Samsung Galaxy Note 20 and Galaxy Note 20 Ultra Unveiled: New Features and First Impressions

Samsung has finally taken wraps off the much-awaited Note 20 duo. The newly-launched series is built for performance, gaming, pro-grade videography and photography, and of course the forte of Samsung’s Note portfolio -- a replete office suite in the palm of your hand. While the Korean giant didn’t redesign the Samsung Galaxy Note 20 from the ground up, it does build on where the S20 and the Note 10 left off.

The ‘Ultra’ comes in Mystic Bronze, Mystic Black, and Mystic White but the vanilla Note 20 has a more creative Mystic Bronze, Mystic Bronze, and Mystic Gray palette. 

With the Samsung Note 20 Ultra, you get a 108MP main camera, a 12MP periscope lens, and a 12MP ultrawide sensor. The base edition has a 12MP + 64MP telephoto + 12MP ultrawide configuration. 

Not only is the duo more refined, polished, it’s also on the cutting-edge — a flagship of flagships. The Note 20 Ultra has a giant 6.9” Dynamic AMOLED 2X screen that curves around the edges and operates at an extreme 120Hz refresh rate and a resolution of 1440x3088 px. In contrast, the base edition is flat and runs on a standard 60Hz rate.

For a more life-like, fluid experience, the iconic S-pen has been revamped to work on an even lower 9ms latency (and 26ms in the vanilla version). The stylus lets you take notes, doodle, and draw, as it always has, but it now doubles as a remote control as well. You can edit PDFs, record audio, and also convert the notes into text and export them to Microsft Word and Powerpoint.

The Note 20 series is most powerful Samsung yet, optimized for gaming thanks to the AI-powered ‘Game Booster’, a slim vapon chamber cooling system, and a touch latency of 240Hz.

And to keep the seamless gaming going, you get 8GB of RAM, 256GB of storage (expandable up to 1TB in the Ultra), and a battery capacity of 4,500 mAh (for the Ultra) and 4,300 mAh (for the base) — augmented with 25W fast charge. Samsung’s fastest Exynos 990 chip powers the duo.

Toggle the play mode, and cast your Note onto a secondary display. Unlike typical screen projecting, however, it won’t mirror your screen. Instead, you can interact with both outputs using Samsung DeX. For better videography, the ‘Pro Video’ mode allows you to shoot in up to 4K, complete with adjustable frame rate presets — 24, 30, 60, 120 FPS. The Note 20 4G variant will start at €950 or about 190,000 PKR and the 5G model starts at €1,023 or about 204,000 PKR without taxes.