Samsung Galaxy S20 review: answers to the most pressing questions

The successor to the S10 is really great

The camera of the new Samsung Galaxy S20 received attention before the market launch. But currently Samsung fans are mainly concerned with one issue. Our test report gives a clear answer to this.

The Samsung Galaxy S20 is the basic model of the Galaxy S20 series. This test report will serve as the basis for the test reports of the sister models Samsung Galaxy S20 + and Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra. We will submit detailed tests for both models shortly.

table of Contents

1. Battery Life
   

2. Design and Craft
   

3. Hardware
   

   1. Display stand
      

   2. Performance and memory
      

4. Software
   

5. Voice quality
   

   1. Dual SIM
      

   2. 4G or 5G?
      

6. camera
   

7. Price and availability
   

8. Is it worth switching?
   

9. in conclusion
   And alternatives

If you surf on related forums, Samsung fans are currently mainly interested in a question about the Galaxy S20: How long can the battery last? The Korean manufacturer's phone has a short life span. If you go drinking after a hard day's work, if you don't want to lose your functioning phone soon, it's best to charge it in advance.

Battery Life

With the Galaxy S20, this will change, at least for many users, because Samsung has significantly increased battery capacity compared to the Galaxy S10. Energy storage now has a capacity of 4,000 instead of 3,400 mAh. Is this obvious in everyday life? Instead. In PCMark's battery test, turning on the screen can achieve nearly 9 hours of running time, and the remaining power is 20%. It doesn't matter whether we choose a refresh rate of 60 Hz or 120 Hz. At this value, the Galaxy S20 even lags behind its predecessor, the Galaxy S10, which lasted almost 11 hours in the same test. However, it should also be said here that we tested on a Galaxy S20 with a higher display resolution. We chose Quad HD + instead of Full HD +. The test with a Full HD + display is still running and we will submit the results. We also want to run for less than 11 hours. This is a fairly modest value: For comparison, in our tests, the Huawei P30 ran for up to 14 hours.

Samsung Galaxy S20 series in pictures

Although PCMark attempts to mimic the usage behavior as practical as possible, the benchmark results are only partially meaningful. According to initial user reports, the Galaxy S20 should be more economical than the S10 in standby mode. In general, you should only be able to squeeze a half-and-a-half-day run time from a larger "battery." In the coming weeks, we will bring more impressions to your daily life.

We cannot confirm the statement, as Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 is another processor, so the battery life of the US version of the Galaxy S20 is significantly longer. The S20 with Snapdragon processor had similar battery life when reviewing the test results of several colleagues in the United States.

Samsung has greatly increased the charging speed. The Galaxy S10 still needs to wait nearly 90 minutes to fully charge on the socket, and despite the larger battery, the Galaxy S20 still takes 75 minutes. After 30 minutes, in our test, the phone was charged between 1 and 54%. Of course, optionally, the Galaxy S20 can also be wirelessly charged, and can act as a wireless charger for other Qi-enabled devices.

Now that we have answered the most pressing questions about the new Samsung phone, we want to clarify how the Samsung Galaxy S20 performs in daily life and how useful the innovations made by Samsung are. Let's start from the outside of the phone.

Design and Craft

Samsung redesigns the GalaxyS only every two years. After the Galaxy S10 was completely renewed, the Galaxy S20 didn't have much new idea in this regard. The front-facing camera is no longer in the upper-right corner of the display, but rather in the middle of the top of the display. There, it's not even as prominent as the Galaxy S10. The annoying Bixby button is gone. Instead, there is only a volume rocker and switch on the right side of the phone. Samsung did not let Bixby die completely. This button is integrated in the switch and should initially confuse users.

Because switches now react differently to certain gestures. Holding down the button no longer allows the Galaxy S20 to be turned off, but rather starts Bixby. If you hold down the volume down button and the power button, the screenshot will not be taken, but the restart menu will open. Thankfully, Samsung allows you to change the behavior of the power button so that you can use regular handles.

Another feature has also been removed: the Galaxy S20 no longer has a headphone jack. These can only be connected to the phone via USB C or via Bluetooth. This has been hinted at, for example, Samsung has also cancelled such a slot in the recently launched Galaxy S10 Lite. We hope Samsung will bother some users. But with strong protests in 2016, when Apple removed the iPhone 7 socket, we no longer expected it.

Otherwise, you will only be able to make cosmetic changes: Samsung now uses a large rectangular camera module in the upper left corner of the back of the phone. In our opinion, this also looks much better than a lens placed horizontally on the Galaxy S10. The frame of the phone is still made of aluminum. Both the front and back are made of Gorilla Glass 6. However, mobile phones are not particularly sturdy. After the first drop test online, we urgently recommend that you purchase a protective case for the Galaxy S20. Protect the enclosure according to IP68 again to prevent dust and water from entering.

Happily: Although the diagonal of the screen has increased again, it now reaches 6.2 inches. Samsung has reduced the edges around the screen so much that the Galaxy S20 is almost larger than the Galaxy S9 with a protective cover. Compared to the S10, the S20 is even narrower and can be moved easily. The end result is a fairly compact top smartphone.

Galaxy S20 is available in Germany in two colors: "cloud pink" (pink), "cloud blue" (blue) and "cosmic gray" (gray). What must the Galaxy S20 technically provide?

Hardware

The new fabric softener display should be mentioned here first. Now Super AMOLED screens also support refresh rates up to 120 Hz. Samsung promises to provide you with smoother animations and smoother scrolling.

Display stand

What can you imagine? In the slow-motion video below, we demonstrated the "fabric softener effect" with the Razer Phone 2, which also has a 120 Hz display. We compared the gaming smartphone with the Sony Xperia XZ3. Its display frequency is 60 Hz.

You must have doubted that if the presentation requires slow-motion video, the effects in daily life will not catch your attention at most. We cannot directly compare the Galaxy S20 and S9 when scrolling in the menu and application drawer. Only during playback should you really benefit from a higher refresh rate. On the other hand, if you are not using your phone as a handheld device, you can safely choose 60 Hz to save battery.

Since Samsung did not succeed the Galaxy S10e, the Galaxy S20 is the entry-level model of Samsung's new flagship series. Anyone who fears that they must accept the compromise of a device (such as a display) is wrong. The Galaxy S20 has the same Quad HD + Dynamic AMOLED display as the sister models Galaxy S20 + and Galaxy Ultra. Due to the smaller screen size, the pixel density of 563 pixels per inch (ppi) is significantly higher than other S20 variants. The quality is no doubt, but we noticed some problems with the automatic brightness adjustment in the test equipment. This usually results in considerable delay after the device is woken up from standby. Software updates may help you.

Performance and memory

In addition to the "Fabric Softener Display", the Samsung Galaxy S20 offers the expected innovation. Therefore, the country's Exynos 990 is the latest Samsung chip. Samsung itself promises a 20% increase in performance compared to the Exynos 9820 used in the Galaxy S10, and our benchmark results confirm this. However, the S20 may not be the fastest Android smartphone because we are able to measure higher values ​​on a demo device using a Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 processor. The Xiaomi Mi 10 equipped with this chip will be sold especially in the country.

Using the applications AnTuTu and Geekbench, the performance of processors, memory, graphics units and Co. can be measured. Higher values ​​mean better results. Speaking of memory: The Galaxy S20 has a lot to offer here. The processor has up to 12 GB of RAM in the Galaxy S20. This is the first time that this is the new LPDDR5 memory. It reached a maximum speed of 5500 megabits per second (Mb / s) and is therefore much faster than the LPDDR4X memory used in the Galaxy S10, which has a maximum read and write speed of 4,266 Mb / s.

However, the Galaxy S20 only offers 128 GB of space for apps, photos, music and videos and other files-after all, it can still be expanded to 1 TB with a microSD card. Samsung has removed the memory card slot on the Galaxy Note 10, so there have been rumors in advance that the basic model of the S20 series must also have no memory card slot. But that is not the case.

The fingerprint sensor has also remained almost unchanged. Samsung just placed it higher, so it's easier to get. Samsung has decided not to use the new Qualcomm Sensor 3D Sonic Max sensor. This will provide a significantly larger detection area. Installing a screen protector or tempered glass can impair the sensor's functionality. Therefore, Samsung provides mobile phones with customized protective films.

Software

The operating system on the phone is Android 10 with the new Samsung user interface One UI 2.1. This provides many useful additional features-such as an integrated screen recorder or the option to clone the WhatsApp application to use Messenger with different numbers on the device. Many features are also available after updating the software on older devices. On the positive side, Samsung has further purified the surface. There is almost no little head on the device.

Voice quality

The voice quality of the Samsung Galaxy S20 is usually at a high level. Noise filtering worked very well in the test, and even successfully filtered the wind, with a small natural impact on the sound.

Dual SIM

The Galaxy S20 is one of the first Samsung phones to be operated via eSIM. This also brings new opportunities for the operation of dual SIM card mobile phones. So you can use SIM, eSIM and microSD card at the same time. If you want to use a second physical SIM card instead of an eSIM card in the Galaxy S20, you cannot insert the memory card into your phone as usual.

4G or 5G?

Samsung offers 4G and 5G versions of the Galaxy S20. Even if 5G network expansion in Germany is still in its infancy, we still recommend the Galaxy S20 5G-especially if you want to use your phone for a long time. The Galaxy S20 5G initially only supported the new mobile radio standard in Sub 6, not the millimeter wave range. No full network expansion in this area is expected in the next two years. If you choose the 4G version, you can only get 8 GB of memory instead of 12 GB of RAM.

camera

Samsung smartphones have long been known for their great cameras, but Huawei now outperforms South Korean manufacturers in this regard-especially when taking pictures or zooming in on subjects in low light conditions. For the Galaxy S20, this should change again. To that end, the South Korean manufacturer installed a triple camera on the back. In addition to the 64-megapixel telephoto lens, it also offers a 12-megapixel main camera like the S10 and a 12-megapixel ultra-wide-angle lens.

Samsung promises that the camera will provide triple optical hybrid zoom and work non-destructively. This is not pure optical zoom, but a combination of optical zoom and digital zoom. Huawei uses similar technology, although Samsung's digital share may be higher (check the camera's technical data). However, recording is still available.

Associated with artificial intelligence, 30x zoom is possible, but the quality here is significantly impaired. If you want to use an improved digital zoom (called spatial zoom), you should choose up to ten times what we first tested. If you want greater zoom, you must use the Galaxy S20 Ultra.

Samsung Galaxy S20: Camera samples

According to Samsung, the pixels on the sensor are also enlarged compared to the S10, which allows more light to be captured in the dark. According to Samsung, the software optimization also further reduced noise and doubled the number of photos taken in auto and night modes. Compared to previous Samsung models, our first night photos with the Galaxy S20 worked well and the colors were much more natural. S20 does not set a new standard here. The S20, like its predecessor, takes selfies at 10 megapixels. With F2.2's open aperture, the front camera is no longer as bright as the Galaxy S10.

Samsung has also added new features to the camera app. For example, you only need to press the shutter button once in "single shot" mode, and the Galaxy S20 can take up to 14 different photos and videos. You can then choose the best one. This means you no longer need to think about which camera on the Galaxy S20 is best for a particular situation. This function can also be used for the front camera. Here, Samsung only cut the recording, because the Galaxy S20 only has a front camera. In our opinion, this function is a good header, but it no longer exists. It is especially worthwhile for dynamic themes such as football games.

If you want to transfer recordings made by the Galaxy S20 to your PC, you may not be able to use the included USB cable, as it only provides two USB C plugs and no longer provides USB A plugs.

Price and availability

Since March 13, 2020, the Galaxy S20 has been listed in Germany. Manufacturers recommend a retail price of 899 euros for mobile phones, while 5G versions will cost 100 euros more. However, prices are expected to fall in the coming weeks. You may be able to buy the 4G version for less than 750 Euros in just a few weeks.

Is it worth switching?

As with the new generation of smartphones, this question has surfaced: Is it worth changing for the former owner? Compared to the Galaxy S10, the innovation is very small, so we recommend against switching here. If you are still using the Galaxy S9 or S8 and are looking for a new phone, you can still use the Galaxy S20. You hardly have to get used to form factors, but you get a better camera than older models.