Samsung Galaxy S20 and S20 Plus Review

The Samsung Galaxy S20 and S20 Plus might not quite have all the bells and whistles of the S20 Ultra, but they have two key advantages: they are not as gigantic as the Ultra and while expensive as well, their price is not quite as excessive as the $1400 price of the Ultra.

With these two key factors in mind, it's time to take a closer look at the S20 and the S20 Plus, two phones that will not get as much press as the Ultra, but phones that are likely to end up in a lot more pockets.

First, these are the major differences between the flagship S20 Ultra and the other two:

Apart from those few differences, all three phones share the same processor, the same amount of storage, the same awesome 120Hz refresh rate option, the same interface and the differences really mostly boil down to the size and their capabilities to zoom.

As to our thoughts on the S20 and the S20 Plus, we found them to be awesome devices. The one feature that impressed us most was the 120Hz refresh rate that makes everything run buttery smoothly. It's hard to switch back to 60Hz once you've tried 120Hz on the S20 series. Unfortunately, we also found that it takes a heavy toll on battery life, decreasing it by as much as 37% on the S20 series.

The cameras have changed from the S10 series and can now zoom further than most other phones which is awesome. Images turn out with a lot more contrast. They are not perfect, though, as we noticed issues with oversharpening and the lack of a 2X zoom camera actually made Live Focus images a bit worse. We also noticed a nasty bug with selfies that we hope Samsung fixes soon. Some of the new options like the 8K video recording we found to be cool more in theory than in practice: 8K videos are gigantic in size, but worse than that, the phones themselves don't have enough power to play them without dropping frames. Our Intel i5-powered desktop computer also couldn't handle the task of 8K videos.

These shortcomings are not dealbreakers by any means and the S20 series are perfectly fine even with them. The S20 are the Android flagship to beat in 2020 even with those shortcomings. And for more details, jump right to our full review below...

Design and Display

Nothing short of amazing, and you'll never want to go back to a 60Hz screen

And the screens on the S20 series are the best so far: they have only a tiny punch hole and are otherwise almost completely uninterrupted by bezels. 

The S20 Plus is the larger one, with a 6.7" diagonal, while the S20 has a more compact, 6.2" size. These days, you also have to consider the aspect ratio of the screen: it's 20 to 9 on the S20 series, which means that the screens are narrow and very tall. A few years back, we used to have tablets with 7-inch screens, but those had a more squarish aspect ratio and that's why it might be misleading to just look at the diagonal size.

The big story in 2020, however, are not the colors: it's the new 120 Hertz refresh rate option. 120Hz means that the screen refreshes twice every second, compared to the traditional 60 Hertz technology where the screen would refresh only once. By default, the phones run at 60Hz because of battery preservation reasons (jump to the battery section below to see the extra strain on battery life that comes with 120Hz). But if you don't absolutely need the battery life, you will be insantly hooked with the 120Hz option. It's a game-changing experience and after you use it once, you wouldn't want going back to 60Hz.

Performance

The S20 and S20 Plus are both powered by the Snapdragon 865 chip if you live in the States, while international buyers will get the phones with the Samsung-made Exynos 990 processor.

In our experience with the Exynos version you have plenty of power for a fast experience, but you've had that in past years too and Samsung's One UI has still been a bit behind Google's Pixel series or OnePlus phones in terms of actual perceived smoothness. That changes this year with 120Hz option that finally brings Samsung to an elite club of 'ultra smooth' phones.

As for the benchmark story, you have it right below: these phones are truly speed masters. This will matter for gamers who will get better frame rates with these new processors. Unfortunately, the games that we tested did not yet support the 120Hz refresh rate. We expect Samsung to unlock this option for some of the most popular games soon and we will update once we get to test that.

In terms of storage, the S20 and S20 Plus base models both come with 128GB and both phones have the option of expanding on that storage via microSD cards. Most people would be perfectly happy with 128 gigs on board, and we ought to mention that this is one advantage Samsung phones have over iPhones and Pixels that only have 64 gigs of storage in their base models.