Samsung Galaxy S20 review: A beautiful phone for your tiny hands

March 14, 2020

Samsung Galaxy S20 review: A beautiful phone for your tiny hands

After reviewing the massive and highly unnecessary S20 Ultra, I was ready for a more practical phone.

Sure, the Samsung Galaxy S20 has a smaller screen and can't zoom up to 100x like the Ultra. But at that level, the photos are grainy — and, honestly, how often do you need to zoom in that close on something?

The S20's starting price of $999 (depending on the configuration) feels fair, as opposed to the Ultra, which starts at $1,400.

Of course, if you're looking for something good in between, there's the S20+, which comes with a 6.7-inch display. But for my tiny hands, the S20 is the perfect fit.

Beautiful and comfortable design

Thankfully, I don't have to constantly worry about dropping this thing.

When I first held the Galaxy S20 at a briefing, I didn't want to put it down. It wasn't just infatuation. A month later, after using it for a week, my feelings haven't changed. I still really love it.

On the right side of the phone is the volume rocker and the power button. It's also a designated Bixby button, Samsung's voice assistant, which can be triggered by holding the button down. On the bottom is a USB Type-C port. As I mentioned in the S20 Ultra review, Samsung has officially nixed the headphone jack.

Flip the phone over to find the triple-camera quad setup. It's a welcome change from the thin, horizontal strip that housed cameras on past Galaxy smartphones, which looks really outdated at this point.

The camera bump isn't that noticeable, either. It's almost flush with the rest of the phone, so you can easily slip it in your pockets. The phone also has softer curves than the chiseled S10. The rounded edges, plus its reasonable size, makes the S20 comfortable to hold.

The S20 Ultra felt so fragile and unwieldy. The S20 felt the complete opposite. Sure, the Ultra has the same glass back, but since the S20 is smaller, it was a lot easier to hold.

The S20 also comes in two very cute colors: Cloud Blue and Cloud Pink. My review unit was blue, which looks a bit more iridescent depending on how the light hits it.

I prefer Cloud Pink but the blue is very nice too.

Coming from the dark sea foam green on the iPhone 11 Pro, it's a super refreshing color that matches how light and airy the phone feels.

Another bonus: At no point did I feel the need to put a case on it. Even when taking it out to go for a run (something I refused to do with the Ultra). And, that's a lot coming from me—the girl who literally drops anything and everything.

Stunning display

Compared to the Ultra, it's compact. But it's still fairly large compared to other phones. Its 6.2-inch AMOLED display (563 ppi) isn't much smaller than the 6.5-inch display on the iPhone 11 Pro Max.

But even after growing used to the 5.8-inch display on the iPhone 11 Pro, it didn't feel like such a huge difference. I got used to it quickly and it felt super manageable. Especially with its narrow build, which makes it easier to grip.

I could take photos, type out text messages, and scroll through social media all with one hand. The S20 also features Samsung's signature "Infinty-O" display complete with a 10-megapixel selfie camera.

Like the Ultra, the S20 comes with a 60Hz refresh rate out of the box. But you can crank it up to 120Hz for a much smoother performance. It honestly makes me wish every phone out there had that option, but for now it's more common on phones built for gaming.

I'm officially obsessed with the 120Hz refresh rate.

While it does a number on your battery (which I'll get to later), the high refresh rate feels so smooth and quick that I didn't want to switch back to 60Hz. But, of course, it's not the worst thing to settle on.

Smooth performance, standard battery life

Under the hood is a Snapdragon 865 processor along with 12GB of memory and 128GB of internal storage. There's also a microSD card slot with up to 1TB of additional storage.

As for battery life, the S20 comes comes with a 4,000mAh battery. If you want to preserve your juice, you'll have to stick with the 60Hz refresh rate.

After taking it out for the morning to test the camera, I switched to 120Hz by noon. At that point, I still had about 70 percent battery left. Unfortunately, I noticed it was draining the battery pretty quickly, so I switched back to 60Hz by mid-afternoon since I was nowhere near a charger.

By 5 p.m., I was at 34 percent, which is still impressive considering I used it almost all day to take photos, answer emails and Slack messages, and stream music on Spotify.

Even though it's a tiny phone, the battery life endured tons of heavy usage without dying on me.

However, if you plan on capturing a lot of content (including 4k or 8k video) with this phone, then you're better off opting for the S20+, which has a larger, 4,500mAh battery.

The S20 Ultra's 5,000mAh battery lasted me 12 hours after a day and night of taking tons of photos and videos. I also kept the refresh rate on 120Hz the entire time. But if you're a more casual user, the S20's battery will suffice.

A perfectly capable camera

When I say "perfectly capable," I mean that in comparison to the 108-megapixel rear camera and 40-megapixel selfie camera on the Ultra, the specs on the S20 are more than enough for high-quality shots.

Both the S20 and S20+ feature a triple-camera setup on the back that includes:

A 64-megapixel telephoto lens with f/2.0 aperture
12-megapixel wide-angle lens with f/1.8 aperture
120-degree 12-megapixel ultra-wide angle lens with f/2.2. aperture
Time of Flight sensor for depth

As with the Ultra, the sensors are up to three times larger than the S10's. That way, they can take in more light, which results in sharper detail in your photos, even in low-light environments.

Initially, I wasn't sure how I'd feel downgrading from the 108-megapixel telephoto lens on the Ultra. While I certainly noticed a difference in quality, when it comes to sharpness and detail, it's not a dealbreaker.

I took the phone out around New York City and compared its images to photos I took using the iPhone 11 Pro.

Here are some sample shots.

Between these two photos, it's easy to see the S20's image came out a lot darker than the iPhone 11 Pro.

With HDR turned on on both phones, the iPhone does a better job of capturing detail in a dark area of the cafe. The exposure is also a lot more evenly distributed throughout the photo, which makes it easy to pinpoint certain things like the cups on the shelf or the color of the wood.

The S20 only highlights the middle area where the light hits the window. The rest of the details are lot tougher to pick out.

The green colors and even the wood clearly look very saturated in color.

The S20 also tends to oversaturate photos. The photo on top was taken with the S20. You can see the saturation in the wood, specifically where the cracks are highlighted and the brown looks a lot darker.

The iPhone 11 Pro looks a lot more natural.

The photo above, taken with the iPhone 11 Pro, reflects the colors a lot more realistically. The purples and the greens aren't as punchy or bright.

Sometimes, that over saturation comes in handy when you're taking photos with a lot bright colors though.

Ultra-wide angle shot on the S20. While I like the saturation on the flowers, it's a bit too much everywhere else.

Above and below, you can see the S20 was able to pick up the colors of all the different flowers and enhance them in a way that looks better than it does on the iPhone. Although, I would still crank down the saturation a little on things like the couch and shelves.

The iPhone 11 Pro doesn't pick up on the colors as well, but it does leave more room for editing afterwards.

You can see the over saturation a lot better in Night mode. Though, it helps that most of the time, the S20 doesn't even require using the feature because it does a good job clearly capturing images in low light.

Below is a photo I took without Night mode, which does have the help of some streetlights. But for the most part, the street was fairly dark and the photo still came out clear enough that I didn't feel the need to use the feature.

Below, is the photo with Night mode turned on. You can see the over saturation in almost every part of the photo: the bricks, the trees, the shrubs planted out in front, and the asphalt.

It's even worse in this photo below, which looks like I heavily edited it. But all I did was turn Night mode on. Again, while it's a great feature to have on-hand, the camera doesn't really call for it most of the time.

I snapped this photo of my dog while sitting in the living room with the lights dimmed, and it came out really well.

But there tends to be an issue with blurry corners. It wasn't the same issue I had with buggy auto focus on S20 Ultra, but I noticed it after the image was processed.

Below, I took a photo with both the S20 and iPhone 11 Pro.

On the S20, you can see everything in the background is blurry.

With the S20, things like my frame and jewelry in the background are a bit blurred while the flowers look super sharp.

This photo looks a lot more clear overall.

This one shot with the iPhone 11 Pro doesn't have that problem. Everything in the photo looks a lot more sharp.

Thankfully, I didn't run into this issue a lot.

Alright, let's move on to the zoom. As mentioned before, the S20 can zoom in up to 30x. While I didn't find myself using it a lot, it's still way more useful than 100x.

Here are some examples:

As expected, 10x zoom still looks very clear and useable. The same goes for the image at 20x below.

Below, at 30x zoom, it's a bit grainy but isn't as bad as what I saw on the S20 Ultra.

Here are few more sample images of what other subjects look like at 30x zoom:

The neon lights above still look super clear even at 30x zoom. There's also no loss in brightness or color either.

Zoom at 30x, where you can see the lil people standing outside.

Unlike the 100x zoom on the Ultra, the 30x zoom doesn't sacrifice all that much quality and clarity. In the image above, I can still clearly make out things like what the people are wearing and that the woman has sunglasses on. Which, I must say, is very impressive.

Moving on to selfies. While the 10-megapixel selfie camera isn't as intimidating as the 40-megapixel sensor on the Ultra, it still has the same problem: it smooths skin too much.

I even turned down the smoothness down to zero, and it still had the tendency to go a bit overboard on my skin.

Selfie taken on the S20, where I literally look like a teenager.

Selfie on the iPhone 11 Pro, which makes me look more my actual age.

In the above selfies, I literally can't help but think I look like an adult baby. I mean, look at that skin. It's like I'm Benjamin Button.

5G still difficult to find

In case you haven't noticed, the S20 comes with something called 5G — specifically sub-6 5G. Meanwhile, the S20+ has sub-6 and mmWave capabilities.

Now, I will repeat this over and over until 5G is widely available: please, do not buy this phone strictly for the 5G coverage.

If it's available in your city, then go for it. But even then, it can be hard to find. As with the S20 Ultra, I had zero luck tracking down those super fast download speeds. Granted, I was using mmWave on the Ultra with Verizon. Apparently, T-Mobile's sub-6 5G is even tougher to find.

However, if you're the type that doesn't upgrade their phone every year, then you shouldn't let the 5G feature deter you either. It'll likely be available in your area over the next couple of years.

Skip the Ultra, buy this instead

There's really not much to critique about the Galaxy S20. As my girl Goldilocks would say: this one is just right. Starting at $999, it offers top-notch specs and camera features all packed into a really comfortable and beautiful form factor.

While you might not be zooming in on things all the time, you can rest assured that at 30x, it provides you with images that are at least useable.

And, unlike the S20 Ultra, it's practical and a worthy investment. Especially if you plan on keeping it around for the next few years until 5G rolls around.

Those who prefer larger phones should definitely go with the S20+, which comes with the same features but a bigger display and battery. But, naturally, it's more expensive, with a starting price of $1,199.

There is, however, one thing that might be an issue for some and that's the S20's tendency to over saturate photos or smooth selfies. So, if you want more of a raw image that you can edit freely then you're better off with the iPhone 11 Pro or iPhone 11 Pro Max.

If budget is more of a concern, and you're totally OK with the heavy saturation (like me), then the Pixel 4 or Pixel 4 XL are both great alternatives.

Otherwise, the S20 and S20+ are the way to go.