Camera: Daylight Evaluation - The Samsung Galaxy S20+, S20 Ultra Exynos & Snapdragon Review: Megalom

Publish date: 2024-07-24

Camera: Daylight Evaluation: Far Sight

Naturally, the proof is in the pudding, and that’s where we’ll fully evaluate the S20 Ultras as well as the S20+. Last year we saw some larger camera quality differences between the Exynos and Snapdragon variants of the S10+; these differences slowly disappeared over the course of the year over numerous software updates, but there still remained some discrepancies here and there in terms of the software processing. This year, we’ll be putting the two S20 Ultras against each other in the same manner, and we also have the Exynos S20+ to check how that camera configuration compares.

I’ve noted that over the past years maybe I hadn’t been objective enough when it came to colour accuracy of the photo evaluations, so starting with the review today I want to do something else and add in another comparison point. The Fujifilm X-T30 with the standard 18-55mm kit lens will serve as a “reference” point in terms of the exposure and in particular the colour accuracy of the scenes – I particularly chose the Fuji because it had been praised as being amongst the best in the industry in this regard. The samples here are adjusted in terms of their exposure and dynamic range, but without any modification to the colour science.

[ Galaxy S20U - (S) ]
[ Galaxy S20U - (E) ]
[ Galaxy S20+ (E) ]
[ S10+ (S) ] - [ S10+ (E) ]
[ iPhone 11 Pro ] - [ Pixel 4 ]
[ Mate 30 Pro ] - [ P30 Pro ]
[ X-T30 ]

Diving right into the matter, let’s talk about the S20 Ultra’s zooming ability. Samsung here advertises up to 100x magnification, and I’ll pretty much discard this mode right out of the gate as being useless and a mere marketing gimmick. There’s essentially little to no advantage over a 30x magnification on the phone and it doesn’t even warrant samples as it just looks like a mess and no different than just magnifying the 30x shots digitally.

So, taking the 30x shots as the first comparison point, there’s only three phones in the line-up actually capable of such captures. Between the two S20 Ultra phones are very similar to each other, but there’s slight differences in terms of how they’re handling noise and sharpening. The Snapdragon unit has a bit more sharpening going for it but it’s hard to pick it as being outright superior. The S20+ is the only other phone capable to such magnification, and the difference to the S20 Ultras is quite large as there’s evidently a ton more pixilation and nowhere near the same spatial resolution – but that was to be expected.

At 10x magnification we again see the two S20 Ultra shots being similar in exposure, however there’s again differences in the detail. Here it’s more evident that the Snapdragon unit is using post-processed sharpening to the image, and there also appears to be some smearing of details as the Exynos unit does achieve to maintain some better textures on some elements.

Huawei’s P30 Pro and its own periscope telephoto module is the only unit that comes into play here as a competitor in terms of sharpness, but the S20 Ultras still beat it handily. The S20+ produces a useable result, but also lags behind the S20 Ultras – but is still far ahead of any other “conventional” zoom camera, with only the Pixel 4 competing in terms of result.

At 4x magnification which is the native level of the S20 Ultras, we again see the differences between the Snapdragon and Exynos units just pop right out at you, as the former’s sharpening is evident throughout the scene.

The S20+’s 3x result is the phone’s default mode when you tap on the telephoto zoom button when switching cameras, and the result does look respectable and is significantly more detailed than what you’d see from other 2-3x optical zoom modules, although the Mate 30 Pro’s 3x optics are much sharper, even if the sensor itself has some dynamic range issues.

At a 2x magnification, that’s where we see the S20 Ultra’s biggest weakness and problems. Samsung here is employing image fusion between the main and telephoto modules, using the sharper center image output of the telephoto module and merge it into the wider capture of the main unit. The problem here is that they’re doing this while the main module is at 12MP resolution, and the result is that the majority of the image looks like a pixelated mess as it has to do digital magnification on that 12MP image. It’s a massive disappointment and it’s here where the S20+’s dual-wide angle camera system comes to shine, as the 2x results is leaps and bounds better than on the S20 Ultras.

Not only are both S20 Ultras blurry here, but the Snapdragon S20 Ultra here goes haywire with the sharpening and the foreground vegetation is ridiculously over-processed, as if suffering from high image compression.