Samsung Galaxy S20+ has turned its top-tier S-series flagship smartphone into the middle option this year. The phone under discussion is none other than the Samsung Galaxy S20+.
Being the middle sibling, the Galaxy S20+ misses the S20 Ultra’s unique camera setup and shares the same camera setup with the vanilla S20. There’s an addition of a ToF camera, though, and some other upgrades as compared to the Galaxy S20. Let’s have a look at the $1200 phone’s key specs.
Samsung Galaxy S20+ Specifications
Design:
- Curved Gorilla Glass 6 front and back, aluminium frame.
- Infinity-O-Display.
- IP68 rating for dust and water protection.
- Cosmic Grey, Cosmic Black, Cloud White, Cloud Blue and Aura Red colour schemes.
- Weighs 186 g.
- No 3.5mm audio jack.
Display:
- 6.7” Dynamic AMOLED 2X Display, 797nits max. brightness.
- 1440x3200px resolution, 525ppi.
- 120 Hz refresh rate, 240 Hz touch sensing.
- HDR 10+ support.
- 20:9 aspect ratio.
Chipset:
- Exynos 990 (7nm), Octa core CPU, Mali-G77 GPU – Global.
- Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 (7nm), Octa core CPU, Adreno 650 GPU – USA.
Memory:
- 8GB RAM, 128 GB Built-in storage (UFS3.0), shared MicroSD slot.
OS:
- Android 10, One UI 2.1.
Rear Camera:
- Main Wide-Angle Camera: 12 MP, 1/1.76” sensor, f/1.8 aperture, PDAF, OIS.
- Telephoto: 64 MP, 1/1.72” sensor, f/2.0, PDAF, OIS, 3x hybrid optical zoom.
- Ultra-Wide: 12 MP, ½.6” sensor, f/2.2, fixed focus.
- TOF: 0.3MP. 3D, f/1.0.
Front Camera:
- 10 MP, f/2.2, 1/3.2” sensor, Dual Pixel PDAF.
- Dual video call, Auto-HDR.
Video Recording:
- Rear Camera: 8K 4320p@24fps, 4K 2160p@30/60fps, 1080p@30/60/240fps, 720p@960fps.
- Front Camera: 4K 2160p@30/60fps, 1080p@30/60fps.
Battery:
- 4500 mAh, 25W fast charging support USB Power Delivery 3.0.
- 25W charger supplied in the box.
- Fast Qi/PMA wireless charging 15W.
- Reverse wireless charging 9W.
Miscellaneous:
- Ultra-sonic under display fingerprint reader.
- Accelerometer, gyro, proximity, compass and barometer sensors.
- NFC, FM Radio (Market dependent).
- Stereo Loudspeakers.
- Samsung DeX support (desktop experience).
Moving on, the box contents are same as seen on the other S20s:
- 25W PD, PPS-enabled charger.
- High quality Type-C cable.
- AKG-tuned Type-C earbuds.
- Silicon protective case.
Design
Samsung launched this year’s S20 trio with pretty much same design sense – curved glass sandwich with metal frame, polished colours, decently placed power and volume buttons and minimal bezels. It’s a refined look over last year’s Samsung flagships. The punch hole cut out is made even smaller than the past in the Infinity-O-Display. The Galaxy S20+ is a premium device with no complaints regarding its finely tuned design.
The phone comes with a pre-applied plastic sheet at the front and back. Users can remove that sheet to rely just on the Gorilla Glass 6 or can apply a third-party screen protector for the peace of mind.
The phone comes in five different colours – Aura Red, Cloud Blue, Cloud White, Cosmic Grey and Cosmic Black. It’s likely that not all options will be available across all markets.
Moving to the camera cluster, it is not that of an eye sore as the S20 Ultra’s. Samsung fitted the three actual cameras on the left and the flash is paired with ToFon the right, with a mic at its bottom.
Three mics are housed on the phone in total – one is on the top, the second with the cameras and the third one accompanies the primary loudspeaker and the USB-C port at the bottom.
The SIM-card slot is located at the top of the phone, which offers a hybrid configuration – that is to say, a Nano-SIM with a microSD card, or the microSD card can be replaced by a second Nano-SIM.
The phone’s earpiece acts as a second channel for loudspeaker purposes. We’ve found no 3.5mm audio jack on the phone.
Dynamic AMOLED 2X
Samsung Galaxy S20+ offers the premium Dynamic AMOLED 2X display in all three of its S20s. The difference among these three is just the size and resulting pixel density. The S20+ offers 6.7 inches of QHD Dynamic AMOLED 2X display with a resulting 525ppi density. Keep in mind that the vanilla S20 gives a 6.2” display while the big brother, the S20 Ultra offers a huge 6.9” one. All of them offers 120Hz refresh rates and 240Hz touch sampling. The native resolution of these panels is 1440 x 3200px in a 20:9 aspect ratio.
Brightness measured on the S20+’s display panel was 379nits in manual mode, while the Adaptive Brightness mode gives us a maximum of 797nits. That is to say, the phone is easy to use in brightest of days with no difficulty. The colours on the screen showed excellent accuracy in normal mode.
The phone supports HDR 10+ videos coming from YouTube, Amazon Prime Video or Netflix, as the word ‘Dynamic’ suggests.
Battery
The Galaxy S20+ is powered by a 4500mAh battery. The vanilla S20 offers a 4000mAh battery while the S20 Ultra makes it a 5000mAh one. The reason behind battery difference is the difference in the display sizes of the trio. The phone’s battery life is neither too great, nor too bad. It’s adequate for daily use if not for a heavy user.
With the provided 25W USB-Power Delivery power brick, the phone goes from flat to 62% in 30 minutes, while a full charge takes almost 57 minutes. That pretty much compensates for the overall battery endurance, as the phone doesn’t take a long period of time to charge itself.
The S20+ is also capable of wireless charging up to 15W with a compatible charger, and it also offers reverse wireless charging at 9W. Samsung calls this technology Reverse PowerShare. This means you can charge your Galaxy Buds+ or other devices with your phone too. Pretty convenient!
Stereo Loudspeakers
The bottom of the phone carries the primary loudspeaker grill, and the earpiece acts as the second loudspeaker. In terms of loudness, they offer a very good experience although the smaller S20 offered a bit more loudness comparatively. Regardless, the sound quality is excellent.
Performance
As usual, Samsung flagships exist in two main variants, depending on their markets. The USA gets the Snapdragon variant of the phone while the rest of the world is given the Exynos version to taste. The phone uses Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 865 chipset, paired with Adreno 650 GPU in USA. The Global variant offers Exynos 990 chipset with Mali-G77 GPU.
Both chipsets are built on a 7nm+ manufacturing process. The Exynos 990 carrying phones are found to have issues of thermal throttling. The phone heats up while intensive gaming or using heavy apps, and even while running a benchmark. Otherwise, the phone’s performance is flagship-grade and on par with the flagships of other companies.
Camera
The Galaxy S20+ has the same camera setup as the Galaxy S20 with an addition of a 0.3MP ToF camera.The actual cameras include a 12MP wide-angle (main) camera, a 12MP ultra-wide angle one, and a 64MP telephoto lens with 3x hybrid optical zoom.
The Main camera shoots excellent images both in daylight as well as in the night. We’ve seen blue skies, punchy colours, excellent dynamic range and balanced sharpness all around. The Night mode improves noise reduction and boosts up the shadows, delivering satisfying images.
The Ultra-wide camera delivers reasonable images as expected from cameras of its kind and are on par with other flagship competitors. It delivers nice colours and good dynamic range. Night mode poses impressive results during low light situations and while the pictures taken are of no match for the main camera, they are great in comparison with the other flagship ultrawide cameras.
The Telephoto camera offers good results in its native 64MP mode. The picture quality decreases as the zoom increases. At 2x or 3x zoom, it captures nicely detailed images with good sharpness. 4x zoom and onwards, the image starts to lose sharpness. Night mode here gives a boost to shadows. The pictures look great, with some noise reduction and nice colours.
Results from the Selfie Camera were the same as taken from the Galaxy S20. The images were excellent all along, apart from misfocused pictures taken under lower light. Selfie portraits were a good experience, too.
Video recording from all cameras delivered the same experience as the Galaxy S20. The phone can record videos at up to 8K which is warmly welcomed but sticking to the maximum of 4K offers better results. Stabilization is available in all modes.
Conclusion:
Samsung Galaxy S20+ offers top-notch performance and the display it uses is one of the best in smartphone market. It is a balance between the $1000 S20 and the $1400 S20 Ultra. It offers a larger display, beefier battery and a ToF sensor over the Galaxy S20, while it just lacks the extreme camera setup of the S20 Ultra. Samsung Galaxy S20+ is the best choice of premium smartphone from Samsung’s S-series this year.
Source: https://www.mobilereviewers.com/samsung-galaxy-s20-plus-review/
