The Samsung launch in February and Apple event in September nicely bookend the year for those of us in the mobile phone world. With the MWC in Barcelona now being cancelled by the Coronavirus this year, it seems likely that Samsung’s announcements on Feb 11, will be the highlight of the year for quite some time.
The main takeaways of the Samsung event were 3 new Galaxy S flagships – jumping from last year’s S10 to the S20 and a new clam shell Galaxy Z Flip review. We will be looking at the flip soon, but in the meantime, we are going to focus on what is likely to be the biggest seller the Samsung Galaxy S20.
6.2” screen
The S20 is the cheapest and smallest screen handset in the new range. That said, coming in with a 6.2” screen, it is the same size as the older S9+ handset. This AMOLED screen is supported by an aluminium frame and Gorilla Glass 6 back. In the UK, it is likely to ship with Samsung’s own Exynos 990 chipset backed by 8GB and 128GB of expandable storage.
All this will be powered by a 25W fast charging 4000 mAh battery, that also supports fast wireless charging. It will be available in Cosmic Grey, Cloud Blue or Cloud Pink.
Impressive camera setup
Like the S10, the S20 sports a triple rear array camera, but with upgraded specs. The main camera is a 12MP f/1.8 wide lens, similar to the S10. But the telephoto lens is a large 64MP f/2.0 that delivers 3 X optical zoom and 30 X digital zoom. The final camera is a 12MP f/2.2 ultrawide lens, combined together this new setup offers a major upgrade on the S10 setup. This is because Samsung has increased the size of the individual pixels and combined that with a larger sensor. Also, a new software feature is Single take mode. This cycles through all 3 cameras over 10 seconds to take a variety of photos and videos. You can then decide what you want to keep.
Finally, on the back, you can record videos up to 8K. On the front is a centrally mounted pinhole camera that has the small footprint seen on the Note 10. This is a 10MP f/2.2 wide lens.
5G comes as standard
If you are looking on switching to 5G in 2020, then the good news for you is that 5G is enabled by default on all the S20 models, so you won’t have to pay extra. This should give you up to 6X faster download speeds when compared to 4G.
Finally, we’ll finish on a negative. For the first time ever on the Galaxy S range, Samsung have removed the headphone jack, shipping the handset with a USB-C converter instead – it was bound to happen one day!
So, with a much-improved camera and 5G the Samsung S20 is going to be on many people’s shopping lists this year, when they come to upgrade their handset.
Will it make yours?
