SAMSUNG GALAXY S20+

Hey, what’s up guys, spokesman-review here and this is my long term review of the Samsung Galaxy S20+ after 3 months. I’ve also used the S20 for the same amount of time as well. The S20+ is Samsung’s early 2020 flagship in their S line up before we get the Samsung Galaxy Note 20 series later this year.

In this blog, as always with my long term reviews, I’ll share the things I liked and things I liked less and felt could have been better, I’ll share those with you as we go, and of course. Now onto the S20+ Before I move on, I want to quickly talk about the S20 and S20+’s difference, the S20 is smaller, obviously, while the S20+ is larger, with a bigger battery, optional 512GB storage, the Time Of Flight Sensor, something missing that camera array, and a slight difference in price, about 200 dollars, that’s pretty much it.

Starting with the display on this device, as always, having used the S20+ and I don’t say it lightly. it’s one of the smoothest flagship devices you'll use in 2020. If I want to classify people who are currently reading this blog in 2, I’ll say maybe those who are not using this device (and may or many not have experienced 120Hz) or those that have an S20 series’ devices and know what I mean. If you fall in the first category and don thave it or haven’t used one, you should definitely test it out to know how if feels and you should know there are now phones with 144Hz but when I went 120Hz, as they say, you never go back really and it’s why I’ve held onto this device. 

I enjoyed typing and using it mainly because of how responsive it was and most of all enjoyed using it because of the refresh rate even though I know it would take my battery down a lot. Everything just felt super smooth to use. Watching movies, Netflix or YouTube streaming on this is actually cool of course, coupled with HDR 10+, definitely recommended. As far as technicalities and specifications, the display is protected by a Gorilla Glass 6, same as the back, 6.7 inches with a high525 pixel per inch.

                                                                               

OVERVIEW

You have the lowest 720p option which will save you the most amount of battery and I know you won’t be using a flagship with that quality and you can use 120Hz in 720p too, the one most people use or kept using was the FHD+ at 2400 by 1080 this is the mode where you should mostly use 120Hz. The last mode is WQHD+ which is a 1440p mode, super-high-resolution and as you know you can’t use 120Hz in this mode. This will be crystal clear, will drain your battery and Samsung doesn’t even give you this option out of the box.

In addition, you’ve got dark mode, the blue light filter, and edge lighting. If you’ve seen my review on the Samsung Galaxy Note 20 which is a very highly recommended midrange device, it has similar features too. Also because I turned off accidental touches on here, I did notice lesser functionality of palm rejection and of course, it made it not a very enjoyable experience because the bezels are too thin. I feel like technology has become so good or slick quote-unquote where we’re able to get such thin bezels but the trade-off is not enough room for your hands to actually hold the phone.

Another thing to note is that this phone rocks on a flat surface just something I thought you should know because of how the camera protrudes. Although this device is protected by gorilla glass 6, I think all through my usage I’ve had it drop about 3 times but on wooden floors and rugs, never on times because wow, that would be a disaster. I never used a case on it and it still looked really pristine. Of course, it’s IP 68 dust water-resistant up to 1.5 meters for 30 minutes. It can wirelessly charge another device, like your galaxy buds, or even your iPhone but that would be slow and it’s not too heavy in the hand. Although it’s not a removable battery, I like how the curve is present on the right side of the volume rockers and power button, do note that there’s no headphone jack, you get the Galaxy Buds + and of course it's a USB C port. While with regards to the kind of sim it has, In terms of how the device’s sound quality goes, I did enjoy playing music out loud on here, and here’s just a sample of my not so comprehensive test.

SOUNDS SYSTEM

Speaker sounded at the center of the device when loud but boy does it sound so sharp and crisp to listen to, of course, it’s a stereo speaker so definitely on both sides the same thing with the microphone, it’s one on top, one on the bottom and of course, one on the back. Audio quality in terms of voice while it may seem a bit scratched, it was always clear and I had no problem with phone calls at also a solid 9 out of 10 from me. Maybe not under sound quality but overall general use, the vibration intensity of the S20 and 20+ are actually high, loud, and very on-par. In the sounds and vibrations section of the device, when you get to the vibration intensity section, i can see vibration intensity, here you’ll be able to change the harshness or softness of vibrations from incoming calls, notifications, and touch interactions when you use the phone normally. 

Within this setting, you can also separate sound on your Samsung device, and here you can, for instance, make youtube play on a Bluetooth headphone or speaker, and your normal music app play on another device may be an external speaker. I tried it and it worked seamlessly. I’m using the Global version of the S20+which comes with an Exynos processor, the Exynos 990, for the Snapdragon variant, which comes with the Snapdragon 865, you’ll get that if you buy from Amazon i''ll provide you the link or India and some select locations but I’ll link those below. There’s also the thing about 5G, this version isn't the 5G version, and even if in the wildest chance that is is, there’s no way. I would know because there's no 5G router anywhere to test so..yeah. Samsung didn’t release it all with the same processor or the same 5G capabilities so it’s definitely a more affordable variant with some compromises.

STORAGE

My model has the 128GB of storage with 8 GB of RAM definitely on the lesser side but you can go as high as 12GB of RAM and even 512 GB of storage. You probably won’t get any lags while using this, I didn’t so performance was definitely on-par throughout my usage nothing to complain about. The software on here is, of course, Android 10 and it's brought to light with all the features on One Ui which I didn’t feel the need to change during my day to day use. In terms of gaming though, this was fast and120Hz was just a delight. I barely had any quality issues and it flew through a lot of the games I played. However, it does get warm to the touch when gaming sometimes but not so crazy. Unless you’re gaming and you use your hotspot which, I have a bad habit of but yeah, that’s something it would get quite warm, please do not try that at home. 30 minute COD with sound and all 72% to 59%and in total 1 hour dropped me down to 46% also keep in mind that my gaming during this period was in 120Hz so on the positive side gaming were smooth but on the negative side, battery life was significantly impacted.

BATTERY

Still, on the matter of battery life, Samsung by default puts un used apps to sleep if they haven’t been used for a while and this can be a good thing and a bad thing. It’s good because you’re saving your devices battery of course and they put it there for a reason and it may not be as good because, you won’t get notification from that app. You can simply Disable this feature but keep in mind you’re sort of on your own here or, you can enable it and do it singularly. What do I mean by this? For instance, you go to the multitasking menu, and select and hold on one of the apps, say YouTube, when you click on that simply select“Keep open for Quick Launching” and voila you’re good. It shows you this padlock sign and Keeps in mind you can only do this for one app though. My charging speed for the S20+ was quite fast, keep in mind that both the S20 and S20+ support fast charging at 25W while the S20 Ultra supports 45W, well I used a 25W charger to charge it, and charging speed went from 0-45% in the first 30 minutes and literally to 89%, almost 90% in 1 hour and it took all of 12 minutes to get to 100%. Keep in mind that this test was done multiple times and this was the slowest. What do you think about the charging speed?

SECURITY

In terms of Biometrics and security too, you’ve got Face Unlock which is just too fast in good lighting to unlock your device. Samsung has the switch of default Faster recognition turned on by default and they even give a warning that it reduces the security. I also did prefer to use the on-screen fingerprint reader which I sort of found fast too and is more secure.

CAMERA

There’s 1 camera on the front of the S20+, a 10MP lens. It’s worthy of note that last year’s S10+had 2 cameras upfront, a similar 10MP like the S20+ and an 8MP depth sensor but this is just one and it’s not too bad, I’ll share samples in a bit. The back of the S20+ has 4 cameras, 12MP wide camera, 64MP. Telephoto camera 12MP Ultrawide and a 0.3MP Time of Flight a la, depth sensor with LED Flash which I almost never used. This camera also has auto-HDR and it tells the shots you eventually end up taking. As far as camera quality in videos, the front camera can take up to 4K at 30 and even 60FPs while the back camera can do 8K in 24FPS,4K in 60FPSm, 180P in 240fps and below, and the kicker, 9060fps at 720p quality so this is a big deal as far as smartphone cameras. Selfies I took on the S20+ were just really detailed even when it's wider, of course, there’s no wide-angle lens or dedicated depth lens on the front camera here it’s just one lens and software doing the rest of the work for you. But yeah, in general, you will get very sharp selfies from here no doubt. 

When I did my regular zoom level tests, ultra-wide with the 12MP ultrawide lens, this camera was doing really amazing. I found the main lens really sharp of course, and it held its value in 5x of zoom and the maximum 30X zoom nothing to complain about all. It’s worth it to note that the S20 Ultra has 100x zoom which I, unfortunately, couldn’t get my hands on but form samples it’s just insane. When you shift the focus on to human subjects and not just buildings or plants, the 12MP ultrawide, again, delivers results, in its very sharp and detailed quality, although it had the curves or the lens distortions usually comes with as I can see from my foot in this image. The normal shots were cool but also a little washed out but not the same when zoomed. Portrait mode also seems to have some characteristics of the normal lens in terms of lower saturation but the edge blur seemed really good and almost perfect. Coming inside, the shots also retain a lot of color with moderate lighting, even when zoomed in although with really little color shifts that you won’t notice unless you’re looking really hard. The macro capabilities on here are really really decent, I enjoyed the bokeh effect that this had and how sharp it looked. I thought it was a very good lens, it just worked. I could say the same thing for portrait mode indoors on humans too, how it got the edges, and I like that you can even go ahead to adjust how intense the blur is on the image, in 7 stages and it has this really nice isolation effect where it makes the background black and white and the subject retain their color.

                                                                                 

COLOUR AND CAMERA SATURATION

There are 2 other effects that you should also note, a spin effect and a zoom effect. Overall in terms of colors, I thought it was decently saturated even if it seemed a little more, I liked how every shot turned out, even though it loses some form of sharpness in macro sometimes. Overall, it did produce some nice images during my use, I can’t complain, the S20+ did a 9/10 job for photo camera quality in the daytime. At night, the camera did look good, with a decent amount of sharpness, images looked really sharp also when there was enough light with regards to shots taken on the back camera. In terms of color changes and using night mode, there’s only going to be slight differences especially if there’s some kind of light but it’s definitely brighter turned on. Also, the selfies at night had significant differences, night mode turned on definitely increases saturation but other than that, it looked usable overall, and dare I say really sharp. This is an 8K footage, of course, downscaled to 1080p. Anyway, the footage is about 100MB, exactly98.7MB, the downside is that the footage was a little bit choppy, the upside is that it’s too sharp and you probably don’t know what you would do with it.

Samsung also poets you directly grab stills or pictures from your 8K video and it’s very sharp too. I thought that was cool as well. Shooting in Normal 1080p was actually not jittery and had a smoother motion than 8k and it was still sharp. I liked that I could edit the slow-mo footage and pick areas of the entire video I wanted to slow down. That was nice to see especially given how high the frame per second is at 960, that’s quite high you guys but it’s not new to the S line up. All in all, I did enjoy using the S20+ throughout the time and it was a very premium choice for me to use, I enjoyed typing gaming and just overall usage with very little to no complain using this, a problem may just be the slightly high price tag especially since our rupee rates aren’t that favorable but getting them from Samsung directly or the direct retailers can help with the high imports.

DESCRIPTION

• Quad rear camera - 64MP OIS F2.0 tele camera + 12MP F2.2 ultra wide + 12MP (2PD) OIS F1.8 wide + VGA depth camera | 10MP (2PD) OIS F2.2 front punch hole camera | rear LED flash
• 16.95 centimeters (6.7-inch) dynamic AMOLED display with capacitive touchscreen, 3200 x 1440 pixels resolution | Quad HD+ resolution
• Memory, Storage & SIM: 8GB RAM | 128GB internal memory expandable up to 1TB | Dual SIM (nano+nano) dual-standby (4G+4G), microSD card slot (expandable upto 1 TB), hybrid sim slot
• Android v10.0 operating system with 2.73GHz+2.5GHz+2GHz Exynos 990 octa core processor
• 4500mAH (non-removable) lithium-ion battery | Face-unlock & finger print sensor
• 1 year manufacturer warranty for device and 6 months manufacturer warranty for in-box accessories including batteries from the date of purchase
• Box also includes: Non-removable battery included, earphones, travel adapter, USB cable and user manual

Technical Details

OS	Android
RAM	8 GB
Product Dimensions	16.2 x 0.8 x 7.4 cm; 186 Grams
Batteries	1 Lithium ion batteries required. (included)
Item model number	SM-G985FZADINU
Wireless communication technologies	Bluetooth, WiFi Hotspot
Connectivity technologies	GSM, 4G, 3G, 2G, WCDMA, TDD, FDD, LTE
Special features	Dual SIM, GPS
Display technology	1440 x 3200 pixels, 20:9 ratio (~525 ppi density) Corning Gorilla Glass 6,HDR10+,Always-on display
Other display features	Wireless
Device interface - primary	Touchscreen
Other camera features	64MP+12MP+12MP
Form factor	Touchscreen Phone
Colour	Cosmic Gray
Battery Power Rating	4500
Whats in the box	Handset, Non-removable Battery Included, Earphones, Travel Adapter, USB Cable, User Manual
Manufacturer	Samsung
Item Weight	186 g

Additional Information

ASIN	B0844516K1
Customer Reviews	4.1 out of 5 stars    242 ratings 4.1 out of 5 stars
Best Sellers Rank	#6,838 in Electronics (See Top 100 in Electronics) #370 in Smartphones
Date First Available	5 February 2020
Manufacturer	Samsung
Item Dimensions LxWxH	16.2 x 0.8 x 7.4 Centimeters

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Samsung Galaxy S20 + (Cosmic Gray, 8GB RAM, 128GB Storage) with No Cost EMI/Additional Exchange Offers

                                                                               

CONCLUSION

I’ll leave some links in the description below so you can help support the blog. Another cool thing is that Nigerians get YouTube Music free for the first 3 months when they get a new Samsung Device and you get features like non-stop play on YouTUbe even when you minimize the app on your smartphone and many more. Thank you so much for reading this blog,I hope you enjoyed it, it took me quite a while to make it for you guys so do comment below and subscribe, besides it to turn on subscription to this blog so you'll be the first to know when I post a new blog. Also, guys, if there’s any question you might have, I’m not perfect, I may have missed something on the S20+, please let me know in the comments below. Thanks again and I’ll see you in the next blog.