OCTOBER 2020 PCWorld 47motion smoothness turned on.
Note 20 Ultra users will have to settle for
second-best when it comes to battery life,
however. In benchmarks, I got better than 12
hours with 120Hz turned off, but only around
9 hours with it on. My real-world experiences
were similar: Even with the new adaptive
refresh rate, the Note’s battery drained
significantly faster when motion smoothing
was on, which is just going to be a fact of life
until it evolves. It’s the main reason why the
iPhone 12 probably won’t include a
ProMotion display—it kills battery life.
When you need to charge it, you’ll get
25W fast charging, but not the 45W charging
on the Note 10+ and Galaxy S20 Ultra. It
won’t make a huge difference—the Note 20
Ultra will still fill up in less than 90 minutes
using the 25W charger—but it’s strange that
Samsung removed support after just a year.
The camera bump also caused some
issues with charging pads. More than once
my phone didn’t charge because the camera
lifted the phone up enough where the coils
weren’t touching.A MIGHTY NOTE-TAKER
Because this is a Galaxy Note phone, it has an
S Pen on board, though it’s not like the styli of
Note past. For one, it’s been moved to the left
side of the device after living its whole past
life on the right side.
The placement isn’t the only thing that’s
new. Samsung has accelerated the S Pen’s
latency from 45ms to 8ms, which has a
dramatic effect on writing and drawing. I
never had an issue with the old pen’s
performance, but the new S Pen feels as
natural as writing on
an actual piece of
paper. That latency is
the same as the
Apple Pencil’s, and it
makes a huge
difference when
taking notes, marking
up documents, or
just scribbling on the
screen. It’s even
better with the
higher refresh rate.
Samsung’s Notes
You’ll want to take more notes with your Note 20 Ultra’s S Pen. app has been