With Samsung primed to announce the Galaxy S21 series in a couple of days, I figured out it might be a good time to assess how the Galaxy S20 series has fared so far. I happened to own a Galaxy S20+ since May 2020, more particularly the international Exynos-powered variant which is often frowned upon by the tech geeks around the world. Here’s my long-term review.
A quick overview of the device’s specs, the Galaxy S20+ is the middle sibling of last year’s S20 family, sharing most of its specs and feature set with its smaller sibling — the Galaxy S20 — more so than the behemoth S20 Ultra. Apart from the beefed-up battery, the larger form factor, and the addition of a fourth time-of-flight sensor on the back, the S20+ can be hardly differentiated from the vanilla S20. Nonetheless, such differences still impose a noticeable influence on the overall user experience, as I shall demonstrate.
Display
The Galaxy S20+ sports a 6.7-inch 3200×1440 QHD+ display with the capability of running at 60 or 120 Hz refresh rate, albeit with a slightly confusing caveat which we’ll touch on later. At the time of its release, the Galaxy S20+’s display was considered one of, if not the best display on the market. With a maximum brightness of 800 nits, the S20+’s display boasts a quite respectable maximum brightness even by today’s standards — only beaten by the iPhone 11 Pro, iPhone 12 Pro, and its Ultra sibling.
Delving deeper into the specs, the S20+ boasts a 240 Hz touch sampling rate, a feat that’s only matched by the hardcore gaming smartphones such as the Asus ROG 2. In reality, this is only a nominal figure. During normal usage, the touch sampling rate is clocked down to 120 Hz, as demonstrated in this experiment. Still, this is such an incredible feat which can definitely be felt when using the phone. My only reservation so far is that the phone’s auto-brightness algorithm refuses to lower down the brightness to near-minimum levels when sitting in a quite dark room — the phone only dials down the brightness to about 20%, requiring a manual intervention to dial it down further than that.
And then comes the elephant in the room. While the display is capable of operating at a refresh rate of 120 Hz, you can only enjoy this buttery smooth refresh rate at FHD+ resolution, which introduces the conundrum of having to choose between running at QHD+ resolution but with a refresh rate of 60 Hz, or ditching the slightly sharper context in favor of that 120 Hz refresh rate option.
To be quite honest, given that newer phones like the OnePlus 8 Pro or the Oppo Find X2 Pro have no problems running at 120 Hz at their native QHD+ resolution, I was a bit let down by that fact. My personal choice, however, was to ditch the QHD+ resolution in favor of the higher refresh rate. In my own humble opinion, a higher refresh rate is much more tangible to the end-user than a slightly sharper context when looking at the phone ever so closely.
Unfortunately, the S20 family does not feature any sort of adaptive refresh rate mechanisms to dial down the screen’s refresh rate when not needed, which is a bit of a bummer. The best way to work around this issue is by setting up a Bixby routine to automatically switch to 60 Hz. I, for instance, set it up to automatically switch to 60 Hz when opening YouTube and Netflix, as well as a routine that can be engaged at will via a widget placed on my home-screen (to avoid draining battery unnecessarily on the Always-on Display running at 120 Hz). Thankfully, Samsung has introduced its own Adaptive Refresh Rate in the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra, which means such workarounds are no longer necessary going forward.
Performance
Depending on the region, your Galaxy S20 device might be powered by Qualcomm’s flagship SoC, the Snapdragon 865, or Samsung’s own in-house counterpart, the Exynos 990. In my case, I bought the international variant, which is powered by the latter. Objectively speaking, the disparity between the Snapdragon SoC and its Exynos counterpart this year is a substantial and well-documented one. It doesn’t take long before you stumble upon an article stating how worse the Exynos 990 is when compared to the Snapdragon 865. I even dare to say that, this year, the disparity between both chipsets could be compared to that of 2 years ago, when Samsung debuted its first SoC with a custom CPU architecture in the Exynos 9810.
But here is the thing. While the Exynos 990 lags behind the Snapdragon 865 in several performance-related metrics, it is by no means a slouch for the most part. Simply-said, flagship smartphones nowadays have been more than capable enough to deal with whatever you throw at them. Such said differences between both SoCs do not reflect on the user experience when it comes to the usual round of checking up my social media apps or browsing through the web. Even moderate gaming has been absolutely fine unless you engage in a gaming session of more than half an hour, where the phone might feel a bit warm and start to throttle. I am no gamer to thoroughly assess this part, so I will leave this part to the more-informed.
Now, of course, throwing Apple’s own silicon into the comparison would dwarf both Samsung’s and Qualcomm’s scores in synthetic benchmarks. The question is, how relevant is that to real-world usage? To me, perhaps the only area where I feel such a powerful chipset like Apple’s silicon is actually needed is the camera post-processing. Taking a high-contrast HDR shot on the Galaxy S20+ might need a few seconds to process in the background, though that won’t get in the way of capturing other shots while the previous image is being processed.
Having the option to bump up the refresh rate to 120 Hz is one of the key elements of making the overall experience that enjoyable. In tandem with the 120 Hz touch sampling rate, the phone feels significantly more responsive and the overall UI feels much more fluid than any of the phones I used to own. Having selected the higher refresh rate, switching back to 60 Hz has become pretty much unbearable.
Software
Of course, none of this would count without being powered by a well-optimized software complimenting the whole experience. And I am glad to say, Samsung has done a quite great job with the later iterations of their own skin, namely OneUI. I never really expected myself to like Samsung’s OneUI software — I have always been an advocate of stock Android and lightly modified skins. But shortly after I have set up my phone, I have come to appreciate Samsung’s software more than I thought. And with the latest OneUI 3.0, Samsung further refined a lot of the software elements, while updating the phone to Google’s latest Android 11 release.
What annoyed me the most was the fact that 3rd party launchers did not play well with Google’s native navigation gestures out of the box. Mercifully, Samsung took notice of that issue and fixed it with OneUI 3.0. This for me was the most crucial fix OneUI 3.0 has brought to the table. Other changes include slight refinements to the UI and the introduction of Android 11’s native features such as “Bubbles.”
Speaking of which, Samsung has rather oddly kept around its own proprietary “Smart pop-up” option alongside Google’s native “Bubbles” solution, which essentially does the same thing with the added option of resizing the pop-up window. In my opinion, Samsung’s own proprietary version works more consistently and reliably, so I have decided to stick around with it. You can read more about what’s new in OneUI 3.0 here.
Brief pop-up notifications and Edge Panels remain my undisputed favorite features of OneUI for the way each feature adds more functionality and convenience without getting in the way. Contrary to Android’s default heads-up notifications style, Samsung’s Brief pop-up option essentially minimizes the space taken by the sweeping notifications, with the option to swipe down on the incoming notification to open it up in an overlaying, resizable pop-up window. This is very convenient particularly when watching videos in landscape mode where the default card-like notifications style would clog half of the display, whereas a “brief” pop-up notification would take much much smaller space. And as an added bonus, you could enable Edge Lighting for more fancy effects which you can select to show while the screen is off, effectively acting as a makeshift notification indicator.
When it comes to added functionality, nothing beats Edge Panels in my own opinion. With a single swipe from the edge, you can swipe through several panels that can be configured to your heart’s content. From nifty shortcuts and quick-launching apps to having your clipboard and notes one swipe away, Edge Panels has it all. I admit it took me quite a while to get used to it and to figure out what I would like to keep handy the most, but once I got the hang of it, Edge Panels became a quite integral part of the way I use my phone.
An honorable mention to Samsung’s own Internet browser, which I have found to be way more convenient than a lot of the browsers I used before, including Chrome. As a citizen of the Internet world, ads have been a constant nuisance that I have to put up with. You can imagine the beaming smile on my face once I discovered that Samsung’s Internet browser supports ad-blocking out of the box. Not only that, but you could also choose which ad-blocking add-on to install. So I made the switch to Samsung Internet and I didn’t look back, slowly discovering even more niceties.
It’s the small stuff here and there that convinced me of finally jumping ships from good old Chrome. For instance, instead of cramming every option in a 3-dot menu in the top right corner, everything is kept in a neat toolbar in the bottom for better reachability. Samsung even went the extra mile, making the toolbar fully customizable as shown below.
There are also some little shortcuts that make life much easier. Long-pressing the home button will directly edit the address up top in the URL bar. Long-pressing the tabs button will promptly open a new tab. You can also swipe to the right or left on the bottom toolbar to swiftly switch between the opened tabs. Perhaps what I mourn the most is the loss of cross-device syncing of my bookmarks and history, due to the lack of a Windows/Mac version of Samsung Internet. What are the odds we see that happen?
Battery life
Complimenting the relatively large form factor of the Galaxy S20+ is a 4500 mAh battery, which while not the biggest battery capacity is still quite respectable. But as we all know, battery life metrics are impacted by more than just the rated capacity of the battery inside. And as much as we try to remain objective when judging the phone’s longevity, battery life, in particular, varies a lot depending on the usage patterns. Unfortunately, given the current circumstances of the ongoing global pandemic, my typical usage patterns have been greatly disturbed. Thanks to the lockdown rules, I have been restricted from going out and about as I would normally do prior to the COVID-19 outbreak. Add to that the fact that I’ve started my obligatory conscription in October, and matters have only come even more complicated.
In an attempt to provide more accurate and normalized results, I have decided to use a 3rd party app to keep track of 2 very important metrics: active drain rate and idle drain rate. The former is indicative of how much battery is drained while the screen is turned on while the latter indicates how much battery is drained while the phone is in an idle state. Below are some screenshots of some stats I have managed to capture on OneUI 3.0.
In more layman terms, more often than not I would reach the bed at the end of the day with some juice left in the tank enough to watch a couple of YouTube videos before I fall asleep. However, on a more busy day where I would be using my phone constantly for navigation or taking a lot of images, low-battery anxiety would inevitably kick in at the end of the day. Of course, notching down the refresh rate to 60 Hz would earn me a couple more hours of usage. I, however, found it increasingly intolerable to revert back to 60 Hz — I admit it, I’m spoilt. In short, the battery life on the S20+ is not going to be a big concern most of the time. However, it is still not the undisputed battery endurance champ most of us so much crave.
Perhaps what annoys me the most is the fact that it is well-documented that Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 865 chipset is more efficient than Samsung’s Exynos 990, so those who live in the US would end up having better battery life across the board while paying virtually the same money as I had.
Thankfully, the S20+ ships with a 25W fast-charging brick in the box. While the rated output power might sound a bit underwhelming when compared to other proprietary rapid charging technologies, it does charge up the S20+ super quick. Plugging in the phone for 30 minutes would top it up from flat to more than 60%, enough to pull you through a whole day of moderate usage. Charging up the phone to the brim doesn’t take that much time either — 55 minutes to be precise, which is quite impressive. Only the S20 Ultra supports Samsung’s 45W charging, though I have really felt annoyed by the lack of such support. Sadly, it’s only a matter of time before phones start shipping without a charger in the box, thanks to Apple’s mischievous move of doing away with the bundled charging brick. Thank you, Mr. Tim Apple, for saving the world from falling apart.
Camera
Unfortunately, I have been unable to take my usual tour in the city to showcase the phone’s camera capabilities, thanks to the COVID-19 outbreak necessitating strict lockdown rules. I did, however, spend quite some time messing about the camera app which I have come to appreciate more than I had thought. The fact that you can add and rearrange the camera modes in the main carousel on the bottom flank of the viewfinder is so underrated. Rather surprisingly, Night Mode by default is tucked in the ‘More’ section, along with Live Focus, two of the most common features most people use on any given smartphone, let alone a high-end one.
The latter is Samsung’s camera experience at its most joyous best. Apart from taking bland portrait shots with heavily blurred backgrounds, with Live Focus, you can alter the applied portrait effect in the viewfinder and the gallery after taking the shot. My personal favorite is the “Color Point” mode, which basically singles out the foreground object to remain normally colored while the rest of the background remains in black and white while adding a slight vignette effect that you can adjust to your liking. There is also a Live Focus Video mode, which shares the exact same functionality albeit with a few caveats; you can only choose the desired portrait effect in the viewfinder before recording the video and it’s only limited to using the main sensor, whereas you could take Live Focus stills using the main or telephoto sensor, which offers a slightly zoomed-in crop.
One of my favorite features of the camera app is that you could quickly switch to the selfie camera without even touching the screen. If you are out in the cold, you could double-tap the power button after you launch the camera to switch to the selfie camera and take a selfie using the volume button. It’s still a bit strange that the selfie camera launches in this slightly cropped mode by default.
Conclusion
The Galaxy S20+ is not the ultimate powerhouse you’d carry around in your pocket — there’s the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra for that. Instead, what Samsung has managed to come up with is a phone that excels at executing the normal ordeals reliably. It checks the main pillars of a successful flagship smartphone, and then some. Flanking the screen from the top and the bottom is a pair of very capable stereo speakers, with Dolby Atmos support, which sounds quite good for a smartphone speaker. Voice calls sound very crisp and clear from the earpiece up top. Even the vibration motor, an aspect many manufacturers usually turn a blind eye towards, oozes with premium vibes, which is only bettered by the iPhones of the world in my opinion.
With the S21 family right around the corner, the S20+ still feels like a worthy acquisition going into the 2nd year of its existence. And with Samsung rumored to commit to some strange compromises with the non-Ultra variants of the upcoming S21 series, in some ways the S20+ somehow manages to one-up its upcoming successor before it’s even released. For instance, both the S21 and S21+ are rumored to max out at FHD+ resolution only, with both phones featuring a so-called “glasstic” back, less RAM, and no microSD card support. Of course, everything should be taken with a pinch of salt. But if such rumors are to be confirmed, it does feel like the non-Ultra phones of this year are an upgrade of last year’s S20 FE rather than the all-out flagship S20 series debuted at the beginning of last year, making the S20+ an even more valuable acquisition.
Feature-Image: The Verge
