Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G Mobile Phone; Sim Free Smartphone 128GB - Cosmic Grey, (UK Version)

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Galaxy Fold and Z Flip notwithstanding, the S20 Ultra is Samsung’s most expensive smartphone to date. It’s not like we weren’t warned beforehand – the leaks made sure of that – but now that Samsung’s premium-tier flagship has been let loose, it’s safe to say that the rumours failed to soften the blow.

best Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra deals in October 2023 The best Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra deals in October 2023

According to our display colourimeter, the S20 Ultra’s screen is pretty much faultless, aside from a slight discrepancy with oversaturated dark red tones. Contrast – as you’d expect from one of Samsung’s AMOLED screens – is a perfect infinity:1, and the screen is capable of getting plenty bright, peaking at 667cd/m2 with a torch shining directly on the ambient light sensor. That's troubling for such a pricey camera phone. You also lose some features in 108MP mode, including motion photos (fine) and beauty mode (won't miss that), and there seems to be some baseline skin smoothing you can't control (not good). This means that the S20 Ultra has the advantage when it comes to low-light conditions, and it really shows in testing. Comparing the two, the Galaxy S20 Ultra’s low-light pictures have greater contrast and manage to soften the highlights more effectively. The Xiaomi also doesn’t benefit from the Galaxy S20 Ultra’s abundance of new camera features. Instead of offering a more affordable alternative to the Samsung Galaxy S20 and Galaxy S20 Plus, we’ve got a far pricier option in the form of the Galaxy S20 Ultra. During a period where consumers are holding on to their phones longer and spending less overall, this move seems somewhat odd. Speaking of which, the Galaxy S20 Ultra’s USB Type-C connector supports charging speeds up to a rapid 45W, although disappointingly Samsung only supplies a standard 25W charger in the box. Finally, the top-mounted SIM slot can house two SIM cards, or just one and a microSD card up to 1TB. Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra review: 120Hz displayNetwork: The bandwidths supported by the device may vary depending on the region or service provider. While some of the Space Zoom 100x zoom features are a little pointless, if you’re only going up to 10x then the results are really quite good. You don’t this kind of zoom unless you have a periscope camera. You shouldn’t buy it if… You want the best flagship camera The phone might be dual-SIM enabled, however only the main slot has 5G support. You couldn’t pop two 5G SIMs in and utilise the next-gen network on both. There’s Wi-Fi 6 support too and I have been thoroughly impressed with both call quality and data connections. Software Of course, it isn’t entirely about how much the S20 Ultra costs, and besides, if you’re craving the very pinnacle of smartphone achievement, such a device is never going to come cheap in the first place.

S20 Ultra 5G- all carriers Cosmic Grey Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G- all carriers Cosmic Grey

For all these high-end internals, the S20 Ultra runs and performs like any other flagship Android. You can play any game from Google Play at the best settings without a hitch, lag in the UI is virtually non-existent and apps open instantly. For this review, I have been using a European Galaxy S20 Ultra powered by the Exynos 990 and 12GB RAM. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Qualcomm edition varied in areas like battery life and benchmark scores as we’ve seen this previously with Samsung phones.

Making an open-hand gesture to trigger selfies so that you can hold your arm out and frame up the shot – without having to retract and reset for every shot. If you're a phone manufacturer without these basic features on your camera phone, we’re judging you. Hard.

Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G Mobile Phone; Sim Free Smartphone

We could write a whole review of the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra’s cameras, there’s so much to say about them – and that’s good news if you want something fresh out of your smartphone’s photos, but bad news if you want the best photos with every snap. 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. If you like specs, then you’ll love the Galaxy S20 Ultra. If you love comparing spec-sheets and gazing in awe at how much RAM a phone has then the S20 Ultra should immediately grab your attention.

Over the course of my week with the S20 Ultra my battery life experience has changed numerous times. With the 120Hz refresh rate on and two SIMs (one 5G) enabled I struggled to make it through from 8am to 10pm without getting nervous and topping things up before I left the office. Well, currently the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra looks like one of the best smartphones ever released. It has the best display of any phone ever (factually, not subjectively), a 5000mAh battery, a 6.9-inch display and a slightly ridiculous 12/16GB RAM. Wi-Fi 6 (ax), 120Hz Amoled Display, In-Display Fingerprint Sensor, Optical Zoom, Mobile Communications Standard 5G TouchWiz branding might have been absent from Samsung phones for years, but it’s only recently that the software on the brand’s phones has recovered from years of, well, being awful. Oddly, what’s not on offer here is 45W wired charging, which is supported by last year’s Note 10 Plus, and this year’s S20, S20 Plus and S20 Ultra, via an adapter that Samsung sells separately. A few companies are even toying with 100W charging, but Samsung seems to be taking its time in rolling out truly fast charging.

S20 Ultra 5G Factory Unlocked New Android Cell Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G Factory Unlocked New Android Cell

It’s Samsung’s biggest camera sensor upgrade since the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge, yet we found the hyped-up 108MP camera mode captures photos that don't look much different than snaps taken in the main camera's default 12MP mode. READ NEXT: Which smartphone has the best battery life? Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra review: Performance and battery life The answer is simply that you should go with the regular S20 if you want the S20 range while keeping things relatively affordable and the Ultra for just the all-round best device. S20 Ultra or the newer S21 Ultra: which is the better choice That’s certainly not ideal if (like me) you’re still paying off your credit card debt in the Christmas shopping aftermath, but if you do somehow manage to cough up the funds, I can’t see there being many better Android alternatives as we begin to settle in to the new decade. Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra review: What you need to know It features an outright huge 6.9-inch display that covers the majority of the front and curves slightly around the phone’s edges. The only obvious item breaking up the otherwise all-screen aesthetic is a small hole-punch notch in the middle of the top edge. Make no mistake this is a glorious OLED panel, but that shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who has used a flagship Samsung phone before.My summary says it all, really, but there’s no getting around it: the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra, despite only launching at the beginning of 2020, is already this year’s best flagship Android phone. However, no matter how exciting it may be – it has the most zoomable camera we’ve ever seen and a 120Hz screen – it actually costs more than the ludicrously expensive iPhone 11 Pro Max. The best thing about all this camera stuff? Well, there’s a new shooting mode called “Single Take”, which uses all of the cameras simultaneously. Simply tap and hold the recording button, film some interesting stuff, and you will get a nice collage at the end of it, including wide-angle stills, boomerangs, slow-mo video and artsy monochrome images. Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra review: Verdict a bit like the 100x zoom, feels more like a feature Samsung hypes up rather than one the average consumer is going to really make use of. The footage, which is shot at 30fps, is very sharp – but you’ll need some form of 8K display to really see that come through.