- Hey guys this is Austin,
and these are 10 things you need to know
about the brand new Galaxy S20.
Number one is a big one, the price.
So the brand new Galaxy S20 starts at $1,000,
and that's for the base model.
So the Galaxy S20 starts at that $1,000 price point.
If you want to go up to the S20 Plus it's $1,200,
although it can go higher
based on if you want more storage
and then to top it all off you have the S20 Ultra at $1,400.
And then it also has a higher end model.
Now to help counteract this
they do actually have the standard S10e, S10,
and S10 Plus from last year still around,
and they are all getting a $150 price cut.
But when you put all this together,
there's certainly nothing wrong with an expensive phone.
I mean the iPhone 11 Pro is a great example of that,
but when we're talking about $1,000 plus
for these new flagships,
they had better bring some serious features.
Thankfully they do, but I mean,
you better be prepared to pay (laughs).
Number two is actually a legitimate feature
that does help justify the price,
and that is the 120 hertz display.
Now by default, all three of the Galaxy S20's
will run at full HD resolution and 60 frames per second,
very much like last year.
However, you do have the option of bumping all of them up
to that full 120 frames per second.
After spending a lot of time
with the OnePlus phones of last year
with their 90 hertz displays,
it does make a big difference.
Now, yes I will completely admit
that going from 90 to 120 frames per second's
probably not gonna be a big deal,
but considering that pretty much everyone
who's going to be upgrading to these S20's
is coming from a a standard 60 frames per second display,
it is so much smoother.
Although, it's not necessarily that straightforward.
The issue is that you can't have your resolution
and your frame rate at the same time.
So all three devices have QHD displays, which look great,
but if you want to run it all full resolution
you have to run it at only 60 frames per second.
The 120 option only exists
when you're running at full high definition.
Now 1080p is not bad on say the S20,
which has actually a fairly nice 6.2 inch display.
Once you jump up to the S20 Plus, and specifically the Ultra
with it's ridiculous 6.9 inch display,
HD just doesn't quite cut it.
It is noticeably softer,
and while I personally love that super smooth
120 frames per second action,
you're actually making a legitimate sacrifice with that.
Now is it something that I will personally do?
Yeah, probably,
but it really shouldn't be the way it is
on a $1,400 phone.
Now if I can just shamelessly plug something for a second.
My brand new podcast went live this morning
called The Test Drivers.
In it we talk a lot more in depth
about the Galaxy S20 as well as lot of the things
such as the screen which are slightly nefarious trade offs.
So it's co-hosted by my good friend Mike Hurley,
and on The Test Drivers, what I really want to do
is go much more in depth than I can
in a 10 minute YouTube video, right?
So the podcast is really there
to not only talk much more in depth about technology,
but also about what it means
to actually daily drive something, right?
'Cause these S20's seems very interesting,
and as you'll see later in the video
there's a lot of really cool features.
But at the end of the day,
it's one thing to do a hands-on
it's another thing to actually spend time
really living with these devices.
So if that sounds interesting to you
or you just want to be a supporter,
please go give The Test Drivers a try.
It's available at the link in the description,
Spotify, Pocket Casts, Apple Podcasts, wherever,
or you can just go check it out at relay.fm/TheTestDrivers.
Reason number three is 5G.
So well this is technically not new this year
there was an S10 model with 5G last year.
However, it was very limited
and only a few people actually bought it.
However, this time every single Galaxy S20 you can buy
has 5G built in.
Well, technically.
So right now there are a couple of competing 5G standards.
There's one known as Sub-6
as well as there's mmWave.
So Sub-6 is becoming fairly popular
specifically here in the United States thanks to T-Mobile.
So they've actually already turned on their full 5G network
and this is essentially an evolution
of the 4G speeds that we have today.
Coverage is very similar,
and the speeds are better
but say it's the difference between like
40 and 80 megabits per second.
It's good but it's nothing completely revolutionary.
Other carriers such as AT&T and Verizon here in the States
are focusing on their mmWave 5G.
Now this is where you get those crazy speed tests
of a gigabit per second or more,
however it comes with a major downside.
The coverage is incredibly limited.
Like literally, you can walk around a corner
and go from a gigabit down to like nothing with this.
So really the best case scenario for 5G
it to have a phone which supports
both mmWave and Sub-6.
Sort of the best of all words,
and that is what you get
except not on the standard S20.
So the way it breaks down is like this,
the standard Galaxy S20
only supports Sub-6 5G, which is fine,
and it's really enough for most people.
However, when you go up to the S20 Plus
as well as the Ultra,
they support not only Sub-6
but also that mmWave
which means that you can get way, way faster speeds
but in very limited situations.
It's really a future proof play,
but that's I think a legitimately really big selling point
for that new S20 Plus and S20 Ultra.
Really what you're getting here
is something which should look much better into the future,
but you also have to deal with the fact that
well you spend $1,000 you get 5G
but it's not full 5G,
'cause that's not confusing right?
Now with a 120 hertz display and standard 5G
my next favorite point
is a really obvious one, battery life.
So while, yes the S10 had decent battery life,
the S20 bumps it up in a big way.
At least on the battery size of the equation.
So the S20 has a 4000 mAh battery.
The S20 Plus has 4500 mAh.
If you go up to the S20 Ultra it's a thick boy
with 5000 mAh of battery capacity.
Now that sounds really impressive.
It's much better than what we got last year,
but the issue is is that with that power hungry screen,
and a 5G radio inside,
you're probably gonna need that.
So while I haven't had enough time
to actually do any kind of real battery life tests,
I will be surprised if the battery life
is actually anything all that impressive.
I really do feel like these bigger batteries
are probably purely there just to power
all these new features,
but we'll have to wait and see on that one.
That said though,
I'm glad they at least decided to increase the battery size
and not just throw these fancy new things at you and go,
"Oh yeah, charge it in three hours."
Ah, what a beautiful fountain
to go onto our number five point, the zoom.
So cameras of course are a huge component
of every modern smartphone.
When it comes to the S20 things get a lot closer,
a lot more zoomed, we're zooming in on the truth.
So the standard S20 as well as the S20 Plus
have a three times telephoto zoom
which is much better than the two times of last year.
However, what really takes the cake is the S20 Ultra,
with a massive 10 times optical zoom.
Yes, 10 times.
That's a lot of times.
Now funnily enough,
Samsung actually claims this to be 100 times space zoom
on the back of the camera.
Now this is a slight exaggeration,
as to get to 100 times zoom
they're making a combination of that 10 times optical zoom
as well as a lot of digital zoom.
It's not exactly as great as it sounds.
However, you can get some super, super tight shots with it.
Now unfortunately, I can't actually show you
any of these shots
because the phone I was testing
was using pre-released software
so I can't actually pull any images off of it.
The results were good,
certainly not as good as a full 100 times zoom camera,
but this is hands down
as far as like standard flagships of today
the best looking zoom lens I've ever seen.
A big reason for that is actually because
they flip the entire thing on its side.
So when you look at this zoom camera,
it's actually looking through a prism
so the camera lens is actually sideways in the phone.
This actually has some other sort of effects
that I'll talk about a little bit later.
But essentially what you're getting here
is a zoom which is pretty much unmatched by any iPhone
or Pixel, or LG,
or Asus, or wait no Asus actually has the Zenfone Zoom.
It's a really good zoom.
Number six is a big one.
It is 8K video
which Is standard across the board for the S20.
Now there's actually something really impressive about this.
While yes it is certainly not as good
as the 8K video that you would get on say a Red camera,
but what it is is a major step up
at least in actual real pixels.
When you consider that 4K is eight megapixels
and 8K is 33 megapixels
that is a lot of data to process on a phone video camera.
Now there are some limitations.
So the 8K video only records
at a maximum of 24 frames per second,
which is the correct frame rate anyway
but that is a little bit of a downside for some people.
But I think the bigger downside
is the fact that you can only record on certain cameras,
because you'd have to have enough megapixels
to do it in the first place.
So, on the S20 and the S20 Plus,
you have to use the three times optical zoom lens,
the telephoto camera to actually be able to record
since those are the only cameras
with more than 33 megapixels.
That's fine, although honestly it's a little bit
of a major downside
just because when you're trying to record 8K video
you are very, very zoomed in.
However, when you go up to the S20 Ultra
the main wide-angle camera has a ridiculous 108 megapixels
and I'll talk about that in a second.
But you can use that main wide-angle camera
to record 8K video,
which personally I think looks a lot better.
The downside here though
is that when it comes to recording 8K video,
you really have major limitations.
It's a nice thing to have, it looks decent,
but at the end of the day
based on at least my initial first impressions,
it's still probably not as good
as say like the 4K on an iPhone.
The number seven might not sound like a big deal,
but just hear me out here.
It is the camera sensor size.
Now we all know at this point
when it comes to buying a new smart phone,
camera is one of, if not the top priority.
Not only if it means you're upgrading from your last phone,
or even if you're just shopping between the like Pixels
and the iPhones of the world.
The camera matters a lot.
Now well a lot of the advances that we've seen
over the last couple of years really come down to software,
at a certain point there's no sort of substitute
for just a bigger, better camera sensor,
and that's exactly what Samsung have done this year.
So, the standard camera on the S20 and S20 Plus
is 1.6 times bigger,
which to be clear was already pretty big last year.
However, what really takes the cake is the S20 Ultra.
It's main 108 megapixel camera
is almost a full one inch sensor
or 1.33 inch sensor to be specific,
but it's really approaching something like a compact camera
like the Sony RX100.
Now this means that the image quality should
not only be better across the board,
now I know that they use a weird like
nine times pixel binning process.
So, even though you have 108 megapixels,
it's taking all of that information
and putting it into a very sharp looking 12 megapixel photo.
But put that side and what you should have here
is what I think is a real candidate
for the best phone of the year.
Best camera on a phone of the year.
That.
Number eight is a big one, literally.
The S20 Ultra is a thick boy
in the truest sense of the word.
Not only is it significantly thicker
thanks to that huge battery compared to the standard S20,
but on top of that it is heavy
and the camera bump is really, really tall
mostly because of that 10 times optical zoom camera.
Now come on, we've all been there,
we've all had a thick boy in our lives.
But the real issue with the S20 Ultra
is that all of this thickness is combined
with a 6.9 inch screen.
- [Ken] Nice.
- (laughs) Look, look, this is a big phone.
It's a big phone in every sense of the word.
It is also a big phone in the sense that
it is a very powerful, very battery hungry,
like it's a monster right?
It's really a step above
anything like the S20 or the S20 Plus,
but the downside though is that like, for me,
I can't really handle 6.9 inches in my hand (Austin grunts).
Number nine is simply the fact that these phones
are significantly more powerful than last generation.
So while we don't actually have,
as I'm recording this video,
the official spec of what's inside
beyond a seven nanometer next generation processor,
but it is almost certainly going to be
the Snapdragon 865 here in America in North America,
and the Exynos 990 in other parts of the world.
So really what you're getting here
is not only a very powerful processor,
but also a lot of RAM.
These guys all have 12 gigs of RAM across the board.
However, on the Ultra you can opt it up
to 16 gigabytes of RAM.
Yes, that's more than most people's laptops.
Now there are a couple
of actually legitimately really nice uses for this.
So even on the 12 gig of RAM phones,
you have an option to lock up to three apps of memory
so that it will not close them off in the background
and on the 16 gigabyte of RAM option
you've got five apps that you can keep open at once.
Which is, now is that actually, is that a lot,
or should you have more than five apps
that are like permanently open in RAM?
I guess it's kind of a nice thing to have.
But anyway, when you're charging $1,000
they got to find a way to justify it somehow right?
Meanwhile, the iPhone still has four gigs of RAM,
and Samsung's shipping 12 and 16 gigs.
Just saying, actually I don't know what I'm saying
'cause it's not really relevant.
Android just eats up memory, it's fine.
And number ten we have good and bad news.
As this time around we still have the micro SD card slot
which can support up to an additional
one terabyte of storage.
But sadly the headphone jack is no more.
Can you see it?
Can you get really close there?
Goodbye Jack, it was nice knowing you.
- [Ken] He's been gone.
- No, he was on the S10 last year.
- [Ken] Oh, you're right.
- Yeah, feels like it was a long time ago right?
- Yeah - It's okay.
He's moved on to greener pastures.
Like Unbox Therapy's channel.
And again, definitely don't forget to go check out
The Test Drivers at the link in the description.
And if you enjoyed this video
make sure to subscribe to the channel,
because of course this is not the only
Samsung news of today.
Well maybe it is, but I don't think so.
I think there's something else
we might be able to talk about.
This is the universal sign for flip phone, right?
(rhythmic music)