When you see the new Galaxy Note 20 and Note 20 Ultra up close – while wearing a mask, at a socially distanced hands on event – it's not dissimilar to looking at a nice watch or bag or, funnily enough considering the USP, a nice pen. The Note 20 series is refined, in both senses of the word, as all the tech upgrades are nice-to-haves for an already luxe smartphone without being particularly surprising or essential for competitors to copy. Does that make it a teensy bit boring next to the Galaxy Z Fold 2? Yes. Has Samsung finally got it right when it comes to super-duper-premium? Yes.
Samsung tried to make the original Fold a luxury phone but you can't just tell people that something ugly is luxury. The Note 20s aren't ugly. This 'Mystic Bronze' finish Samsung is suddenly obsessed with looks smart here, but a little too much on the shiny-shiny Buds Live. There's a few design tweaks: the S Pen slot has switched sides, from right to left, to make room for the cameras, the buttons are back on the right hand side and the camera housing has been smartened up.
Aside from the usual spec and performance bumps – which all leaked many, many times pre-Unpacked – there's lots of day-to-day improvements, mostly it must be said in the software, that aren't the kind of thing to sway you to buy a phone but will probably come into their own for Note 20 owners long term. I'm talking about the lower latency S Pen, now 9ms versus 42ms. (Funny how last year's flagship tech gets so slow so quickly, isn't it?) There's also auto straighten for S Pen handwriting in Notes – much needed in my case and the ability to add voice recordings as attachments. The gesture controls, which essentially allow the stylus to act as your Android menu, I can take or leave as last year.
On the camera, it's largely catching up with the Galaxy S20 series so there's a new laser AF sensor to speed up focusing and the ability to 'Space Zoom' to 100x with a combination of the telephoto lens and digital zoom. Samsung seems to be going after the influencer/creator crowd with even more specificity with multi-source mic control and the ability to add Bluetooth mics or use the Buds Live as a recording mic in the native camera app. The pro video mode can shoot 8K video at 24fps with the option to go for a 21:9 aspect ratio. Winter lockdown filmmaking project?
So the Note 20 Ultra, in particular, has everything you'd expect: a beautiful 6.9-inch 120Hz display, 5G, the latest Exynos 990 processor, three lenses (wide, ultra-wide, telephoto), a big 4,500mAh battery and fast charging to 50% in 30 minutes. Two tech upgrades that sound boring but have a lot of potential and could be very useful in practice are Ultra Wideband and Dex. In my demo of the now fully wireless Dex syncing, I used the Note 20 as a blanked out remote control pad, feeling a bit like a granny behind a new fangled steering wheel, to open up proper full-fat browsers and applications and files on a Samsung Smart TV (it works on any model 2019 or later).
And as for UWB, which Apple introduced on the iPhone 11 series last year, Samsung says this spatial/directional technology will be used to share files by pointing your phone at another UWB device. Expect to hear a lot more on this front as it works its way onto S20s and tablets, earbuds and wearables.
Then there's Xbox on the Galaxy Note 20. You get a three month Xbox Game Pass Ultimate with pre-orders that gets you access to 100+ titles for cloud streaming. You can play with a Bluetooth controller and, of course, Samsung gave a shout out to 5G gaming.
So yes, the most interesting tech upgrades on the Note 20 series are not Note exclusives. Many more people will use the video and audio features on the Galaxy S line and the real innovative leaps are happening over on the Folds. (You have to leap when you're starting with a 5/10 product).
And despite the £849 price on the 6.7-inch Note 20 and the £1,179 you'll need for a Note 20 Ultra, that's not a problem because these are Samsung's luxury, "like pen-to-paper" business phones. And fairly futureproof ones at that.
You can pre-order the Samsung Galaxy Note 20 and Note 20 Ultra now from Samsung, Carphone Warehouse and EE.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
