Samsung Galaxy S20 Plus review

The Samsung Galaxy S20 Plus sits in between the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra and the Samsung Galaxy S20.

The phone is cheaper than the S20 Ultra, but has a bigger screen and battery compared to the standard S20.

SCREEN AND BODY

The Galaxy S20 Plus has a subtle curve on the screen.  This gives it an elegant look which is just nice to the eye.

It features a 6.7-inch AMOLED 2X capacitive touchscreen which has a pixel density of 1440 x 3200.  This puts the pixel density at about ~525 ppi.

The refresh rate for the phone can reach up to 120Hz on FHD.  I prefer the 120Hz but this will dry up the battery faster.

The screen has a punch hole to store the selfie camera, and the screen to ratio is about 91%, which is pretty massive.  This is thanks to the tiny bezels surrounding the phone.

There’s an under-screen fingerprint scanner for quick access down at the bottom of the screen.

On the rear side, a quad camera set-up is placed in a rectangular shaped bump which is quite large, but still smaller than what you see on the Galaxy S20 Ultra.  The bump isn’t that high, so the phone does lie quite well on flat surfaces.

The phone has an IP68 rating and it is protected by Gorilla Glass 6, which makes it strong enough to withstand for basic damages like fine scratches and water splashes.

AUDIO SYSTEM

For external audio, the Samsung Galaxy S20 Plus has a stereo sound set-up with bottom firing speakers with the hearing piece doubling as another speaker.

The speakers perform well, but the maximum sound can’t reach the loudness of the Samsung Galaxy S20.

There’s no 3.5mm audio jack for this phone.

SAMSUNG GALAXY S20 PLUS SOFTWARE

Samsung uses the One UI on top of the Android 10 in the Galaxy S20 Plus.

The software was given a minor redesign by Samsung and there’s also a dark mode available.

There’s also proper gesture modes to navigate and use the phone which is convenient for those hating having to swipe from the bottom of the phone.

Accessing the multi-screen is however slightly difficult.

Google Duo has been added to the One UI and this makes video calling much faster to do.

PROCESSOR AND STORAGE

There’s two different processors used for the Galaxy S20 Plus.

Those in the US get the Qualcomm SM8250 Snapdragon 865 processor, while other parts of the world get Exynos 990.

Both processors are paired with 8GB of RAM with 128GB storage space.

Together, they work well for gaming but there’s some very slight slowness if compared to the Galaxy S20 Ultra and Samsung Galaxy S20 when it comes to gaming, but nothing one would really complaint about.

GALAXY S20 PLUS BATTERY LIFE

A 4,500mAh battery powers the Samsung Galaxy S20 Plus. This gives you about 87 hours of play time when using the 60Hz refresh rate, and 87 hours when using the 120Hz refresh rate.

Wireless charging, and reversible wireless charging, is supported by the phone in case you need to juice up the battery.

Charging the phone in 30 minutes gives the phone 62% of juice to use.

SAMSUNG GALAXY S20 PLUS CAMERA

The Samsung Galaxy S20 Plus has the same triple camera set-up as the S20, but with an additional TOF lens.

There’s the 12 MP wide lens, the 64MP telephoto lens which comes with 1.1x optical zoom and 3x hybrid zoom, and a 12 MP ultrawide camera with Super Steady video.

The 12MP wide lens and the 64MP telephoto lens both have image stability and auto-focus while the additional TOF lens helps with portraits and live focus.

Generally, photos by the Samsung Galaxy S20 Plus are very sharp and detailed during day light use, but using the 4X zoom will see the photos losing their sharpness.

Usability of photos further drops at 10X zoom as well.

Night shots using the main camera are outstanding even without help of the night-mode.  Night mode also helps clear up photos when using the zooms attached to the lenses.

The TOF camera proved to be outstanding when taking portraits and live focus.

Videos can be shot at 8K using the Samsung Galaxy S20 Plus, but that doesn’t entirely mean that your video quality improves in general.

Shooting in 4K gives you already great shots and image stabilization through Super Steady is available in every mode used.

The front camera did excellent in capturing selfies although they are no match to the portraits taken using the TOF lens.

VERDICT PRICING & AVAILABILITY

It seems that the S20 Plus is probably the better version of the Galaxy S20 series.

It’s not as pricey as the S20 Ultra, and it has a bigger screen and battery life than the basic S20.

As a matter of fact it does seem to outperform the Apple iPhone 11 Pro in terms of screen, weight and camera.

That said, if you are considering a phone to own, you might want to put this one in your bucket list this year.

Last but not least, the S20 Plus retail price is RM3,999 but it goes from RM3,288 on Lazada Malaysia.

FIND SAMSUNG GALAXY S20 PLUS ON LAZADA

// READ REVIEW OF THE XIAOMI MI NOTE 10 PRO