On the GFXBench graphics test, the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra scored 1,455 frames on the Aztec Ruins (High Tier) off-screen benchmark, compared to 1,657 frames for the iPhone 11 Pro. Swiping anywhere on the viewfinder portion of the screen to flip between the front and rear cameras – to us, this acts like a big button, replacing that tiny ‘flip’ icon that's in a random corner of nearly every other phone. I also tried the Dead Trigger 2 games, which is one of the titles optimized for the 120Hz panel. As I ran around shooting zombies and navigating dark corridors the game looked smooth and felt extremely responsive. Seeing a timer ring form around the 10MP selfie camera punch hole, rather than having to badly guess where the camera lens is inside the display – invaluable for group selfies.

Apple’s Night Mode is typically our favorite of all modern phone makers’ low-light shooting modes, but the Note 20 surprisingly topped the iPhone’s best efforts here. The image from Samsung’s phablet is sharper and less grainy, with more gradation in color, especially looking at the tree to the right and the lawn below. Apple’s software glosses over everything in sepia tones, producing a roundly blurrier and less precise result. Battery Capacity (Typical) : Typical value tested under third-party laboratory condition. Typical value is the estimated average value considering the deviation in battery capacity among the battery samples tested under IEC 61960 standard. Rated (minimum) capacity is 4170mAh for Galaxy Note20 and 4370mAh for Galaxy Note20 Ultra. Actual battery life may vary depending on network environment, usage patterns and other factors.By comparison, the Galaxy S20 Plus with its 4,500 mAh battery lasted 10 hours and 31 minutes and 8:55 in 120Hz mode. And the OnePlus 8 Pro lasted 11 hours and 5 minutes in 60Hz mode and 9:02 in 120Hz mode. The handsets on our best phone battery life list all last over 10 hours. Some people have launched complaints about dust getting in the Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra camera housing, though we haven't experienced much that in our extensive testing. The complaints appear to be – mostly – limited to Korea. Images at 20x zoom on the Note 20 Ultra (left) and S20+ (right) are both artifacted, but they're less so on the Note Conclusion: The Most Phone Available Space Zoom camera is very impressive: I got in very close with the Note 20 Ultra's 5x optical zoom, putting my iPhone 11 Pro Max's 2x zoom to shame. And the digital zoom stayed steady up to 20x; it got shaky at 50x. I hooked up the Note 20 Ultra to my Windows PC using Link to Windows and got my dialer, messages, photos, and notifications, but attempting to mirror apps didn't work. Link to Windows is supposed to mirror one app at a time already, if not six, so hopefully a promised software update in September will iron things out.

Even despite the Note 20’s deficiencies on paper compared to the Ultra, this is still a supremely capable mobile camera that routinely equals — if not betters — the iPhone 11 Pro in several side-by-side comparisons. Looking at this first example, showing off an idyllic river scene, it’s honestly hard for me to choose a favorite. The contrast and verdant greens in the Note 20’s shot are more captivating, but the iPhone handles the color of the sky better. The perfect photo would comprise elements of both. The decision is an easy one: the 120Hz 1080p setting looks good out of the box, and most people we know who are upgrading from the Note 8 have been impressed. The 6.9-inch screen isn’t big enough to see individual pixels, and we won’t truly need higher resolutions until foldable phones become mainstream. On the flip side, the Note 20 becomes the vastly better camera when zooming in from afar. Apple’s digital zoom still doesn’t incorporate demosaicing algorithms, like you see in many Android devices today, including Samsung’s latest flagships. (This is the same technique that gives Google’s Pixels their Super Res Zoom.) Using clever software, the Note 20 is able to reconstruct images in a way that makes digital zoom far sharper than it would be normally, allowing it to capture a cleaner, crisper and less noisy picture of this flag amidst a sea of cornfields at 10x power. In fact, the Note 20 can get all the way up to 30x if you let it.In terms of charging, the Galaxy S20 Ultra and Note 20 Ultra both support 25W fast charging, but only the S20 Ultra supports even faster 45W charging as an option. Galaxy Note 20 Ultra vs Galaxy S20 Ultra: Verdict The Note 20 Ultra also trailed the iPhone on our video editing test, taking took 1 minute and 16 seconds to the iPhone’s 45 seconds. The Your Phone app is rich with features that iPhone and Mac users have been enjoying for years, like the ability to make and receive calls without leaving your desktop. The integration is solid and easy to get up and running once you’ve accepted the flurry of notifications Windows requires to dig its hooks into your Note 20.

The Note 20 Ultra endured for 10 hours and 26 minutes on the Tom's Guide battery test, which involves continuous web surfing at 150 nits of screen brightness over 5G. In this case we used T-Mobile's network. This was with 60Hz screen mode on. The device lasted just 7:59 with the 120Hz screen mode turned on.

User reviews

The only concern when choosing the Note 20 Ultra is the battery, which is 10% smaller than the S20 Ultra. However, the dynamic refresh rate reduces the Note 20 Ultra's display to as low as 11Hz when the UI elements are inactive, which helps offset the difference in capacity. I tested my Note 20 Ultra on Verizon LTE and got spectacular performance. The phone pumped out speeds up to 400Mbps purely on 50MHz of ordinary licensed spectrum, without using any of Verizon's more arcane or shorter-distance technologies like LAA, CBRS, or 5G. The phone also showed noticeably better signal than a Galaxy S20 in the same location—between 1-9dB better depending on the location. That cements the Note 20 Ultra's performance as the best phone for connectivity on the market today. One UI 2.5 is launching on the Galaxy Note 20 and Note 20 Ultra, though it won’t remain exclusive to Samsung’s latest phablets for long. You can expect many of these features to drop on the Galaxy S20, Galaxy S10 and Note 10 series as well, where applicable, once One UI 2.5 rolls out to them. That’s great news for existing Samsung owners, though it hardly makes a good case for upgrading to the Note 20 if you already have one of those recent handsets. Samsung Galaxy Note 20 review: Performance Battery: Actual battery life varies by network environment, features and apps used, frequency of calls and messages, number of times charged, and many other factors. The 108-megapixel sensor still has a very shallow depth of field, and the focus isn't great in the corners if you're taking photos of extremely close-up subjects. The full 108-megapixel mode, meanwhile, is more image than anyone really needs. At a 1:1 pixel view, it's noisy and definitely susceptible to artifacting, unless you're taking pictures in very bright natural light. As it also creates 24MB files, it's more for photography experts to experiment with than anything else.