Samsung unveils S20 range including an ‘insane’ S20 Ultra 5G with 108MP camera & 100X zoom
The camera on Samsung’s new S10 Ultra 5G is madness: a 108 megapixel lens and 100X zoom. But it won’t come cheap.
Samsung is a company that knows how to grab a headline. How else do you describe a phone with a 108 megapixel lens and 100X zoom on its S20 Ultra 5G?
It’s among five Galaxy S20 models announced by the Korean manufacturer at an “unpacked” event held early this morning (AEDT) in San Francisco. This year Samsung has gone with the S20 label for its signature range, skipping S11 through to S19.
MORE BY CHRIS GRIFFITH: Aussies reject pricey phones | Samsung readies Galaxy Flip Z | Galaxy packs in goodies | Plenty to like about Galaxy Book S
They are feature rich, but they’re not cheap. Australian prices start at $1349 for the S20 with a 6.2-inch screen and climb to $2249 for the S20 Ultra 5G, a 5G handset with a huge 6.9-inch display. You’d almost class it tablet size.
This phone has a camera with an incredible resolution: 108 megapixels, and with the help of artificial intelligence, a “super zoom resolution” mode of up to 100X. That trumps Huawei which offered up to 50X zoom with the P30 Pro. But we’ll have to see whether performance matches the size of those numbers.
100X is big. Some described the Huawei 50X zoom as a “spy camera”, although in reality I find that anything above 30X isn’t so clear. It will be interesting to see the quality of the 100X zoom that Samsung is promoting with the Ultra model. Will it achieve “super spy” or even “ultra spy” status?
The phones also shoot 8K videos. In theory that means you can shoot video and then show it on a screen the size of a wall in crystal clarity. In this case you can stream your 8K video to a Samsung QLED 8K TV if you are lucky enough to own one. You’ll pay about $9000 for a 75-inch one from The Good Guys.
The new flagship phones will be available to buy in Australia from March 6. Pre-orders can be made from today and Samsung says it will throw in a free pair of new Galaxy Buds+. They were also announced at the event and will cost $299.
Samsung showed a preview of its Galaxy Flip Z folding phone but this isn’t coming to Australia anytime soon. Samsung Australia says the Galaxy Z Flip will be launched here “in the coming months”. “The pricing and on-sale date for Galaxy Z Flip in Australia will be announced closer to the local launch,” it says.
All three S20 models: the S20, S20+ and S20 Ultra have 5G variants with the Ultra only available as a 5G phone.
Samsung also announced an “Olympic Games Athletes Edition” design for the S20+ to commemorate the Tokyo Olympic games later this year.
In Australia, Optus and Telstra have announced plans for both 4G and 5G S20 handsets. Vodafone will sell 4G models.
The S20, S20+ and S20 Ultra have progressively larger displays: 6.2-inches, 6.7-inches and 6.9-inches respectively. All displays are OLED (AMOLED 2X), support HDR10+ movie content, have 2K resolutions (3200x1440) with a default 60 Hz refresh rate. But you can select 120Hz for smooth motion fast action gaming.
The camera line-up varies between models. The S20 and S20+ have 12MP wide and ultrawide lenses, and a big 64MP telephoto lens. The S20+ has an additional DepthVision camera which equates to better depth of field judgment and more secure face recognition when available. There’s a 10MP front-facing camera.
As I said before, the S20 Ultra 5G camera line-up is insane: 12MP, 108MP and 48MP ultrawide, wide-angle and telephoto lenses and a DepthVision camera, and a 40MP selfie lens.
All models have fast 8-core processors with the latest 7 nanometre architecture. 5G models offer at least 12GB of RAM memory, 4G versions have 8GB. Storage ranges from 128GB to 512GB.
As usual, Samsung has worked on improving the camera quality with a larger image sensor, so you’ll get better low light performance.
The S20 and S20+ will offer 30X zoom which smartphones so far have achieved, although you don’t get anything like the sharpness and clarity of optical zoom lenses on traditional cameras.
This brings me back to the 100X zoom. Samsung says it uses “AI-powered multi-image processing” to reduce quality loss on high zoom levels. At the end of the day it is digital zoom.
The phones are capable of creating several variants of one shot – such as ultrawide, cropped and live focus versions. This feature is called “single take”.
This year we are going to see the rollout of the second generation of 5G phones which have 5G radios integrated into the phone’s processor platform. Last year they were too separate entities. This means better energy efficiency and space efficiency.
The top two phones, S20+ and S20 Ultra, have two additional 5G-related features called mmwave and sub-6, which we will see more of on premium 5G phones.
Mmwave or millimetre wave is for short range networks over about one kilometre. It supports data transmission speeds above one gigabits per second. That’s if you have a 5G network that supports it. It will be subject to auction in Australia in 2021 and is not available to the public yet.
Sub-6 5G is shorthand for supporting 5G frequencies below 6Hz and equates to more stable coverage and not-so-fast speeds.
In the end it means Samsung phones will be versatile in their support of different 5G bands which offer different performance.
The S20+ and S20 Ultra support both mmwave and sub-6 whereas the standard S20 only supports sub-6.
There’s a few other notable changes. Samsung says its personal assistant Bixby will be available only in the US and South Korea which suggests Bixby won’t be continued here on the S20.
Instead it’s promoting other services. For example you can make a video call from the phone dialler using Google Duo. Video will be streamed as full HD (1080p).
You can upload 8K video you shoot on the phone to YouTube’s 8K channel without loss of resolution. You can watch 8K YouTube videos on the phone, although frankly, 8K is wasted on even bigger screens below about 75-inches. However it says it is working with Netflix to create 8K video with the Galaxy S20. Netflix was announced as Samsung’s 8K entertainment partner at the launch event.
The fast 120Hz screen refresh rate on the S20 models should deliver extra smooth motion gaming. It says Microsoft’s Forza Street racing video games for Xbox consoles will come to the Galaxy Store for S20 models.
The S20 and S20+ will support 25 watt fast charging while the premium Ultra model supports 45W “super fast” charging.
All models support a regular micro SIM as well as an electronic SIM (eSIM). You can also slot in a microSD card (up to 1.5TB capacity) for additional storage.
In all, the Galaxy S20 range has the most advanced specs of any phone around, are ready for the 5G era, while the Ultra has over-the-top camera resolution and zoom that will be fascinating to try out.
The S20 and S20+ are available in “cosmic black”, “cloud blue” and “cloud pink” with the Ultra in just the grey and black.
Galaxy Buds +
As expected Samsung also announced an upgrade of its Galaxy Buds earbuds. It features 2-way speakers, 3 microphones and Samsung says this model will work with iOS (Apple) phones. We don’t know how good the Apple integration is yet. It says you can access Spotify with a single key press.
Why that Valentine’s Day gift might head back to the shop
Australians returned more than $11m in gifts, or 88,600 items, in the fortnight after Christmas and it could be down to people cashing in what they can to make ends meet, a data collector says.
CEO still MIA as Richard White is back with a vengeance
WiseTech says it is progressing with its search for a new chief, as Richard White wastes no time settling into his new $1m a year consulting role at the company he took some brief leave from.