The Galaxy S20 Plus is the best 2020 Samsung flagship most people actually should have bought.
Samsung spent all its marketing energy on the S20 Ultra’s 108MP sensor and 100x Space Zoom, but the middle child quietly nailed the formula: sensible size, serious specs, and fewer compromises than either sibling.
Design: Premium, Practical… and a Bit Boring
Samsung’s been iterating the same glass-and-aluminum sandwich since the Galaxy S6, and the S20 family is basically the endgame of that refinement. The S20 Plus is slim at 7.8mm, IP68-rated, and wrapped in Gorilla Glass 6 front and back. Bezels are tiny without the ridiculous waterfall curves of the past – just a very mild slope that helps ergonomics more than it hurts.
You do still get enough curvature to make glass screen protectors annoying, and the pre-applied plastic film is borderline hostile if you use gesture navigation – every back swipe scrapes your thumb along the edge. The front is clean: a centered punch-hole selfie camera and minimal chin, easily among the most modern-looking 2020 faces.
Flip it over and things get less interesting. Cosmic Black, Cosmic Grey, Cloud Blue, Cloud White, and Aura Red don’t exactly scream personality, and the rectangular camera island is clearly designed to disappear on the black unit. It’s much tidier than the Ultra’s monstrosity, but it’s still a big black tile on an otherwise generic glass slab.
No 3.5mm jack, of course. You do get stereo speakers (bottom-firing plus earpiece) and a microSD slot that shares space with the second SIM on dual-SIM models. Weight is a very manageable 186g – lighter than an iPhone 11 Pro Max and a Galaxy Note 10+ despite the big screen and battery.
Display: 6.7 Inches of 120Hz AMOLED Done Right-ish
On paper, this is the 2020 Android display to beat: a 6.7-inch Dynamic AMOLED panel at 1440 x 3200 (20:9), 120Hz refresh rate, 240Hz touch sampling, and HDR10+ support. It’s closer to the Ultra’s 6.9-inch size than the vanilla S20’s 6.2, so if you want “big but not tablet,” this is the sweet spot.
There’s one catch: you must choose between 120Hz and full resolution. 120Hz is locked to 1080p; 1440p caps you at 60Hz. Most people will pick the 120Hz/1080p combo and never look back. The panel is sharp enough at 1080p, and the smoothness boost is more noticeable in real life than the extra pixel density.
Brightness is seriously strong: around 379 nits manually and up to 797 nits in adaptive mode under harsh light. It’s brighter than the OnePlus 7T Pro, Mate 30 Pro, and Pixel 4 XL, though a bit behind the iPhone 11 Pro Max and Oppo Find X2 Pro. Color modes are classic Samsung:
- Natural: tight sRGB, average DeltaE ~1.7, max 3.1 – accurate but dull to the eye.
- Vivid: wide gamut toward DCI-P3, average DeltaE ~3.4 with bluish whites out of the box. A quick nudge to the warmer side gets whites closer to DeltaE ~1 and overall accuracy around 2.8.
Out of the box it ships in Vivid, which is what 99% of people will stick with – the trademark AMOLED punch without going full neon. HDR10+ works across Netflix, Prime Video, and YouTube, so the panel isn’t just spec-sheet bait; it backs it up in actual apps.
Performance & Battery: Fast, But Not a Battery King
There are two S20 Plus worlds: Snapdragon 865 and Exynos 990. The unit covered in the source is Exynos, with an external modem whether you buy the 4G or 5G variant. Both SoCs are 7nm+, both theoretically fast, but the Exynos trails the 865-based Oppo Find X2 Pro in multi-core CPU and GPU-heavy tests by non-trivial margins.
Benchmarks consistently show the Exynos S20 Plus a few percentage points behind its S20 and S20 Ultra siblings too, despite sharing the same platform. You’re not getting jank, but you’re also not getting “fastest Android on earth.” Snapdragon versions are the ones enthusiasts want; that’s outside this source, but the Exynos picture is clear: fine, not class-leading.
Battery is a more mixed story. The S20 Plus packs a 4,500mAh cell, right between the S20 (4,000mAh) and Ultra (5,000mAh). Samsung’s own testing paints a realistic picture once you account for the 120Hz panel and the external modem.
Two main modes were tested:
- 120Hz at 1080p: ~11 hours web, 13.5 hours video.
- 60Hz at 1440p: ~13 hours web, 17+ hours video.
Overall endurance ratings land at 87 hours (120Hz/1080p) and 97 hours (60Hz/1440p). That’s slightly better than the Ultra in the same modes and entirely respectable for a big flagship. It’s not a battery monster; it’s good enough, and 120Hz doesn’t murder it.
Charging is handled by a bundled 25W USB Power Delivery PPS brick. You get ~62% in 30 minutes and a full charge in 57 minutes. The Ultra’s optional 45W charger exists more for marketing than real-world gains, so not having that option here is no real loss.
Wireless charging goes up to 15W, and Wireless PowerShare reverse charging hits up to 9W for earbuds and watches. As usual, it’s more “nice emergency perk” than daily workflow.
Software & One UI: Better Than Before, Still Bloated
The S20 Plus launched with One UI 2.1 on Android 10 and later jumped to One UI 3, but the behavior described here is firmly in the One UI 2.x era. The core experience matches the other S20s: big, touch-friendly UI elements, system-wide dark mode, and the usual Samsung suite.
Gesture navigation is flexible: you can use Android 10’s swipe system or Samsung’s own side/back and bottom swipes. The side-swipe Back gesture fights with that scratchy plastic screen protector and any thick case lip, but you can always fall back to the three-button nav bar.
Biometrics are a split bag:
- Ultrasonic fingerprint: behind the display, not especially fast or reliable, and clearly behind the best capacitive sensors.
- Face unlock: faster and more convenient, but less secure.
Samsung keeps piling on features:
- Edge panels for app shortcuts, tools, and Edge lighting notifications.
- Quick Share: Samsung-only sharing using Bluetooth for discovery and Wi-Fi Direct for bulk data.
- Music Share: lets other phones piggyback on your Bluetooth speaker connection.
- Google Duo baked into the dialer for instant video calls.
On the flip side, some long-time power features are now awkward. Multi-window is more taps than it used to be post-Android Pie, and Samsung’s attempt to fix it by moving menus around hasn’t really solved the UX tax.
One UI 2.1 also doubles down on the typical Samsung control sprawl. The brightness slider has been demoted into a sub-menu by default, and you need to wrangle quick settings to remove nonsense toggles and surface what you actually use. It’s powerful, but not lean.
Later, One UI 3 started rolling out to S20 devices (including the Plus), bringing the usual visual refresh and Android 11 features, but the source doesn’t go into details. The important bit: this phone did get past the early-software limbo and into Samsung’s newer UI, which matters if you’re buying it late or second-hand.
Cameras: Versatile, Smart, and a Little Dishonest
Camera hardware is where Samsung plays naming games. The S20 Plus uses the same camera stack as the vanilla S20, plus a Time-of-Flight (ToF) sensor for depth. The actual cameras:
- 12MP main (S5K2LD), f/1.8, 1.8µm pixels, 1/1.76″ sensor, Dual Pixel PDAF, OIS.
- 12MP ultrawide (S5K2LA), f/2.2, 1.4µm pixels.
- 64MP “telephoto” (Bright S5KGW2), 1/1.72″, 0.8µm pixels, OIS.
- ToF DepthVision module.
The problem: that 64MP isn’t a real telephoto in the traditional sense. Its optical magnification over the main camera is basically negligible – around 1.07x. Samsung markets “3x hybrid optical zoom” and “up to 30x” zoom off a sensor that mostly relies on cropping and processing.
Is that dishonest? Technically they’re using optics, so the wording weasels through. Practically, it’s marketing spin. The good news is that up to 3–4x, the results are genuinely solid. At 2x and 3x, zoomed shots would pass for native telephoto output on a lot of phones. At 4x it’s still usable; at 10x you’re in “good enough at fit-to-screen only” territory. 30x exists for spying on distant objects, not for photos you’ll be proud of.
Daylight shots from the main camera are classic Samsung in a good way: lots of detail, punchy but controlled colors, and Auto HDR that lifts shadows without blowing out the scene. The ultrawide trails in per-pixel detail, like every ultrawide, but matches color reasonably well and keeps dynamic range acceptable.
Low light is where the upgraded sensor and big pixels pay off. Even in standard Photo mode, noise is controlled and dynamic range is strong. Night mode tightens things up further, especially on the ultrawide, which tends to underexpose without it. Zoomed low-light shots around 3x also benefit from Night mode with cleaner shadows and less noise.
Portraits (Live Focus) lean heavily on that ToF sensor for depth maps. Edge detection is competent on people and surprisingly solid on complex non-human subjects. One odd quirk: if you use a self-timer, focus locks when you press the shutter, not when the photo is actually taken. If you’re the subject and the photographer, that’s a trial-and-error mess.
Selfies use a 10MP front sensor and come out detailed in good light, with Samsung favoring detail over aggressive noise reduction in dimmer scenes. Some misfocus in low light sneaks in, but the general quality is high even if colors are a bit more muted than the rear camera.
Camera App & Video: Powerful, Messy, and Full of Modes
Samsung’s camera app tries to do everything and almost succeeds, but the UI is messy. Manual HDR toggles are gone; it’s Auto or nothing. The aspect ratio toggle doubles as a 64MP switch, flipping you over to the 64MP sensor when you pick that mode. That’s handy, but buried in a confusing list of 4:3, 1:1, 16:9, Full, and 64MP.
Video resolution controls are equally opaque: you see 1:1, 16:9, Full, and 16:9 8K, with no clear label for the actual resolutions behind the non-8K modes. Zooming behavior complicates it further, since 8K and higher zoom levels switch you to the 64MP camera, while 60fps modes lock you to the main sensor.
There’s even a hacky workaround if you want zoomed 60fps video: set 30fps, zoom in, then flip to 60fps in settings. The app preserves zoom, but you’re now just heavily cropping the main 12MP sensor with visibly worse quality. It feels like behavior that slipped QA, not a thought-out feature.
On the capabilities side, the S20 Plus is stacked:
- 8K/24fps video from the 64MP camera.
- 4K30 from every camera.
- 4K60 from the main cam.
- Stabilization in all modes, including 8K and 4K60, with an option to turn it off.
- Super Steady at 1080p using the ultrawide for the widest mode and the main camera for the cropped-in mode – better than the Ultra, which uses only the ultrawide.
- HDR10+ video tucked away in an Advanced menu for compatible screens and YouTube.
Selfie video goes up to 4K, with stabilization at 30fps only. There’s also a night hyperlapse mode that chains Night-mode-like frames into a bright light-trail timelapse.
Single Take is Samsung’s attempt to solve camera FOMO. Hold the shutter, move around, and the phone captures from multiple cameras, then spits out stills, clips, GIFs, and stylized edits curated by its AI. It’s actually useful for chaotic scenes – pets, kids, parties – if you don’t want to constantly think about switching modes.
On balance, the S20 Plus camera system feels designed by engineers and marketers at the same time: capable, versatile, but obsessed with headline features like 30x zoom and 8K that most people won’t truly need.
Positioning & Value: The Quietly Sensible Flagship
In Samsung’s 2020 lineup, the S20 Ultra is the no-budget flex phone. The vanilla S20 is the compact-ish option. The S20 Plus is supposed to be the “big but sane” variant, and that’s exactly how it lands.
Compared to the S20, the Plus asks roughly €100 more for a significantly larger display and a bigger battery with slightly better endurance. If you like big phones, that’s a justifiable bump. Compared to the Ultra, the S20 Plus undercuts it by over €300 while giving up mostly just the extreme camera hardware and its associated problems.
Outside the Samsung bubble, the obvious 2020 rival is the iPhone 11 Pro Max. Objectively, the S20 Plus brings a better display, more flexible camera system, lighter body, and in many markets a lower price (about 20% in Europe and most regions, closer in the US). Apple’s ecosystem and brand pull might override that for a lot of people, but purely on hardware and versatility, the S20 Plus has the edge.
Then there are the spoilers from below: things like Huawei’s P40 Pro (where Google-free software is the real handicap) and OnePlus’ then-upcoming 8 Pro, expected to deliver similar specs for less money. That’s the S20 Plus’ real danger zone – not that it’s a bad phone, but that Samsung’s pricing strategy increasingly assumes people will eat four-figure price tags as standard.
Inside Samsung’s own trio, the S20 Plus is also the least obvious choice at a glance. The Ultra has the crazy camera. The S20 has the lower sticker price. The Plus is just the big sensible one, which makes it the right pick for more people than either sibling.
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