Samsung invited us to take a closer look at the three newest smartphones. We gratefully made use of it and we share our findings with you.
Samsung announced no fewer than three new devices last week. The Samsung Galaxy S20, the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra and the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip, the second smartphone with folding screen from this manufacturer. We were allowed to play with the devices and share our first impressions with you.
Galaxy Z Flip
First of all I got the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip in my hands and the first feeling that went through me was mainly a nostalgic feeling. The ability to close your phone is something that was mainly done in the first part of the previous decade and now, slowly but surely, returns, but now with a screen that could be folded over. Samsung previously brought the Galaxy Fold to the market and had to adjust the device here and there to eliminate the teething problems. The company has done well and seems to continue this line with the Galaxy Z Flip.
Unlike the Fold, the Flip has a vertical folding orientation, so you close the device like the old clamshell devices of yesteryear. This gives you an elongated device with a 6.7 inch screen in your hand when you unfold it and a nice compact square box with a cute little 1.1 inch screen on the front when you close it.
The Galaxy Z Flip, just like all other foldable smartphones, has a thin, plastic, flexible OLED screen on the inside and Samsung says that a thin layer of flexible glass has been added to make the screen a little more sturdy than the competing devices. Tests from various other sources, however, show that the screen is just as susceptible to scratching as the other foldable smartphones, but that is simply the price that has to be paid for a flexible screen. On the other hand, the device can be closed, making the screen less likely to get scratched, so that is not something we pay for the device on.
Just like with other foldable smartphones, this smartphone also suffers from a folding line where the hinge is located. It is not very disturbing, but it is tangible and present enough to be seen in the right light conditions. To prevent dust and other dirt from getting into the hinge, Samsung has added special brushes to the inside of the hinge. At first glance this seems to work well, but we can only say something useful about it after we have extensively tested the device.
The exterior of the Galaxy Z Flip is made of glass (Gorilla Glass 6) and feels very sturdy as does the aluminum rim. The small 1.1 inch screen can be used to display the time and status of the device as well as app notifications and even making selfies.
Another great feature of the Flip is the so-called Flex mode. This mode splits the screen in two with the lower part being used for dedicated controls. You can see this for example at the gallery app. The top half is used to display the photo as you scroll through the other photos in the bottom gallery and when you make a video call, the controls can be used on the bottom half while you simply continue on the top part. This is a function that must be supported by the app. At the moment there aren’t many 3rd party apps that support it except YouTube, although we couldn’t test that ourselves.
Of course we couldn’t help but see if this device had support for Samsung’s desktop mode, DeX. This was not the case, but since the software on the devices in our hands was not yet complete, Samsung left out whether this function would eventually become available.
Conclusion
Our first impressions are positive, the Galaxy Z Flip looks sleek and sturdy, is closed nice and compact, fits nicely in the hand and has, in comparison with other foldable smartphones, considerable specifications. With an HDR + Full HD + (1080 x 2636) Foldable Dynamic AMOLED screen, octacore Qualcomm Snapdragon 855+, 265 GB storage, 8 GB RAM, 12 Megapixel camera on the back, 10 MP camera on the front and 3300 mAh battery, the device knows practically leaving behind all other folding devices. Although we see the omission of both the micro SD card reader and headphone jack as a major missed opportunity.
Galaxy S20, S20 + and S20 Ultra
With the Galaxy S20, S20 + and S20 Ultra, Samsung continues the same line it had outlined with the S10, even larger, flatter devices with a thin bezel and a punch hole camera on the front. In addition, these devices have a larger battery and faster LPDDR5 memory on board. Furthermore, the devices have an OLED screen on board with a whopping 3200×1440 resolution, but if you want to use the super fast 120 Hz refresh rate, you will have to switch back to 2400×1080. The screens are 6.1 inches, 6.7 inches and 6.9 inches tall and therefore even larger than those of its predecessors. Now that smartphones with an almost 7-inch screen are actually coming out, I can’t help but think back to the era when tablets were sold with a 7-inch screen and smartphones didn’t come close.
Unfortunately, we also have to conclude with these devices that Samsung has omitted the headphone connection. We continue to find it a strange move, certainly because the company ridiculed other companies that left out the connection on their smartphones. The Galaxy S10 and S10 + still had it while the Note 10 had to do without. It looks like the normal Galaxy smartphones also have to do without this connection. Fortunately, unlike the Galaxy Z Flip, the S20 and S20 + do have a micro SD card slot on board. The power and volume buttons can be found again on the right side of the phone, so the trip to the left (Note 10 series) was short-lived.
Other great features are the Quick Share function for sharing files without being connected to a network and streaming music to other Samsung devices.
Naturally, Samsung has once again come loose this year with the canmeras. The S20 and S20 + have a whopping 64 MP camera on board and a 10 MP camera hole in the front and the S20 Ultra has a 108 MP camera on the screen. rear and a 40 MP camera on the front. This allows you to zoom both optically and digitally and take the best close-ups. The light sensitivity has also been increased by combining even more pixels through Pixel Binning, by merging groups of 9 pixels into 2.4 micrometer pixels, the light sensitivity increases and the noise further decreases. We have not been able to test this yet and we will keep it until the review. The S20 Ultra also has, thanks to the 108 MP sensor, the possibility to zoom up to 100 x, this mode is called Samsung Space zoom. However, the periscopic lens gives you the option to zoom 5x optically. The rest is therefore a combination of digital zoom and interpolation. Although I have never been charmed by this technology, the large number of megapixels might make it worse now, that is something that will also be extensively tested.
In addition, it is possible to film with a resolution of 8K and you can take photos with all cameras at the same time, so that afterwards you can select the most beautiful photo (or video) or make a beautiful collage, the so-called Single Take mode.
Finally, we also hung these Galaxy devices on the Nexdock to see if they already have support for DeX and indeed, the Galaxy S20, S20 + and S20 Ultra switched neatly to the desktop mode. With such powerhouses of smartphones we of course had not expected anything else, but after the service refusal of the Z Flip it was just as exciting.
The S20 works perfectly with DeX in combination with the Nexdock laptop, even without the 5-app limit
Conclusion
Samsung has done it again and released huge powerhouses of smartphones. The first impressions are very positive. The cameras, the screen, the battery, the memory and … the appearance. Yes, these devices will probably win some great prizes again … we think. Of course we only do it after an extensive test.
The specifications do not lie in any case.
The S20 has an Exynos 990 with eight cores, 8 to 12 GB LPDDR5 RAM, 128 GB storage, 4000 mAh battery, 64 MP camera and a 6.23 inch OLED screen with a maximum resolution of 3200×1440 pixels on board.
The S20 + has an Exynos 990 with eight cores, 8 to 12 GB lpddr5 RAM, 128 to 512 GB storage, 4500 mAh battery, 64 MP camera and a 6.68 inch OLED screen with a maximum resolution of 3200×1440 pixels on board.
The S20 Ultra has an Exynos 990 with eight cores, 12 to 16 GB lpddr5 RAM, 128 to 512 GB storage, 5000 mAh battery, 108 MP camera and a 6.87 inch OLED screen with a maximum resolution of 3200×1440 pixels on board.
All S20 devices have a Micro SD card reader on board, but they all lack a headphone connection.
