S20 Ultra 5G: Samsung unfurls Galaxy flagship with bonkers 108MP cam, 6.9-inch display

What even is a flagship mobe these days? In the past few years, punters have been blessed with a bevy of top-notch blowers from firms like OnePlus, Xiaomi and Honor that cost less than £500. In 2020, what's the point of spending more than a grand on a phone? Enter the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G. Formally announced today at …

[Michael H.F. Wilkinson]

108 Mpixels in a phone?

I occasionally do shoot 100 Mpixel images but I use some serious optics, and even then it is hard to get really sharp images. Quite apart from all the physical reasons a tiny aperture will not give the same image quality as bigger optics, what is the point of imaging at this resolution, when 99.99% of the time you will only view it on your phone, fondleslab, or computer monitor? Don't get me wrong, many modern phones get great quality images, and for most purposes they fine, and rival shots taken with good cameras, and they are MUCH more portable. However, I will not ditch my DSLR soon, despite it "only" having 24 Mpixels.

[Argh]

Re: 108 Mpixels in a phone?

It's another way of doing a zoom, by cropping the image to a more standard resolution.

I'm not sure about with these phones, but previous phones with high resolution sensors have also used them to reduce noise by downsampling to a lower resolution as well when not zooming.

[big_D]

Re: 108 Mpixels in a phone?

Take a look at the image in the article, it is flat, pixelated and, well, bloody awful...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: 108 Mpixels in a phone?

Pixel binning to avoid blur/shake/low light conditions. It's only 16MP processed.

Eventually these might go light field with this kind of sensor size/fidelity, so you could refocus. Or even use it for partial mapping of some sort to do high FPS. Lots of tricks you can do with the other data that does not necessarily need to be raw file size.

[Mark Jan]

Re: 108 Mpixels in a phone?

The Nokia 808 unveiled at MWC 8 years ago had arguably comparable, if not better camera tech, albeit in a single lens design. It's a shame Nokia ripped itself apart...

[RantyDave]

Re: 108 Mpixels in a phone?

I had a Nokia 808. It wasn't really all that good. The Panasonic CM1 ... was great, as a camera, but was welded to the worst phone ever made (red excluded).

[Michael Habel]

Re: 108 Mpixels in a phone?

But, will you ditch your DLSR for something mirrorless?

Me? My 5D MkII will do me just fine as is.

[Kevin McMurtrie]

SFail

Gaming display but no headphone jack for real-time audio. 108mpix sensor that combines pixels to partially recover the lost dynamic range of small pixels. Massive camera bump. Samsung shovelware. Samsung kills app tasks too aggressively to use extra RAM. Dated looking hole in the display. Costs $$$$.

Other than the S series having lots of radio channels, this seems like an awful phone.

[Charlie Clark]

Re: SFail

So, not for you then?

[juice]

Re: SFail

To be fair... as the owner of an S10+, I'm not particularly seeing a reason to upgrade, and I'm not convinced that's likely to change in the run up to the March 2021 release date.

Camera: looks interesting, but I'll wait to see how successful the pixel binning is - and the folded optics on the Ultra

Screen size: the S10+ is already at the limit of how big I want a phone to be; once you slap a protective case on[*], the S20 Ultra is going to be ridiculously big

Screen resolution: meh. it's the same as the S10+ - and I ended up dropping mine down to 720p, in an effort to save battery life. Hasn't really made any visual difference - but then, it's seemingly not really improved the battery life any, either...

RAM: what's the point? Looking at my phone, it's using 4.1GB of ram, of which 2.5GB is flushable cache. Any RAM above the 6GB limit (unless playing video games, maybe) is just going to sit there and waste electricity!

And then there's the headphone jack, or lack thereof. I like my wired headphones - they're cheap, easily replacable, don't require recharging and aren't fitted with tiny, non-servicable batteries which are likely to fail completely after just a year or two [**]. And I'm not that keen on having to carry around a USB-C adapter; it's something else to lose or break and makes it even harder to safely cram this massive slab of expensive technology into a pocket.

So, my current verdict is a resounding "meh".

Still, who knows? The 2-year contract on my S10+ will run out around March... I might give it a few months for the price to drop (and for the reviews to come in) and then go for one!

[*] I learned the expensive way to always keep my phone in a case, after an incident with a caseless S7+ several years ago!

[**] Apple Airpod batteries are expected to have a 2 year lifespan...

[CCCP]

Re: SFail

"The 2-year contract... runs out around March".

So, you received your S10+ around March 2018, about a year before it was released... Unlikely.

[Martin an gof]

It may not be a full resolution image...

but I'm not impressed with the example. The image given as an example comes to 7.2Mpixels, which is presumably around half the "full size" image, but even so it looks over sharpened, some of the colours are slightly off (though definitely on the better side of camera phones), the JPEG artifacts (again, I suppose at 520k it's been re-sampled) are pretty awful on the pink anemone and there's something really odd going on with the metal conduit to the left of the image. I know good pictures are possible from camera phones, but even compared with my 11½ year-old 10Mpixel low-end SLR this image doesn't impress.

I wouldn't buy a phone just for the camera, but a camera phone can come in very handy - as someone said, the best camera for the job is the one you have with you. It's definitely not worth $1,400 (and the other phones in the range aren't much better). If I had to spend £1,400 (as usual, £1 is likely to = $1) on this sort of thing I would probably be looking at spending £200 on something like the Moto G8 Power and the rest on a high-mid-range DSLR kit. Something like the Canon EOS 90D should be available for around £1,200. The phone should take excellent snapshots and spur-of-the-moment video, while the DSLR is capable of such a lot more.

M.

[Francis Boyle]

Seconded

The thumbnail looked pretty bad and my first response to the full-size was "Ugh – this has been over-sharpened to hell".

Still, I assume this is a jpeg straight from the camera for which over-sharpening and day-glo colours are pretty much de rigueur. Samsung (high-end at least) phones have long supported raw capture, which has saved me on occasion when my DSLR decided to die on me, so I imagine it will be possible to get decent images out of this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: It may not be a full resolution image...

>Something like the Canon EOS 90D should be available for around £1,200.

I'd rather buy one of the Sony A7 full frame mirrorless, which can be had for less, around £749 with 28-70mm lens.

[Martin an gof]

Re: It may not be a full resolution image...

Not particularly a Canon fan, it was just the first thing that came to mind in this price bracket. I'm afraid I'm a bit "old school" even with my digital cameras, though that's getting difficult these days. I'm not convinced by mirrorless - I still like a proper eyepiece, and electronic viewfinders don't quite do it for me except with video. The aforementioned low-end DSLR is a Pentax and will still accept lenses I inherited from my father-in-law and, apart from my wife's "handbag camera", all the digital cameras we use take AA batteries, which doesn't half make things simpler.

M.

[Francis Boyle]

Re: It may not be a full resolution image...

Can't disagree with you about how got those old Pentax lenses are but AAs? Batteries are one area where I have no fond feelings for the ways of the past.

[Martin an gof]

Re: AAs

There are six digital cameras in my family. When we visit places, everyone brings a camera. As five of the cameras take AAs, in order to ensure a constant supply of power on holiday all I have to bring is a box of AAs. We use low self discharge rechargeables which last longer than alkalines* and so all I usually bring is two boxes of four (two of the cameras take four AAs, three of the cameras take a pair) and a small AA charger.

If the cameras had Lithium batteries, chances are that each camera would have its own type and each type would need its own charger, so I'd have to double-up on every type of battery and bring along a charger for each.

And in an emergency you can get AAs just about anywhere.

As a bonus the cameras tend to be a bit chunkier, which is good for young children :-)

M.

*of course it's impossible to make a direct comparison, but the LSD AAs we use in most of the cameras seem to last as least as long as the Lithium battery in my wife's small Canon, so it's not as if you can say that a Lithium-powered camera wouldn't need to be charged so often. Then again, said Lithium battery is 850mAh IIRC while the AAs are 2,100mAh.

[Francis Boyle]

Re: AAs

Not sure why someone felt the need to give you a thumbs down for merely explaining your use case. It's not my use case, and it's probably not most people's but nothing you said is incorrect and you have a point about non-standardisation of battery types. (I'm sure this will be sorted out – right after camera manufacturers agree on a common lens mount.)

[Martin an gof]

Re: AAs

When I talk to people about the battery thing there is only one real argument they have against AAs - Lithium batteries are more energy-dense, so a device using Lithium batteries can be smaller and/or lighter.

There is another subtle problem that most people don't seem to clock, and that is that for best results, individual cells (nothing much will run on a single AA) need to be charged separately, not in a string, so using AA rechargeables necessitates using an external charger.

As I said, from my point of view, the fact that we can go on holiday and I only have to pack one charger and a couple of sets of spare AAs to cover five cameras, the torches and a portable radio makes my bag-of-bits a lot more manageable. Of course it still has to have the charger for my wife's camera and (if we take it) the laptop, but even phones are more-or-less sorted these days thanks to some far-sighted regulation. A single plug-in USB charger takes care of the half-dozen phones and the battery bank(s). The video camera (doesn't run on AAs) will charge through its USB port (an awful lot of devices won't - e.g. the wife's camera - and I don't understand why) and even the charger for the AAs can work from a USB socket, though nowhere near as quickly as if it's plugged into the mains or a 12V car socket.

M.

[Michael Habel]

Re: It may not be a full resolution image...

AA Bateries? Um ok, my external Flash Head still uses those. but, name me a proper DLSR from nearly the last 20 years, which used AA's.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: It may not be a full resolution image...

>I'm not convinced by mirrorless - I still like a proper eyepiece, and electronic viewfinders don't quite do it for me except with video

Mirrorless electronic viewers are great for us short-sighted glasses wearers as we can take our glasses off and see subject in focus, which is not the case with mirrored DSLRs, you still need your glasses on.

[Michael Habel]

Re: It may not be a full resolution image...

Somebody doesnt, know how to set the Diopter on their DLSR it seems. And, even then, Canon seels, or at lest sold addtional kits that could be fitted to the eyepeice to correct focus.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: It may not be a full resolution image...

>Somebody doesnt, know how to set the Diopter on their DLSR it seems.

Sounds like someone has never heard of astigmatism.

[Agincourt and Crecy!]

Re: It may not be a full resolution image...

> I'm not convinced by mirrorless - I still like a proper eyepiece, and electronic viewfinders don't quite do it for me except with video.

I used a Canon EOS 5D MkII for many years and was sent an EOS RP with the 28-105 L RF lens to try out. The viewfinder is excellent, very bright and I can adjust it for my eyesight really simply meaning I’m not struggling to look through it with glasses on. The diopter adjustment on the 5D didn’t quite do it.

I’ve swapped over to the RP pretty much full time now. It’s lighter, faster and I can use all my L glass with it. I was a mirrorless sceptic and still use my OM2 SP bought back in the 80s for film. Mirrorless does feel like the way forward for DSLR photography.

[Martin an gof]

Re: It may not be a full resolution image...

still use my OM2 SP

I have a couple of OM1n cameras that I'm itching to put back into use (I learned photography on my dad's OM1n with a 50mm lens), but both need attention (not least they need the "mod" that allows them to use non-Mercury batteries for the meter) and I haven't yet got around to sending them off...

The thing I miss the most from my OM1 days? The focus screen. DSLRs are (in my experience) very difficult to focus manually.

M.

[Michael Habel]

Re: It may not be a full resolution image...

I think he unwittlingly naled it... Try searching "Photograpy" on YouTube sometime, and not all the Videos posted there, about Film, and Video. as opposed to just say good old fashend still photograpy. So is it such a shock that the people most psyched for a Mirrorless Cam all happen to be Soy latte drinking vlogers?

[Michael Habel]

Re: It may not be a full resolution image...

I will never understan the fascination with this mirrorless tat. but, then I'm over 40, shabby, and losing my hair too. So this could be a case for your camera / music sucks type of argument. But, I just dont see mirrorless as an option here.

[Jon Blund]

Re: It may not be a full resolution image...

Someone has done something seriously wrong with this image. I can't imagine Samsung releasing something this embarassing. Probably the website compressed it.

[Gio Ciampa]

Re: It may not be a full resolution image...

The image appears to be in WEBP format (at least, that's what "Save As" says) so would have been (re)compressed beyond all recognition of the original...

[Carpet Deal 'em]

Re: It may not be a full resolution image...

It's being served as a JPEG; the prompt to save it as a WEBP is Google using their browser to push an image format nobody wants nor needs.

[Martin an gof]

Re: It may not be a full resolution image...

In any half-decent browser, load the image, right-click menu, view image information. Note that there's no meta information, no EXIF. It's a half-meg JPEG so obviously not directly from the phone but other than that it's difficult to be specific.

M.

[Anonymous Coward]

108 Mpix?!

This is completely demented! Until you see the thing about image cropping.

So this is effectively multiple smaller sensors tiled together or one huge sensor?

Maybe this can be used to reduce the image size: have the software "choose" things with useful detail and then store

instructions to reconstruct the entire image using interpolation from the preview and RAW.

[Martin an gof]

Re: 108 Mpix?!

Someone else pointed out that you can usually get the RAW out of a Samsung - I wasn't aware of this - but to try to answer your question, most image sensors are specified as the number of picture sensing elements, so a 5 Mpixel sensor has approximately 5 million of them, but each of those elements can only sense the intensity of light, not its colour.

To get colour, the sensor grid is usually overlaid with a filter grid. In most cases this is in groups of four, RGBG or similar (sometimes there's a yellow or perhaps a clear). In the raw then, you might have 5 million pixels, but 1.25 million of them will actually only give you the intensity of the red, 2.5 million the green and 1.25 million the blue components of the image. For a full colour image each pixel's measured value is combined with adjacent colour values so your effective colour resolution is a lot less than the luminance resolution. This is a common trick used in lots of places because the human eye is a lot more sensitive to luminance than to colour.

The other way of doing it is to create a final image with only 1.25 million pixels, which means that each pixel has a non-interpolated colour value, but does throw away some luminance resolution. On the upside, four sensors collecting light can be more sensitive than one (though size does matter) so you should get a better low-light result.

Samsung seems to have gone one step further and instead of combining four filtered pixels is combining nine. I have no idea what format the colour filter takes, but I bet it includes more than just RGGB, probably has at least a couple of yellows, maybe a cyan and a clear or two. As all this pre-processing has to be done in the phone in order to produce a standard JPEG, that's a fair bit of grunt required and if you can get a RAW out you would undoubtedly get a better result from a dedicated "RAW developer" application on the desktop. Even at 8 bits per pixel though, 108 million pixels is around 103Mbytes of uncompressed image, and it's possible (is there a spec. somewhere?) that this sensor is capable of 10 or 12 bits per pixel...

Interesting case of diminishing returns I'd have thought, and as mentioned I can't say I'm terribly impressed with the sample image in the article, but the fact that they can shout about a "108 million pixel sensor" is a clear case of Top Trumps.

M.

[Jon Blund]

Re: 108 Mpix?!

While image cropping allows the 100x "zooming" with dodgy results the real benefit is the "binning" where 9 pixels are averaged to 1. This should give more or less noise free images which would close the quality gap to "real" cameras. The sample image is seriously compromised.

[juice]

Re: 108 Mpix?!

To quote the official page:

https://news.samsung.com/global/introducing-the-samsung-galaxy-s20-change-the-way-you-experience-the-world

====

With a larger image sensor available on the Galaxy S20 series, camera resolution is significantly increased [...] S20 and S20+ have a 64MP camera. S20 Ultra has 108MP camera [and] takes things a step further with the option to shift dynamically between a high resolution 108MP mode and a 12MP mode, thanks to nona-binning technology which combines nine pixels into one at the sensor level

====

I.e. you only get the 108MP lens on the Ultra, but if you do, you can choose to shoot full-resolution photos if that's your thing. Personally, I think I'd stick with the downsampled images!

Presumably, this also means that you don't get the 9-pixel binning technique on the S20 and S20+, given that they've got a 64MP lens and hence would spit out a ~7MP photo if this was enabled.

As ever, I guess we'll just have to wait and see what the reviews say!

[Neil Barnes]

In 2020, what's the point of spending more than a grand on a phone?

I suspect that for many people, the answer will be 'because I *can* spend a grand on a phone'.

Me? Not the target market, thanks.

[macjules]

Re: In 2020, what's the point of spending more than a grand on a phone?

Yes, it is the idiot tax principle: if the idiots have that sort of money to burn then why not provide them with tat for their money? Otherwise they might just go and spend it on sensible things like mortgages or (heavens forbid) save it for a holiday.

[werdsmith]

Re: In 2020, what's the point of spending more than a grand on a phone?

Many people don't have mortgages. Many people have lots of disposable income. These people won't care about the cost of the sim free phone purchase because the numbers they will be looking at is probably £60 per month for 24 months. I wouldn't buy one of these because for all its high-rent hardware features it still comes with the same low rent OS you get on cheapo phones. But I won't call someone an idiot because they choose to use their money as they wish. To do so would be idiotic.

I know this won't be popular, because it seems to be fashionable to be snarky about people with disposable income. But I really don't give a shit.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I won't call someone an idiot because they choose to use their money as they wish

you won't, I will (and I don't give a shit that you don't give a shit :)

[Martin an gof]

Re: In 2020, what's the point of spending more than a grand on a phone?

I dispute your statements "many people...", but I completely agree with the £60 a month principle - in fact I think I mentioned something similar here a short while ago. I would contend that those with reasonable disposable incomes are often at or near retirement age, and I really don't think that people in their 60s and 70s are the target of these phones :-)

M.

[a pressbutton]

Re: In 2020, what's the point of spending more than a grand on a phone?

People with less than average eyesight like bigger than average screens on phones.

Eyesight degrades as you age...

[Martin an gof]

Re: In 2020, what's the point of spending more than a grand on a phone?

Maybe, but there are a lot of phones out there with screens of 6" or more, and a lot of them for a lot less money. Even the £110 Nokia 3.2 has a 6¼" screen!

M.

[dajames]

Re: In 2020, what's the point of spending more than a grand on a phone?

People with less than average eyesight like bigger than average screens on phones.

That's an argument for having a large but low-resolution display ... or for getting some decent reading glasses.

I went for the latter ...

[Anonymous Coward]

outlier here

I'm more excited with Samsung's rugged phone that is water resistant and has a removable back cover. Weird times.

[Martin an gof]

Re: outlier here

Samsung's rugged phone

Which one is that? We have two Samsung rugged phones in this house - both "dumb-ish" phones and a model which was discontinued a couple of years ago. Definitely robust - one is the only phone my wife has not managed to wreck and has now been passed on to one of the children.

Nokia has recently launched a rugged phone that looks very similar to our Samsungs but runs Nokia's "feature phone" OS, Kai OS. It's basically the same specification as the "retro" 8110 slider and 2720 flip phones they have been selling but in a different form factor. If it weren't the same price as a low-end smartphone I'd be very tempted.

M.

[renniks]

Re: outlier here

Check out the Ulefone Armor series of phones if you want rugged. I got the Armor 6E for €175, and I am well happy with it.

The thing with spending a grand on a 'flagship' phone is that all it takes is one drop and you can say goodbye to your expensive phone

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: outlier here

Galaxy Xcover Pro 2020. Quite costly at 500 euros and would cost me as much as a brand new s10e in Asia. Unless Sammy keeps their word on global availability.

I have no use for any advanced tech/features crammed on a sealed battery device.

[Martin an gof]

Re: outlier here

Ok, thanks. €500 is way over my budget, particularly as I'm looking for phones for my notoriously dangerous-to-tech wife and a young teenager*, but it's good to know these things are out there.

M.

*some parents seem happy to send their children to school with iPhones and Apple Watches. Not me!

[Anonymous Coward]

nonna binning

I recognize English... ending.

[dajames]

Re: nonna binning

Indeed. Did anyone else notice:

... it uses nona-binning, which amalgamates nine pixels into a single megapixel ...

So Samsung's "megapixel" in only nine pixels ... so I guess the 108MP camera has only 972 pixels?

That wouldn't explain the price, though ...

[big_D]

Example photo...

That has to be one of the worst quality photos I've seen in a long time. Not a good advert for the S20 Ultra..

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Example photo...

Looking at the photo it doesn't appear to be the original file. It's been re-compressed. It's only 479 KB whereas I expect the original file would have been several MB

[Undergrid]

The real question I want answered...

... is are they going to support it these new £1000+ devices for more than two years, or are they going to wash their hand of them before most people's contracts are over.

[Gio Ciampa]

Re: The real question I want answered...

Knowing Samsung, it'll be whenever the next flagship gets released ... so 12 months

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The real question I want answered...

FWIW, I just received an update for my Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge, which was released in February 2016.

I believe the S7 was a very popular phone, and was continually sold for a long time after release, which may explain the "LTS" status it seems to have - but I do think they support their flagship devices very well.

[Matt_payne666]

Its never going to be as good as a real camera with a decent sized sensor... but what it is, is better than nothing, or better than the ok camera that was on the last phone you had.

Ive a Panasonic LX100 - a great little camera and it takes photos that are head and shoulders above my S7 camera - the 'feel' of the images, portrature especially. A smartphone certainly cant aproximate background blur as well as real aperture blades produce it, but HDR, low light and ease of use, the camera phone will outshoot the real camera a lot of the time...

DxO reviewed the Xiaomi note 10 which uses a 108mp samsung camera module and it looks pretty darn good for a camera phone!

the sample photo - its not a staged publicity shot, but looks like a hasty snap at the booth, use the camera properly and I expect it will produce much better results

[Martin an gof]

better than nothing

I think the point here is that "better than nothing" doesn't justify the price. If you want a half-decent snapper, phones from many other manufacturers produce pretty darned good results for only a couple of hundred quid. The Motorola G7 Plus has a 15Mpixel main sensor with a 5Mpixel depth sensor (if that's your kind of thing), a pretty decent spec of screen, RAM etc. and a street price of around £160.

the sample photo - its not a staged publicity shot, but looks like a hasty snap at the booth

That's as maybe, but it was obviously taken at a manufacturer event and they provided the props and (presumably) the model / sales rep. Dayglo pink is a really difficult colour for any camera to handle, so if they wanted to show off they must have been confident the camera could handle it. If not, they should have chosen something else. But many of the flaws in the example image are nothing to do with not "using the camera properly", they are inherent features of the way it works - the oversharpening, the JPEG artifacts etc. Even if you can get RAW from a Samsung, very very few people are going to do that. They are all going to rely on the camera app in the phone, so it needs to be top-notch.

M.

[GrahamRJ]

Yorkshire War Cry!

OW MOOCH?!?!?

(What else would the icon be?)

[intrigid]

Have we reached peak phone absurdity yet?

When are we going to see a backlash against the trend of removing every possible useful feature from a phone in order to make internal room for 7 inches of screen covering 99% of the surface, which will shatter into a beautiful glass spider web the first time it slips out of your hand?

I could really, really use a sequel to the Galaxy S5.

[Anonymous Coward]

Samsung S101

Now with binocular holographic retina painting (tm) display. As good as actually being there or your money back!!

[www.pakmegaplace.com]

Samsung Galaxy S20

That Omnivison sensor won't be available for 2020.

Maybe they'll bring it in 2021.