Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G Review: Big, Bold, Tricked-Out

Samsung's Galaxy S line is the company's premier family of flagship Android phones. Over the years it has been underpinned by a recurring theme of bigger, faster, and prettier, with a ever-growing list of features. This year's Galaxy S20 family is no exception, starting out at a bold 6.2-inch format for the smallest Galaxy S20 5G device, 6.7-inches for the Galaxy S20+ 5G, and topping-out at the bodacious 6.9-inch Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G. We have the Galaxy S20 Ultra on tap for review here and it's Samsung's full boat, no compromises offering in the Galaxy S20 line-up.

As its name suggests, the Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G is a 5G-ready phone powered by Qualcomm's most powerful Snapdragon 865 Mobile Platform, along with Qualcomm's Snapdragon X55 5G modem chipset that's compatible with both Sub-6 and mmWave (Millimeter Wave) 5G connectivity. This means the device will connect to any available 5G network coverage, from Verizon and AT&T to T-Mobile and Sprint. Our device was sent with a T-Mobile SIM in it, so we'll be working with T-Mo's Sub-6 enabled 5G network, which generally speaking means a broader 5G coverage area versus mmWave, but at slower speeds. It's still true 5G, though. More on this later. 

Breaking down the basics, color options for the Galaxy S20 family are not common across all of the devices, so take note. Our Galaxy S20 Ultra is a Cosmic Gray variant, though in this model you also can op for Cosmic Black. For the Galaxy S20+ the color options are Cosmic Gray, Cosmic Black or Cloud Blue. And finally standard Galaxy S20 devices can be had in Cosmic Gray, Cloud Blue or Cloud Pink (represented in the trio shot above).

As you can see, Yogi mostly approves of this small disruption for the Galaxy S20 Ultra's 40MP selfie cam and indeed it's far less obtrusive in most use cases than traditional notch implementations. However, what's really standout about the Galaxy S20 Ultra's display (other than its expansive size) would be Samsung's award-winning Dynamic OLED display technology. It's simply the best in the business with great saturation and OLED pop, along with HDR10+ certification and serious brightness for excellent viewability in sunny daylight conditions. You'll have to go easy on the brightness slider of course, for optimal battery life, but when you need, it's there and this display's color fidelity is exceptional. Finally, for less eye strain and more fluid graphics and gaming animation, there's now a 120Hz refresh option for the Galaxy S20 Ultra's display (default is 60Hz), which also at the expense of some battery life. However, again, it's an option you can easily toggle and with a 5000 mAh battery on board the S20 Ultra, you may not care. More on this shortly as well. 

Beyond that, in terms of buttons and IO, you get the standard Samsung setup of a volume rocker and screenlock/Bixby button on the right side edge, with a combo SIM tray and microSD card slot on the top. On bottom you'll find USB-C connectivity and a downward-firing speaker port, but no 3.5mm headphone jack unfortunately, so it's dongle or wireless whether you'll like it (or not). You also get dual mics (top and bottom) as well as another earpiece speaker up top for stereo sound that actually puts out excellent volume, but as always, is a little thin on low-end bass response. In terms of volume, we'd say the Galaxy S20 Ultra is more than capable of kicking out the jams, but you'll want to enable its Dolby Atmos setting and maybe trim back the highs a touch, while pushing up the lows, to achieve a richer sound. All told, acoustically, we have no complaints here, but we still miss the analog headphone jack to keep our options open. 

Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G - A Camera Array On Steroids 

These days, the back-sides of smartphones are getting much more complex with ever-more sophisticated camera systems. Qualcomm's Snapdragon 865 affords higher camera resolution processing up to 108 Megapixel resolution and up to 8K video recording, so Samsung took the opportunity to equip its top-end model in the Galaxy S20 line-up with a 108MP ISOCELL Bright HM1 sensor and a 100X periscope, prism of sorts, zoom lens. This configuration allows the phone to achieve a hybrid 10X optical zoom, along with 100X digital zoom for what the company has now branded as Space Zoom. 


But that's just the primary camera with its f/1.8 aperture 79-degree wide angle lens. Also on board are a 12MP f/2.2 120-degree ultra-wide angle camera, a 48MP f/3.5 telephoto zoom lens, and a ToF sensor (DepthVision) array and LED flash. The result is an unmistakable, large rectangular bump-out on the back that offers a lot of versatility to capture an array of shot compositions and effects. We'll step through many of those in our camera test results shortly as well.