Samsung Galaxy S20+ Review: The S20 Ultra Alternative

When Samsung Malaysia asked us if we wanted to review the Samsung Galaxy S20, we went and told them, we will review both the S20 and S20+ because honestly, my question at that point was really simple: The S20 has quite the upgrade over the past gen and its much better than the S10+ – Read our review on that – So, where does this S20+ leave us? Honestly, very little spot to be honest. Here’s why – this is our Samsung Galaxy S20+ Review.

If you have read our S20 Review, skip to the conclusion on this one.

Look and Feel

1/8

Honestly, the Samsung Galaxy S20+ gets the same design cue as the S20 and it doesn’t look anything like its predecessors. On the front, the front facing camera is moved to the centre and on the back the rear camera is moved to the corner. Although the colors that the Samsung Galaxy S20+ comes in – its very pretty. The S20+ comes in Cosmic Grey, Black and Blue and we got the blue for review. Although, I do wish there was a pink S20+ – because after talking to some of my friends, their answer was “if there’s a pink S20+, I’d buy it because I want a big phone.”

If you are coming from a normal sized phone, chances are – when you pick up the S20+, you’ll feel that the phone sits nice in the hand. It does have a bit of heft which is my favorite because personally, I prefer a phone that has some weight to it. The phone is covered in glass with a metalframe in the middle. One thing you must take note is how slippery this phone can be. So, I’d suggest you pick up a casing while you are at it and Samsung has quite a lot of nice accessories to go with the phone itself. It was weird for the phone to slip of a Qi Wireless Charging pad which has a rubberized material for that not to happen which is hilarious.

Display

The Samsung Galaxy S20+ rocks a 6.7” QHD+ Display on a Dynamic AMOLED 2X panel respectively. The display now has the front facing camera positioned on the top middle portion as compared to the off-centered position in its predecessor.

Just as what I said with the Samsung Galaxy S20 Review, the display is no longer curved as it would be with their S10 or even the Note10 lineup but it has a slight curve. That said, Samsung’s display has been great because the AMOLED panel produces real nice colors and viewing angle, real black to give a much immersive depth to it. That said, the only new addition to the existing display is the 120Hz High Refresh Rate which users have been so desperate about.

The phone comes with 60Hz at default and you can use it in FHD+ or QHD+ but the moment you toggle the 120Hz High Refresh Rate, the phone switches to FHD+. If you ask me, this is fine. Despite the smooth experience, the other department that’s going to take a huge hit is the battery. When the phone already eats up half the battery due to 120Hz at FHD+, imagine how power hungry the phone is going to be on QHD+. But getting back to the whole 120Hz experience, it’s great and there’s nothing much to say because we have seen other brands execute it first and were amazed then – I am just glad that it’s here.

The fingerprint sensor is not only at the same spot – in-display; but it has no improvement and honestly, feels a little too slow for today’s standard.

Specification, Performance and Experience

As a flagship device, the specification is great – rocking the following under the hood:

• Samsung Exynos 990 Processor (Octa-core)
• 8GB RAM | 128GB Internal Storage (can be expandable)

With the following specification, you can only expect the phone to perform really well. That said, the phone does perform well. Throw any applications at it and it handles like a champ. During our time using it, we hardly came across any issues such as lag or glitch in their very own custom UI. The phone does get a little toasty while playing some games or even running the display at 120Hz and if you use the phone consistently, it feels warm to the touch.

We benchmarked the device with: AIDA64, Antutu and Geekbench 5 for the score and that said, these scores doesn’t necessarily translate to real time use case scenarios but it’s more of a test to see how capable a phone is. The phone runs the new One UI 2.1 and its clean, offers pretty good experience overall. Other than that, you do get some extra features to kick things up a notch.

Camera

The Samsung Galaxy S20+ comes with the same triple camera setup as the S20 but with one more extra sensor – a DepthVision Sensor, which is basically a Time of Flight sensor which to me isn’t a true camera. As for the other camera sensor, it houses the exact setup as the S20 with the following Megapixel Count.

• Ultrawide 12MP Sensor
• WideAngle Primary 12MP Sensor
• Telephoto 64MP Sensor

The fact that Samsung opted in for a higher Megapixel sensor for its Telephoto is commendable because a lower megapixel sensor might not perform well on a higher digital zoom. Speaking of Zoom, this phone has quite the range – Space Zoom where it has an Hybrid Optic Zoom 3x and has a Super Resolution Zoom up to 30x. Truth be told, the camera is great at the normal Telephoto range and anything beyond that, honestly – its more of a party trick than a functional camera because the pictures lacks a lot of details and the camera software sharpens the image to make it as clear as possible. You can take a look at the images below.

The primary Wideangle 12MP and Ultrawide 12MP sensors work just fine and the colors are great. They have improved the low light performance and one feature that caught me off guard is their Night Vision where it takes picture in the dark and depending on how dark it is, it uses the long exposure technique to get an impressive image. There was some focusing issues that the S20+ went under but Samsung patched it with an update but the issue still existed. I am not too sure if a major update is required to fix it but the pictures turns out great in general. Personally, the Scene Optimizer can be a little too aggressive in terms of boosting the colors but you can always jump into the settings to toggle it off. These cameras have other features like 8K Video Recording with support for HDR and Instant Take where it records a memorable video and takes a picture at the same time.

1/14

Charging and Battery Life

The Samsung Galaxy S20+ houses a 4500mAh battery under the hood which is definitely bigger than the S10+ but not by much. But during our tests we got 8 hours+ screen on time with a full charge from a whole day out and I plugged into my battery bank or my charger at the end of the day which was great. As for charging the phone, it comes with a 25W adapter inside the box where you can charge the phone in just about an hour plus from zero to 100. The phone does support 45W charging but its an adapter you’ll have to purchase separately.

Conclusion

The S20+ pretty much gets the same treatment as the S20 with obviously notable difference: now it has a ToF Sensor (this doesn’t matter much to me), bigger battery at 4,500mAh and a bigger display than the S20 as always. Basically, you are spending the extra 400 for the upgrades we mentioned above. No matter what, you are picking up one perfect phone but if you want something small and nice to use, go for the Galaxy S20 which we think is the best small flagship phone. Honestly, as much as the S20 Ultra 5G is appealing, I personally think the S20+ does fit everyone’s daily needs.