Samsung will start shipping to stores the Galaxy Note 20 and Galaxy Note 20 Ultra on August 21, 2020.  This new phone is the latest and greatest on their line of ultra-performance devices that offer little compromise at a premium price.  It has a 108MP sensor on an f1.8 lens on the Note 20 Ultra 5G version that can do crazy zoom and pixel averaging in low light. The more pixels you record even if they are small let you do more computational photography processing to average noise and artifacts out to end with a crisper lower resolution image that is pleasing and punches above it’s weight.

However, not all is good news since the video mode in Samsung devices when it comes to slow motion has been stalling in the last iterations to a max 960fps mode in HD 720p which is now on this phone an interpolated 480fps mode that is slowed 2x to 960p.  This makes the Note 20 line an inferior slow-mo device to even the Galaxy S10 which offers real 960fps.  The good thing here is a full second of recording at 480fps on the Note 20 line which translates to 16 seconds playback at 30fps and 32seconds with interpolation.

Galaxy Note 20 Ultra Main Imaging specs:

• 108MP F1.8 wide-angle optically-stabilized camera module
• 12MP F3.0 telephoto (5x zoom) from 64MP Sensor
•  8K video at up to 24fps in either 16:9 or 21:9
• 12MP F2.2 ultra-wide cameras
• Laser AF module
• Note 20 Zoom simulator online here!

Other specs:

• Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 Plus in USA
• Samsung Exynos 990 CPU for the global version
• 4,500mAh battery
• 12GB of LPDDR5 RAM
• 128GB or 512GB of internal storage
• Up to 1TB Internal Storage with Micro SD Card

Galaxy Note 20 Slow Motion Is stalled:

Samsung at least does the courtesy of showing the real specs of their slow motion implementation. With Interpolation, the camera that shoots slow motion is capped to 480fps and then bumped with a re-timing algorithm to 960p. We are no fans of interpolation for the most part read our article on this here!

Samsung description:

Super Slow-mo up to 960fps

The super-speed camera shoots up to 960 frames per second and slows way down for the ultimate slow-motion takes.⁵

(5) Super Slow-mo only supports HD resolution. Users can record approximately 1 second of video captured at 480 fps and digitally enhance the video to 960 fps with approximately 32 seconds of playback. Playback time can be edited in Super Slow-mo player.

Samsung Galaxy Note 20 event in under 9 minutes by The Verge:

Slow motion samples?

It is a little early but we believe we found samples of the video slow motion component on the Note 20 below. It looks to be very good quality considering but the interpolation does hurt it at 960p. So if you get the Note 20 phone, use only 480fps as your slow motion mode and you will at least have real frames and no artifacts. The quality seems to be above other previous Samsung slow motion implementations by having better resolution and less line loss.

Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra Slow Motion Video Test,240fps,960fps,Galaxy Note 20 Ultra Camera Review by JM Tech Point:

What about the 8k video?

It is quite a sight to see a phone like the Note 20 being able to shoot real 8k video even when it is limited to 24p.  The quality is really amazing but we also know that it is limited by the small optics. 8k video of 4320p makes the lens system on these phones run around trying to fill those pixel buckets with enough resolution to be useful. There is no denying that 8k lets you shoot crisper 4k video but rest assured, you are not getting a RED Camera 8k quality on a $1000 phone. 

The footage below shows what can you expect in 8k and it does not disappoint. The Note line was also first with 4k on a phone way back when and now while 8k has been on other Chinese phones, this is really the very first useful implementation.  We wish however that 120p was also implemented for 4k footage which is a trend that is accelerating in the camera world.

Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra 8K sample video by K D:

What to do?

The Galaxy Note 20 is an excellent phone choice that can shoot probably the best quality video ever on an Android phone with so many video and photo features to keep you excited for a long time. The zoom is very useful but not overly good as any medium telephoto lens on even a smaller sensor camera will run circles around in quality compared to the very small sensor and camera module here.

The phone’s slow motion is very good at 120p and 240p which is to be expected for full HD but nothing above that can reach 1080p. The 480fps mode is limited to HD 720p and interpolated up to 960fps.  Not a really impressive slow motion phone, adequate for many but not class-leading by a mile (see this Huawei Phone instead).

So in our view, the Note 20 Ultra is the one to get for even greater photo and video features but the regular Note 20 is identical for slow motion performance so you do not have to pay up to match better specs, when it comes to higher frame rates both Note 20 phones share the same spec.

The Galaxy Note 20 and Note 20 Ultra will ship by August 21st and you can Pre-order at Amazon.com Here!

We will have more video samples from the Note 20 line as they become available, thanks for reading and remember to help our site by ordering through our links at no added cost to you-Thanks! -HSC