The Samsung Galaxy S20+, S20 Ultra Exynos & Snapdragon Review: Megalomania Devices
by Andrei Frumusanu on April 3, 2020 9:30 AM ESTDisplay Measurement
The Galaxy S20’s screens follow the same recipe that we found on the S10 and Note10 series, and other than the 120Hz display modes, the new panels don’t have any major new changes to them when it comes to features or display quality changes.
We move on to the display calibration and fundamental display measurements of the Galaxy S20 screen. As always, we thank X-Rite and SpecraCal, as our measurements are performed with an X-Rite i1Pro 2 spectrophotometer, with the exception of black levels which are measured with an i1Display Pro colorimeter. Data is collected and examined using Portrait Display's CalMAN software.
In terms of brightness, the S20 Ultra and S20+ fall in line with what we’ve seen from Samsung phones over the past few generations. The panel goes up to 325 nits in maximum manual brightness mode, and boosts up to 731 nits at full screen white when under auto brightness and high ambient light. The lower the APL of your content, the brighter the screen will become.
The S20 series is identical to the S10 series when it comes to the display settings; we find the phone comes by default in a “Vivid” mode with a larger color gamut target for all content. But what’s new here is that this generation Samsung has included a color temperature slider offering not only a few discrete choices between cool and warm, but it also gives the option for fine-tuning the RGB balance as well. Nevertheless, the accurate color profile for the phone is the “Natural” one which aims for sRGB colors for default contents and is able to support wider color targets for color managed applications.
Unfortunately, the S20 doesn’t really behave any different to the S10 series, and we find the same characteristics in the calibration between the phones. The worst offender here is the color temperature which is far too warm at an average of 6330K across all grey levels, and a white falling in at 6220K. Samsung keeps doing this year after year and at this point I just don’t know what the point is anymore in hoping that they would finally get it right.
The resulting gamma is also quite off and will wildly vary in the measurement depending on your pattern’s APL. We’ve had tons of phones fail at this aspect as the panels are calibrated without consideration of the CABC mechanisms of the display – for some vendors it’s even possible to retrace the methodologies and showcase where they went wrong in the calibration.
At this point I should note that we’ve slightly revamped our display reporting methodology, and have now moved from showcasing dE2000 error values to the newer dEITP standard, which is more strict in its error figure handling.
The S20 Ultra here ends up with a dEITP of 6.03 because of the color and luminosity errors, and just the color error would lend it a dEITP of 2.72. I’ll be remeasuring more devices and bring back comparison charts on other devices with the new dE standard in upcoming reviews.
Saturation targets for the S20 are also in line with what we’re used to from Galaxy phones – not great, but not totally bad either. The major issue again is the shift of the spectrum towards reds.
The Gretag MacBeth chart with common human color tones is also just somewhat acceptable, with the commonality of gamma errors, but also some larger hue errors due to the shift towards reds.
A Typical Galaxy Display
Overall, the S20 series come with what I’d call typical Galaxy displays. The panel is fantastic quality, and there’s nothing to criticize it in terms of its intrinsic qualities. The calibration is a bit more lackluster and in-line with what we’ve become accustomed from Samsung, key points being that the gamma is off yet again, and the Natural display mode is also too warm, yet again. It’s not a deal breaker, but Samsung has done better in the past. In any case, they remain high quality displays which are just short of being outstanding.
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Reflex78 - Friday, April 3, 2020 - link
I live in Europe, I like Samsung and have S9 at the moment.But I will never pay +1000€ for lower quality Exynos S20 version in Europe!
This is a big mistake from the company management to allow such a difference between this 2 variants at the same price!
And I just read that they have chosen to sell Snapdragon version even for their home country:
https://www.phonearena.com/news/Samsung-chip-divis...
twtech - Friday, April 3, 2020 - link
The edge design of Samsung's more recent releases is just not good. There are no cases that can both properly protect the screen, and avoid blocking any of it. My older phones typically lasted for years without any significant damage. These new ones are one slip of the hand away from being garbage fodder.FunBunny2 - Friday, April 3, 2020 - link
"These new ones are one slip of the hand away from being garbage fodder."rube!! :) it's a feature, not a bug. going back to Lotus/MS conflict: "DOS ain't done til 1-2-3 won't run."
Harysviewty - Friday, April 3, 2020 - link
Totally wrong calculation. It's 7.1mp when you crop 3x3. It's only possible to do full 12mp resolution with the help of Super resolution algorithm, which adds up to 75% more detail to 'normal bayer' setupAndrei Frumusanu - Friday, April 3, 2020 - link
I don't know what you're talking about. The sensor is 108MP at 12000 x 9000. 3x3 binning results in 4000 x 3000, which is 12MP.krazyfrog - Friday, April 3, 2020 - link
The 3x3 binning only happens on the 108MP sensor, not on the 64MP sensor.s.yu - Saturday, April 4, 2020 - link
You said "crop 3x3" which confuses people, usually we just say 3x crop, but yes, the digital zoom doesn't provide native 12MP in any sense at 3x.JDSP - Friday, April 3, 2020 - link
Image links on the iPhone are wrong, Wide links to zoom and night sight links to normalAndrei Frumusanu - Friday, April 3, 2020 - link
Corrected that, thanks. There's probably a few other link issues there I'll keep an eye out for that.Quantumz0d - Friday, April 3, 2020 - link
Great analysis, will go through it slowly but looking at that Exynos 990, Seriously WTF is that. Higher power consumption, lower GPU performance, higher throttling. Very unfortunate. And losing to that copycat Chinese Huawei Kirin trash (EMUI garbage with LZ Play backdoor, Read only EROFS Filesystem and Google copying that into Pixel 4 and the proprietary garbage NMSDslot no 3.5mm jack, No Play Store, lies and deception) Samsung should be ashamed of themselves removing all their genius whatever PR ads for milking customers and offering mediocrity.The only good part for Exynos is unlockable bootloader. Since SD versions in US are locked as hell and useless for customization esp how they depreciated the SpO2 sensor in this phone HW and from SW side also in S10 and previous phones to promote bullshit Smartwatches.
This phone sucks bad, their S10 has better features and looks better as well on top this phone camera sucks, no 3.5mm jack and ugliest design ever with insane price tag on top, LG's V60 is looking very good in comparison from Camera to Audio and other features/specs plus price vs this phone or even that Chinese OP8 Pro (despite lacking SD slot and 3.5mm jack as at-least it is cheaper and has hassle free Bootloader unlock), since Samsung dropping HW feature set which defines the all in one phones from Samsung they want greed and money from that shitty Buds and other garbage.
S10+ Exynos is a better choice all rounder as it has BL unlock as well. On top I'd like to mention how DJ Koh also was removed from the Samsung mobile CEO office, I presume it also played an important role in S.LSI even if independent and the financial results of the conglomerate, esp how it impacted the design philosophy for sure as Note 10 provided a platform for removing features and cost cutting similar aspect in S20 a bit more worse.
On the Foundry aspects, TSMC 7NP is not EUV and Samsung 7nm LPP is EUV since N7+ is the EUV one. Not sure 20% to 30% is valid ? I do not know since the uArch is garbage doesn't mean that the node is trash, esp last rumor was Ampere would be on Samsung node with EUV and Nvidia wouldn't afford a stupid decision tbh, and a big shame is S.LSI getting hacked. I think the PR marketing team and the budgets ruined them or such, we may never know. Shame indeed.