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- What you are looking at here,
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is the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra.
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And, there's a lot going on.
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It is big, it has 5G, 108 megapixel camera,
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four other cameras, a massive screen,
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a high refresh rate, a 1399 dollar starting price.
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It's just a lot.
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(drum beat)
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If there's a spec that you can think of
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for a phone, this phone is trying to beat that spec.
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The S20 Ultra goes big,
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I mean you know, literally big, look at the phone.
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And looking at it I think one thing is blindingly obvious.
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Samsung feels like it has something to prove.
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Let's see if it can.
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The best word that I can come up with
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to describe the S20 Ultra is, imposing.
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It has this giant, giant camera bump
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on the back which sometimes can be a problem on a table.
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But look, the thing looks like a Galaxy phone overall.
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Just kind of taken to the limit.
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It is as large and nearly as heavy
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as pretty much any phone that I've ever used.
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It's a monolith.
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It sees your puny attempts at using a phone one handed
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and it laughs at you.
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Now the main reason this phone
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is as big as it is is so that you can have
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this screen which is 6.9 inches diagonally.
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And because this screen doesn't have
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a face unlock sensor on it,
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it can cover nearly the entire front of the phone.
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Now I figured that I'd be annoyed
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at having to go back to an in-screen fingerprint sensor
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instead of face unlock, but I really wasn't.
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The sensor is fast and accurate enough for me,
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so I've got no complaints.
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But the real reason I think that this screen
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shows that Samsung has something to prove
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with the S20 Ultra, is they finally added the option
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to switch it to 120 hertz refresh rate.
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Now, it comes outta the box at 60 hertz
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to save battery but I hopped into settings
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and turned it on right away
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and never looked back because I think
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it has enough battery life to handle it.
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And 120 hertz really does make scrolling
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and screen animations look better and smoother.
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Samsung even says that it stopped bothering
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with any variable refresh rate
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based on the content of the screen nonsense.
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It's just locked to 120.
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Oh, by the way, you can't have both 120 hertz
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and the phone's maximum 3200 by 1440 resolution.
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But, I think the trade for 1080 by 2300
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to get 120 hertz is totally worth it.
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And of course, the screen looks great.
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Looks great indoors, outdoors,
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at different angles, with HDR content.
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Samsung knows how to do this by now,
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it's very good at it.
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And again, because it's nearly seven inches diagonally,
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it looks good 'cause it's just huge.
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But, look.
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Samsung has already done the make the phone bigger
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than everybody else thing.
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That's not actually what the S20 Ultra is about.
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It's about being bigger in every way, not just size.
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And there is no better place to start
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talking about what that means,
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than to just jump right into the biggest
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number of all, the 108 megapixel camera.
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(relaxing music)
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So let's just get into it.
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If you count the depth sensor,
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there are five cameras on this phone.
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And three of them have just silly megapixel counts.
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The selfie camera is 40 megapixels.
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The telephoto is 48,
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the regular wide angle is 108 megapixels.
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The only camera that isn't out of bounds
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megapixel wise is the ultra wide which is 12 megapixels.
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But the S20 goes further than that.
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So similar to what Huawei did on it's phones,
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the telephoto lens here actually hits
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a prism and a mirror and redirects
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the light across the body of the phone
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into the sensor, like a periscope.
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It means that the phone can get
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real optical zoom all the way up to 4x,
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and something really good up to 10x.
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Then there's this thing that Samsung
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calls Space Zoom, which pushes the zoom
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all the way out to 100x.
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That's one of the reasons that Samsung
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went with a 48 megapixel camera on the telephoto,
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so that it has more pixels to choose from
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when it starts cropping in.
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It also does this thing where it takes multiple photos
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to help get data from all the sensors to help.
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So how does all that tech work?
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Well I tested this zoom against the iPhone 11 Pro,
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and the Pixel 4 XL, both which have telephoto lenses.
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And for fun, I threw in the Sony RX100 VII.
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The Pixel 4 XL maxes at 8x zoom,
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so I just compared it at that level
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and I used a tripod for all of these photos
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that you're looking at.
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I think the RX100 wins, but you know,
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it's a stand alone camera so of course it's gonna.
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When you just look at the phones,
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the S20 Ultra embarrasses the iPhone,
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and I think it edges out the Pixel 4 too.
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So far so good, but what about this Space Zoom thing?
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Well, you can impress your friends
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with little whoa moments by zooming
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all the way into 100x, but truthfully,
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I think they look like splotchy messes at that zoom level.
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I was able to get some fairly nice
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stuff at 30x, usually by propping
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the phone on something stable.
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But, it still looks like a phone photo to me.
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Okay, but what about just regular,
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plain old, non-zoom photos?
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Well, Samsung is doing some weird tech stuff here too.
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So, by default the 108 megapixel sensor
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makes 12 megapixel images because the hardware
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automatically combines nine pixels into one big pixel.
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It's a process called binning.
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And combined, those binned pixels
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are about as big as what they would've been
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on a lower megapixel sensor.
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Which does help this camera avoid
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some of the usual problems that you get
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with high megapixel sensors.
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Like bad low light, and noise.
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It mostly works.
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See, in order to make all of this pixel binning
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stuff happen, Samsung still has to do a lot in the software.
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Now, generally I think the S20 wants to smooth out
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lighting especially on faces,
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it wants to keep things bright,
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and it wants to shift towards less red tones.
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And those are often really good instincts for photos.
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So, for example, I think the shot of Alex looks great.
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And this purple plant thing,
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it's intense in just the right way.
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But then, Samsung sometimes steers
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the S20's tuning just a little too far.
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So, compared to the iPhone, or the Pixel,
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this photo of me is just plain
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over smoothed and over brightened.
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It is actually super weird.
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As soon as the S20 camera sees a face,
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it brings up the shadows too much
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it smooths skin too much, and it tries way too hard
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to adjust the white balance and often gets it wrong.
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Turn your head 45 degrees where
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it doesn't see a face, and it's fine.
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Turn on pro mode, and it's fine again.
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Turn on Bixby Scene Optimizer,
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and well, okay Bixby makes it worse, but still.
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In a lot of lighting conditions
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I got good photos of faces but
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in challenging conditions it got rough.
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Samsung tells me that it's looking into it,
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but there's no setting that you can change
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to change the default behavior
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of what this thing does with faces.
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The weirdest part though,
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none of this applies to the selfie camera.
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Which is great.
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Now Samsung also let's you take full on,
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108 megapixel photos,
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and there's yet more camera tech involved in this
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like re mosaicing but the bottom line
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is you need a lot of light to get a decent photo
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at that resolution.
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And even then, my 108 megapixel photos
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were noisy enough in the fine details when I cropped in,
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that I never really saw the point.
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Now, when it comes to low light photos,
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Samsung is doing better than it ever has,
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partly because the sensors are so big here.
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But it still has a lot of work to do
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to catch up to the Pixel 4.
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And on portrait, again, better than it ever has,
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but it still has a lot of work to do
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to catch up to the iPhone.
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The selfie camera though, which is 40 megapixels,
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is my favorite camera on this entire phone.
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It doesn't do the same bad over smoothing on faces,
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I just really like it.
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Finally, I hate to tell you this,
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but as usual with every phone that we try,
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the ultra wide camera is the worst
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of the three cameras in terms of quality.
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Things kinda just get over sharpened
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as a result of a meh sensor.
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I guess the iPhone kind of beats the S20 here,
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but nothing is really good.
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Now as for video, the headline feature
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is that you can shoot and edit in 8K,
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and I dunno, I think that's kinda gimmicky
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but I do like that you can pull a still photo out.
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More important to me is the slightly improved
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video stabilization 'cause I have pretty shaky hands,
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but you should know that that still doesn't
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work in 4K and definitely not in 8K.
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Last and you know what, definitely not least,
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is I saw this thing hunting for focus a lot.
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Especially when I was shooting video.
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I also really like this new feature
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called single take which does as many
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of Samsung's weirdo camera modes as possible
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in one long shot.
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It's fun, but I wouldn't depend on it
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for anything important 'cause the quality
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is like, not that good.
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So, that's a lot.
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It's a lot of camera which makes sense
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'cause this camera bump is so huge right?
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I mean, okay.
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Where do I think it all lands?
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Well, I think Samsung
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has a little bit more work to do
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on it's photo algorithms.
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I think it's gonna take a minute
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for them to learn how to take all of these huge
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megapixel counts and turn them into something
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that really works in every single context.
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Especially with faces.
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(relaxing music)
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Now the S20 phones are the very first
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main stream 5G phones.
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There have been a few before,
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but they've never been the default
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and with the S20 line they are.
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Now you should know that only the S20 Ultra
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and the S20 Plus support the super high speed
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millimeter wave-5G that you can really only get
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at like a few street corners.
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But, all of them support the slightly slower,
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but much more widespread mid band 5G.
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So, okay, here's the state of 5G in New York City.
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On T-Mobile's mid band, I was able to pull
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anywhere from like 45 down,
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which is not much faster than LTE,
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up to 120 megs per second in a pretty good spot.
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That's real fast.
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But it's not as fast as what I could get