when you hear the term ultra you would typically associate that
with the best or extreme or loaded in fact the term
ultra comes from latin and it means beyond so what
happens when you slap that term to a product especially a smartphone
well according to samsung this will change the photography game it'll help
you create without boundaries it should also be able to hold up with anything
and everything you throw at it whether if it's leveraging 5g putting it
through extreme conditions capturing high resolution photos and
videos without compromising on storage blistering performance a battery that
can keep up to your demands a display that's revolutionary
you get the point oh and let's not forget
the ultra price tag that comes with it in this case
$1,400 for people who live in the united states
and for lovely canadians $2,300 for a phone i repeat
for a phone you see i've been using the s20 ultra for the past 10 weeks and
i'm still having trouble figuring out who this is for
now don't get me wrong i love a lot of things about the s20 ultra but
i also have some thoughts some mini rants
because this is the most expensive smartphone that i've ever held and it
deserves to be treated with the utmost respect and scrutiny
so sit back grab a drink or a snack or maybe both
because this was gonna be a long one and i'll leave timestamps in the description
down below if you want to get to a certain segment
so let's get to it after this corsair dark
rock rgb pro is a mouse for every type of gamer with
50 million omron switches lighting bling two side grips for better
comfort a type-c connector with 50-hour battery life and
the three-way operation mode with corsair's slipstream hyper-fast
wireless technology check it out below alright first things first design it's a
minor upgrade over the s10 series but it still looks pretty
when you unbox it for the first time of course
but that shine only lasts for about 5 minutes
as you can see this is what it really looks like when you start using it
extensively without a case but you probably knew
that let's also address the elephant in the
room that huge thick jacked camera bump listen it
might not be the prettiest thing that you've ever seen
but samsung had no choice this phone has four cameras
now if you decide to place this flat on a table prepare to get used to this
pretty sure you can make a rap song out of that now in a world where we're
starting to see the competition coming out with unique
ways to hide fingerprints and adding contoured matte finishes to the
back to make it look fresh and classy the s20 ultra in my
opinion looks dated perhaps give us different color
options like a ceramic blue option because the s20 plus and the s20 have
those options or a different texture at the back to
make it look unique compared to the competition i
really wish that they did something different here because to me the s20
series just looks like a copy and paste from
the s10 with minor tweaks here and there and that's about
it oh and the other thing that i should mention
is the size and the weight of this phone for comparison it's about the same size
as the oneplus 8 pro but it weighs more than 200 grams
now that might not sound like a lot but if you're like me using it one-handed
lying down on a couch you will definitely experience fatigue
which could result in unexpected disasters that shall remain
unknown seriously i miss using smaller phones and
dissing it folks next up the display and samsung pulls something completely out
of the ordinary you see with previous samsung phones
we're used to curved screens around the edges and
i've had numerous issues with palm rejection which to an extent i was able
to address through software settings but this time they took a step back and
went with a flat screen with a gentle curve that's barely
noticeable just to give the phone that bezel-less
look and the result of that is that you get better grip when you're holding the
phone in one hand no accidental touches which is awesome
and you can watch content without any distractions from glare
that you typically notice with aggressively curved displays
this is exactly what a phone should function like and i'm happy that samsung
learned from their mistakes the screen spans across 6.9 inches and
it is gorgeous guys samsung's amoled technology is one of
the best out there and it offers vibing colors with deeper blacks however
i really wished if it got brighter outdoors like the 8 pro
with its peak brightness at a thousand nits but let's not forget it's
really sharp too since it features quad hd plus resolution
and the most notable improvement over last year's s10
is the upgraded refresh rate from 60hz to 120hz but there is more to that story
you see for some unknown reason samsung decided to cap that buttery
smooth 120 hertz experience at 1080p and that has caused a bit of
controversy over the internet which i mean we should have all expected now
this is not a chipset limitation because the oneplus 8 pro for instance
can do both quad hd and 120 hertz without a problem at the same time and
it features the same specs as the s20 ultra so what exactly are you
giving up here well if you're used to watching 1440p
content on youtube or any other platform you won't be able to do that on the s20
ultra because you will be limited to 1080p now you can just go back to the
settings and enable quad hd at 60 hertz but that completely defeats the purpose
of getting the smartphone in the first place now does screen
resolution really matter for a screen this size it really depends
on how you look at things you see our eyes have a physical limit
when it comes to spotting individual pixels
i personally can't notice any difference between quant hd and full hd on a
smartphone so it might not be a deal breaker for
some of you out there but there is the other side there is the
the other side of the spectrum where people want everything they're not
willing to compromise on screen resolution for refresh rate uh
because you know they're paying close to
fourteen hundred dollars for this thing so
compromises shouldn't be a thing honestly i don't see a point in calling
this phone ultra anymore with that being said i
have to give credit to samsung for delivering that fast 120 hertz
experience constantly because they haven't baked
any dynamic modes on this phone that switches refresh rates depending on
the type of content that you're going through on your smartphone i'll
give you a perfect example on my oneplus 8 pro
when i'm scrolling through youtube or talon which is my third party twitter
app or some other apps the phone actually tends to lag quite a
bit and it almost feels like i'm using a 60hz display
even though the phone is set to quad hd at 120 hertz when i flip over to the s20
ultra the refresh rate is constant regardless
of the app that i'm using on a regular basis now at this point you might be
wondering about battery life because when you keep adding features on top of
features the battery ends up being the victim
ultimately uh now when i switched over this phone i was getting
really bad battery life how about you may be wondering uh
plugging in during the middle of the day kind of situation which was definitely
not easy especially in the middle of road
trips mind you this was before quarantine season
i was averaging three and a half to four hours of screen on time which was not
what i expected from a phone this caliber but
through the magical powers of software updates it kept getting better
that's right i was getting i'm now getting like a day and a half to two
days if i push it really hard which is definitely awesome so if you're
a power user you don't have to worry about it even with the 120 hertz mode
enabled full time you're just good to go so samsung made
the right call by jamming in a 5 000 milliamp
battery to keep up with that fast screen by the way my sample has the snapdragon
865 soc and i am aware that in certain regions
where samsung's offering exynos models the battery life does tend to suffer
quite a bit so if you are looking for the s21 ultra just make sure you grab
the one with the 865 processor just because
it's a lot more power efficient compared to the exynos variants the ultrasonic
fingerprint sensor is still present on the s20 ultra just like the s10 they
haven't made any major improvements here honestly i was really hoping to see
samsung bring something different here like a secure face unlock system like
the pixel 4 because i really really missed face unlock on
that smartphone just because it worked every time regardless of the
lighting condition even in pitch black the ir tracking was spot on
and uh yeah i mean if you're if you're you know fair smartphone manufacturer
thinking of slapping the term ultra on your phones
you want to make sure that you're bringing something beyond customers
imagination something that you know you can compete against but um
that's not the case here now with that being said i haven't had any
issues with the fingerprint sensor uh it's fast i also love the fact that you
can simply unlock your smartphone with the screen turned off so that's
pretty cool glancing over the rest of the features it's got the ip68 dust and
water resistant rating expandable storage
up to a terabyte qi wireless charging though keep in mind that it's not as
fast as oneplus proprietary 30 watt warp charge uh basically they've
just brought everything from the s10 to the s20
without making any tweaks the speakers sound great you're still getting that
stereo imaging with the earpiece and the bottom facing speaker
call quality has also been excellent i haven't heard any complaints from anyone
who i've been talking to on the other side and the haptic vibration motor on
this phone is amazing it's way stronger than the
oneplus 8 pro and i'll promise you in fact i'll
guarantee you you will never miss a notification or phone call
because it's absolutely amazing it's the best moving on to software
samsung's one ui has matured slightly over these past few years
but it still comes with bloatware apps like samsung health
samsung globe samsung smartthings samsung internet the list just goes on
they really want you to get into their ecosystem but i ended up removing most
of them now you might not be familiar with this
layout and that's because i've customized it with my favorite launcher
widgets and icon packs in fact if you're interested in a
complete walkthrough on how i set up my android smartphone
i have made a dedicated video covering that and you can check it out
right over here ever since i switched from the pixel 4 i've had to get used to
a few things like the full screen gesture navigation
samsung does it slightly differently so instead of a single bar that you
typically find on android 10 you now have three separate bars one for
going back one for jumping back to the home screen
and one for recent apps i was really annoyed by the back gesture
because on the pixel 4 and the oneplus 8 pro
all you had to do was swipe left to right on any app but on the s20 you have
to swipe up from the bottom left corner to make it work
i'm sure over time you'll get used to it in fact if you're not a fan of full
screen gestures you can bring back the dedicated nav buttons so that's
pretty cool now samsung did remove the dedicated
bixby button which thank you so much i i don't know why
that was there in the first place on previous phones
but they've actually mapped it to the power button so if you hold the power
button if you want to turn off your smartphone
it actually ends up activating bixby now there is a workaround to this if you
hold down the volume down and power button
it'll bring up the power off options and if you want to make life less
complicated you can head over to the side key
settings and choose the power off option under the press and hold section
other than that the software experience has been great you still have
customization options with the widgets and the lock screen
the theme store is still here and i will warn you that most of them
are paid versions and quite frankly useless personally samsung's one ui
is not my cup of tea i like oxygen os from oneplus and
the stock ui that google offers but you don't have to be on the same boat as
i am finally let's wrap things up with the camera performance
this is where you would expect the phone to shine given its
ultra badge and the triple camera setup well technically quad but i'll get to
that in a bit so for starters you get a 12 megapixel
ultra wide angle sensor 108 megapixel standard wide angle and
a 48 megapixel telephoto sensor the aperture on all three of them are varied
and they're all optically stabilized which is awesome that fourth camera is a
0.3 megapixel time-of-flight dev sensor which helps
process live focus or in layman's terms portrait mode let's
start with the ultra wide generally it produces respectable
results with good dynamic range saturation and contrast
but it seriously lacks detail samsung tends to apply a
softening filter in the shadows and it over sharpens subjects around the
highlights to make up for the detail and throughout
my testing period i've learned one thing from using this camera if
you're using it in broad daylight expect over sharpened photos and in low
light it applies a super soft filter and it just can't keep up with
the competition like the pixel 4. the oneplus 8 pro's ultra wide angle
sensor does a much better job because it has a 48 megapixel sensor and
there's barely any software processing taking into effect
resulting in cleaner images there's just no way to get away from samsung's post
shopping effect which really is unfortunate
it honestly looks like a video game render on the s20 ultra
whereas on the 8 pro it's more true to life the main 108 megapixel sensor
is good but keep in mind that by default it does pixel bin to produce 12
megapixel images so if you want to take advantage of that
full 108 megapixel sensor uh you need to make sure you go into the
settings and enable that option keep in mind that it doesn't remember
that settings so you will have to manually do that every single time when
you open the camera which is definitely annoying the first thing that
stood out to me was the detail you can punch in to retain information which is
pretty cool i've also noticed that this new sensor
has toned back on saturation in some situations the picture turns out
with too much contrast which you may or may not like but
generally it does a great job with dynamic range and sharpness
samsung still loves to apply that sharpening filter and given that this is
a huge sensor it does a pretty good job separating the
subject from the background so you don't really have to rely on
portrait mode or live focus however if you want to get a closer
subject in focus you're gonna have some trouble there because
you'll start to notice fringing on the sides and the bokeh tends to be a little
weird it's because it's razor thin and that's
because of the f one point aperture that's one of the biggest drawbacks of a
larger sensor to be honest low light performance here is not the
greatest as i mentioned earlier samsung just
loves to smooth out things speaking of which
night mode for some reason ended up being a disaster on my sample
as you can see by this image compared to the oneplus 8 pro
it processes the highlights in such an aggressive manner
there's just no hope for restoration here the telephoto lens once again
conveys the same story here same old post sharpening effect and in
some cases it does mess up exposure also i'm not
sure if this is just me but i'm not a fan of the focal length on the sensor
it crops in too much especially compared to the oneplus
8 pro but that is a subjective thing you don't have to agree with me on that
the selfie camera was quite frankly disappointing
as you can see on the image towards the right this phone just straight up
applied a beauty filter and my skin tones look way off not only
that it's the pore sharpening effect that i
talked about earlier as well now in certain lighting conditions it does a
decent job of reducing all that madness but overall
i'm really disappointed here due to its inconsistent performance
and then there is the 100x space zoom i i'm just going to leave these photos
here i tried to be a creep uh just because you know i had
to play that role to showcase what it really is
um i'm not a zoom guy you might be i mean if you're a private investigator
this is probably the film for you because if you want to capture
license plates or you know if you're investigating someone
for someone this phone is probably something that you should look
into because of its space zoom so this is the front-facing camera test
on the s20 ultra this phone is packed with video
recording features and it's just incredible so the
front-facing camera can shoot up to 4k at 60 frames per second
the rear camera can shoot up to 8k though i would never really use ak i'm
perfectly fine with 4k but man the video quality coming out of
this phone is just insane the stabilization the
dynamic range the detail this is like i would totally be fine
shooting video on the s20 ultra no denying the fact it's absolutely
great i think there is no other android smartphone that can
beat this phone in terms of video quality let me know
what you guys think about it in the comments
okay so about that 8k video recording feature
it's going to apply a substantial crop to your image especially when you switch
from 4k to 8k it's pretty difficult to frame or
compose your shot uh and the other thing that i
want to mention is that if you're planning on shooting 8k video it is
going to chew through storage and the other thing i
also noticed is the rolling shutter was pretty terrible uh with some of the
clips and finally i do want to mention that i've been
experiencing some glitches trying to play back 8k footage on my windows pc
i have an rtx 20 dti it is supposed to or it can handle 8k footage but for some
reason i'm just starting to have issues uh
you're probably watching this as i'm showcasing it to you guys so
something to keep in mind all right i know this has been a long one but i'm
gonna conclude this quickly for 1400 the galaxy s20 ultra
doesn't have that ultra factor that i was looking forward to
there are far too many compromises with the smartphone and let me list them one
by one the design looks stated especially
compared to what the competition is offering
the display can't push 120 hertz and quad hd at the same time
something that the competition can also do now don't get me wrong i love the
display it's beautiful but it's not up to flagship specs if
that makes any sense the camera performance is
not the greatest especially with that post sharpening effect that these
software applies and i know someone in the comment is
going to be asking me eber did you disable scene optimizer
i did in fact all those photos that you saw was taken in auto mode with scene
optimizer and all the filters turned off it's basically what the sensor sees
and i know i should have mentioned this in the camera segment but i'm still
experiencing autofocusing issues with that main 108 megapixel sensor even
after the latest software update installed
i just feel like the competition does a better job than this listen if you're in
the market looking for a flagship android smartphone
just do yourself a favor and stay away from the galaxy s20 ultra because
samsung they were just clearly out of their minds pricing this phone at 1400
in fact there's another reason another perfect reason why i should disregard
the s20 ultra it's this the oneplus 8 pro
it's 500 cheaper and in my opinion it has
better camera performance than the s20 ultra
great display great battery life and the design
is i mean look at this it's more come on so on that note thank you so
much for watching i hope you were able to take away
something from this video stay safe spend responsibly
and i'll talk to you guys in the next
one