Galaxy S20 Ultra review: Impressive but impractical

The first major phones of the year are here, and Samsung is being its usual ambitious self. The company unleashed a trio of new flagships in its S20 series, and for the first time, it introduced a souped-up Ultra variant alongside the regular S20 and S20+. The S20 Ultra is big and beefy, though with a starting price of $1,400, it's also very expensive. It offers a long list of impressive specs and intriguing features, like a triple camera system with a 108-megapixel sensor that can zoom up to 100x. But do these features make a good phone?

Size

One of the first things you should consider is the Ultra's size. As my colleague Chris Velazco so eloquently put it, the S20 Ultra is a chonky boi. Thicc with seven C's. With a 6.9-inch screen and a very dense build, the Ultra is the largest member of the S20 family ever. After just a day of testing it, my left thumb felt sore and my arm ached. I could never last more than 10 minutes of furious scrolling through my favorite subreddits.

To be fair, the S20 Ultra is only slightly larger than the iPhone 11 Pro Max, which is four grams heavier than the Samsung phone despite its smaller 6.5-inch screen. At 222 grams, the Ultra is noticeably heavier than the OnePlus 7T Pro (206 grams). Even the Note 10+ 5G, which has a slightly smaller 6.8-inch screen, weighs a lot less at 198 grams.

High-resolution, superzoom cameras

The biggest, most notable thing about the Ultra is its cameras. This is a tri-camera setup with a primary, 108-megapixel sensor and a 12-megapixel ultra-wide option that captures a 123-degree field of view. The most interesting of the lot, though, is the 48-megapixel telephoto lens folded into the chunky bump on top of this already-giant phone's behind.

Thanks to the bigger, sharper sensors, the S20 Ultra should take brighter, more colorful and clearer pictures than Samsung's previous flagships. But the company's image-processing algorithms are still pretty aggressive and soften details. Edges of buildings lack the definition you'd find on pictures taken with a Pixel 4 or an iPhone 11 Pro.

By default, the 108-megapixel camera snaps pictures at 12 megapixels using a process Samsung calls "nona-binning". Basically, it combines nine pixels into one on the sensor level to make them much bigger. Technically, that should result in brighter shots with less noise, but whether it's due to Samsung's algorithms or something else in the processing, the images just aren't very crisp no matter what resolution you're shooting at. Ultimately, the S20 Ultra's pictures are a minor improvement, at best, over the S10's.

The aggressive software also shows up in Live Focus and Night modes. The former adds an artificial blur to the background of your images to mimic bokeh, and Samsung's approach lags the competition. Google and even Apple are far better at recognizing outlines of people and applying bokeh that looks realistic and natural. And though I see an improvement in low-light photography and Night Mode on the S20 Ultra compared to the S10+, Google is still more effective at noise reduction and in darker conditions.

Besides the sharper sensors, the standout feature of the S20s is what Samsung calls "Space Zoom". On the S20 and S20 Plus, this lets you get up to 30 times closer to your subject. On the Ultra, you can go in up to 100x through a combination of optical zoom, digital zoom and a little AI trickery.

I've used the Ultra mostly to zoom in on buildings or faraway signs, and when you get beyond 10x, the image quality drops drastically. As with any other camera, every tiny movement is magnified when you're zoomed in that much. At 100x, it is nearly impossible to frame up a shot without a tripod and have it be still. At least Samsung includes a helpful visual guide in the top corners of the viewfinder for aiming. When you finally do line up a shot and take the picture, almost anything captured at beyond 10x is a muddy, noisy mess.

People have debated the ethics of such a feature and its potential for becoming a tool for snooping. And I have to admit, it's a bit creepy. Once, I shot up from the sidewalk into an apartment where a woman was having a conversation on the phone and looking out. Her face filled up the entire viewfinder at a mere 10x zoom and while I'm sure she didn't know I was that up close, it felt like she was staring right at me. I immediately felt uncomfortable and put the phone down.

Yes, Space Zoom is unsettling. Samsung is naive if it believes people are only going to use this feature to zoom in on tourist attractions from afar, like in the examples it gave at Unpacked. We'll have to rely on the decency of people who buy this phone to not use it for nefarious reasons, and depending on your worldview, that could be absolutely terrifying.

Moving on to a more fun addition to the camera experience -- the new Single Take mode. When you press the shutter button in this mode, the S20 captures a variety of shots and video from all the cameras. You'll have to hold the phone for a few seconds, and on-screen alerts will prompt you to move around to get different angles. When you're done, voila, the S20 spits out about 10 variations of your picture.

I like that Single Take serves up options I wouldn't have otherwise thought to take, like a monochrome version or a looping video set to a cheesy soundtrack. But it's not something I'd use all the time since it's best for moving subjects and I don't shoot those a lot. Parents of human and fur babies, for example, might find this more worthwhile.

I was concerned that the Ultra's 40-megapixel front camera would take selfies sharp enough to reveal every unflattering scar and stray eyebrow hair on my face. But by default, the system captures images at about 6.5-megapixel, and you have to manually select 40MP from the viewfinder. When I enabled high-res selfies, I wasn't as put off by the increased detail as I expected -- even after disabling beauty mode, which is turned on by default. I was surprised to see every strand of my hair so starkly, and honestly I don't think most people need or want selfies this sharp. But the pictures at either resolution will still serve you well -- they're bright and clear with accurate colors.

Fair warning though, since the image size is about three times that of a 6.5-megapixel version, these will suck up storage quickly and the phone struggled to keep up when I snapped a slew of them in rapid succession. Same goes with the 108-megapixel shots on the rear sensors.

Sharp, smooth video

Another thing I didn't find that useful was 8K video recording. Like Space Zoom, this is another feature that's really there for Samsung to say, "Hey, we did this technologically impressive thing!" Thanks to the S20's Snapdragon 865 processor, it can record the super high-res footage, so long as your device has enough storage and battery. It does put a bit of strain on the processor, though. I took some 8K clips of NYC streets, and the Ultra started to get a bit warm after about a minute.

The problem with 8K video isn't so much shooting it as it is trying to find somewhere to play it back. The S20 Ultra's screen is just Quad HD+, so watching it on the phone won't give you the full impact, and edges of buildings look distorted. Samsung's solution is to make it easy for you to cast your video to one of its 8K TVs, which are about as common in the wild as a panda bear. You can also upload it to YouTube, but again, you'll have to find a super high resolution screen to watch it on to really appreciate the quality.

I did like the improved Super Steady stabilization tool, though -- my footage turned out very smooth despite me tripping while walking on an uneven sidewalk. I have yet to notice the autofocus or frame dropping issues that other reviewers have reported during my video tests, although to be fair I haven't been able to play my footage back at the full 8K resolution. Again, these screens are hard to find.