I and several other members of the AP team have been using the Galaxy S20 Ultra for the last few weeks, and if anything, our opinions of the phone have worsened in that time. In fact, we made the decision to drop the initial 7/10 score to a 6. It's just a disappointing device.
Ryne says he's "distinctly unimpressed" after using the S20 Ultra. Not all of the negativity is because we made him stop using his beloved Galaxy Z Flip, either. We agree on the basics here: the battery life and display are good, but the software comes with its fair share of annoyances. Perhaps most galling, the new camera setup is, in a word, bad. Oh, and the price. Charging $1,400 for this phone is obscene.
Samsung's camera processing simply hasn't kept up with the competition, and packing in more advanced hardware isn't cutting it. There was an update recently that seems to have mostly fixed the autofocus, but the image quality is still substandard. You can take some nice photos with this phone, but most of them look like they came from a mid-range device—edges are constantly oversharpened, and details are blurred. The dynamic range is also extremely inconsistent. I'm getting used to the feeling of abject disappointment when I look at the gallery after snapping images. My wife, who rarely comments on image quality, told me some photos I shared of our dog looked "soft," and she was completely right. Ryne says the S20 Ultra "takes terrible photos." Emphasis his. Here are some more samples.
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