Samsung Galaxy S20 Plus review – Refined perfection and worth the price

• The Galaxy S20 Plus strikes the perfect balance between power, design and price, making it one of the best flagship smartphones in 2020 so far.
• While its powerful hardware can handle almost everything you throw at it, its cameras can bring far away objects close enough to make the distance less of a problem.
• Overall, the Galaxy S20 Plus is one of the most well-rounded smartphones to have launched recently.

Samsung honed its flagship chops to perfection with the Galaxy S20 Plus. Sitting smack dab in the middle of the Galaxy S20 lineup, the S20 Plus strikes the perfect balance between powerful hardware and price.

Just like last year, Samsung launched three devices in its Galaxy S range – the standard S20, the S20 Plus and the S20 Ultra. The S20 Plus in the middle takes the best bits from the S20 and the S20 Ultra – it has a bigger display than the S20, a bigger battery, a better camera setup but costs significantly less than the top-end S20 Ultra.

The result is a device that is powerful enough for those who want the best phone but don’t want to pay a premium for it.

Samsung’s design language has matured

Samsung has been fine-tuning its flagships for the past few years, making iterative changes that build on from the last year’s model. While this had brought a certain amount of predictability to the table, it has shown that Samsung’s design language has matured to the point where radical changes are no longer needed.

With the Galaxy S20 Plus, you get a smartphone that looks every bit premium that its price suggests. The back of the phone is glossy and bare for the most part, save for the neatly designed camera module on the top left and the subtle Samsung branding on the bottom.

The single punch-hole notch on the top-center of the display shows Samsung has put thought into refining its design. Bezels are minimal and the display is curved ever so slightly to blend in like water with the rest of the body.

Overall, the Galaxy S20 Plus is one of the best looking and sleek smartphones you can buy right now. It screams class with its minimalism.

Much smoother animation with better experience

The Galaxy S20 Plus display story is easily summed up in four words - big, bright, striking and smooth.

With the S20 Plus, you get a 6.7-inch Quad HD+ display with a high refresh rate of 120Hz. Thanks to its aspect ratio and sleek design, handling the S20 Plus is just as easy as handling any other modern smartphone.

Coming back to the display quality, the Galaxy S20 Plus runs in two modes – at the higher resolution Quad HD+ with 60Hz refresh rate, or at Full HD+ with 120Hz refresh rate. In essence, you have to choose between high resolution or high refresh rate.

In our case, we found the high refresh rate mode to be a joy to use. While it consumes slightly more power, it results in much smoother animations, resulting in a better overall experience.

AI picks the best image and clips for an album

The Galaxy S20 Plus has four cameras on the back, with each sensor handling a different task. While the primary and wide-angle cameras bring some minor improvements, the 64MP telephoto lens with its 30x zoom capabilities is the major talking point here.

While you won’t get much detail at 30x zoom, the S20 Plus is perfectly serviceable at 2x, 4x or even at 10x zoom. This is useful when the subject in question is distant.

The Galaxy S20 Plus also has an improved night mode that can take respectable photos in low light conditions, but pictures can sometimes turn out to be grainy.

Samsung has also included several useful features like Single Take, which takes all sorts of photos with a single click. Samsung then uses artificial intelligence (AI) to pick the best image and clips and make a neat mini album out of it.

The S20 Plus has a 10MP selfie camera, which is mostly serviceable.

Samsung’s own chipset not Qualcomm

The Galaxy S20 Plus packs in the best high-end hardware that is currently available – well, almost. It has one of the best displays out there, fast memory and storage, great cameras, the latest connectivity options and a big battery.

The only area of concern to some users would be the chipset – the Galaxy S20 Plus uses Samsung’s own chipset instead of Qualcomm, which is slightly faster.

However, this doesn’t really make much of a difference in real life. The Galaxy S20 Plus delivers smooth performance without missing a beat. It handled everything we threw at it – from graphics-intensive games like Fortnite, PUBG Mobile, Asphalt 9: Legends to photo editing apps like Photoshop or Lightroom.

Samsung has also vastly improved its user interface, One UI. It is easier to handle on big-screen devices like the Galaxy S20 Plus when compared to Google’s Pixel or OnePlus smartphones. Samsung has added a wide range of features that allow you to customize the S20 Plus to your heart’s content.

Expensive, but well worth the price

The Galaxy S20 Plus has a big 4,500mAh battery that easily lasts more than a day. In the high-resolution mode, the phone lasted nearly two days, while in the high refresh rate mode, we managed to get a day and half’s worth of usage.

It is worth noting that battery life will vary depending on your usage patterns.

The Galaxy S20 Plus also comes with a fast charger out of the box. In our tests, we were able to charge it from 0-100% in less than 75 minutes.

The Galaxy S20 Plus is refined perfection. It is one of the most well-rounded smartphones in recent history in almost all categories, be it design, performance, features or the value for money (as far as premium smartphones are concerned). It is certainly expensive, but it is well worth the price.

Currently, the Galaxy S20 Plus is available at ₹77,900 on Samsung India’s online store. You can get a cashback of ₹6,000 on HDFC credit cards, as well as a discount of ₹8,000 on the Galaxy Buds+.

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