OCTOBER 2020 PCWorld 45The front of the phone is equally fabulous.
The bezels around the enormous 6.9-inch
screen are about as thin as they can get
without disappearing completely. The curved
edges contrast nicely with the flat top and
bottom.
Because it’s a Samsung flagship, it goes
without saying that the display is big, bright,
and breathtaking. But I’ll say it anyway.
Samsung somehow manages to top itself with
each new flagship. If you go deep enough in
the comparison with the S20 Ultra, you’ll see
a more consistent white balance and a higher
max brightness (a whopping 1,500 nits using
adaptive brightness), but all you’ll notice are
the vibrant colors and deep blacks.
The Galaxy Note 20 Ultra has the same
120Hz display that Samsung introduced with
the S20, so unfortunately, you still need to
drop the resolution to Full
HD to use the 120Hz
setting, but it’s a small
sacrifice. Once you try it
out, you won’t want to go
back. but here it has an
adaptive refresh rate to
conserve battery life. So if
you’re reading an article,
the rate will drop to 60Hz,
but if you’re playing a game
or watching a movie, it’ll
increase to 120Hz. It’s a
great battery-saving feature
and one that looks to be
exclusive to the Note. Samsung has
announced the One UI 2.5 features that are
coming to the S20 (go.pcworld.com/tktk)
and the adaptive refresh isn’t one of them.POWER TO SPARE WITH
SOME SPARING PARTS
The Note 20 Ultra might not be a true
“gamer” phone like the Asus ROG Phone 3 or
the Lenovo Legion Duel (go.pcworld.com/
lndl), but it packs just as much of a punch. The
Snapdragon 865+ combined with 12GB of
LPDDR5 RAM produced the best scores I’ve
ever seen on an Android phone:Geekbench 5
Single: 966
Multi: 3,067
Compute: 3,652The Galaxy Note 20 Ultra (top) is only about three-quarters of a
millimeter thinner than the S20 Ultra, but the difference is noticeable.