Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra review and specs .

I need to give Samsung’s Galaxy S20 Ultra
two scores. If I’m reviewing it solely on the merits of
its components and what it can do, it’s easily a fivestar
device, with only the smallest of perceptible flaws.
The 6.9in display is remarkably bright and incredibly
smooth when the 120Hz refresh rate is switched on,
and the 40Mp hole-punch selfie camera is much more
discreet than it was on the S10. The RAM, storage
and processor are all the fastest you can get in a
smartphone, and the 5,000mAh battery both lasts
all day and fills up incredibly quickly. And yes, the
100x Space Zoom camera is cooler than any other
telephoto lens I’ve used.
But if I were to score the Galaxy S20 Ultra on
usability and cost, I’d give it closer to 2 stars (hence
the 3.5-star final score). Even if our review model
didn’t start at £1,199, a price high enough to make
Apple blush, the Galaxy S20 Ultra would still be far
too much phone for most people. Everything feels
extreme, especially its size. Samsung’s push to make
the ultimate device has created a gorgeous and aweinspiring
superphone that is far beyond what most
people need. Or even want.
Big, heavy, and awkward
For several generations now, Samsung has established
that its ‘plus’ phones are essentially larger versions of
base models with better cameras. On paper, that’s true
of the S20 Ultra as well, but in reality, it’s much more
than a super-sized Galaxy S20+.
I don’t usually spend much time thinking about the
weight of my phone, but it’s hard to ignore the S20
Ultra’s mass. At 222 grams, it’s significantly heavier
than S20+ (188g) and the S10 5G (198g). It’s actually a
bit lighter than the iPhone 11 Pro Max, which clocks in
at 226 grams, but you wouldn’t know it from holding
it. With such a massive camera bump in the top left
corner, the S20 Ultra is both top-heavy and sideheavy,
so it requires a slightly different grip, lest it slide
and slip out of your hands.
You can forget about one-handed operation.
While the new, higher placement of the in-display
fingerprint sensor has drastically improved the
accuracy and reliability of the scanner when picking


The S20 Ultra
towers over the
Galaxy S10+,
which isn’t
exactly small
it up and unlocking with my thumb, the size of the
S20 Ultra makes it difficult to do much else without
using all 10 of my fingers. It was hard enough to use
the 6.8in display on the Note 10+, but the S20 Ultra’s
6.9in screen, coupled with the weight and near-9mm
thickness, is simply too much for one hand to bear.
The S20 Ultra is the only phone I’ve used that I
could actually feel sliding down my hand as I held it.
It’s a weird phenomenon, caused by a combination
of the size, weight, and polished aluminium edges.
Eventually, I settled on a grip that either contorted my
pinkie finger under the bottom or used my off-hand
thumb to keep it steady. I still had to adjust my grip
every so often. Long stretches with the Ultra were
downright uncomfortable.

Even if you have fingers long enough to
comfortably reach the upper corners of the screen,
the bulbous camera will complicate your grip. While
giant geometrical camera arrays are all the rage, the
S20 Ultra takes it to almost comical proportions, with
a bump that protrudes some 3mm from the back.
Because it’s such a broad bump, taking up about an
eighth of the rear case, your fingers will inevitably
butt into it.
The giant camera bump also makes it tricky to use
on a table, especially when tapping the upper left side
of the screen. It’s wobblier than the S10 and the Pixel,
and when a notification comes in, the haptic vibration
is downright startling. All said, it’s the first phone I
wanted to put in a case, which is a shame, because
the glass repels fingerprints surprisingly well.
Elsewhere, it’s easier to raise the volume, as the
rocker has been moved to the right side above the
power button. That leaves the left side completely
smooth, because Samsung has dumped the Bixby
button once and for all.
Gone, too, is the headphone jack, which we
expected after the Note 10+ dropped the port last
year. Samsung is offering a pair of USB-C earbuds in
the box and selling a set of Bluetooth Galaxy Buds+
earbuds for £139. It’s still a bummer that Samsung
couldn’t find 3.5mm of free space on a phone this big.
Pixel perfection
Samsung has delivered its most impressive display yet
for the S20 product line – and that’s before you even
touch it. The weirdly off-centre camera cut-out of the
S10 product line has been repositioned in the S20 so
it’s smack-dab in the centre of the top of the screen.
While the hole is still a little too low to centre itself
inside the status bar, its new position still improves
the look of the phone.
I can’t really find a fault with the image quality. It’s
impressively crisp at 1440p and still very nice at the
default 1080p resolution. I was able to crank it all the
way up to 650 nits’ brightness manually, and it reached
an eye-piercing 1,350 nits with auto-brightness
enabled. Its ability to transition automatically between
low and bright light is excellent. Colours are vivid
without being too saturated, whites are natural, blacks
are impressively deep, and the whole palette is rich
The front camera
in the S20 line has
moved to the middle
of the top of the
screen, a positive
change from the
awkwardly offcentre
hole of the
prior generation.
and robust. There just aren’t enough superlatives for
how incredible the S20’s display is.
It’s also not as curved as previous Infinity displays.
It’s hard to see without putting it next to a Note 10
or S10, but the S20 screen is decidedly ‘flatter’ than
those of previous generations (though definitely
more curved than the S10e’s). That’s a good thing:
it helps cut down on accidental palm touches
and still does well to hide the side bezels. I vastly
prefer it to the extreme ‘waterfall’ displays that
Oppo and Vivo are pushing.
Samsung has once again gone with an ultrasonic
in-display fingerprint sensor on the S20 family. While
a thousand-pound-plus phone should really have
That’s no moon,
that’s the 100x
Space Zoom
camera bump

You can fit an awful lot of
app icons on the Galaxy
S20 Ultra’s screen
3D facial recognition, this implementation of the
fingerprint sensor is much improved over what we
had with the S10. The position of the scanner is higher
on the screen and the target is a bit bigger, so I didn’t
need to alter my grip or flex my thumb to hit it. It’s still
not as consistently fast as the hardware sensor on the
S9 and probably never will be, but it’s plenty accurate
and reliable now.
The best feature on the S20 display is actually
switched off by default (and I’m not talking about the
usual WQHD 1440p resolution). The S20 is Samsung’s
first product line to feature a high-refresh display, and
it’s gone for the gusto, opting for a full 120Hz, twice
as fast as the standard 60Hz. It’s glorious. Compared
to the standard 60Hz setting, scrolling, animation
and gaming are fantastically smooth, well worth the
serious hit to battery life when it’s switched on.
When pitted against the Pixel 4’s 90Hz Smooth
Display, however, the difference is not nearly as
obvious. Samsung could easily have gotten away with
90Hz, saved some battery life and offered it for 1440p
resolution as well, but as it stands the 120Hz setting
is available only with Full HD 1080p resolution. Fast
refresh with WQHD would have been nice, especially
on a screen this size – I’m holding out hope that
Samsung will unlock it with a future update. Despite
that limitation, however, the 120Hz screen is one of
the best reasons to buy any S20 phone.
Speed to spare
Galaxy phones have been fast enough since the
Snapdragon 820 processor in the Galaxy S7, but the
Snapdragon 865 in the S20 line is on another level.
Snapdragon 855 Plus-powered phones had already
broken the 10,000 threshold on the PCMark Work
2.0 benchmark, the S20 crushes expectations with a
score of 12,350. While the speed boost is palpable,
Qualcomm doesn’t deserve all of the credit. Samsung
is using entirely new RAM modules inside the S20, and
every handset is packed with at least 12GB of LPDDR5
memory. Plus you’re able to keep three apps open
for faster switching, so launching games with lengthy
startup times are lightning-quick. To give you an idea
of how it feels to have this much RAM: I stopped
counting the apps on my Recents screen at 50.
Even the SSD has improved. It’s not just the 128GB
capacity – once again, twice as much as the Pixel and


Compared to the S10, the
Ultra’s camera is a monster
iPhone – but the speed: Samsung is using UFS 3.0
storage on all S20 models. While it’s not as fast as the
UFS 3.1 storage that will probably debut in the Note
20, it’s a huge jump over what you got with the S10,
and it even bests other UFS 3.0 phones (though I’m
not sure what’s going on with random write results):
S20 (UFS 3.0)
Sequential read: 1,592.46MB/s
Sequential write: 662.75MB/s
Random read: 45,172.27 IOPS
Random write: 33,764.08 IOPS
S10 (UFS 2.1)
Sequential read: 802.13MB/s
Sequential write:188.34MB/s
Random read: 34,612.61 IOPS
Random write: 7,383.57 IOPS

OnePlus 7T (UFS 3.0)
Sequential read: 1,436.19MB/s
Sequential write: 210.4MB/s
Random read: 44,158.73 IOPS
Random write: 7,189 IOPS
Add up the chip, RAM and storage, and you’ve got a
downright monster of a phone that’s faster than most
Chromebooks and can even give some PCs a run for
their money. It’s so powerful, Samsung could probably
rest on its laurels for the next two generations and still
keep pace with its competitors.
Great battery, so-so 5G
Samsung has loaded the S20 Ultra with a 5,000mAh
battery – its biggest ever, and a sign that it’s finally
ready to push the limits of battery capacity after the
Galaxy Note 7’s exploding-battery debacle.
The S20 needs it. With 5G active and 120Hz
motion smoothness flipped on, I was barely able
to make it through a full day of heavy use. With the
120Hz refresh off, WQHD on and 5G enabled, I was
able to last a good part of a second day, which is
iPhone 11 Pro Max territory. Benchmarks topped 10
hours in both cases, but 120Hz zapped more than
three hours of use, so you’ll definitely want to consider
whether it’s worth it to you. The bundled 25-watt
charger fills up the Ultra in about an hour and a half,
but it also supports 45-watt charging – if you have
the right charger. I tested numerous 60-watt chargers
and none of them worked, so you’ll probably need
Samsung’s proprietary one.


The buttons on the
S20 Ultra have all been
moved to the right side
The same goes for 5G. While all S20 phones sold in
the UK will have a 5G modem, you can opt to turn it
off in settings, which will give battery life a slight uptick.
Even if you don’t take advantage of the 5G modem
now, you can be assured that the S20 Ultra will be as
future-proofed as it can be, for as long as you hold
onto it. With support for both mmWave and Sub-6GHz
5G, 12GB of RAM, a fast processor, speedy storage,
and an insanely great display, the S20 Ultra is primed
for years of solid performance.
An Android skin worthy of praise
It’s not just the hardware that’s future-proofing the
S20. For the first time since I’ve been testing Galaxy
phones, I’m confident that Samsung will keep the

The S20 Ultra isn’t available in
any funky colours, but even in
grey, it cuts a striking figure
S20 line as fresh as possible with regular updates.
Exhibit A: it’s 3 March as I’m writing this, and my S20
Ultra already has the March Security Update, the third
straight month that one of my Samsung phones has
gotten an Android update earlier than my Pixel 4 has.
That’s a huge accomplishment and hopefully a sign of
things to come with Android 11 later this year.
One UI has completely transformed the Samsung
smartphone experience from a so-so skin to one of
the best user interfaces Android has to offer. The S20
family ships with One UI 2, and while it’s very much an
iterative update, the new features it brings – including
an expansion of dark mode and the adoption of a
proper back gesture – are as smart and thoughtful as
they are on the Pixel 4.


One UI 2 is a bona fide contender for the best
Android overlay of the year, and far and away the most
creative in the Android world right now. If Samsung
can deliver One UI 3 at or around the time Android 11
drops, there will be very few remaining reasons to buy
another Android phone.
A great camera with caveats
While there are plenty of reasons above to justify
the S20’s Ultra surname, the camera is the biggest.
Inside that huge bulge is an array of large, powerful
sensors and lenses that can do more than any other
smartphone camera ever made. Like the rest of
the S20 Ultra, the camera is on the cutting edge of
available components. You’re unlikely to find another
The S20 Ultra’s zoom isn’t
quite DSLR-quality, but it’s
the closest a smartphone
has ever been
smartphone that bests it on paper. Like the S20+, the
Ultra has four rear cameras, and they’re all different:
S20 Ultra
Camera 1: 12Mp Ultra Wide, f/2.2
Camera 2: 108Mp Wide-angle, f/1.8
Camera 3: 48Mp Telephoto, f/3.5
Camera 4: DepthVision (time-of-flight)
S20+
Camera 1: 12Mp Ultra Wide, f/2.2
Camera 2: 12Mp Wide-angle, f/1.76
Camera 3: 64Mp Telephoto, f/2.0
Camera 4: DepthVision (time-of-flight)
Whether those S20 Ultra specs actually make a
difference in your day-to-day picture-taking is another
story. There’s a 108Mp sensor that most people will
never turn on. There’s a 100x zoom that most people
will never need. And it can record in 8K, which most
people will never – well, you get the idea.
While the 108Mp sensor obviously stands out on
the Ultra, the telephoto lens is the real star. Samsung’s
claims are true – it can reach up to an insane 100x –
but you’re unlikely to use it at that distance very often.
As you can see overleaf, the pictures it captures aren’t
really ones you’ll want to display. Plus there’s the
creep factor: I was able to see clear across my wide
yard into my neighbour’s kitchen window. Still, when
you see just how far it can go, it’s mind-blowing.
The S20 Ultra is even more impressive when you
zoom out. While 2x or 3x optical zoom is pretty
The various preset zooms on the S20 Ultra, clockwise from top left,
1x, 10x, 30x and 100x, show how incredible the telephoto lens is
In challenging lighting, the S20 Ultra (left) performed
admirably, retaining detail that the Pixel 4 lost (right) and
preserving low lights that the S10 blew away (centre)
These three photos taken by the S20
(left), iPhone 11 (centre), and Pixel 4 XL
(right) are so similar, I had a hard time
remembering which was which
standard for premium Android phones, Samsung
says the S20 Ultra has a 10x ‘lossless’ zoom that
combines 4x optical and 6x digital zoom with AI
to reduce the noise you’d normally get with digital
zoom. It’s good: photography purists will still
see some telltale digital smartphone artifacts at 10X,
but it’s an excellent first step, and the quality should
improve with steady updates.
Speaking of improvement, Samsung has put a good
deal of work into its night mode, and the effort shows
on the S20 Ultra. Most of the heavy lifting is done by
the ISOCELL Bright HM1 image sensor that powers
the 108Mp lens – night mode shots are using 9-to-1
nona binning to turn 0.8μm pixels into 2.4μm – but
Samsung’s maturing algorithm deserves some credit
too. On the S10, night shots were largely overexposed,
but there’s much more nuance on the Ultra. Shadows
The S20 Ultra’s rear camera does an excellent job with
portraits (left), but the selfie cam tends to smooth over
perceived blemishes, like my son’s freckles in this shot
and highlights are preserved, and in some shots, I
actually preferred the S20 Ultra’s night mode to the
Pixel 4’s. The new countdown interface that’s built
into the shutter is extremely clever and the best
implementation I’ve used so far.
Samsung also continues to make strides with
portrait mode. Even without a second selfie camera
like the S10+, edges are crisp, and wisps of hair are
recognized. The rear camera excelled thanks to the
time-of-flight sensor, though the aggressive AI tended
to smooth faces a bit too much with the selfie cam.
The S20 Ultra camera’s other claim to fame is 8K
video recording, which you can capture at 30fps.
You’ll need a lot of space for it – every minute will
eat up about 600MB of storage – and some of those
clips might need to be reshot. That’s because of a bug
that messes with the S20 Ultra’s autofocus. Samsung
has supposedly rolled out a fix for it in Korea, but my
The S20 Ultra’s 108Mp lens handles colour and detail
remarkably well, even if you’re not shooting with every pixel
device, which has already gotten the March update,
hasn’t received it yet (or if it has, it’s not fixed). The
autofocus issue affects photos as well, but it’s more
apparent in videos, where tapping the screen to
focus manually is more of a nuisance.
I hope a fix will be available soon, because it’s
a nagging issue on an otherwise amazing camera
that can take truly excellent photos. Pictures were
constantly a bit more saturated than on the iPhone or
Pixel, as is Samsung’s tendency. Despite the autofocus
issues, however, more often than not I snapped a
great pic with the Ultra. I particularly liked Samsung’s
new Single Take feature, which uses AI to offer up a
Space Zoom on the Galaxy
S20 Ultra is far out
smattering of different shots and compositions. It’s
downright delightful at times.
Far more concerning is how the S20 Ultra’s size
affects the photography experience. The S20 Ultra is
so big that taking it out of my pocket, launching the
camera, pointing it at my subject, and tapping the
shutter button took several seconds longer than it did
on other phones, simply due to the phone and the
bump’s tremendous size. It’s a fact that people who
really want a 108Mp camera and 100x zoom are going
to have to deal with, and it should definitely factor
into your buying decision.
Verdict
There are three types of people who should spend
£1,199 on the top-of-the-line Galaxy S20 Ultra:
1. Samsung fans who will pay anything to have the
latest and greatest handset.
2. Smartphone photographers who need the latest
and greatest camera.
3. Influencers who have enough money to afford
this phone.
That’s basically it. Anyone else should look at the
S20+, which has many of the same features and specs
minus some of the camera stuff, or even the S10+,
which received a permanent £150 price cut.
Don’t get me wrong: the S20 Ultra is a great phone,
definitely in contention for the best Android phone
ever made. But for most people, it’s just too much
phone for too much money. Michael Simon

Specifications
• 6.9in (3,200x1,440; 511ppi) Dynamic AMOLED 2x
capacitive touchscreen
• Android 10.0; One UI 2
• Exynos 990 (7nm+) processor
• Octa-core (2x 2.73GHz Mongoose M5, 2x 2.5GHz
Cortex-A76, 4x 2GHz Cortex-A55) CPU
• Mali-G77 MP11 GPU
• 12GB/16GB RAM
• 128GB/512GB storage
• Four rear-facing cameras: 108Mp, f/1.8, 26mm (wide),
1/1.33in, 0.8μm, PDAF, OIS; Periscope 48Mp, f/3.5,
103mm (telephoto), 1/2.0in, 0.8μm, PDAF, OIS, 10x
hybrid optical zoom; 12Mp, f/2.2, 13mm (ultrawide),
1.4μm, Super Steady video; 0.3Mp, TOF 3D, f/1.0,
(depth)
• Two selfie cameras: 40Mp, f/2.2, 26mm (wide), 0.7μm,
PDAF
• Dual-band 802.11ax Wi-Fi
• Bluetooth 5.1, A2DP, LE
• A-GPS, GLONASS, BDS, GALILEO
• NFC
• Fingerprint scanner (under display)
• USB 3.2, Type-C 1.0 reversible connector
• Non-removable 5,000mAh lithium-polymer battery
• 166.9x76x8.8mm
• 222g