anteroToday, Samsung launched its new Galaxy Note series during a web-transferred Unpacked event.
So how will Samsung’s next pen mobile be? Well, it’s expensive – but you probably already knew that. It will also be about as rumors have long said; extremely angular. Galaxy Note 20 Ultra is the full name for the heaviest magazine Note. It has a suggested retail price from Samsung of 15,000 kroner, which both sounds and is expensive. But compared to the S20 Ultra which they released earlier this year, it’s actually not that bad – we look at indicative prices there as well, and what you have to pay if you go to an Elkjøp or Komplett, it actually costs more, with 15,800 kroner in price tag. At the same time, Samsung has solved some of the problems we were annoyed with in the S20 Ultra model. Could this be more and better mobile for the money?
For this year as last year, Samsung has several variants of Note. Last year there were Note 10 Plus, Note 10 and Note 10 Lite. But unlike last year, the “regular” Galaxy Note 20 model appears more like a Lite model of the original. You get the pen and processor from the top model, but the Galaxy Note 20 is missing these things from the Note Ultra 20:
-The camera Glass on the back – and that’s important, since the Ultra model has the new Gorilla Glass Victus front and back
-High refresh rate in the screen
There are not many things, but they are important, and make the Galaxy Note 20 appear … more or less like a cheap phone. The price? A little over 12,300 kroner for a phone built in plastic and with an old-fashioned 60-hertz screen in a price range where for far too long is about to land north of 90 hertz. However, it is not entirely without benefits; a slightly more hand-friendly size and a screen that is flat all the way to the edges are things many people prefer.
Is this the market’s most expensive screen pen? We’ll see – but we know that the tendency to praise the digital S-pen in the Note series highly is not new. We will have to wait for the verdict until the test copy is in place. Note 20, however, shares its features with the Ultra model. And here Samsung has done several smart things.
New Note features
Among the news in the Note 20 series is a massive upgrade of the note application on mobile phones. Now it can be used a bit in the same way as Microsoft’s OneNote, in that you can let your mobile record the lecture or meeting you are in, at the same time as you take notes in the app. The app then links your notes to the timeline in the recording, so you can go back and find your notes along with what was said that led to them.
Even better pen On the Ultra model, the pen has received a significantly faster update. You may have heard mobile manufacturers say that the touch response goes up when the performance of the screen increases. This is because the so-called “digitizer” that reads your fingerprint usually has a speed that corresponds to the speed of the screen – for example, Samsung’s own top models have 120 hertz screen update, and 240 hertz finger detection. This combined feature also applies to the pen, which has become extremely agile and fast in the latest edition of Note. Delays in digital scribbling seem to be a thing of the past, where the line one drew often failed to keep up with the tip of the pen. Again, the disappointment shows up a bit considering the “cheap model”, which is neither particularly cheap nor has a 120 hertz screen. It does not get this increased response time, which should have gone from 42 milliseconds to cormorant 9 for the Ultra model – and in fact also the new Galaxy Tab S7 models that were launched with the phones.
Laser fixes focus In the Galaxy S20 series, I actually preferred the cameras in the cheaper models, even though on paper they looked like a downgrade. In practice, the cameras in the Note 20 Ultra and Note 20 are a mirror image of what we saw on the camera front this spring. Note 20 Ultra has about the same camera rig as 20 Ultra, while Note 20 has about the same camera equipment as S20 and S20 Plus. But there are a few important differences here. The S20 Ultra got a lot of pepper, both for unclean performance, battery life and camera. Reviewers and users were quite divided, and eventually it seemed that part of the disagreement stemmed from the choice of processor in the American and European versions of the phone. But the camera proved to be harder to get. The unstable performance with focus problems and some bugs marked Samsung’s most expensive regular phone for months after launch. But things have happened in the Ultra model.
Samsung has also added a laser sensor to the back of the phone. And with that, they should hopefully have cured the focus problems from the S20 Ultra for good. Laser sensors are not a big hocus pocus, and we’ve seen them before. For focus problems at short distances, they usually do exactly what is on the package; provides lightning-fast focus that is not as dependent on light or other factors to create good results. It sounds like exactly the accessory the S20 Ultra camera needs to take great pictures every time, and not just eight out of ten times. At the same time, it is allowed to be a little skeptical – the so-called Time of Flight sensor (ToF) on the back of the S20 Ultra, should play a similar role as the laser sensor in the Note 20 Ultra. On top of all that, we have the fact that the S20 Ultra in itself appears to be a significantly better phone today than when it was launched, after a small tractor load of updates. It is thus allowed to raise hopes for the camera rig in the Note 20 Ultra, at the same time as this may be the time when the technically weaker camera in the regular model actually disappoints a bit in comparison.
