Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra Review

Samsung shipped the Note 20 Ultra in August 2020 and never shipped another Note, so it stands as the finished form of the idea. The 6.9-inch QHD+ Dynamic AMOLED 2X was Samsung's first LTPO panel in a phone, dropping to 10Hz on a static page and running 120Hz only at FHD+, a compromise but a sensible one. It was the first phone with Gorilla Glass Victus and it was readable in direct sun. S Pen latency fell to 9 milliseconds, and writing on it finally felt like ink instead of a cursor chasing a stylus.

The camera fixed the S20 Ultra's embarrassing focus problem with a laser autofocus module beside the 108 megapixel sensor, and it swapped the useless 100x zoom for a 12 megapixel 5x periscope that made real photographs at 10x. In 2020 only the iPhone 12 Pro Max and Pixel 5 were in the conversation and neither could zoom like this. The camera hump was the size of a domino and rocked the phone on a desk, which is the one design fact everyone who used it remembers.

The 4500 mAh cell was fine with the Snapdragon 865+ in the US and Korea and mediocre with the Exynos 990 in Europe and India, where owners reported both the heat and the hour of screen time they lost. Charging was 25 watts. One UI 2.5 on Android 10 was mature, Samsung promised three OS versions and delivered Android 11, 12 and 13, and security patches ran through 2024. That support, the Victus glass and an absence of hardware scandals earn the reliability grade, though a 208 gram glass slab with a raised camera needs a case.

At $1,299.99 it cost as much as an iPhone 12 Pro Max with a stylus you could lose. Eighteen months later the S Pen moved into the S22 Ultra and the Note name was retired, which tells you what Samsung decided the market thought of it.