Samsung has done it again and this time they have taken it up a notch. Another year, another line of Galaxy flagships but this time they decided to change the naming scheme. Samsung's flagship specifications this year are very impressive yet predictable due to the leaks. Even though the bigger and better S20 ultra is the phone to beat, the smaller S20/20 plus still has a lot to love about them.
Compared to the Ultra, the smaller ones are on the safer side when it comes to upgrades and features but still have a lot to offer such as the 120Hz display which makes the phone feel super smooth and the impressive array of cameras. The Samsung Galaxy S20 replaces the S10e and the S20 plus replaces the regular Galaxy S10.
Going into the specifications, the Galaxy S20 is a 6.2 inched screen phone weighing 163g which makes it light compared to the iPhone 11 which weighs 194g. The actual design isn't anything new compared to last year's flagship. That said, the camera system has been totally overhauled, with Samsung ditching its dual-aperture main module in favor of an f/1.8, 12MP camera across both the S20 and S20 Plus. The 108MP show stopper camera can be found on the S20 ultra.
CAMERA
The Samsung Galaxy S20’s camera consists of a main 12MP sensor with huge (for a smartphone) 1.8μm pixels, combined with an f/1.8 aperture lens packing OIS. By ditching the dual f/1.5 and f/2.4 lens found on the S9 and S10, Samsung has gone for a more traditional setup, as found on the Pixel 4 and iPhone 11 Pro which arguably outperformed the Samsung galaxy s10 last year. While there’s no 108MP sensor here, Samsung has used the 64MP module found in the Realme X2 Pro on its S20 and S20 Plus, powering that 3x telephoto zoom. Naturally, with that kind of resolution, you get smaller 0.8μm pixels, though thankfully, Samsung has loaded the module’s lens with OIS as well. There’s no time of flight sensor on the vanilla S20, so the final camera is the ultra-wide 120-degree 12MP module with an f/2.2 lens and 1.2μm pixels.
DISPLAY AND PERFORMANCE
This year, Samsung decided to equip all three Galaxy S20 devices with flagship QHD+, HDR10+, Dynamic AMOLED displays. Even though in real-world use, you would not be able to tell the difference because all three displays are crystal clear, technically the regular Galaxy S20 has the sharpest display with 563ppi with the S20+ sitting at 525ppi. Samsung also jumped on the high refresh rate train with all three Galaxy devices being released with a native panel refresh rate of 120Hz and a 240Hz touch polling rate which simply means the phone is extremely smooth and fast(on paper anyway) and responds very quickly to touch and gestures and the UI also is very smooth.
One thing worth noting, regarding the high refresh rate, though, is that 120Hz is only accessible at FullHD resolution but this is only because the high refresh rate consumes a lot of power but in the current setup, Samsung is fairly confident that running any of the S20 phones at FullHD, 120Hz will still allow for full-day battery life. But FullHD is very sharp in my opinion but most people would not be able to tell the difference.
The S20 and S20 plus also came with 5G this year and have the best in class hardware and chipset such as the new snapdragon 865 and the Exynos 990 which are some of the most powerful chipsets on the market at the moment, paired with fast LPDDR5 RAM (8GB or 12GB in the S20 and S20+) and capable ISPs, capable of things like 8K, 30fps video recording.
SOFTWARE
The Samsung Galaxy S20 and S20 plus come with One UI 2.0 on top of Android 10. The second version of its UI has been polished a bit to increase speed and reduce animations a bit which when coupled with the phone's fast RAM could make the phone feel buttery smooth. The phone is also packed with features such as QuickShare which is a new streamlined way of sharing with nearby devices via Wi-Fi, Google Duo is now baked into the Phone app - probably as an easy way to bring Apple FaceTime-like convenience for video calling. Bixby, which, despite the lack of a dedicated button, has been going strong and growing in features and popularity. Samsung's Game booster has gotten a bit smarter too with problems users used to complain about in the past devices have been fixed. and so much more which makes these phones competitors for the best phones of the year already. They are the phones to beat because of the fact that they come with a lot of the S20 Ultra's features with a better starting price.
For the Specifications, the phones come with;
- 6.2 inches display, 93.8 cm2 (~89.5% screen-to-body ratio)
- 1440 x 3200 pixels, 20:9 ratio (~563 PPI density)
- Corning Gorilla Glass 6
- 120Hz refresh rate (up to FHD resolution)
- Android 10.0; One UI 2
- Exynos 990 (7 nm+) - Global
- Qualcomm SM8250 Snapdragon 865 (7 nm+) - USA
- 128GB 12GB RAM
- 12 MP, f/1.8, 26mm (wide), OIS
- 64 MP, f/2.0, (telephoto) with 3x hybrid zoom
- 12 MP, f/2.2, 13mm (ultrawide)
- Non-removable Li-Po 4000 mAh battery
- Fast battery charging 25W
- Power bank/Reverse wireless charging 9W
- Cosmic Grey, Cloud Blue, Cloud Pink, Cosmic White
Check out everything that was announced here.