Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra
A bigger screen and battery are matched with an inflated price, but in a sea of similar handsets the Note 20 series stands out
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PRICE 256GB, £983 (£1,179 inc VAT) from johnlewis.com
The term “phablet” might not be fashionable anymore, but Samsung’s Galaxy Notes are still the first handsets that spring to mind when you think of that term. Despite outlasting the designation once used to define it, the Note is back once again, and this time around Samsung isn’t resting on its laurels when it comes to upgrades.
There are two models of Note 20 to choose between in 2020. The Galaxy Note 20 Ultra is primed to steal the limelight, since it’s where you’ll find all the extras. Just be prepared to fork out the most you’ve ever had to spend on a (non-folding) Samsung phone: while the plain Note 20 is £849, the Ultra starts at £1,179.
In return, you get a monster list of upgrades compared to last year’s Note 10+ ( see issue 304, p81). That includes Samsung’s most
up-to-date flagship processor, the Exynos 990, a well as a 6.9in 120Hz screen, a 108megapixel camera (accompanied by wide-angle and telephoto zoom lenses) and 5G as standard. The S Pen returns with new features, along with DeX mode, Samsung’s desktoplike interface, which now supports wireless screen mirroring.
Key features
There’s no hiding from this phone’s size, but Samsung keeps it comfortable in the hand, with curved sides – unlike the regular Note 20 – that literally take the edge off the 77mm width. It’s tall at 165mm, but an 8.1mm thickness means it’s more svelte than you might expect while a weight of 208g is reasonable.
The 6.9in screen dominates first impressions. A neat hole-punch notch sits in the top-centre portion of the display, which houses the tenmegapixel selfie camera, and it also has some of the skinniest bezels I’ve ever seen on a handset.
Flip the phone over, though, and we encounter the first of Samsung’s aesthetic missteps. The rectangular camera housing, which sits in the top-left corner, is unsightly. It takes up a lot of space, increases the weight of the top portion of the handset, and protrudes a noticeable 4mm. Nor am I a fan of the harsh-edged top and bottom sides of the phone, and there isn’t even a 3.5mm headphone jack for compensation.
Still, the remaining rear space is quite lovely. There are three elegant colour choices, with a fingerprintfriendly frosty finish to chew over this year: Mystic Black, Mystic White and Mystic Bronze. This looks just as good here as it does on the Samsung Galaxy Tab S7+ ( see p56).
Pen features
The S Pen’s interior housing has switched sides and is now in the bottom-left corner instead. There are a few minor upgrades this year, most notably when it comes to writing precision: the Note 20’s S Pen has a speedy 9ms latency, which is a 40% improvement upon last year’s model. There are five new waggle-like gestures too, including one that allows you to shake the S Pen to take a screenshot and then directly annotate it.
The phone’s note-taking software can now straighten wonky handwriting and you can attach voice recordings to your notes, allowing you to read and listen at the same time. Other work-friendly improvements include a PC-like folder and subfolder structure, deeper Windows integration, autosaves to the cloud and wireless DeX functionality with any TV or monitor that supports screen-mirroring.
As for play, both Note 20 phones are among the first to support Microsoft’s Project xCloud streaming
“Other work-friendly improvements include a PC-like folder, deeper Windows integration and autosaves to the cloud”
service. As long as you have an active Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription, and both phones come with a three-month pass, you’ll be able to stream and play more than 100 Xbox games when the service launches in mid-September. You’ll need to pair a compatible Bluetooth controller to play games, however.
There’s one notably absentee: Bixby. Samsung’s naff digital assistant wasn’t mentioned at Samsung’s official launch of the Note 20, and the dedicated Bixby button on the side of the phone has gone. Rumours about the upcoming Google Assistant integration might be true.
So nice it hertz
Not only does the Ultra benefit from the largest-ever screen on a Note handset, it’s also the first Note with a 120Hz refresh rate. The caveat is that you can’t enable the 120Hz setting at the phone’s native screen resolution of 3,088 x 1,440. Instead, you have to dip the resolution down to FHD+ in the display settings. The regular Note 20, which is £330 less, doesn’t have this problem as it uses a 60Hz panel.
The Dynamic AMOLED screen also supports HDR 10+ content, with two display modes to choose from. With the Natural profile activated, the Note 20 Ultra reproduced 93.7% of the sRGB colour space with a total volume of 95.2% and an average Delta E of 3.3. Switch to Vivid and you sacrifice accuracy but it covers 88.8% of the Adobe RGB and 96.6% of the DCI-P3 gamuts – far better if you’re looking for punch.
It’s bright, with a measured peak luminance of 688cd/m2 with the autobrightness setting engaged, which is more than enough to ensure that the screen is readable in sunny conditions. Likewise, HDR 10+ content on Netflix, Prime Video and YouTube looks sublime, with deep, rich colours and boosted highlights in darker scenes.
Notable power
The Ultra is powered by Samsung’s latest in-house flagship chipset, the
Exynos 990. This eight-core processor has a maximum clock speed of 2.73GHz and it’s a capable performer.
It isn’t, though, as fast as the Snapdragon 865+ inside US versions of the Galaxy Note Ultra, as shown by the OnePlus 8’s superior results in Geekbench 5. How much this matters in real-world use is questionable but it’s still annoying when you’re paying this much for a phone. The good news is that the Exynos 990 is a third faster in multicore tests than the Exynos 9825, which powered the Galaxy Note 10+.
Gaming performance follows a similar trend, with the Note 20 Ultra significantly behind its rivals but far faster than last year’s Note 10+. Again, though, you can hardly call this phone slow, and it’s helped by the 120Hz screen. Provided the game supports it, you should expect to reach above 60fps in a wide variety of titles.
Elsewhere, there’s a healthy 12GB of RAM for multitasking, as well as either 256GB or 512GB of internal storage. While the vanilla Note 20 doesn’t have expandable storage, the Ultra model has a microSD slot, which takes cards up to 1TB in capacity.
The Ultra also has a larger battery, at 4,500mAh, with support for 25W charging – it can charge up to 50% from empty in only 30 minutes. In our video-rundown test, it lasted 18hrs 26mins at native screen resolution, before needing to recharge. If you dial the resolution down to FHD+ but increase the refresh rate to 120Hz, the stamina decreases by 14%.
Advanced cameras
The camera offering is also slightly different to the regular model, most notably when it comes to “Space Zoom”. Both phones have a triple-camera array at the rear, but the regular Note 20’s telephoto unit can only use Samsung’s hybrid zoom technology up to 30x, while the Ultra is capable of “zooming” up to 50x.
I don’t think this is worth buying the more expensive phone for, but where the Ultra does beat its Note 20 stablemate is with its huge 108-megapixel main camera unit – which works with the 12-megapixel zoom sensor and a 12-megapixel ultra-wide camera.
The Ultra can capture video at up to 8K resolution, although you’ll have to drop the resolution down to 4K to record at 60fps. Samsung has also updated the camera software and you can now enable an onscreen histogram, as well as audio level indicators. The zoom slider has been improved too, and you can now tinker with multi-source mic controls, if you decide to pair the phone with a Bluetooth mic – including the new Galaxy Buds Live.
Winning notes?
The Ultra is everything you could ask of a modern flagship. It’s fast, takes great pictures, has a delightful screen and its software experience is refined.
But there’s one major sticking point: the high launch price. At £1,179, I can’t imagine Samsung is going to be inundated with orders. Other than the three months of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, there aren’t any freebies to sweeten the deal, either.
Perhaps Samsung is busy looking at the iPhone 11 Pro Max ( see issue 304, p80), which costs £1,299 for the 128GB model. Or perhaps it knows it’s selling something unique. If you want the best Android phone you can buy, and will take advantage of its features, nothing can match it. NATHAN SPENDELOW
SPECIFICATIONS
8-core 2.73GHz/2.5GHz/2GHz Samsung Exynos 990 processor Mali-G77 graphics 12GB RAM 256GB storage microSD card slot 120Hz 6.9in AMOLED screen, 1,440 x 3,088 resolution triple 108/12/12-megapixel rear cameras 10-megapixel front camera 802.11ax Wi-Fi Bluetooth 5 NFC USB-C 4,500mAh battery Android 10 77 x 8.1 x 165mm (WDH) 208g 2yr warranty (via John Lewis)
“The Galaxy Note 20 Ultra is everything you could ask of a modern flagship. It’s fast, takes great pictures and has a delightful screen”