Tag: Galaxy S20

Galaxy S20 battery test shows the impact of 120Hz display, Exynos processor

The Galaxy S20 series has been on the market for a few weeks now and, as we published in our full review, the battery life is pretty good even with the 120Hz refresh rate enabled! Now, the folks at Anandtech have published an extensive test to show just how much of an impact 120Hz has on a Galaxy S20’s battery, as well as showing how Exynos differs.

Back before the public S20 launch, a battery test on the Galaxy S20 Ultra revealed that enabling 120Hz had an impact of nearly 3 hours of use time depleted from the device. In this latest test, we’re getting even more insight into how Samsung’s battery life is altered based on the refresh rate.

Using a Snapdragon 865 variant of the Galaxy S20 Ultra on the “High Performance” mode, this web browsing test managed 13.04 hours from the device before it kicked the bucket. When turning on 120Hz, that number dropped to 10.02 hours, just like the previous test discovered.

What’s very interesting is that using an Exynos-powered Galaxy S20 Ultra, the battery results absolutely plummet down to just 7.38 hours!

Interestingly too, there’s less consistency with the Exynos processor. On a Galaxy S20+ using Exynos, the battery test pulls 9.06 hours in 60Hz mode, but 7.28 hours in 120Hz mode. It’s a little odd that the extra 500 mAh in the S20 Ultra doesn’t offer more than 0.10 hours compared to the S20+. No wonder fans are petitioning Samsung to stop using those chips.

Real-world photos confirm Samsung’s next flagship phone is called the Galaxy S20

There will be no Samsung Galaxy S11. Instead, Samsung is jumping ahead to the S20. Rumors had been swirling about the branding change in recent weeks, and today XDA Developers published the first real-world shots of the Galaxy S20 Plus.

The phone’s startup screen confirms the new name; maybe Samsung is naming by year now. And we also see that the front of the device has a center hole-punch cutout that’s similar to the selfie shooter from the Galaxy Note 10. Samsung has significantly toned down the curved sides of the Galaxy S10 and S10 Plus, with XDA’s source saying that the S20 Plus feels largely flat in hand.

On the back, we get a look at Samsung’s large camera array for the S20 Plus, which is rumored to contain a regular wide lens, an ultra-wide, portrait, and a macro lens as the new, fourth option. On back is also one of the more optimistic, hopeful confidentiality stickers I’ve ever seen: it actually just flat out says “do not leak info.” So much for that.

Samsung will unveil an entire line of Galaxy S20 devices at its Unpacked event on February 11th, including multiple screen sizes and some models with 5G connectivity. The company’s next foldable phone, perhaps called the Galaxy Bloom, is also expected to debut next month.

Samsung may name its next flagship the Galaxy S20 because 2020

When Samsung releases the successor to the Galaxy S10 next year, it may call the phone the Galaxy S20. The rumor comes from frequent Samsung tipster Ice Universe, who tweeted this week that the company will skip S11 for its next flagship.

“Next year is 2020, and 20 is a new beginning,” they said in a follow-up tweet — without elaborating what exactly a “new beginning” means. In the absence of more concrete evidence, all we have to support Ice’s claims is that it would make sense for Samsung to call its next phone the S20 for a couple of reasons.

One of the more compelling ones is that by aligning the phone’s model number with the year, Samsung will make it easier for casual consumers to know which phone to buy if they want the company’s latest and greatest. Additionally, skipping S11 would mean the S-series would once again be ahead of the iPhone in terms of their model numbers. It’s also worth pointing out, Samsung wouldn’t be the first manufacturer to do something like this. Huawei skipped P11 when it announced the P20 in 2018. Likewise, Samsung itself skipped the Note 6 when it wanted to align its two flagship series together.

As usual, it’s best to be skeptical of these types of rumors. While Ice has a good track when it comes to pre-release leaks, they haven’t been consistent about calling the phone the S20 either. Case and point: in another, more recent tweet from this week, Ice referred to Samsung’s trio of early 2020 phones as the S11e, S11 and S11+. Ice also tweeted about Samsung’s next foldable phone this week, sharing a new image of the device and corroborating a rumor that it will feature a glass cover that’s less prone to creasing.