Antonio Villas-Boas/Business Insider
The new Galaxy S20, left, and its bigger sister, the S20 Ultra, right.
- Samsung just unveiled its latest line of flagship smartphones: the Galaxy S20, S20 Plus, and S20 Ultra.
- It's the most expensive flagship line Samsung's ever released - the base model Galaxy S20 starts at $1,000.
- Wilder still, the S20 "Ultra" model comes in at a whopping $1,400 to start, and can go even higher with additional memory and storage options.
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On Tuesday afternoon, Samsung unveiled its latest lineup of flagship Galaxy smartphones.
The Galaxy line is intended to compete directly with Apple's iPhone lineup, but this year's pricing puts even Apple's notoriously high prices to shame: The base model Galaxy S20 starts at $1,000, and the highest-end Galaxy S20 "Ultra" model starts at a downright shocking price of $1,400.
Apple's latest smartphone, the iPhone 11, starts at $750 - $250 less than the base model Galaxy S20.
The differences between the various new Galaxy S20 models mostly come down to subtleties like specific camera functions, battery size, and screen size.
Samsung
The Galaxy S20, Galaxy S20 Plus, and Galaxy S20 Ultra, left to right.
The base model S20, which starts at $1,000, has a 6.2-inch screen, whereas the Ultra is just shy of 7 inches. That larger size of the Plus and the Ultra also means they have larger batteries. And the Ultra model - the one that starts at $1,400 - comes with a special lens with 10x "hybrid" optical zooming and up to 100x with optical and digital zooming.
In short: The $400 dollar difference between the Galaxy S20 and the S20 Ultra pays for a handful of very specific features.
All three Galaxy S20 models boast the much-hyped 5G connectivity that smartphone makers are touting as the next step in smartphone communications, but only the Plus and Ultra come with high-band "mmWave" connectivity, the type of 5G that enables gigabit-per-second data speeds that are faster than most home internet connections.
All of which is to say one thing: If you want the best features that Samsung has to offer in a smartphone, you'd better be ready to shell out some serious cash.
