Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra Australian review: Do you need a 108-megapixel camera phone?
Samsung’s new $2000 smartphone promises to produce “professional quality photos” and a zoom that will reach the moon. But don’t go throwing out your camera just yet.
Smartphone
Don't miss out on the headlines from Smartphone. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Consider Samsung’s latest smartphone ‘shots fired’ at the camera industry.
The tech giant has thrown everything at the lenses inside its top-of-the-range-set-you-back-$2000-please-for-the-love-of-all-things-good-buy-it-a-case handset.
The Galaxy S20 Ultra packs in four lenses, a huge image sensor, a peak resolution of 108 megapixels, a digital zoom that will magnify objects 100 times over, and a smart new addition that could solve those pesky video-or-photo dilemmas.
It’s even attached to a phone that will make calls.
But, before you bin your DSLR and join the Samsung preorder queue, ready for its Friday, March 6 launch, there are serious considerations ahead.
Even sophisticated smartphone cameras have limitations and, after testing it for just over a week, we have identified developments you should note before snapping up this flash device.
THE MOST MEGAPIXELS OF ALL
The photos from this smartphone can be exceedingly large.
How big are they?
— They’re so big you can make four regular images from one giant photo.
— They’re so big you can tell if your subject has a rogue eyelash or concealed pimple.
— They’re so big you can almost taste the detail in your foodstagrams.
— And they’re so big you won’t be able to attach them to an email message. Seriously.
Photographers will tell you that image quality needs more than many megapixels, of course, and they’re right.
But Samsung has countered this argument by almost tripling the size of the image sensor in this phone.
It is 2.9 times as large as the sensor from phones released a year ago, making this camera more capable in low light and able to record fine detail within photos.
After pointing this phone camera at a tiny dandelion, for example, we were able to capture each seed parachute in surprising detail.
By zooming into the image on the phone’s screen, and tapping the Quick Crop button, we created an image you could mistake as the product of a dedicated camera with macro lens.
This massive megapixel mode will also come in handy if you ever need to isolate anyone in a crowd shot, in highly detailed scenes where you don’t want to miss anything, and for any photo you plan to print.
Full-resolution photos captured with this phone can be as large as 35 megabytes, ensuring no printer will complain they’re too small.
Their file size, and the power required to create these images, does push this smartphone’s hardware to the limit, though.
The Galaxy S20 Ultra often took a moment longer to capture a 108-megapixel image, as you might expect, making it less helpful for action scenes.
Extra effort was also required to lock its focus on some subjects, and the smartphone became quite warm after a shooting session; hot enough to keep it out of your pocket and to challenge its battery.
AN ALMOST CREEPY ZOOM
Samsung has just about weaponised the zoom lens in this smartphone.
It is so powerful there’s scope to remake Rear Window with this device; a man serving a quarantine period could peer at their neighbours through the zoom feature on this camera.
The Galaxy S20 Ultra not only matches the 10x zoom inside some rival Android smartphones but takes the technology further.
Its telephoto “folded lens” offers a 10x hybrid optical zoom, and the option of a 30x or 100x “space zoom”.
This can be both useful and creepy and, as with superpowers, great zoom comes with great responsibility.
It can be incredibly handy, though. Whether you’re trying to get close to a butterfly without scaring it, or you want to give the impression that you were actually in the mosh pit at a gig, this close to Taylor Swift, this camera can help.
At 10x magnification, the camera maintains surprisingly clear image quality.
At 30x magnification, there’s still a chance you’ll capture a usable photo that you wouldn’t otherwise be able to record.
And at 100x, you’ll get a slightly blurry rendering of something very far away. This might be useful if you need to make out what a distant sign says, for example, but isn’t something you’d show your friends.
It’s also worth noting this huge zoom is not available at 108-megapixel resolution. You are limited to a 6x zoom in that mode, indicating that may be the optical strength of this lens.
OTHER CAMERA TRICKS
Moving images have not been overlooked inside this smartphone either.
You can record video in an 8K resolution with the Galaxy S20 Ultra camera and, perhaps more impressively, you can capture still photos as you go or after you’re done recording.
If you dive into its menus, you can also record photos in RAW format if you use its Pro mode, there’s a night hyperlapse mode for long-exposure shots, and it keeps additions such as Super Slo-Mo and Live Focus modes.
And, even though there’s a lot of fancy hardware in this phone, one of its most useful photo features might be a software addition.
Called Single Take, this mode takes short videos up to 10 seconds in length and uses artificial intelligence to produce as many as 10 photos and four videos in different styles.
Photos might appear in monochrome and colour, for example, while videos are saved in real time and as a hyperlapse.
It’s surprisingly convenient at times when you want to cover something from all angles, like a child blowing out candles on a birthday cake, or a fully grown adult who should know better doing a bomb dive into a pool.
EVERYTHING ELSE
The Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra is more than just a big camera.
It also uses a 6.9-inch OLED screen with the highest refresh rate on the market that is slightly taller than the biggest Apple iPhone display.
This handset also uses 5G by default, futureproofing your investment, will accept memory cards in case your 108-megapixel gallery gets too much for its 128GB storage, and it comes with a powerful 12GB RAM and 5000mAh battery, which it needs to record all those pixels.
Naturally, this S20 will also resist dunks in 1.5m of water for up to 30 minutes and, no, you can’t have your old headphone jack back. Samsung has moved past that.
GALAXY S20 ULTRA VERDICT
It doesn’t fold, it doesn’t flip, but the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra lives on the cutting-edge of technology in perhaps a more practical way.
Its cameras are advanced enough to lift the standard of phone photography and challenge dedicated compact cameras for your attention (though this phone still won’t replace a DSLR).
Its $2000+ price will be an obvious sticking point for some smartphone buyers, and iPhone fans might question whether they are willing to switch camps to try the tech, but there’s little debate that, in the right hands and circumstances, the Galaxy S20 Ultra is capable of capturing some of the most finely detailed, realistic, and printworthy smartphone photographs to date.
Oh, and it also makes calls.
Originally published as Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra Australian review: Do you need a 108-megapixel camera phone?
President Trump’s wild new business move
The Trump Organisation has announced it will be entering the telecommunications market.
‘Retro’ Gen Z trend baffles millennials
A growing number of young people are turning back the clock and purchasing nostalgic millennial-era devices.