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Summary

Samsung's new flagship, the Galaxy S20 Ultra, tries to pack every single modern phone feature and the kitchen sink, and it mostly succeeds. It is Samsung's most expensive smartphone yet (not counting the foldables) and for the first time, the starting price is actually higher than on arch-rival Apple's top device, the iPhone 11 Pro Max.

In exchange for that high price, you get more features: the S20 Ultra comes with 5G connectivity that the iPhone lacks, it comes with a zoom camera that allows you to see things so far away that your eye cannot see them, and its screen now refreshes at double the rate for a buttery smooth experience. All of that is powered by a huge, 5,000mAh battery cell that lasts on and on.

There are a few camera kinks like a wonky autofocus in video and there are a few inconsistencies and smaller issues with the camera. Samsung has promised an update that would fix those camera issues, but while we are optimistic, we do feel like this phone has been rushed a bit. The interface is also starting to get a bit overwhelming with settings. Overall, though, the S20 Ultra will likely impress you, especially if you can stomach its $1,400 price.

Intro

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Making a phone that truly stands out these days is a tough challenge: most smartphones already look great, cameras are better than ever, and even battery life has gotten quite good lately.

So what would you do if you were the one calling the shots at the biggest smartphone maker in the world?

Well, we know what Samsung would do: come up with a crazy new camera system that can zoom further than ever before and add every new feature you could think of in a single device. After the hugely successful Galaxy S10 series last year, Samsung takes things up a notch with its most expensive phone yet (not counting the folding and flipping ones): the Galaxy S20 Ultra. It has everything you might want in a flagship phone: a big, 6.9-inch screen with colors that look incredible, a giant, 5,000mAh battery on the inside, and support for 5G connectivity. But its main focus is on the one feature Samsung says has the most value to those looking for a new phone, and it's the camera.

How well has Samsung done its job? I have been using the Galaxy S20 Ultra for a week now, taking a bunch of photos and comparing it to the most popular rivals from Apple, Google and others. Read on to find out how the S20 Ultra performed.

But first, let's start with a quick look at what you get inside the box with the Ultra:

• Phone with pre-applied plastic screen protector
• 25-watt charger with USB-C connection (black)
• USB-C to USB-C cable (black)
• USB-C in-ear headphones, tuned by AKG (black)
• A pair of large and small sized eartips for the headphones
• User manual
• SIM tool
• *Clear Case (might be included in some markets and not in others)

Design

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You might be quite intimidated when you read that the S20 Ultra has a 6.9-inch screen. "Wasn't that as big as tablets back in the day?," you may rightfully wonder. The answer is a bit complicated, but put shortly, no, the S20 Ultra is definitely not as big as tablets back in the day. The reason for this is the aspect ratio which used to be more squarish on older devices, and these days, the S20 Ultra has a much taller and also a much narrower display (it uses a 20:9 aspect ratio). In fact, the S20 Ultra is quite the tall phone, yet at the same time it's even narrower than the 6.5" iPhone 11 Pro Max which uses a different aspect ratio.

Since we have already drawn some parallels, let's also say that the S20 Ultra is also quite the thick phone. Compared to its S10 predecessors from last year, it's noticeably bulkier and heavier too.

The materials Samsung uses are the familiar combination of toughened glass for the front and back, and polished, glossy aluminum for the middle frame of the device. Archrival Apple is using stainless steel for its Pro series of iPhones, and that materials feels a bit more lush, but the aluminum on the S20 Ultra helps keep the weight down and the Ultra weighs less than an iPhone 11 Pro Max.

My colleague Peter complained about how disappointingly dull the design of the S20 Ultra is, especially when you compare it with the mesmerizing Aura Glow finish on Samsung's Note 10 Plus late last year, a design that reflected colors in all sorts of beautiful patterns while remaining classy. Here on the S20 Ultra you have none of that eye-candy: just a plain old boring gray model and a black version, and both attract fingerprints like crazy too. Most people would probably put a case on it and not care too much, but it's strange nonetheless.

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There are two important changes in the S20 Ultra: the first one is that the Bixby button is gone (good riddance!), and the second one is much more unfortunate, and it's the removal of the 3.5mm headphone jack. Not a surprise considering current trends, but definitely a feature that some people are still missing on the latest smartphones.

On the back, you have bulging out a camera module the size of which we haven't seen since the good old Nokia Lumia times. As one acquaintance puts it, "if my kid is scared of it, than it definitely doesn't pass the beauty test". Hopefully, Samsung has some serious camera magic to show in exchange for this giant camera module, we take a look at the photos and videos a bit later in this review.

Finally, this latest glass and metal concoction is also IP68 water and dust resistant, which is something that we have come to expect and it simply means that you should not worry about getting your phone a bit wet. At the same time, diving with it is definitely not a good idea, especially in salty water that would damage it, a reminder I feel obliged to put as another acquaintance of mine washed their water protected Galaxy phone in the sea only to find out its USB-C port was compromised.

Display

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We have already mentioned part of the screen specs, so here is the full breakdown: you get a big, 6.9-inch Dynamic AMOLED screen with a maximum resolution of 1440 x 3200 pixels. Most importantly, this is practically a flat screen. Gone are the times of those Galaxy phones with their displays tapered towards the edges. We find flat screen easier to use and even small conveniences like finding a proper glass screen protector are much easier with a flat screen.

The phone has a tiny punch hold camera centered at the top and bezels so tiny that... well, it makes using the phone without a case actually quite frustrating at times as just holding it you accidentally touch parts of the screen and trigger random actions. Slap a case on it, and this problem disappears, though.

The big new feature here, however, is something called a 120-Hertz refresh rate. If you are just as devoid of memories from your high school years as yours truly, let me remind you that a Hertz is a unit of measuring frequencies, and in this case, it means that the screen of the S20 Ultra refreshes 120 times per seconds, double that of your typical smartphone that runs at 60Hz. In reality, this means that the phone reacts to your touch with a sense of urgency and immediacy that you don't quite feel on a 60Hz phone and everything appears to be running faster and smoother. The difference is really noticeable and you don't have to be a geek to see it BUT and that's a big one, it will also result in considerably higher power consumption. That is why Samsung gives you the option to go into the display setting and change it to the traditional 60Hz mode where you will get better battery life.

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There are two things to know about the 120Hz option: first, it's not available in the maximum Quad HD resolution and it only works in Full HD mode; and second, there is no in-between 90Hz option, which we find a bit strange as that would have been a nice balance between smoothness and not too high of a battery drain.

The rest is all about the colors and Samsung as a company that is also making AMOLED screens has absolutely mastered them. You have two color modes: a Vivid and a Natural one, which basically lets you choose between oversaturated, vivid colors (the default option) and more toned down colors (that is the option we prefer as we find the Vivid mode a bit too unrealistic).

Traditional staples of the Samsung display experience are all still present: you have the quite useful Always-on Display option that gives you a quick peek at notifications, you have the Edge lighting which lights up the edges of the screen with a pulsating color show (this is meant to replace the traditional notification LED light that is missing here), and you have the Edge screen with shortcuts.

Fingerprint Scanner and Security

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One of our biggest complaints with the S10 series and then the Note 10 series was the fingerprint scanner. Samsung used a fingerprint reader embedded under the screen and one of the ultrasonic kind, meaning that it uses sound waves to read the ridges and specific pattern of your finger to recognize it. This is different from most other Android phone makers that use an optical solution that uses light. Unfortunately, the S20 Ultra does not seem to have improved much from the Note series last year and the ultrasonic fingerprint scanner still feels like a hit-or-miss experience. Sure, it works most of the time, but we were having far more missed readings than on other phones.

You also have face recognition as an option. The Ultra uses 2D picture based face recognition, so it's not quite as complex and secure as the 3D models used on Apple's Face ID, or Google's Pixel 4 series, but we do recommend you try it out. Since the fingerprint scanner experience is not quite perfect, you might find it a better experience to use both the fingerprint and face recognition in tandem. Just don't forget that this face recognition system could theoretically be tricked by some malicious actor using your photo.

One UI and Android

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The S20 Ultra is running on a slightly newer version of the Samsung One UI that we have already seen on the S10 and Note 10 series. You have One UI version 2.1 on the Ultra and the looks are the same as on the S10 series, but there are a couple of new features, chief among them a new Quick Share option that is basically Samsung's alternative to AirDrop and allows you to quickly send big files between devices without the need to deal with slow Bluetooth speeds.

The feature is not supported on the S10 series yet, so we could only test it between the new Galaxy S20 Ultra and Z Flip. To illustrate the speeds you can expect to get, we tried sending a 1GB video from the S20 Ultra to the Z Flip, and it transferred in just 21 seconds, which works out to transfer speeds of nearly 50MB per second, impressively quick. QuickShare works even when the devices are not connected to a network or even Wi-Fi. What it does is create an ad-hoc Wi-Fi network for every file transfer. While it worked great most of the time, it did not always work so fast, and on a couple of occasions we noticed slowdowns as the same transfer took nearly 40 seconds and once even two minutes, but most of the time, the speeds that you will get will be pretty incredible. We can only hope such a feature arrives on a much wider range of Android smartphones in the future.

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Processor, RAM and Performance

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The S20 Ultra like other Samsung flagship phones comes in two versions depending on your location: customers in the United States and a few other countries are getting the S20 Ultra powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 system chip, while the rest of the world is getting the phone with the Exynos 990 chip made by Samsung.

We happen to have the Exynos model and the performance between the two might differ slightly, so keep that in mind when reading about our battery tests and performance benchmarks.

In the daily grind, the phone definitely feels fast like you would expect for a 2020 flagship, but there are a few persisting issues. The first one is a weird jitter when scrolling in basically all Google-made apps. If you are using Chrome, YouTube or Gmail, expect to see a strange jitter as you swipe around. This has been an issue for years now with Samsung phones, and there doesn't seem to be a fix in the works. In comparison, if you switch to using Samsung's browser instead of Chrome, everything runs perfectly smooth and the jitter is not there, but there are just no worthy alternatives to apps like YouTube.

But let's not be too nit-picky, and take a look at the rest of specs which are generous: you get either a 128GB storage/12GB RAM version or a 512GB storage/16GB RAM model (we got the latter) and you get expandable storage via microSD cards. This is an insane amount of RAM and it means that you can keep dozens of apps open in the background without any issue with the phone. Here are a few performance benchmarks that will give you more color about the speeds you will get on the Ultra:

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Camera

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The make-or-break feature of modern smartphone has got to be the camera. As everyone is working on creating the ultimate smartphone camera, Samsung is pushing the boundaries with a huge camera bump where you can find a brand new, 108-megapixel camera sensor for the main shooter, as well as a folded periscope lens with a native 4X field of view. You also get a similar ultra-wide camera as you used to have in the S10 and Note 10 series, but what is missing is a 2X zoom telephoto camera.

Let's take a quick look at the camera specs:

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So how do images turn out?

Well, mostly great, with just a few inconsistencies. Here are a few shots taken on the Ultra to give you a rough ballpark.

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Let's start with one thing that's absolutely great: this phone can really zoom better than any other phone we have ever tested. But! Forget about the 100X zoom marketing mumbo-jumbo! The only thing you get at 100X is a blurry mess, not something that deserves to be called a photograph. If you stick with the 4X to 10X zoom range the results you will get are truly incredible, clean and quite sharp, destroying other phones. Interestingly, the zoom performance until the 4X zoom level is not that impressive as the phone just seems to use digital zoom at those levels, while other phones use a dedicated 2X telephoto lens that's missing here.

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S20 Ultra 5X zoom

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iPhone 11 Pro Max 5X zoom

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S20 Ultra 10X zoom

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iPhone 11 Pro Max 10X zoom

If you just use the main camera, you should know that it actually defaults to taking 12-megapixel photos. It comes up with these pictures after combining 9 individual pixels from the 108-megapixel sensor and combining them into one. This way, Samsung is able to avoid the noise that you usually get with so many pixels cramped in a tight sensor, and the result is images that mostly look good. When comparing the S20 Ultra photos to other phones you will immediately notice that images from the Ultra are way sharper. In a way, that's a good thing: the Ultra has sharpness both at the center of the image, as well as the corners, which often look a bit soft and less detailed on other phones. On the other hand, however, this is not just a regular sharp photo: it is artificially oversharpened as you can see by the glowing halos of light around objects. The last time we saw such aggressive oversharpening was on the S7 Edge, and we thought Samsung has managed to fix that issue, but it's recurring again now with the 108MP sensor.

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Original image on S20 Ultra

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Crop. Notice the halo around tree branches (as if they glow), an artifact of aggressive oversharpening

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Original image on S10 Plus

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Crop. Notice lack of aggressive oversharpening

If like me, you shoot a lot of photos using portrait mode (Live Focus), you'd find that the Ultra makes one quite big compromise here: since there is no 2X lens, it will use digital zoom to give you that 2X magnification for portrait shots. This in turn means that Live Focus photos sometimes look worse than on other phones. The digitally zoomed photos don't have as much detail and quality as earlier Galaxy and are the biggest regression in this camera. Notice in the images below how the sun from the side is way too bright for the S20 Ultra and it has burned the face of our beautiful model: