Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra – Test – Tek.no (2023)

TestSamsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra

This time most applies to Samsung.

The new Galaxy Note 20 Ultra is Samsung's new flagship. Just like its predecessor, the S20 Ultra, it's a beast and offers everything Samsung has to offer in terms of technology. But a cluttered spec sheet isn't always conclusive - something we saw in full force with the Galaxy S20 Ultra's buggy software when it was new.

And software doesn't get any more important than it does on a phone like the Galaxy Note. The included stylus isn't all that useful without a specialized set of features - and we're talking features that didn't exist in Android before. So Samsung has a lot more work to do to ensure it works in this series compared to most other Galaxy products, which are largely based on Google's software, with fewer and mostly cosmetic tweaks from Samsung itself.

We can get the good news right away; The Galaxy Note 20 Ultra is Samsung's best in years. Also considering the included software. However, as usual, updates are to be expected when phones ship to buyers and those updates were pretty much quality. However, the fact that the phone works almost flawlessly is already a good sign.

The other good news; The camera has become much more usable than the S20 Ultra, offering mostly stable and excellent quality throughout.

But at a price of NOK 15,000, expectations are also high.

In terms of design, the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra is a slightly whimsical creature. I personally find it relatively nice to look at, but with the phone becoming so thin that the camera bulge protrudes about two to three millimeters from the back, it feels like a Lego brick is stuck in its pocket.

But luckily the "Lego" looks pretty good, with shiny metal framing the camera bulge and the back and recessed metal rings around each of the cameras.

The phone is available in two colors. All-black and a copper-colored body - which in itself is pretty close to what's often referred to as "rose gold" by various phone manufacturers.

The latter of the two phones is clearly the more attractive, but it also has a practical advantage. Where the black version has a glossy back and collects fingerprints like a storm, the copper version has a matte glass treatment on the back, meaning it collects virtually no visible fingerprints. If you look really closely, you'll likely see some fingerprints - but they don't scream out in the right angle like fingerprints on a glossy black surface do.

It's a tired chorus, but Samsung knows its screens. And this year's Note 20 Ultra, like the Galaxy S models and the previous Note models, has a very good OLED display produced by Samsung.

Not only do you get a 120 Hertz refresh rate here, which makes the phone extremely comfortable to use and view, but you also get variable screen speed. That means if the screen is just showing a still image, the processor doesn't have to work to generate 120 frames per second. That means longer battery life and less heat from the processor, which to a certain extent also gets extra power that can be used for other things running in the background - albeit this is mainly taken care of by the graphics part of the processor. .

As usual, the screen can be fully adjusted to almost 0 lighting, so that the mobile phone can also be used at the edge of the bed without acting as a "wake-up light". It's also nice to have HDR support, covering absolutely everything, not just videos already recorded with an HDR signal encoded into it.

For example, I sat watching "We Hunt Together" on NRK's ​​mobile app, and without Samsung's onscreen features enabled, it was an occasionally dark experience, with details in many of the dark scenes not being clearly visible. But once you turned on video enhancement, the experience was much closer to what you'd likely get with a 'true' HDR variant of the series - where the phone itself takes care of lightening up some of the dark parts of relatively dark scenes.

Largest and most convenient mobile phone for viewing photos, YouTube or whatever you have been looking for for a long time.

But that doesn't mean that Samsung is alone with good displays. Today it's become a focus and you get similar screens from OnePlus, Motorola and Huawei - and all phones cost significantly less than the Note 20 Ultra. But very few screens have variable speed like Samsung's, and not all phones have video enhancement like Koreans have.

There is hardly a cell phone on the market with as many unique features as the Galaxy Note. The phone is designed around the digital S Pen, which is housed in a small garage on the bottom of the phone. And while you can use a stylus on many phones with fully stock Android software, Samsung made sure to add value to the stylus.

This year, the stylus on the bottom of the phone has switched sides and is now on the left side of the phone. Samsung justifies this by saying that this time there are no buttons on the left side of the phone - so the stylus lands in a less "occupied" area of ​​the phone. But personally I would have preferred to always be on the right side of the phone. The bottom left corner of the phone tends to go into the hand I'm holding the phone in and as such it requires a bit of grip adjustment and more knots than usual before releasing the stylus.

But if you take it out while the screen is off, you get a simple writing tool that covers the entire screen where you can make little notes for yourself. Personally, I was a bit irritated that the stylus was so fiddly to remove that I occasionally bumped into the lock button - and ended up on my home screens instead of the note function. But that is probably mostly a matter of getting used to.

The Note Pen even has a built-in rechargeable battery and can be used as a wireless remote control for the Note series. That means you can use it as a remote shutter release for your camera or to control music on your phone. You can also use the stylus to control other camera functions or PowerPoint presentations.

There are a number of new features in the Notat app. For example, you can import PDFs and write directly on them without needing Adobe's Signature app - although it works normally, it's another step towards support right on your phone. You should also be able to record sound while taking notes and present everything on a timeline.

The Galaxy Note series is a typical line of phones where you need to use the phone for about a year before you can enjoy all the features it offers. In the week I've had the phone, I haven't used all, but many of the features. And for the most part they worked really well together.

One of the biggest disappointments with the Galaxy S20 Ultra was the camera. It promised 100x zoom and delivered nothing more than a button that created images that looked like Minecraft screenshots. It promised the biggest image sensor ever in a Samsung phone - which made for some fantastic photos at times, but the combination of the large sensor and glossy glass meant the phone shot blurry shots quite often. The S20 Ultra still does this occasionally, but Samsung has made major improvements to this camera too, and some of the bugs that plagued it when it was new are gone. For example, an annoying color shift towards green, which often occurred in photos taken, has now completely disappeared. But the S20 Ultra camera isn't perfect just yet. It can't deliver an amazing picture every time, which is what you expect when the phone costs more than SEK 15,000.

With the Note 20 Ultra, Samsung seems to have recognized this problem. Instead of the S20 Ultra's so-called time-of-flight camera, the Note 20 Ultra has a laser sensor that simply measures the distance from your phone to your subject if they're within four to five metres.

Now the focus on the main camera works every time. Also, the software has been organized in such a way that it works quickly and almost all photos - from the main camera - come out fine. And the camera is fast enough to take good photos of moving animals and children, for example, which was and still is a problem with the S20 Ultra.

The usual Samsung features are included. Colors are boosted a little more as a result - and can appear particularly intense on the OLED screen if you use the Vivid setting. Contrasts also seem to be a bit more pronounced. The combination creates compelling images that really "are" on screen. They're certainly not the most natural photos I've seen on a phone, but they're still some of the best I've seen.

We have to add that the dark mode has also become much better than before. It probably helps that the whole camera feels fresher than the previous top model.

For the zoom feature, Samsung promises up to 50x, which is still more than they can handle - but not so stupid that everyone realizes how bad it is. There's an extra trick to the Note 20 Ultra's optical zoom compared to the S20 Ultra, and with up to 20-30x working zoom on the predecessor, we ended up in the same range with a small bump on the Note. Even the full 50x magnification does not deliver fabulous images here, but can be used for documentation purposes. However, this camera performs poorly in the dark, but that's to be expected - almost no portable optical zoom has glass bright enough to work particularly well in the dark. This also applies to Huawei variants. Additionally, focus is also poor when zooming in the dark - making it even harder to get anything out of a zoomed-in image. But again; This camera isn't made for use in the dark, although it's possible to torment it a little at dusk.

The ultra-wide angle is absolutely perfect - and, as usual, not on the same level as the main camera, but it gives the camera good flexibility if you need to make room for more in the shots.

All in all, this is a camera that delivers on Samsung's promise.

This is one of the best phones out there for watching movies because of the great display. But the sound is a bit average - there's stereo sound here, but not much sound from the top speaker. This is more the kind of sound I've come to expect from phones that don't have "true" stereo sound built in, but instead use the speaker for the stereo channel. However, it has to be said that the Note delivers loud and clear sound and the stereo effect works well enough - even if it's not the best stereo sound I've heard from a phone.

On the battery front, the Note 20 Ultra actually has a slightly smaller battery than the S20 Ultra. The battery life is also considered sufficient, even if not very good. This is a phone that you need to charge daily and will get you around 3-4 hours of screen time without the battery that day. You may also experience longer battery life if you primarily use movies where separate low powered motors take over. There are significantly better phones out there for this particular capability - but for the vast majority, that runtime means the Note 20 Ultra will get through the day. The fact that battery life is so similar to its predecessor despite having a smaller battery probably has to do with two things; the adaptive display that doesn't need full processor throttling all the time; and that Samsung's software has only gotten better since the release of the S20 Ultra last spring.

It is worth mentioning that a quick charger is included in the box. Anything else would be crazy at this price. But the fact that the phone only supports 25-watt charging is a bit strange considering the S20 Ultra supports a full 45-watt. However, the predecessor only came with a 25-watt charge, so you had to buy additional equipment to be able to use the faster version. The new Note can't exactly be accused of slow loading - but most of its competitors around NOK 10,000 and support even faster loading than here. Said, that; The more extreme fast charging variants are likely to put a much greater strain on the battery than the somewhat quieter variant of the Note 20 Ultra.

Samsung has had a good grip on sound quality on calls for a number of years, and again it's excellent.

One problem that has bothered me with Samsung phones in the past is that no matter how much processing power they have, the user experience is often a bit choppy. The software faltered a bit here and there, often at critical points, such as when switching between landscape and portrait format - such as when entering and exiting games.

The Galaxy Note 20 Ultra is almost completely exempt from these random stops. I had a few minor glitches during my short week on the phone, but none that were repetitive and none that were too annoying.

To the extent that something seems to hamper the Note 20 Ultra's performance, it's more of a different tradition from Samsung. they overload their products with information and functions - and mobile phones often warn against this. But again, the Note 20 Ultra is better than its predecessors - it's just a less demanding phone than the S20 Ultra and the Note 10 before it. In comparison to best-in-class, there are still a few details to be given here.

It's worth noting that the Bixby home screen is gone, replaced by a similar screen called the Samsung Daily, and Google Assistant is preselected whether you press and hold the home button or activate via swipe gestures while Bixby is still on. almost dead when you press lock button.

Anyhow, it looks like Samsung isn't trying to push Bixby on us as much as it did back when they had a dedicated button for it on their phones. Bixby wouldn't have been so stupid if the service had supported Norwegian, but bragging about a voice assistant that only speaks Korean and English seems like something someone in a marketing department got the nod for rather than something Samsung did -Users wanted.

Samsung Pay is also a hindrance if you are a new user of this phone. I usually immediately switch to swipe gestures to control the phone, and I often find that imprecise handling of the cursor that indicates where to swipe activates Samsung Pay. Again, it's a matter of habit, and Samsung Pay can be turned off or switched to Google's payment services if you don't like it.

A third hurdle here is the phone's side menu. Appears when you drag your finger along the edge of the screen. It's just an annoyance for me - since I've set up my homescreens with the same apps anyway, and the extra menu doubles. It may be different for others - but you can still disable this menu.

pull short; The Galaxy Note 20 Ultra performs very well, but is so feature-packed that it needs to be customized a little more than other phones to become “hand in hand” with a new user's habits and desires. It's a bit annoying having to tinker with everything, but you end up with a phone that feels like a glove - and the job only needs to be done once, after all.

There's a long list of features here that I've been able to more or less test. And with a test approaching 17,000 characters, there's not necessarily room to include.

What's new and apparently extremely useful is the ability to use the Note "like a PC" on a display that supports Miracast wireless image transmission - which is most televisions. You get a kind of desktop and mouse pointer support by dragging your finger across the screen. I've seen this work only marginally, but it seemed like a very good solution - maybe especially in the boardroom, but also for light jobs around the house.

The Galaxy Note 20 Ultra is Samsung's best phone in years. It's got smoother software than before, it takes better pictures than before - and if you live with the thickness of the camera, it looks extremely good too. The fact that it's the first to feature Corning's custom Victus glass also means it can survive bumps and falls from greater heights than previous models - and it should also be more scratch-resistant. The test product was treated badly and sloppily by the signer as usual and hasn't suffered a single scratch in a week - this is relatively unusual for phones I use, so could mean that the wear resistance has actually improved.

Average battery life compared to the best rivals is really the only real downer here. The steep price tag also does its part to dampen the mood - you'd expect the spec to be good when it costs a whopping SEK 15,000.

If we look at the price, you get most of the usual mobile features offered by the Note 20 Ultra from a OnePlus 8 Pro for around NOK 11,000 - that's NOK 4,000 less. For many users, the difference in a OnePlus Nord for less than 5,000 SEK will be perceived as minimal.

But the Note series is unique. No other phone offers such a geeky focus on pen and handwriting capabilities as it does. It separates itself a little from the competition's price race and stands on its own two feet. Terribly expensive but just as full legs. If you want something like the full Note package, you'll have to scroll up.