Galaxy Note 20 Ultra vs Galaxy S20 Ultra: Comparing best of the best Samsung has on offer

Last week, Samsung unveiled the Galaxy Note 20 Duo at its first virtual-only Galaxy Unpacked event. The Galaxy Note 20 and Galaxy Note 20 Ultra arrived with flagship specifications and a price to match. This time around, Samsung replaced the “Plus” with the “Ultra” moniker for the top-end Note 20 device, similar to what it did on the S series with the Galaxy S20 Ultra.

However, the arrival of the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra brings up an important question - Is the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra 5G worth the extra price?

Galaxy S20 Ultra vs Galaxy Note 20 Ultra 5G

While the design is subjective, the build quality of the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra is better than that of the Galaxy S20 Ultra. This can be attributed to the Gorilla Glass Victus on the Note 20 Ultra, which is the toughest yet. Apart from the build quality, the Note 20 Ultra also features a curved screen as opposed to a flat panel on the S20 Ultra. The S20 Ultra has a bigger battery than the Note 20 Ultra and supports faster charging.

On the camera front, things are more or less the same, with both phones featuring the same primary and ultrawide cameras. However, the big difference is the third periscope camera, with the Note 20 Ultra offering a lower megapixel and 50x magnification and the S20 Ultra opting for a higher megapixel shooter with 100x zoom.

The Note 20 Ultra also has a 10 MP selfie camera as opposed to the S20 Ultra’s 40 MP front shooter. While the S20 Ultra has an obvious advantage on the camera front, the Note 20 Ultra’s AF module that is designed to fix the autofocusing issues from the S20 Ultra.

While both the S20 Ultra and Note 20 Ultra 5G feature the same Exynos 990 SoC, the latter uses a 5G modem. This means users will be able to access 5G connectivity on the Note 20 Ultra. Now, 5G is still at least a year away from kicking off in India. But the accessibility is not the issue here. The main takeaway from the chipset is that both phones are similarly priced, but only one of them supports the next-gen cellular network.

And this alone is why we would opt for the Note 20 Ultra 5G over the S20 Ultra nine times out of ten. A lot of things like the actual real-world use of an S Pen stylus, design, build quality, are all debatable, but 4G vs 5G isn’t. If you are going to invest the amount that these phone cost, you might as well pay more for a future-proof solution.