less with the S20 but it still can wash out facial details that come across better on the iPhone and Pixel. This is all without the beauty mode enabled. The iPhone trends a little warmer but it is a little more pleasing to me at least.

The pixel as always has the most neutral color captured in more dynamic scenes. The S20 handles dynamic range better without washing out the entire shot as the iPhone does while the Pixel once again grabs the most realistic photo. The S20 right behind it when it comes to video, the S20 ultra has some big stats behind it 8k video looks great but it's still prone to some of the issues that we see on lower resolution filming.

Without super steady enabled on the S20 you can still see some shutter roll and minor glitches in the imagery which feel quite as smooth as a super-steady movement with which it's stabilized since the iPhone doesn't necessarily have a super-steady mode. We compared 4k 60 frames per second with super-steady enabled on the S22, the best that the iPhone can do with its 4k 60 frames per second video capture you'll see the s 20 negate a lot of wobble that the iPhone still has but you'll also notice less shutter roll on the iPhone side. They both do excellent color and detail capture but panning the camera still looks best on the iPhone.

Turning off super-steady increases these issues for the S 20 and the difference is noticeable as the iPhone is world's smoother. You'll want to keep super-steady stabilization on as much as possible with the S 20 ultra. There you have our first in-depth comparison between three of the biggest behemoths in phone photography right now we've learned a lot for instance there's just no replacement for optical zoom similarly there's no replacement for a really good image processing but a lot of this does come down to preference so make sure you sound off in the comments below and let us know what you prefer and what your needs are.

Hey everybody, thanks for watching if you liked the video make sure to LIKE subscribe hit the notification bell and check out Digital Trends calm for a full camera comparison and review on the S20 ultra.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enit's the question on everybody's minds right now is Samsung's Galaxy s 20 ultra the best camera phone on the market we put it up against the pixel for and the iPhone 11 pro with some cameos of the Huawei P 30 Pro just to see exactly where it lands so you know the first thing that we had to check out was that to zoom so let's get right into it we took a little stroll down to Battery Park to take a look at the Statue of Liberty from afar and this is something that a lot of people might do traveling or at sports events you might not be able to get close to that thing that you want to see but let's see how these four phones handle getting to it first for reference here's a regular photo at 1x with no zoom taken on the s20 ultra this is pretty much how it's gonna look on any phone at this point if we punch into five x oom you can see the most grain on the iPhone what colors are still better than the p30 Pro even if it is sharper with its optical zoom the pixel with no telephoto lens looks surprisingly good with its color and detail reproduction but the s20 ultros photo is already in the lead here with the best all-around composition punch again closer to 10x zoom we leave the pixel behind at about 8 X where it maxes out and the iPhone 11 Pro maxes out at 10x here too surprisingly eight times zoom on the pixel is still less blurry than the iPhone at 10 X at this point the p30 Pro and s 20 alter have created some very pleasing crops here with excellent composition of color and detail so now that we've left the pixel and the iPhone behind we started to get a little bit more creative here we are at twenty five point five x oom where you can see that the p30 and s 20 are still picking up impressive color in detail but the s 20 is just edging it out a little bit further with its better color representation still both are getting a little bit grainy so we punch in just a little bit further to match them both out just to see what happens so at 50 times zoom the Huawei P 30 is maxed out and as you can see things are pretty grainy and a little bit dark punching into 100 times zoom on the S 20 is pretty grainy but still impressive nonetheless colors have picked up well and it's hard to think that we could have ever even seen this from as far back as we actually were it's even harder to think how we could ever use this in real life so more testing was needed so here we are in Jersey City on the tenth floor overlooking the beautiful New York City skyline let's see what we could pick up at 10 times zoom for reference here's the 1x shot from the iPhone which represents generally how it looked on each phone zoom in 8 times where the pixel maxes out and you get arguably the best photo of the set between that and the galaxy s 20 the iPhone and even the Huawei P 30 don't stand a chance here so we stepped into the light of day with the zoom this time and a nature scene to see what we could get better perhaps in the daytime again here's our 1x photo for a frame of reference zooming into 10 x + 8 for the pixel the optical versus digital disparity is wide while the pixel and iPhone are barely usable the s 20 gets a perfectly shareable and cute shot the P 30 does hang with detail capture but overall composition easily goes to the s 20 here punching in further to 30 times zoom where only the P 30 and s 20 can go both shots are significantly less pleasing or shareable but perhaps do a bullet in a pinch if it's something really cool that's really far things are getting significantly less shareable now so for fun we punched in a little bit closer just to see what we could get so we maxed out the P 30 at 50 times zoom where the s 20 still beat it out albeit a very grainy and pixilated image then we just had to see how a hundred times zoom would look which much like 30 X and up can do in a pinch for something extremely cool and extremely far but it's not something you'll much want to share with people otherwise of course we'll have more in-depth analysis of the zoom lens in our full review but it seems already that the 100 times zoom and kind of everywhere in between isn't something that anybody can compete with right now in this mural wall painting you can see that the iPhones processing sometimes uses thing is up a bit while the pixel in s 20 can look a little flat even if the pixel shows more accurate colors in this shot of figurines you can see that the s 20 has a tough time focusing on Pikachu and Sailor Moon on the outskirts of the center of this image though it does have the best color death one produced an odd yellow tint though things were a better focus but the pixel has the best all-around look in this picture of my colleague Jen sitting on the couch you can see that the s20 gets overcome by a sort of magenta tinge while the iPhone and pixel don't seem to have much trouble producing a well composed image moving on to a more dynamic neon sign the s20 mellows out highlights but ends up flattening things a bit even though it composes a decently accurate picture the iPhone is most boisterous with its highlights and color reproduction and it may make for the most pleasing picture out of the three here through these sets of photos is clear that the s20 ultra still lags just behind the iPhone and pixel for it when it comes to producing consistently great dynamic and daytime shots but then there's the wide-angle camera where the yes Tony pulls ahead once again the s 20s ultra wide lens is able to pull in some better colors and does better work with dynamic range as seen in this bus photo also in this long view of a street with art on the walls the iPhone loses details and adds purple fringing around the branches whereas the s20 pulls in a nice balance shot we see the s 20s better details in this photo of the glass carousel along the branches you can see better details and more sharp representation of the subject while the iPhone still looks good the s20 quality eats out just ahead portrait shots with good lighting shows similar color differences but in this instance we found the s20 ultra capturing an unfocused subject in its live focus mode the pixel and iphone captured the same subject just fine much like you'll find with daytime photography a lot of the differences are gonna come down to personal preference but the s20 is much improved over the s 10 in low-light imagery it avoids overly warm tones without night mode but risks losing color and pop in this city landscape the s20 Spoto loses any hint of blue in the skies that we see in the pixel in the iPhone shots the iPhones photo is a bit more yellow but I tend to prefer it over the other to the pixel definitely finds the best color compromise between accuracy and pomp in this photo of a restaurant at dusk the s20 introduces a slight magenta tinge like we saw in some dynamic daytime shots the iPhone and pix will come away with better looking and more accurate pictures in this scene along the boardwalk we see the same divergence with the s20 taking on a more purplish hue the iPhone a warmer one and the pics are a colder but slightly more accurate rendition I'd say somewhere between the pixel and iPhone was the most accurate to my eyes in the moment which brings us to the dedicated night mode where Samsung has made some improvements but it's not quite where it needs to be yet first let's start with the good in this picture behind the glass carousel you can see that the s20 picks up some sharp details and colors with a lot of character this is easily my favorite version of this picture the iPhone comes off rather yellow while the pixel is again in the middle with probability of most accurate colors but some grain to it too in this photo of a statue you still see sharp details and popping colors on the s20 but it's also quite yellow and a statue itself is actually out of focus the iPhone 2 is a little yellow though not nearly as bad and it has the best details of the statue with proper focus the pixel cleans up all yellow discs and produces the most accurate colors but details aren't quite as sharp as we see on the iPhone with this shot of the pier we see a similar situation but the iPhone this time is the most yellow with the s20 having the sharpest details still the pixel gets the details and colors right but has some trouble with the highlights and back yes 20 probably comes away that the best picture here with this picture inside of a restaurant things get even worse for the s20 it takes a very yellow photo even though it captures some excellent bouquet in detail the iPhone gets the best mixture of colour detail and depth just slightly edging out the pixel here in very dark situations the s20 ultra really starts to struggle with producing a balanced photo for reference here's the shot without any night mode enable this is pretty much how it looks across all three of these phones without the night modes on and of course any night mode comparison it wouldn't be complete with a few shots of those stars what we find here is the s20 lags behind again having trouble getting decent handheld star shots both the pixel and iPhone turn in about the same results for this but nothing compares to the stunning shots captured with the pixels Astro photography mode which is only triggered when it's in a tripod and you know we couldn't go this long without testing some selfies of course Samsung's thankfully over beautifying an over sharpening less with the s20 but it still can wash out facial details that come across better on the iPhone and pixel and this is all without the beauty mode enabled the iPhone trends a little warmer but it is a little more pleasing to me at least the pixel as always has the most neutral color captured in more dynamic scenes the s20 handles dynamic range better without washing out the entire shot as the iphone does while the pixel once again it grabs the most realistic photo with the s20 right behind it when it comes to video the s20 ultra has some big stats behind it 8k video looks great but it's still prone to some of the issues that we see on lower resolution filming with the s20 altra without super study enabled on the s20 you can still see some shutter role and minor glitches in the imagery which feel quite as smooth as a super steady movement with which it's stabilized since the iPhone doesn't necessarily have a super steady mode we compared 4k 60 frames per second with super steady enabled on the S 22 the best that the iPhone can do with its 4k 60 frames per second video capture you'll see the s 20 negate a lot of wobble that the iPhone still has but you'll also notice less shutter roll on the iPhone side they both do excellent color and detail capture but panning the camera still looks best on the iPhone here turning off super steady increases these issues for the s 20 and the difference is noticeable as the iPhone is world's smoother you'll want to keep super steady stabilization on as much as possible with the s 20 ultra so there you have our first in-depth comparison between three of the biggest behemoths in phone photography right now we've learned a lot for instance there's just no replacement for optical zoom similarly there's no replacement for a really good image processing but a lot of this does come down to preference so make sure you sound off in the comments below and let us know what you prefer and what your needs are hey everybody thanks for watching if you liked the video make sure to LIKE subscribe hit the notification bell and check out Digital Trends calm for a full camera comparison and review on the s20 ultra youit's the question on everybody's minds right now is Samsung's Galaxy s 20 ultra the best camera phone on the market we put it up against the pixel for and the iPhone 11 pro with some cameos of the Huawei P 30 Pro just to see exactly where it lands so you know the first thing that we had to check out was that to zoom so let's get right into it we took a little stroll down to Battery Park to take a look at the Statue of Liberty from afar and this is something that a lot of people might do traveling or at sports events you might not be able to get close to that thing that you want to see but let's see how these four phones handle getting to it first for reference here's a regular photo at 1x with no zoom taken on the s20 ultra this is pretty much how it's gonna look on any phone at this point if we punch into five x oom you can see the most grain on the iPhone what colors are still better than the p30 Pro even if it is sharper with its optical zoom the pixel with no telephoto lens looks surprisingly good with its color and detail reproduction but the s20 ultros photo is already in the lead here with the best all-around composition punch again closer to 10x zoom we leave the pixel behind at about 8 X where it maxes out and the iPhone 11 Pro maxes out at 10x here too surprisingly eight times zoom on the pixel is still less blurry than the iPhone at 10 X at this point the p30 Pro and s 20 alter have created some very pleasing crops here with excellent composition of color and detail so now that we've left the pixel and the iPhone behind we started to get a little bit more creative here we are at twenty five point five x oom where you can see that the p30 and s 20 are still picking up impressive color in detail but the s 20 is just edging it out a little bit further with its better color representation still both are getting a little bit grainy so we punch in just a little bit further to match them both out just to see what happens so at 50 times zoom the Huawei P 30 is maxed out and as you can see things are pretty grainy and a little bit dark punching into 100 times zoom on the S 20 is pretty grainy but still impressive nonetheless colors have picked up well and it's hard to think that we could have ever even seen this from as far back as we actually were it's even harder to think how we could ever use this in real life so more testing was needed so here we are in Jersey City on the tenth floor overlooking the beautiful New York City skyline let's see what we could pick up at 10 times zoom for reference here's the 1x shot from the iPhone which represents generally how it looked on each phone zoom in 8 times where the pixel maxes out and you get arguably the best photo of the set between that and the galaxy s 20 the iPhone and even the Huawei P 30 don't stand a chance here so we stepped into the light of day with the zoom this time and a nature scene to see what we could get better perhaps in the daytime again here's our 1x photo for a frame of reference zooming into 10 x + 8 for the pixel the optical versus digital disparity is wide while the pixel and iPhone are barely usable the s 20 gets a perfectly shareable and cute shot the P 30 does hang with detail capture but overall composition easily goes to the s 20 here punching in further to 30 times zoom where only the P 30 and s 20 can go both shots are significantly less pleasing or shareable but perhaps do a bullet in a pinch if it's something really cool that's really far things are getting significantly less shareable now so for fun we punched in a little bit closer just to see what we could get so we maxed out the P 30 at 50 times zoom where the s 20 still beat it out albeit a very grainy and pixilated image then we just had to see how a hundred times zoom would look which much like 30 X and up can do in a pinch for something extremely cool and extremely far but it's not something you'll much want to share with people otherwise of course we'll have more in-depth analysis of the zoom lens in our full review but it seems already that the 100 times zoom and kind of everywhere in between isn't something that anybody can compete with right now in this mural wall painting you can see that the iPhones processing sometimes uses thing is up a bit while the pixel in s 20 can look a little flat even if the pixel shows more accurate colors in this shot of figurines you can see that the s 20 has a tough time focusing on Pikachu and Sailor Moon on the outskirts of the center of this image though it does have the best color death one produced an odd yellow tint though things were a better focus but the pixel has the best all-around look in this picture of my colleague Jen sitting on the couch you can see that the s20 gets overcome by a sort of magenta tinge while the iPhone and pixel don't seem to have much trouble producing a well composed image moving on to a more dynamic neon sign the s20 mellows out highlights but ends up flattening things a bit even though it composes a decently accurate picture the iPhone is most boisterous with its highlights and color reproduction and it may make for the most pleasing picture out of the three here through these sets of photos is clear that the s20 ultra still lags just behind the iPhone and pixel for it when it comes to producing consistently great dynamic and daytime shots but then there's the wide-angle camera where the yes Tony pulls ahead once again the s 20s ultra wide lens is able to pull in some better colors and does better work with dynamic range as seen in this bus photo also in this long view of a street with art on the walls the iPhone loses details and adds purple fringing around the branches whereas the s20 pulls in a nice balance shot we see the s 20s better details in this photo of the glass carousel along the branches you can see better details and more sharp representation of the subject while the iPhone still looks good the s20 quality eats out just ahead portrait shots with good lighting shows similar color differences but in this instance we found the s20 ultra capturing an unfocused subject in its live focus mode the pixel and iphone captured the same subject just fine much like you'll find with daytime photography a lot of the differences are gonna come down to personal preference but the s20 is much improved over the s 10 in low-light imagery it avoids overly warm tones without night mode but risks losing color and pop in this city landscape the s20 Spoto loses any hint of blue in the skies that we see in the pixel in the iPhone shots the iPhones photo is a bit more yellow but I tend to prefer it over the other to the pixel definitely finds the best color compromise between accuracy and pomp in this photo of a restaurant at dusk the s20 introduces a slight magenta tinge like we saw in some dynamic daytime shots the iPhone and pix will come away with better looking and more accurate pictures in this scene along the boardwalk we see the same divergence with the s20 taking on a more purplish hue the iPhone a warmer one and the pics are a colder but slightly more accurate rendition I'd say somewhere between the pixel and iPhone was the most accurate to my eyes in the moment which brings us to the dedicated night mode where Samsung has made some improvements but it's not quite where it needs to be yet first let's start with the good in this picture behind the glass carousel you can see that the s20 picks up some sharp details and colors with a lot of character this is easily my favorite version of this picture the iPhone comes off rather yellow while the pixel is again in the middle with probability of most accurate colors but some grain to it too in this photo of a statue you still see sharp details and popping colors on the s20 but it's also quite yellow and a statue itself is actually out of focus the iPhone 2 is a little yellow though not nearly as bad and it has the best details of the statue with proper focus the pixel cleans up all yellow discs and produces the most accurate colors but details aren't quite as sharp as we see on the iPhone with this shot of the pier we see a similar situation but the iPhone this time is the most yellow with the s20 having the sharpest details still the pixel gets the details and colors right but has some trouble with the highlights and back yes 20 probably comes away that the best picture here with this picture inside of a restaurant things get even worse for the s20 it takes a very yellow photo even though it captures some excellent bouquet in detail the iPhone gets the best mixture of colour detail and depth just slightly edging out the pixel here in very dark situations the s20 ultra really starts to struggle with producing a balanced photo for reference here's the shot without any night mode enable this is pretty much how it looks across all three of these phones without the night modes on and of course any night mode comparison it wouldn't be complete with a few shots of those stars what we find here is the s20 lags behind again having trouble getting decent handheld star shots both the pixel and iPhone turn in about the same results for this but nothing compares to the stunning shots captured with the pixels Astro photography mode which is only triggered when it's in a tripod and you know we couldn't go this long without testing some selfies of course Samsung's thankfully over beautifying an over sharpening less with the s20 but it still can wash out facial details that come across better on the iPhone and pixel and this is all without the beauty mode enabled the iPhone trends a little warmer but it is a little more pleasing to me at least the pixel as always has the most neutral color captured in more dynamic scenes the s20 handles dynamic range better without washing out the entire shot as the iphone does while the pixel once again it grabs the most realistic photo with the s20 right behind it when it comes to video the s20 ultra has some big stats behind it 8k video looks great but it's still prone to some of the issues that we see on lower resolution filming with the s20 altra without super study enabled on the s20 you can still see some shutter role and minor glitches in the imagery which feel quite as smooth as a super steady movement with which it's stabilized since the iPhone doesn't necessarily have a super steady mode we compared 4k 60 frames per second with super steady enabled on the S 22 the best that the iPhone can do with its 4k 60 frames per second video capture you'll see the s 20 negate a lot of wobble that the iPhone still has but you'll also notice less shutter roll on the iPhone side they both do excellent color and detail capture but panning the camera still looks best on the iPhone here turning off super steady increases these issues for the s 20 and the difference is noticeable as the iPhone is world's smoother you'll want to keep super steady stabilization on as much as possible with the s 20 ultra so there you have our first in-depth comparison between three of the biggest behemoths in phone photography right now we've learned a lot for instance there's just no replacement for optical zoom similarly there's no replacement for a really good image processing but a lot of this does come down to preference so make sure you sound off in the comments below and let us know what you prefer and what your needs are hey everybody thanks for watching if you liked the video make sure to LIKE subscribe hit the notification bell and check out Digital Trends calm for a full camera comparison and review on the s20 ultra you\n"