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Samsung Galaxy S20 and S20 Plus review.

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Let's just set the stage here.

I think that it is really easy

to take the Galaxy S line of phones for granted.

Samsung sells so many of them,

more than any other Android phone in the US,

so I know it isn't hip or cool to say

that I like the Galaxy S phones

but I usually really like the Galaxy S phones.

Sure, Pixel phones tend to have better cameras,

and OnePlus get a ton of attention

and they also tend to cost less but,

there's just something really familiar

about the Galaxy S line.

It's like the default Android phone,

and so in some ways,

Samsung's biggest job with the S20 and the S20 Plus was

to make sure that it didn't mess up a good thing.

Like for example, I just reviewed the S20 Ultra,

this phones big brother and I think

that Samsung overextended itself with the S20 Ultra.

These phones though, they're trying

to do a little bit less than the Ultra

and so I think they end up accomplishing more.

There are three big new things about the Galaxy S20

that you need to know about.

First is the new camera system,

the second is that they support 5G,

and third, it has a nicer screen with 120Hz refresh rate.

There's also a bunch of little stuff too,

like they got rid of the headphone jack.

They also added a bunch of Samsung-y features

to the software but before we get into any of that,

let's just not take the design for granted.

It looks a lot like what all Galaxy phones have looked like

for a few years now.

There's curved glass in the back and metal rails

and a screen that is almost perfectly bezel-less

but seriously though,

compare this phone to any other Android phone

on the market, your Pixels, your OnePluses

or even your Huawei's

and I think the S20 is just plain nicer.

I actually think it's nicer than the iPhone 11 Pro,

just from a hardware perspective.

Also the small one,

it comes in pink, which is the best color option.

The camera module on the back is this big oblong rectangle

that's off to the side.

The screen is only interrupted by a tiny little hole

for the selfie camera instead of having

a big old notch or a forehead or whatever.

It uses an in-screen finger print sensor

which I have to admit is a little bit slower

than other biometric methods but I do just fine with it.

Now this thing starts at 1000 bucks

and the Plus version is 1200 bucks

and so I know that you can get most

of these features for cheaper on other android phones,

but the Galaxy S line just usually manages

to feel more like a complete package.

Samsung is charging a lot of money for this phone

and for that money, you deserve to get a really nice object

and yeah, Samsung delivers.

Don't take it for granted.

Okay, enough gushing.

Let's talk about the camera,

which is the first big new thing you need to know about.

Okay so,

actually with the Galaxy S20 Ultra,

I had to go into this big long complicated story

about how high megapixel cameras work,

but with the S20 and the S20 Plus,

it's a lot easier, mostly.

So the main camera is a more traditional 12 megapixels

and so is the wide angle camera.

The telephoto though is 64 megapixels.

Samsung says that it needs all those megapixels

to improve the zoom on its telephoto

and that actually works.

You can get a better shot zoomed in

at three or four X than you can with an iPhone

or even a Pixel.

It's still not great, but it's a step up.

Now it also can theoretically go up to 30X

but it looks really bad and it definitely loses

to the S20 Ultra at that zoom,

but the S20 Ultra costs 400 dollars more

and I really don't think it's worth it

to get decent 30X zoom shots.

Now I was really hard on the Galaxy S20 Ultra

for auto focus problems and for how

it did weird stuff to faces.

The regular S20 though, it's better for that stuff

but it's not perfect.

Focusing is improved and maybe that's because

it's using that more traditional 12 megapixel sensor

which uses a more traditional dual pixel auto focus method.

It still hunts for focus just a little bit

in video but it's not awful.

Now as for faces,

I do think that this phone is a little bit chiller

than the Ultra with the sharpening

and the smoothing but it's still doing it more

than I would like, it's a Samsung phone

so it wants to smooth faces.

You should never ever turn on Bixby scene detection though

if you want the white balance

to be any good at all.

What kills me is that if you turn on the Pro mode

on these cameras, everything looks great

and if you use the selfie camera

and turn off all the smoothing there,

everything looks great.

Basically I feel like if Samsung would just get

out of it's own way with the camera,

the whole camera system would be right there

with the iPhone 11 Pro and the Pixel 4

but as it is right now, it's still a third place finish.

As a whole package,

I do actually like this better than the Pixel 4

because you get an ultra wide

and you get way better video performance.

All right.

There are some other features to talk about.

So you can take 64 megapixel photos with this,

but even if you do it in really bright light,

when I crop in, I didn't see enough clean details

to make it worth it.

I think night mode is pretty good,

it's right in there with the iPhone

and about to the level of the Pixel,

better than I expected.

And video quality of course is very good,

it's Samsung quality video.

It's not quite up to the level

of the iPhone Pro though.

Oh if you were thinking you wanted

to get the S20 Plus instead of the smaller S20

because it has that time of flight depth vision camera,

honestly don't bother.

I didn't see any improvement in portrait photos because

of that extra lens.

The second thing to know is that these phones support 5G

and I have to be honest,

I didn't get a chance to really test 5G

because I'm here in San Francisco

where I don't have 5G networks to test on

with the carriers that I have.

I did test 5G on the Ultra back in New York

and it was great but I still think

that you shouldn't buy this phone just because

it supports 5G, I just don't think

the 5G networks are there yet.

One thing you should know is

that the Plus model supports the millimeter wave

version of 5G while the smaller S20 doesn't,

but unless you love standing

on a particular street corner to download videos,

who cares about millimeter wave.

Now one reason you might wanna get the S20 Plus

besides the bigger screen, is battery life.

I mostly tested the smaller S20

which has a 4000 milliamp battery

and after everything settled down

from the initial setup,

I was getting around five hours of screen time

with the high refresh rate turned on.

Brennan tested the S20 Plus

which has a 4500 milliamp battery,

he got a little bit more.

I think either one can get you through a day

and both really embarrass the Pixel 4 for longevity,

but neither one is like stellar.

As for performance,

I mean it's great.

The only Android phone that's faster

than these phones is probably the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra.

There's plenty of RAM and the Snapdragon 865 processor,

it seems like the real deal.

Still Samsung is doing Samsung stuff with the software,

I could complain about this all day

but rather than do that,

I actually wanna tell you what I do

to corral Samsung's worst tendencies.

I clean up quick settings first of all,

second I install this app called Side Actions

which lets you reprogram the power and volume buttons

to do the stuff that you actually wanna do

like launch you know, the Google Assistant

and set up Bixby.

Next I install this app called Edge Calendars

which is awesome, it lets you swipe in

to see your calendars right away.

I turn off Samsung Daily

and I also move the brightness slider

up to the top so it's easier to access.

Oh there's one more setting

that I turn on every time with the Galaxy S20,

the 120Hz screen.

I don't know if I ever wanna buy a phone again

that doesn't have a high refresh rate screen,

it's just, it's so much better.

The animations are better,

the scrolling is better,

it just, it feels better.

There is a trade off for battery life though,

it is worse if you have the high refresh rate on

and Samsung just locks at 120Hz,

it doesn't try and vary it.

So on the small one,

if you definitely need it to last all day,

you might wanna ratchet it back to 60Hz.

Samsung also knocks down the screen resolution

when you're at 120Hz but

I think that trade off is totally worth it

on both sizes of the phone.

Again, it just improves the experience

of the phone so much.

And of course the screen is a typical Samsung screen,

which means that it's, it's great.

I do think Samsung's default colors

are a little bit too garish,

but you can set it to natural

and then it just, it just looks good.

Anyway, that's it.

That's the third thing to know

about the S20.

The screen is awesome.

And I don't think you should ever spend 1000 dollars

on a phone again without a high refresh rate screen.

Samsung decided to call this the Galaxy S20

instead of the Galaxy S11

because it has those three things.

The new camera system,

support for 5G and the high refresh rate screen.

But I think the camera is only

a minor evolutionary upgrade over the S10.

The zoom is really nice,

but otherwise it fundamentally acts like the Samsung cameras

that I'm used to.

Good, but not the best.

I think 5G is a wash because the support really isn't there

in most cities

and although I dearly love the 120Hz refresh rate screen,

I understand that that's a nice to have,

it's not an actual functional improvement.

So yeah.

In my book, this is more of an S11

than an S20.

It's not a whole new generation

but with fundamentals this good,

I'll take it.

Call it what you want Samsung.