you remember back in the day as a cable
tv where you'd wait all day for your
favorite show to come on only to tune in
and discover that it was a repeat
that could be a real bummer unless it
was a show you loved so much that
you tuned in and watched that re-run
anyway well for the past few years
that's what galaxy note launches have
felt like to me
see prior to 2015 the galaxy note was
the phone you bought if you wanted the
most
egregiously over equipped android that
money could buy
it wasn't just about the s-pen stylus it
was the huge display and the
commensurately colossal battery he got
with it
but ever since samsung started offering
super-sized versions of its flagship
phones
beginning with the galaxy s6 edge plus
five years ago
those differentiators have been diluted
and now that the galaxy fold has taken
its place as the pinnacle of ambitious
smartphone design
what is the note really where does it
fit
and most importantly is it worth its
high asking price
i'm mr mobile let's uncover the answers
together on a 10-day test drive from
manhattan to montauk
with the samsung galaxy note 20 ultra
[Music]
i jump started this script as i
sometimes do by turning to my fellow
phone geeks on twitter
i asked galaxy note owners why they kept
coming back to the note year after year
and alongside the number one most
predictable response i got a few small
but significant pieces of feedback
first many folks said that because the
note launches later in the season than
the galaxy s
it ends up being the more refined model
for a given year
that's certainly true when it comes to
the camera the galaxy s20 ultra launched
back in the spring pushed the boundaries
sure
but its camera suffered from a focus
hunting problem that not even multiple
software updates could fully correct
the note 20 ultra fixes that flaw
through the addition of a laser
autofocus module
and you'll see the results when we head
out to montauk for the camera test in a
moment
the note also course corrects on what i
consider to be the s20 ultra's
criminally dull design those wide radius
curves and forgettable palette are
replaced
by sheer sided end caps and sharp
corners for a more aggressive look
and then of course there's the
year's color mystic runs
for the subtler customer there's a
mystic gray option
shown here on my galaxy z flip 5g and
the top layer on both colors is a
subdued
satin that does a great job of keeping
fingerprints at bay
naturally my own review unit has been
decked out with my sponsor dbrand's
swarm skin for the duration of my
testing and given how many times a
similar skin has saved my galaxy fold
from scratches
i can't see myself going nude again
anytime soon
skin your note 20 ultra or whatever
device is keeping you mobile at the link
below
and thanks as always to dbrand for
sponsoring the channel
now predictably it was the s pen that
got the most love from team twitter
this smart stylus has anchored the note
since its introduction in 2011 and while
samsung keeps tacking on features
like the bluetooth camera remote or the
magic wand air gestures
i think the s pen is still at its best
when you're using it for its core
purpose marking up screenshots
highlighting text
signing contracts quickly sketching out
a design that pops into your head
these things are all possible when you
pair any smartphone and a fingertip
sure but the s pen makes all of them
easier and the end results
much better and while it seems like
every year samsung claims reduced
latency between pen and screen
the 120 hertz refresh rate of this new
display combined with clever ai that
predicts where your pen strokes are
gonna go
gives this model a whopping eighty
percent latency improvement over the
note 10
and yeah that's a change you can really
feel it's as close to one to one pen on
paper as you can get
the s pen also amplifies and enhances
other features
like the historically underrated samsung
dex
this feature that turns your phone into
an approximation of a pc
no longer requires a clunky dock or a
cable
if you have a smart tv from 2019 or
later or pretty much any tv with
miracast you can just hit the decks
button
and turn it into a tv pc
i'm not going to say it's a game changer
because we live in a world of chromecast
and apple tvs
but it's already come in handy during my
review period when my roommate david
wanted me to help him proof a video he
cut of our friend's wedding
i just popped his thumb drive into the
phone's usb port and fired it up on the
big screen
later when it came time for the wedding
reception on zoom because
kovet we joined that on the tv too
and to bring it back to the s pen you
don't need it to navigate decks
but using it in hover mode really drives
home the analogy i've been hammering for
years
it's a mouse for your phone yeah
occasionally a couple days will go by
where i sort of forget it's there but
i'm always happy the s pen is around
when i do need it
and more importantly i always miss it
when i use a phone that doesn't have one
just don't try doodling on a table
without a case
with a camera bump big enough to cause
corner crashes like this
those cameras better be worth that
inconvenience right
well i'll let the note 20 ultra's optics
speak for themselves for a few moments
on a road trip from manhattan to montauk
and points between with david cogan
and david amell
[Music]
okay couple things to point out here on
the bright side now that we have this
laser auto focus
the primary camera which the note 20
ultra inherited from the s20 ultra
is a joy to shoot with these might look
like
fake portrait mode shots achieved with
software but no they were taken in
standard mode
all this delicious depth of field is
naturally occurring
in camera also shooting on other phones
for the past few weeks have reminded me
just how much i cherish a proper
telephoto lens
it's just look at how many times i pop
into 5x just to see how many
coasties can fit on a motor lifeboat or
to see how many panels are falling off
montauk air force station's poor old
fps 35 search radar that may or may not
have been involved in mind control
experiments
or to finally decide what i'm to name my
first
boat oh they named it after me i get a
bunch of you hey look at the fish
hey you shut your mouth
you can go past 5x all the way up to 50
if you want but you really start to feel
the quality drop off from that digital
crop as you get much past 20. so
5x is kind of the sweet spot and to
close out the camera
you ready for a surprise after sunset
the king of low light in the google
pixel 4
still edges out the note but just
barely that's not something i expected
to say
now don't go thinking the note camera is
perfect you can see the focus issues are
not entirely resolved in video mode
with either the impact of my footfalls
or possibly lens flare causing the
camera to focus hunt severely in these
night videos
at least until i stopped walking and
it's frustrating that some features like
super steady stabilization aren't
available in all shooting modes
but folks when my criticism gets that
specific
you know it's a solid shooter factor in
the refinements to color science that
finally tone down samsung's historically
cartoonish over saturation
and the new features in the pro video
mode that lets you use bluetooth
headsets like the galaxy beans
as an input which i will demo right now
and it's a photo and video tour de force
look if you ask me what the best mobile
video solution is i'm probably still
going to say the iphone 11 pro
if you ask me what the best mobile still
shooter is i'm probably going to say the
google pixel 4.
but if you asked me to draw a line
between them find the perfect middle
ground
that would probably this that should
come as welcome news to consumers
and a wake-up call to the competition
the problem with the camera that good is
you end up wanting to use it all day
and sadly the note 20 ultra just doesn't
have the stamina for that
on my heaviest day i used an hour of
navigation hopped between twitter
telegram and slack all day
shot an immense number of stills and
video samples and took a half hour
google meet call that
all by itself took up 10 of my total
charge
through it all i had the display set to
hd and 120 hertz and had brightness
maxed out because it's nyc in august and
i had to
that's a very atypical amount of usage
but folks
the note was never made for the typical
user
i've been reviewing these things since
2012 and i can't remember the last time
a note gave up on me before
sunset as this one did on the day i just
described
in a world where some phones offer 6 000
milliamp hour batteries
4 500 just doesn't measure up to the
workloads the power user is likely to
put it through
yes i know the s pen silo soaks up a lot
of room
and yes i understand samsung didn't want
to build a big heavy brick
but i'd wager most note owners would
tolerate the boosted bulk in exchange
for
enhanced endurance especially on a
device that calls itself
ultra let me know in the comments if you
agree or disagree on that
there are other snaggles yes the curved
screen like all curved screens creates
the occasional palm rejection problem
and i think it's about time we admitted
that these were a bad idea
also the fingerprint sensor while
improved is still not as fast as
optical solutions and lacks any kind of
haptic feedback
and as much as i love the s pen there
are features that have screamed for
system-wide integration since
2011 like hover scrolling on every app
if microsoft can force amazon to build a
kindle app that works right on dual
screen phones
i feel like samsung should be able to
convince twitter to let me scroll with
the pen
come on should you put up with any
problems on a phone that costs
thirteen hundred dollars probably not
but do any of those complaints
constitute a show stopper
definitely not if you're shopping the
note you already know you're in for a
whopper of a phone payment every month
and in exchange you're getting the
biggest feature list there is
it's not as flashy as a z-flip or as
ground-breaking as the z-fold 2 is bound
to be
so for the second video in a row i won't
be cracking open the special bottle of
wine i teased in my galaxy watch 3
review
but truly no other device combines phone
tablet and what we used to call
pocket pc into such a consistently
capable
communicator if i weren't all in on
foldables
the galaxy note 20 ultra is the phone i
would carry
of course i am all in unfoldables so if
you don't want to miss my forthcoming
review of that galaxy z fold 2 please
subscribe to the mr mobile i'm also
running a whole series on foldable
displays called into the fold and the
next device i'm going to hit there
is the galaxy z flip 5g that's coming
very soon
this video was made possible by a galaxy
note 20 ultra review sample provided by
samsung
but as always mr mobile works for you
not the manufacturers
the opinions contained herein are my own
and samsung provided no compensation or
copy approval
and was given no early preview of this
content
special thanks to david cogan david ml
hi auto husman and android central for
filming assistance
and thanks to everyone on twitter for
allowing me to use their excellent
artwork
until next time thanks for watching and
remember to stay safe and wear a mask
while you stay mobile my friends