It’s been well over a month since the release of the Galaxy S20 Ultra.. And while this phone
itself is actually a killer phone.. The launch of it was.. I’d say.. Quite unfortunate.
It was clear from the very beginning that Samsung was taking a pretty big risk on the
Ultra.. I mean they priced it at a starting price of $1400, and that’s quite expensive
even compared to the best iPhones out there.. Which have themselves been criticized for
being too expensive since the thousand dollar iPhone X.
So Samsung, knowing how big of a risk this was, put all of their chips on the massive
marketing campaign of the S20 Ultra’s new features like the cameras and 5G, making it
seem like this was the best smartphone ever made.
Now if your smartphone is so good that i can prove itself as the best smartphone in the
world.. Then the $1400 price tag is justified, and people will buy it.
This was a trick that Apple pulled with the iPhone X. At release, it was the most expensive
smartphone ever.. But because it was so good.. It actually was the best-selling smartphone
of the year.
But in the case of the Galaxy S20 Ultra.. A couple of very unfortunate things happened
that nobody was expecting.
But before we get into that.. I first want to talk about the S20 Ultra itself and what
I really enjoyed about this phone since we got our hands on it.
First off.. I love the design. It’s just so fine-tuned compared to before. I personally
love large camera bumps.. And I feel like the one of the S20 Ultra just seems so substantial
and premium.
I also really like the button layout, with all of the buttons being on one side, and
the power button being in the perfect spot for my thumb.
And I absolutely love the massive 6.9” display. Samsung really nailed it this year with the
subtle and clean-looking holepunch camera in the center instead of on the side.
This looks so much cleaner than the iPhone’s notch that’s getting quite a bit old already,
and Samsung managed to pull off really thin bezels while also not curving the display
as much as before. This is great because I no longer accidentally touch the edges of
the display like I did on the S10+.
And the display itself is just amazing. It’s super bright and it’s very color accurate
as well. The sheer size of it actually makes it a decent device to watch Netflix on. And
then couple that with the incredibly loud speakers, and you’ve got probably the best
phone for watching videos.
And I’m still extremely impressed with how Samsung managed to make the earphone speaker
so loud while being so thin that it’s almost invisible.
I honestly think that the S20 Ultra is the best phone for gaming that’s ever been made
because of the combination of the massive display, the excellent speakers, the subtle
holepunch camera, and the new 120hz display.
I played 3 different games on both the iPhone 11 Pro Max and the S20 Ultra for an hour each
to test the battery life of each of these phones.
Even though the Ultra was running the games at 120hz while the iPhone was at running them
at 60, the Ultra drained just a little bit more battery life, which was extremely impressive.
And it did while running the games smoothly and the phone itself didn’t heat up as much
as the iPhone.
So for all of those reasons, it’s the best phone for gaming yet.
Now in terms of performance, both the iPhone and the S20 Ultra are now so fast that it
really doesn’t improve the everyday experience of using the phone any more than last years’
models.
But what does improve it is the 120hz display. This feature itself makes the Ultra feel so
much more snappy compared to the iPhone when swiping through your home screen or scrolling
through apps like facebook.
And it’s also nice to know that you’ve got top of the line specs like 12 or 16GB
of RAM, WiFi 6, IP 68 water resistance and 5G connectivity for those who agree with it.
And now.. The only thing I haven’t mentioned is the biggest thing that Samsung marketed..
The best camera system in the world.
And with this system… Samsung took a major risk..
But before I get into what happened with the cameras.. I want to get into the first unfortunate
thing that happened when Samsung launched the S20 Ultra.
They couldn’t have made the risk of launching a $1400 phone at a worse time. The coronavirus
pandemic turned out quite a bit worse than we all expected.. With the economy taking
a massive hit.
The national multifamily housing council recently released data showing that nearly ONE THIRD
of U.S. apartment renters didn’t pay their rent at all in April, showing just how bad
the economy has gotten in such a short amount of time.
So the truth of the matter is.. If the economy is suffering this badly.. Who is gonna be
buying a brand new cellphone.. Let alone one that costs $1400.
A couple of weeks ago.. Samsung held a private conference call where they reportedly saw
very disappointing sales of the Galaxy S20 series phones. And while they haven’t released
official sales numbers yet, it’s estimated that they only sold 60% of the sales of the
S10 series last year.
Now I know that it’s not just Samsung phones taking a hit.. The entire smartphone industry
got hit as well, including Apple, with researchers expecting global consumers to purchase 33
million fewer phones this year.
So with that out of the way.. Let’s get into the second unfortunate thing that happened
to the launch of the S20 Ultra.
They focused way too much on the camera, making it seem like it the S20 Ultra had by far the
best camera on any smartphone. So with that, came massive expectations from consumers and
initial reviewers.
However, they also put in a brand new camera system that they’ve never used before, and
because of that, the software wasn’t ready for the release.
So when reviewers got their hands on the S20 Ultra, almost every initial review mentioned
camera issues, especially with autofocusing.
This is really bad news for Samsung, since quite a lot of people decided to wait until
the issues were fixed before investing $1400 in the phone.
And a lot of consumers who did buy it right away were disappointed with the camera because
of the huge expectations Samsung set for the camera.
We tried it ourselves and ran a blind test comparing the S20 Ultra, the S20+ and the
Note 10+, which quickly became popular, gaining almost half a million views… and surprisingly,
the Note actually won the test.
At that point, Samsung promised a huge software update that would fix the cameras for good.
And now, over a month later, that software update finally came, so just recently, we
did another camera test before and after the update to see what’s changed, and while
it did improve, the autofocus performance is nowhere near where it should be, and much
worse compared to the iPhone 11 Pro Max.
Along with that, the colors are way too cool on the S20 Ultra, as well as the oversharpening
making the footage look a bit weird.
So the camera performance is still disappointing after that update, so maybe they have more
camera updates planned, I don’t know, but now that it’s been 5 and a half weeks since
we received the phone, it’s honestly too late.
The damage to the S20 Ultra’s reputation has already been damaged so much, especially
in this economy, that I don’t think that the sales of this phone will ever recover.
But let’s pretend for a minute, that the camera was so good that it blew every other
phone away. In that case, this would probably be the phone of the year.
But with a camera that is nowhere near as good as Samsung said it would be, even people
who have the extra cash to buy the S20 Ultra, should just buy something like the S20+ instead.
Now that phone is actually pretty great! So if you want to see our review of the S20+,
Tap Like & click the circle above to subscribe so you don’t miss out on that review, and
you can check out our S20 Ultra camera tests right over there. Thanks for watching, and
we’ll see you in the next one!