Don’t Buy the Samsung Galaxy Note 20!

5 min readAug 30, 2020

Samsung Note 20 vs. Samsung Note 20 Ultra

Samsung’s “Unpacked” event took place online on August 5th and since then, the question remains; Is the “premium” Note 20 worth, or is the Note 20 Ultra the better buy?

Answer: No, the Note 20 isn’t worth to empty your wallet for! Here’s why!

Internal Specs

So if we take a look, the Note 20 it has the following:

Snapdragon 865+ chip
8 gigabytes of ram
4300 milliamp-hour battery
128 gigabytes of non-expandable storage

So Snapdragon 865+ and 8 gigs of RAM as the only spec proves it’s high-end. The 8-gigabytes of RAM cut down a bit from the 12 gigs of RAM from the Ultra but without a doubt, it will still offer high-end performance.

The 4,300 milliamp-hour battery is fine, slightly smaller than the Note 20 Ultra’s battery again, though the Note 20 is a smaller 6.7" phone. And since it’s only a 1080p60hertz display, it will provide a slightly better overall battery life on a charge than the Ultra.

The 128 gigabytes of non-expandable storage (in the U.S) can feel a bit small to many for the only option. And again, others can say that 128 gigabytes is just right or overkill, we are in the age where we constantly capture life with the cameras all the time can start to eat up. Not just photos, but even with giving the ability to take 8K videos and have numerous apps, you would just think you could even have the ability to upgrade via a Micro SD. That is just reserved for the Ultra up to 512 gigs.

S-Pen

The upgraded S-Pen is worth a pat on the back for Samsung. It’s physically on both the Note 20 and the Ultra but latency drops a considerable amount of milliseconds. It drops from 42 to 26 milliseconds. Great, but not down to the 9 milliseconds like the Ultra because of it’s 120-hertz display. Again, it’s still incredibly fast and responsive and Apple Pencil level and competitor now!

Display

The Note 20 packs an AMOLED display but with only 1080p60 hertz, has a slightly larger hole punch, cutout for the same 10-megapixel selfie, and the same ultrasonic fingerprint reader underneath. The 1080p resolution is something that both phones have to undergo as the Ultra has to turn the resolution down to use the 120 hertz. And even if visually 1080p is fine you still get the great colors and the brightness of the Samsung AMOLED screen and it’s really thin bezels. It’s no big deal watching videos and taking photos and all that stuff is awesome on this screen. However, for the price for a thousand bucks on a flagship in 2020, it’d only be fair and right to get a higher refresh rate screen. Right? Heck, Apple’s iPhone 12 Pro is rumored to get 120 hertz at the same price as this Galaxy.

Materials

The body of this Galaxy is plastic. On phones like the Pixel 4a for example they chose plastic and plastic and that’s okay because glass is more expensive and more fragile and the plastic is cheaper. It’ll work for a $350 phone but if we look at this price which we’ll cover later on, Samsung cutting down the materials doesn’t contribute and justify its value. Even if it does a great job of hiding fingerprints and all the micro scratches that you usually get with plastic.

Cameras

The camera array is also cut down as you can see from the significantly smaller camera bump. Instead of the Ultra’s huge 108-megapixel primary camera and the periscope 5x optical zoom, you’re receiving a more reasonable 12-megapixel main camera, 12-megapixel ultra-wide and 64 megapixels 3x zoom. the photos from both galaxies are pretty indistinguishable with one photo having more detail.

More advantages to this system like the not-so-giant sensor focus quickly without even needing laser autofocus but while you have 8K video it also only goes to 30x max unlike the 50x zoom on the Ultra. Though if most people just take a shot with 30x, it’s enough for the “Average-Joe.”

And sure, all of these specs have some problems but there’s not much to hate, right?

The Price is Preposterous

The worst part about this phone launch price they picked. $1,000! There is no way this phone should ever justifiably be a thousand dollars out of your pocket. Sure, if you’d remove the branding and the price from this, you’ve got nice specs for something unique. You do get the S-Pen, wireless DeX, and Samsung’s set of features. Then, there isn’t anything out there that quite matches it in terms of features. But for everything you’re getting, it should’ve had a launch price of $700. They even could’ve lowered the chip to a Snapdragon 765g to make it more reasonable. Then the other complaints such as having a plastic body and only having 60 hertz. display would slide. A thousand bucks just don’t feel right. It genuinely feels like Samsung was confused about whether this was to be a premium phone or not. That’s why this messed up.

The $1,300 Note 20 Ultra is the best deal. In only $300, it fixes all the Note 20’s mistakes such as a 120-hertz screen, better cameras, less S-Pen lag, having a premium glass body, and more. Buy the Ultra.

That’s Samsung’s catch.

Samsung’s Real Play

Samsung wasn’t confused, they knew what they were doing. They used what economists call the “decoy effect.” People’s perception of value is always relative to something. So when you have a similar phone with way fewer features but only at a slightly smaller price — the more expensive phone suddenly appears to be a great deal and worth your wallet. The Note 20 was meant to be inadequate. So its “big brother” is the better one to choose from. Samsung doesn’t expect to sell a lot of Note ’20s. The Note 20 only exists to push people toward the 20 Ultras for profit.

All in all, the Note 20 was meant to be a pawn for more money, not a phone anyone should buy. Even if your eyes are only on the S-Pen, DeX, and the extra year of software updates, it’s just not worth it.

About Me; I’m a twelve-year-old funny weird geek who’s passionate about life, electronics, and other stuff.

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