Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra Camera Review

Note 20 Ultra Camera: What’s new?

The Galaxy Note 20 Ultra camera system is very similar to the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra’s. The Primary and Ultrawide cameras have identical technical specifications.

However, the Zoom camera has changed in a meaninful way. The 48 Megapixel (103mm) camera is replaced by a 12 Megapixel camera (123mm).

The zoom megapixel count and sensor size difference seem dramatic, but its lens is more powerful, so that’s a really interesting way to balance things.

Our hardware analysis shows that the tradeoff between a smaller sensor (~60% smaller) and a more powerful zoom lens (~20% more “longer” zoom) should result in a comparable zoom experience. However only the Image Quality analysis can provide a definitive answer.

Finally, a laser-assisted auto-focus has been added to address AF speed issues of the S20 Ultra camera, but since this does not affect “image quality” (IQ), it is not contributing to the outcome here.

Image Quality Analysis

Important: let’s clarify some terminology we’ll be using:

• “image processing”: software work that improves the image data quality
• “image filtering”: software work that changes the style (aesthetic) of the photo.
• “context photo”: a great approximation of what we see
  • Including how dark the scene actually is
  • Only to provide the context of the shot.
    • Not a quality benchmark

A note about CAMERA IQ score: our camera scoring system is based on four “Pillars” sub-scores that can help tell a fuller story: Day, Night, Ultrawide, and Zoom photography.

A global camera score is clear and simple, but the pillars help tell a better story for those who want to have a more nuanced view of the camera’s Image Quality. If you want to know more details about how the score works, head to our CAMERA IQ benchmark page. 

Daylight photography

The Galaxy Note 20 performance in daylight situation is very close to the excellent Galaxy S20 Ultra, but with some enhancements.

It has the same fundamental advantage of having a 108MP resolution built into the “auto” mode which we’re testing, while many OEMs put their full-resolution mode into a different setting.

Users overwhelmingly stay in “auto” mode and the 108 Megapixel resolution is a gives the Note 20 Pro an edge in daylight photography. We are actively encouraging all OEMs to make all the resolutions available in auto mode, whenever possible.

We have spotted changes in tuning, with the sharpening filter and noise-reduction a bit less aggressive, and that leads to a reduction of unwanted artefacts (filtering noise)/

Both phones capture beautiful shots, and there are small differences in color, but the real difference is in the photo details (see below). Note that the lens flare doesn’t normally show up this much, but the sun was hitting the side of the lens.

The 108-MP resolution in “auto” mode, compared to a 12-MP shot. Megapixel isn’t everything, but it’s certainly something when the conditions are right.

Night Photography

HDR Night Photography

Anytime you have a mix of very bright and very dark areas, the camera will use HDR (high dynamic range) to capture as much information as possible.

Modern high-end phones have very powerful sensors and large-aperture optics, but we can find difficult scenes that will reveal crucial differences between different cameras.

With the same primary camera sensor+lens as S20 Ultra, the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra features new software tuning that features vastly improved noise-reduction over S20 Ultra, better-tuned HDR and slightly stronger image filtering.

Typically, you have to choose between fine details and low noise. Note 20 Ultra gives you both.

Overall, Note 20 Ultra shots are a bit less “natural” (closer to reality) than S20 Ultra, but features better overall image quality because of the improved HDR and noise.

Both cameras apply a good dose of image filtering, but the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra does a better job of capturing the original mood and color hues of the scene. The extra-brightness can easily be toned down, and a lot of the contrast is actually preserved.

Huawei’s camera delivers a heavily filtered image which is far from reality (you can compare with the reference photo). If you like the style, that it’s fine, but that makes it harder for the photographer to predict what the outcome will be, and some contrast is lost due to over-exposing (brightening) some areas.

All smartphones exagerate the lighting in night photography, but some change the mood and lighting of the scene more than others. These Galaxy 20 series does an excellent job with color capture.

The S20 Ultra was extremely on-point when it came to capturing “what your eyes see”, and it makes for amazing controlability. Note 20 Ultra has more image filtering going on, but remains more reasonable than other high-end alternatives.

With a cropped view, it’s much easier to spot the noise-removal (blur) and additional image filtering (higher saturation) on the Note 20 Ultra. Note how noise-reduction can introduce blur too

Non-HDR Night Photography

In very dimly lit environments where your eyes are challenged to perceive fine details, the cameras need their full hardware capabilities. This is a stressfull test for mobile cameras.

The noise has been reduced to almost zero, and surprisingly, the noise-reduction filtering spares fine details, which is great since noise-reduction is often based on blur.

Areas with flat-color surfaces get a very aggressive noise-removal, and you can see patches of blur. However, the fine characters are extremely well preserved, and even sharpened, with superior legibility even when compared to the Huawei P40 Pro+ which is another top camera.

Just like the S20 Ultra, the Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra does a great job at capturing the original color hue of this scene. The Note’s extra image filtering makes it looks a little bit less natural than S20 Ultra.

All of this combined makes Galaxy Note 20 Ultra the new best low-light camera, beating its S20 Ultra cousin, the previous low-light champion.

Important: in this scene, the differences in brightness in the various photos is not our center of attention. Brightness in this case is mostly controlled by image filters, but has little effect on noise, or details. Here’s why brighter is not always better.

The S20 Ultra has more natural colors and exposure at the expense of noise and details, when compared to Note 20 Ultra. That said, both offer more accurate colors than the competition in the high-end against Huawei and Xiaomi. Apple’s and Google’s colors are relatively on-point, but the overall image quality is much lower due to inferior hardware.

Huawei’s P40 Pro+ shot looks slightly more artificial due to higher image filtering. Over the years, Huawei really toned down the image filtering as its hardware quality increased

Night-Vision (~0.005 LUX)

Night-vision is for scenes when your eyes no longer distinguish details and hardly see colors. It’s an edge case that is technically interesting, although not that relevant in the real world.

The Huawei P40 Pro+ is the phone of reference for night-vision photography, with better details and much faster speed.

With the Note 20 Ultra, the Samsung camera team is using higher ISO than S20 Ultra, going from 2000 to 6000 with an exposure that’s too long. It’s the first time that Samsung enters the night vision contest and things could progress faster from here.

In contrast, Huawei phones are much faster (short-exposure) and produce higher-quality photos in near-total darkness. For reference, Huawei shots night-vision photos at ISO-65535, 10X higher. Not using a long-exposure is a huge user-experence advantage for Huawei’s camera in that situation.

Zoom Photography

As I mentioned in introduction, the new zoom camera of the Note 20 Ultra (N20U) is completely different from the Galaxy S20 Ultra’s (S20U) camera. Our Camera Hardware analysis and score for this particular module shows that it is more or less on-par with the S20 Ultra’s long zoom, but is it?

It may sound counter-intuitive if you’re looking at a 48 MP sensor (S20U) vs. a 12 MP sensor (N20U) in this case. However, the Note 20 Ultra has a more powerful lens, and when it comes to zooming in daylight, the optics matter a whole lot more than the sensor.

Our CAMERA IQ (image quality) analysis confirms it: the changes in the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra zoom are paying off, and Samsung’s newest zoom camera is better than the previous one and is currently the most powerful zoom camera we have tested.

The Galaxy Note 20 Ultra and the Huawei P40 Pro+ are close competitors. The Samsung phone has a slight advantage as it preserves the original color tone better than the P40 Pro+ but you’re getting comparable capabilities. Without taking a close look, the Note 20 Ultra and S20 Ultra zoom photos look nearly identical.

To give you some perspective, here’s a comparison with a Premium phone that is not equipped with a dedicated zoom lens: the LG Velvet. The Velvet might be the best zoom-less phone, but this illustrates the reason why long-telephoto hardware makes a huge difference.

Upon close inspection, the Note 20 Ultra zoom camera is slightly sharper than the S20 Ultra. It’s something that the Hardware evaluation would not pick up on, but it will be noticeable if you crop, or print. For example, the word “Enjoy” above the Coca-Cola logo is readable on Note 20 Ultra.

The S20 Ultra zoom has slightly better dynamic range, perhaps due to its different sensor.

The P40 Pro+ shows more artefacts which seem to partially come from multiframe merging that are not present in P40 Pro. We tried taking additional image, but the artefacts were still showing up.

The P40 Pro+ zoom has superior sharpness when compared to P40 Pro, and captures finer details than Note 20 Ultra. However, the artefacts and the heavy image filtering work against overall image quality

And again to give you some perspective, a crop with the LG Velvet which does *not* have a dedicated zoom lens.

I speculate Samsung’s changes were originally designed to reduce the size and perhaps the price of the zoom camera module, while preserving the zoom quality introduced in the S20 Ultra.

The Samsung camera hardware team did an excellent job at finding the perfect balance between sensor and optics.

Ultrawide Photography

Daylight Ultrawide Photography

In broad daylight, the Ultrawide performance of the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra camera is pretty much the same as the S20 Ultra – no surprise here, since the hardware is the same.

When comparing with competitors such as the P40 Pro+, the most important thing to look for is the fact that the P40 Pro+ Ultrawide is nowhere near “as wide” because P40 Pro+ uses a 17mm lens, vs. a 13mm lens for Note 20 Ultra (smaller mm number equates wider lens).

That may influence your decision as for “how wide” you want an Ultrawide camera to be, but going forward, we’ll focus on the image quality aspect.

The Note 20 Ultrawide (UW) camera behaves very similarly to the S20 Ultra’s UW camera.

This illustrates how “wide” the Ultrawide cameras are on these two phones.

Night Ultrawide Photography

At night, the Ultrawide (UW) image quality of the Note 20 Ultra (and S20 Ultra) isn’t as high as the P40 Pro+ and that tracks exactly what we have seen in our full Galaxy S20 Ultra Camera Review.

The battlelines here have not changed since March. Huawei’s UW camera has a superior sensor (more details, less noise), but the size of that sensor limits how “wide” of a lens can fit.

Samsung proposes what is arguably a true ultrawide lens, but has a smaller sensor (less details). At this point, these are the two best tradeoffs available on the market.

Same hardware, same tuning, same results: Note 20 Ultra and S20 Ultra ultrawide cameras have identical behaviors.

From an Image Quality (IQ) point of view, the P40 Pro+ (and P40 Pro) ultrawide camera is clearly better at night.

Conclusion

The Galaxy Note 20 Ultra camera is an incremental improvement of the great camera platform introduced with the Galaxy S20 Ultra, with noticeable improvements in low-light and zoom photography.

Our CAMERA IQ score shows that at present time, the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra has the best mobile camera on the market. However, we would still like to see a 27 Megapixel resolution option and faster shutter speed in low-light.

This victory also shows that Sony is no longer the only game in town when it comes to high-end mobile camera sensors. The primary sensor of this camera is designed by Samsung.

Filed in Cellphones >Reviews. Read more about Camera Benchmarks, Mobile Camera Reviews, Samsung and Social Hit.