The Best Samsung Phone of 2020 Walks Among Us – A Look at Note 20 & Note 20 Ultra
Every year, Samsung gathers the best smartphone specs and puts them into one lineup. As Samsung’s most powerful phone of the year, Note phones always attempt to snap the competition out of existence.
The Note 10 announcement in 2019 brought with it Samsung dual-release format that saw 2 Note phones released: the Note 10 and Note 10+. The difference between the two was mainly in the size, with the regular note being significantly smaller than the plus model.
Flash forward to 2020 and Samsung released 2 phones as well: the Note 20 and Note 20 Ultra. Borrowing from the Galaxy S lineup, the Ultra moniker is meant to signify the most premium of premium smartphones. What dis this mean for the regular Note 20?
Well, this year saw significant differences between the two models, the size being the least of them. Just how good are this year’s Notes? Is the Ultra worthy of its name? Here’s a quick review of the Samsung Galaxy Note 20 and Note 20 Ultra.
Galaxy Note 20
The vanilla Note 20, at face value, look pretty similar to the Ultra. That is until you start looking a little closer. Coming in at $1000, any buyer would expect to receive a lot of high-end specs for the price. Unfortunately, the Note 20 falls just short of expectations, even with some improvement on last year’s offerings.
Build and Design
The Note 20 is available in 3 colors: Mystic Bronze, Mystic Green, and Mystic Gray. It sports the same squared-off design found in the Note 10 series but with one very questionable design choice: it has a plastic back. For context, the regular Note 10 came in 5 colors and featured a Gorilla Glass 6 back. Gorilla Glass (5) can still be found on the Note 20, but just on the front. It is a flat panel, with the curved edges only appearing on the back of the phone.
The camera arrangement is different on this year’s Notes, with significantly bigger lens cutouts housed in a wider camera bump. The bump adds to the 8.3mm thickness. The front has an Infinity-O cutout for the selfie camera.
The bottom of the phone has a bottom-firing speaker, the USB-C port, a microphone, and the S-Pen slot which is found in the bottom left as opposed to the right as in previous years.
It has IP68 water/dust resistance.
Display
The Note 20 has a 6.7” Super AMOLED display at 60Hz and 1080p resolution. It is a great Samsung panel by all means. It is a much bigger screen than last year’s regular Note, which came in at 6.3”. This is in line with the idea of a Note phone and Note lovers will appreciate the bigger screen. The glaring feature here is the lack of a high refresh rate screen which has almost become a 2020 staple, appearing at almost all price points. Lack of a QHD-capable screen might also be an issue, but most people enjoying high-refresh rates on Samsung flagships have had to stick to 1080p anyway.
S-Pen
The S-Pen, the hallmark feature of the Note series, saw great improvement this year. While all the great and gimmicky features remain, the latency has been reduced by about 40% as compared to last year. It gives a true pen-to-paper feeling this year.
Battery and Charging
The Note 20 has a 4,300 mAh battery with 25W fast-charging. The battery is up from 3,500 mAh last year, but the charging speed remains the same.
Memory and Storage
The Note 20 has a decent 8GB of RAM and 256 GB of UFS 3.0 storage, similar to last year. There is no expandable storage onboard but the provided storage should suffice for most buyers.
Cameras
The Note 20 has a triple camera setup:
- Main: 12MP f/1.8
- Ultra-wide: 12MP f/2.2
- Zoom: 64MP f/2.0 3x, 30X SpaceZoom
The Note 20 has a similar camera setup to that of the S20 lineup, with the ability to record 8K video on the 64MP sensor. The photos are great, not very far off from the Note 20 Ultra
Note 20 Ultra
It is really in the name. The Note 20 is the premium device. It has significant improvements, not only on last year’s most expensive model, but also on its 2020 sibling.
Build and Design
The Note 20 Ultra is a squared-off glass and aluminum sandwich: pardon the tech YouTuber cliché. It comes in 5 colors compared to the 3 in the regular Note, adding Mystic Black and Mystic White to the color options. The Mystic Bronze on the Ultra looks and feels great with its matte finish. The front and back sport the new Gorilla Glass 7, also known as Victus. It feels like an expensive phone, and it is at $1,300.
The Note 20 Ultra is surprisingly thinner than the Note 20 at 8.1mm, even though it is 16 grams heavier. It has flat edges and squared corners as compared to smoother edges on previous Notes.
Display
The Ultra is bigger with a 6.9” Super AMOLED screen at 120Hz and QHD+ resolution. It is slightly bigger than the Note 10+ which had a 6.8” display. It is one of, if not the best display on a smartphone. Better than any other Samsung phone, Note or otherwise. It is also the biggest display on a Samsung phone yet. It is slightly curved, just enough to look as good as last year’s Notes while greatly reducing cases of accidental touches. The 120Hz and QHD+ resolution are great specs, but unfortunately cannot be enjoyed simultaneously. The higher refresh rate is only at 1080p. What a waste.
S-Pen
While the 46ms latency on the Note 20 is impressive, the Ultra one-ups that with 9ms. 9! Coupled with the high refresh rate screen, this is as close to drawing on a real canvas as it gets. The older Notes do not even come close!
Battery and Charging
Both Notes share the 25W fast-charging, but the Ultra has a bigger 4500mAh battery. However, the cut down specs in the Note 20 give it a better endurance rating than the Ultra.
Memory and Storage
The Ultra comes with up to 512GB of on-board storage, with MicroSD storage expansion supported for up to 1TB.
Cameras
- Main: 108MP f/1.8
- Ultra-wide: 12MP f/2.2
- Zoom: 12MP f/3.0 5x, 50X SpaceZoom
With a huge and very noticeable camera bump, the Note 20 Ultra offers more than just a wow factor. The 50x sensor cuts down on the issues that plague the S20 Ultra and produces excellent photos.
Both 2020 Notes share the following specs:
Processor
Samsung continues its very controversial inclusion of Exynos processors for flagships in European markets. The better Snapdragon 865 Note phones are sold in the United States. Benchmarks and real-world tests showed that last year’s Exynos 9825 Soc was behind the Snapdragon 855. The Snapdragon 865 comfortably edges out this year’s Exynos 990. Either way, the Note 20 offers improved performance as compared to the Note 10 and 10+.
Connectivity
There are 4G and 5G variants for the Note 20, allowing buyers to choose based on preference or 5G availability. 5G was not available at all for 2019 Notes.
Final Thoughts
While some choices made for the regular Note 20 are mind-boggling, it is still a solid offering giving the full ‘Note’ experience. The price, the worst of those choices, is not appealing at all and might just be Samsung’s way of pushing more people towards the Ultra. The Ultra is a beast of a phone, ticking all the right boxes and then some. It might be huge and unwieldy to some, but it is a great media machine.