At a time when US flagship phones are getting bigger and bigger, it's hard to find one narrow enough to comfortably fit in one hand. The Samsung Galaxy S20 ($999) can be comfortably cradled in a single paw, yet it has a big battery, a zoom camera, 8K video recording, and a 120Hz screen. That's a good balance between power and portability. It's a terrific option if your primary concern is size, but the Galaxy S20+ is our Editors' Choice for its longer battery life and high-band 5G.
Design: The Right Size
People who want to use their phones in one hand have been fighting a rearguard action for years. I like to go with an old LG study that says most people find phones wider than 2.8 inches are hard to use in one hand. The Galaxy S10e, at 2.75 inches, is still good. The Samsung Galaxy S20+, at 2.9 inches, is just a little too wide. The S20 is 2.72 inches, which means that it will still work well in one hand even though it's 0.4-ounce heavier than the S10e and nearly six inches tall. (Samsung is getting its very large screen diagonals nowadays by making its phones tall and narrow.)
The height does matter. I found myself scooching the S20 around in my hand a bit more than I do with the S10e. But the width is what matters most, and the phone is still genuinely usable in one hand.
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Samsung Galaxy S20+
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The S20 screens, in my mind, get better as they get smaller. The S20's 6.2-inch screen is just as bright as the larger S20+ and S20 Ultra, and the dot pitch is a little sharper when you're in the 1080p 120Hz mode, which is where you should leave your phone. The Galaxy S20 series forces you to choose between resolution and refresh rate. You can have WQHD at 60Hz, or 1080p at 120Hz. Always choose the latter. The high-refresh-rate scrolling is noticeably smoother and more restful on your eyes, and it's one of the biggest differences between this year's and last year's models.
Like the other S20 models, this one has the same Qualcomm in-display fingerprint sensor as on the Galaxy S10 series, but with better software than when the S10 launched. That means better performance and accuracy, but it still has a small target area and requires a definitive, on-center finger press. Face recognition is also available for unlocking your screen, along with the old-school PIN, pattern, and password.
There's one important thing you lose by choosing the S20 over last year's Samsung models: the 3.5mm headphone jack. Samsung softens the blow by including AKG-branded USB-C headphones, but coming over from the Galaxy S10e and a collection of nice earbuds, I miss it. Alas, it is not coming back.
No headphone jack, alas
Power: Bigger Than It Appears
The Galaxy S20, like the other S20 models, uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 chipset running at a max of 2.84GHz. The device has a hearty 12GB of RAM, and comes in 128GB (107GB available) and 512GB models. There's a microSD card slot to add additional storage, but you should be aware that you can't store the relatively huge 8K videos (580MB/minute!) on a memory card.
All of the S20 sizes benchmark the same. They all have about 20-percent better overall performance than last year's flagships with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 processor. You probably won't say, "Oh, things feel 20 percent faster!" The performance difference mostly shows up in experiences that weren't possible last year, such as with 8K video and the 120Hz screen. (There are some international variants of the S20 series with a different Samsung Exynos processor, but they aren't sold in the US.)
The smaller Galaxy S20 (right) is much easier to manage than the S20 Ultra (left)
There are a lot of features in Samsung's new One UI 2.0 for Android 10 that you're unlikely to notice, but they're useful. Link to Windows shows notifications on your Windows PC, while DeX lets you easily access data and applications on your phone from your PC. Focus Mode temporarily disables apps you find distracting. You can lock three apps into RAM to keep your game from restarting when you tap away, for instance, and you can sign into multiple accounts on social media apps at once.
The Galaxy S20 has a 4,000mAh battery that got 9 hours, 54 minutes of video streaming time over Wi-Fi at 120Hz, and 11 hours, 50 minutes at 60Hz. At 120Hz, that's about an hour less than the S20+ and two hours less than the S20 Ultra. It's also more than an hour less than I got with last year's S10e. Realistically, I've seen people online reporting five or six hours of screen-on time with this phone before needing a charge. That's fine, just not great.
It'll charge back up pretty quickly. The phone comes with a 25W charger that gives it a 21 percent charge in 10 minutes, a 41 percent charge in 20 minutes, and a 100 percent charge in 70 minutes. That's exactly the same speed as on the S20+. Samsung also sells a $50, 45W charger, but it strangely doesn't seem to make a difference. The S20 supports wireless charging and reverse charging, as well.
5G: I'm a Believer
The Galaxy S20, as sold by AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and unlocked, is a "sub-6-only" 5G phone. That means it only supports low- and mid-band 5G networks, not the fast but limited coverage high-band systems. On AT&T, low-band 5G so far has made almost no difference in user experience. But high-band 5G, which AT&T has in small parts of 35 cities, achieves gigabit-plus speeds. That's a big part of why I'm giving the Galaxy S20+ an Editors' Choice over this phone.
On "New T-Mobile," the S20 will be able to handle T-Mobile/Sprint's "nationwide" low-band 5G system, which doesn't make much of a difference, and its citywide mid-band system, which makes more of a difference. It won't get the high-band system that T-Mobile is installing in central cities, though. And like the other S20 phones, the S20 currently lacks a software update to help it combine low-band 4G and 5G spectrum, meaning the OnePlus 7T Pro 5G McLaren performs better on T-Mobile 5G (and costs $100 less).
Verizon has its own variant of the S20 coming that will support high-band 5G. But I don't know whether it will support mid-band or low-band, or what it will cost; details aren't out there yet.
Beyond 5G, all of the S20 phones had similar 4G and Wi-Fi performance in my testing. They support 802.11ax "Wi-Fi 6," which will improve performance in crowded places like coffee shops once those coffee shops also get Wi-Fi 6 routers. 4G is available on all US and most international bands, including band 46 LAA and band 48 CBRS. There's not much to say about voice quality and such. This is something Samsung locked down a long time ago, and the S20 doesn't introduce any issues.
Folks outside the US, remember there are six versions of the S20 series; the US model will probably not have the 5G frequency bands for your country.
The camera patch is big, but it's not nearly as big as the S20 Ultra's
Camera: Just Enough
The Galaxy S20 has a 12MP ultra-wide camera, a 12MP main camera, and a 64MP, "3x zoom" camera. Realistically, the 64MP mode isn't helpful. Although it's supposedly for cropping and zooming images after the fact, the colors in those images seem off. So what you really have here are three 12MP cameras.
There are a lot of camera modes here, including super slow-mo, hyperlapse, filters, and silly settings that add augmented reality creatures or avatars to your shots. The most innovative is Single Take Mode, which turns 10 seconds of video into cropped shots, filtered shots, a sped-up video, a forward-and-back "boomerang" video, and other very 2020 internet gimmicks.
The Galaxy S20 (right) has better blacks and somewhat sharper details than the Galaxy S10e (left)
At 3x, it's easy to tell the difference between the S10e (left) and the S20 (right)
In the default mode, these are no-nonsense cameras, just like on the S20+, with quick focus and better low-light performance than on last year's Galaxy phones. An adjustable night mode lets you create multi-frame night shots that take 3-10 seconds to capture—it isn't great for moving subjects, but it works to improve still scenes. The night mode software, like on the S20+, tends to choose shorter default timings than on the Ultra and seems more stable. Also like the other S20 models, it's not quite up to the level of Google's night mode on the Pixel 4.
It's easier to get sharp night mode photos out of the S20 (right) than the S10e (left), or even the Note 10
The one difference between the S20 camera and the S20+ camera is that the S20+ has a time-of-flight sensor, which judges the distance to objects and is supposedly useful for portrait mode and AR applications. I don't see any difference between S20 and S20+ performance in portrait mode, and as a result I can't figure out why Samsung spent the money on the time-of-flight sensor. The S20's multi-camera portrait mode is just fine.
Can you tell which one is the S20+ and which one is the S20? I can't. (The S20 is on the right.)
Like the other S20 phones, the small S20 supports recording 8K video, which it does without the focus hunting problems I ran into on the Galaxy S20 Ultra. No other phone we've reviewed so far supports 8K video, which lets you crop, pan, and zoom 1080p videos in post-production.
The Galaxy S10e (left) is still better to use in one hand than the S20 (right)
Comparisons and Conclusions
The smaller Galaxy S20 gets you many of the S20+ flagship features for $200 less. You get the super-bright, super-smooth screen; the improved zoom; a better night mode; and 8K video recording. No other major US phone lineup right now has all that.
I'm recommending the Galaxy S20+ over the S20 at the moment because I see these $1,000+ phones as multi-year investments. A year or two from now, high-band 5G will be more widespread, and I don't want you losing out if you're in a potential coverage area (think most major cities and suburbs, but not exurbs or rural areas). If we were talking $600 phones rather than $1,000, I'd be giving different advice, but the Galaxy S20 starts at $999.
If you don't need 5G or zoom, meanwhile, don't sleep on the Galaxy S10e. It's $549 at Best Buy right now, or $50 per month over 12 months, and I still love lit. For one-handed, general app use it's terrific, and next year you can buy a more affordable next-gen 5G phone.
The Samsung Galaxy S20 is the most manageable of the S20 lineup in terms of size and price, but it may get left behind with future 5G upgrades.
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