- Listen to the Note 10+ review from roughly 6 months ago!
- Pricing
- $1399 base price, there’s another config for another $200
- Preorder trade-in with an S10+ brought that down to $799 (-$600)
- Specs
- For full specs, read GSM Arena
- CPU
- SD 865
- Allegedly the Snapdragon 865 is tied together with the 5G modem, so the cost of the entire device is increased
- RAM
- 12GB; matching Note 10+
- Higher config has 16GB total though
- Storage
- 128GB base
- Higher config has 512GB though
- A real shame this “Ultra” tier didn’t have 256GB to match the Note 10+ out of box experience
- SD Card slot still present though
- Display
- Size
- 6.9’’ !
- 20:9 aspect ratio
- It’s really tall
- Unlike the old Nexus 6 Moto, it’s not too wide
- Special features
- 2020 screen process
- 120hz refresh rate. 240hz input rate
- 1440p is exclusive of 120hz at release time though
- aybe a future update enables it at battery life loss
- Size
- Physicals
- Look and feel, build quality
- Footprint
- Weight
- Battery
- 5000 mah; the biggest ever!
- Charging
- Allegedly 45w compatible again, but not included, and who cares
- Ports
- Speakers
- Initially impressions would say they’re worse than the Note 10+’s speakers
- Buttons
- Alas, the Note 10+ had perfect button placement on the leftside, S20U moved to the right
- No bixby button - Samsung has learned
- 5G
- Of no consequence to me at this time
- It’s identical to LTE in everyday experience
- S20U has the mmWave modem so if T-Mobile somehow pulled a Verizon it could be ultra fast in the park with line of sight
- Look and feel, build quality
- Camera
- 3 real back cameras (time of flight / depth sensor also but not a real camera)
- How is it
- It’s remarkably average
- Initial impressions were concerning
- Any subject movement (a dog, for example) would cause blur
- The depth of field of the primary camera made taking typical shots difficult
- The default settings leave a lot to be desired (scene optimization)
- JPEG
- Special modes
- 100X zoom!
- An example of practical zoom
- 5x zoom ends up “grainy” and looking digital, because the optical zoom kicks in at 10x
- You can see an Ian from 5 rows away
- 108mp
- The pixel binning (can you say HTC ULTRA PIXELS?) is back and it’s still mediocre sometimes
- Night Mode
- Night Mode has been available on previous Samsung phones, but it’s still remarkably good
- 40mp selfie camera
- Cool, I guess?
- 100X zoom!
- Verdict
- Don’t buy this for the camera, I’d say
- The S10+ or the Note 10+ had sometimes better cameras
- The S10+/Note10+ lines shared cameras and the camera “modules” line had been used in other Samsung devices over time; you could think that this is a first gen-use of a module-line and the software hasn’t caught up yet
- The ultra-wide camera module is 12mp - give me more on that one - I love ultra-wide shots and I rarely zoom
- I find predicting which of the cameras the phone will use in a given mode too confusing to even try to understand
- Physical camera bump, alignment is weird and an ergonomic disaster
- Software
- OS
- We’ll get Android 11 on this phone next February or so when the next S-model comes out
- Kind of Samsung’s fault, kind of Google’s fault
- The thirdparty launcher support for the new gestures is still forthcoming allegedly in One UI 2.5 - unfortunately
- We’ll get Android 11 on this phone next February or so when the next S-model comes out
- Updates
- A camera update came 3-weeks into ownership
- It fixed some camera issues but there’s still work to be done
- Hoping there are many more meaningful updates
- Performance
- No jitter or lag for me
- OS
- Final thoughts
- Don’t buy this at full price
- It’s a big, heavy phone, consider the S20+ instead
- Let’s conclude with a funny story
- I’ve been buying phones YoY since 2016 and I bought the Pixel XL 1 with extra-storage at the time, and somehow it came out to ~$950
- S20U is $1399 but with a trade-in, it was still cheaper
