Samsung Galaxy S20 Review: Is It Worth The Price?

The Samsung Galaxy S20 is a stylish phone with a sleek design and display. It’s a great looking phone, but it doesn’t come cheap.

Samsung is going to be looking to be one of the leaders in the industry when it comes to smartphones. To this end, it’s decided to make its devices very successful, and they’ve done it with the Samsung Galaxy S20.

As far as features go, this smartphone has everything you could want. It has a great camera, excellent display, a great keyboard, and many other features that all add up to be a perfect phone. And for just $300, you can get yourself one, which is excellent.

Display And Design

The Samsung Galaxy S20 comes with a 6.2-inch display, offering exactly 0.1-inch more screen real estate than 2019’s 6.1-inch S10. It doesn’t merely change the overall size of the phone, and its maximum resolution remains the same as that of new Samsung Galaxy S models at WQHD+ (3040 x 1440).

Samsung still maintains a default resolution of Full HD+ (2220 x 1080), which appears more than sharp enough for most operation, and saves battery; you’ll need to head into the settings to change to the higher resolution.

The new 120Hz refresh rate isn’t WQHD+ compatible, though, meaning you have to choose whether you like the higher resolution display or, the faster loading image.

Touch-sensitivity is also available, to 240Hz from 120Hz to make games more attractive, by sensing your finger brushes on the screen at a very much higher rate than its immediate. This isn’t something we found recognizable when we were using the smartphone. However, those more dedicated to their mobile gaming may experience something different.

An increase in screen size would be off-putting for many as the S20 is taller than the S10, it’s also a small narrower, with a 20:9 aspect ratio, and the screen is only marginally bigger.

There’s a 5.8-inch display size on the Samsung Galaxy S20. We appreciate the smaller front-facing dynamic camera and return of HDR10+ to the display for vibrant and more detailed images when gaming and streaming movies, a bit of screen size difference would be even more welcome. 

Camera

The primary camera has a 12MP, with an f/1.8 aperture. That makes changes to suit the lighting conditions with the ‘wider’ f/1.5 setting pulling in more light for improved low-light shots. 

There’s also a new 64MP lens camera, boosting like a massive upgrade over last year’s 12MP camera. Each pixel is smaller than the previous, but the megapixel count is considerably more powerful, and the aperture is extensive (f/2.0 rather than of f/2.4 – lower numbers are better). 

If you want the ultimate in zoom capability, the Galaxy S20 Ultra comes with a game-changing 100x zoom. Enabling for 3x lossless zoom, that’s the best we’ve seen so far on a smartphone. But it’s unlikely that you’ll discover much use for that in daily shooting and has 30x to be more useful. 

The Galaxy S20’s 12MP UW camera has changed the least compared to the previous S10 – the f/2.2 aperture is similar, but it features with a smaller sensor with a bigger pixel. It makes your ultra-wide images a touch better.

The Samsung S20 range also reveals new ground with the invention of 8K video recording (up to 60 degrees). But 8K recording restricted to 24fps, and it has one significant benefit: allowing to crop and edit videos without reducing quality if you’re exporting to 4K or 1080p. 

8K is an option that’s still in its start on smartphones. We believed that most people would be glad shooting at 4K or below, where you get more access over frames per second, the 20x video zoom (8K is stuck at 6x zoom), and smaller files (8K functionality will consume about 600MBs per minute in the HEVC format).

5G Network Compatibility

The Samsung Galaxy S20 is the best first possibility for mainstream consumers to receive 5G on their phones. Only 1% of the smartphones that shipped in 2019 were 5G phones though most of those were expensive variants of the 4G processor. 

The Samsung Galaxy S20 is massively 5G by default – as stated, in some markets, you can buy a 4G version of the phone. However, 5G is the standard. The download speeds will flow at around 200Mbps on average, 6x faster than 4G speeds in many parts of the globe.

Of course, this depends on 5G being available in your area from your ISP provider, but even if it isn’t yet active, Samsung is cooking in the future-proofed connectivity.

Performance And Software

The Samsung Galaxy S20 is running Android 10 O.S, the latest and powerful version of Google’s operating system. Samsung’s own One user-interface overlaid, so it’ll look unique to the software you may have tried on other phones that aren’t produced by Samsung. However, the design is responsive and flexible to use.

The company is featuring its own apps on the phone, but if you don’t want these apps on your device, you can uninstall most of them and make use of Google’s own pre-loaded apps.

You’re restrict to 128GB of internal storage on the Samsung Galaxy S20. We believe there’s more than enough storage for the average user. But if you’re planning to shoot 4K video, then you’ll make use of the microSD card slot.

The Samsung Galaxy S20 supports cards up to 1TB storage – if you need even more internal memory, you’ll likely to opt for the Galaxy S20 Ultra or Galaxy S20 Plus that offer 256GB and 512GB options.

The Samsung Galaxy S20 is fully powered by one of two variant chipsets and where you’ll choose a different version. If you live in the US, you’ll get Qualcomm’s top-end Snapdragon 865 processor, while those around the remaining part of the world will get a global Samsung’s high-end Exynos 990.

This post review is based on our time with the Exynos 990 version of the Samsung Galaxy S20 phone. We’ve yet to thoroughly testing the Snapdragon 865 version of the S20.

As to the Exynos 990-powered S20, in our testing, we’ve experienced outstanding performance throughout. Whether for playing games or loading apps quickly, it’s powerful enough to do everything we need it to perform.

Battery Life

One thing we observe about 5G it’s that the super-fast internet technology is a battery hog, and with that in mind, Samsung has powered the Samsung Galaxy S20 with a 4,000mAh battery which is less than that of Xiaomi Mi Note 10.

That’s undoubtedly trade-off, as we’ve found the Galaxy S20 to have healthy battery life that will easily put you through a full day of various use – in fact, we’d often reach home after 24 hours of what we’d consider being fairly heavy use to get the phone remain 20% or so left in the battery.

Pricing And Availability

Encourage yourself: definitely, you’re going to pay more for the Galaxy S20 than the S10 due to its 5G network upgrade, advanced cameras, and more massive 6.2-inch 120Hz screen.

In the US, UK, and Australia, the Samsung Galaxy S20 5G price is $999 / £899 / AU$1,499 for the version of 12GB RAM and 128GB of internal memory. Alternatively, You’re allow to use extra storage of a microSD card up to 1TB capacity. However, if you want 256GB or 512GB of internal storage capacity, then you’ll have to opt for OnePlus 7T smartphone. 

The smartphone is also available in a 4G version in some online and local markets, including the United Kingdom, Australia, and the United Arab Emirates. The Galaxy S20 of 8GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage priced £799 / AU$1,349 / AED 3,199. Those in the United States are only able to get the 5G variant. Why not take a look at Cubot X20 Pro with premium features if you can’t break bank for Samsung Galaxy S20.