What makes a telephone $1,299 on the occasion of a pandemic? That’s the challenge for the Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra, a super-giant telephone that comes out on August 21. This device monster represents the most sensible of diversity in the U.S. Right now, and it might be worth it, if everything works. as promised. I spent a few hours with the telephone, so it looks pretty promising.

The Note 20 Ultra is available in a 128GB style for $1299 and a 512GB style for $1449. The two are similar: impressive 6.5 x 3.0 x 0.3 inch snies weighing 7.3 ounces. Yes, it’s a big phone, even bigger and deeper than the Galaxy Note 10, but if you’re here, you’re here for the full service board experience.

It is available in matte bronze or glossy black or white. It had the bronze version, which looks a lot like Apple’s rose gold color. Temporarily select fingerprints, but I don’t think it matters because you want a case to polish the back panel. The camera hit is ridiculous: a thick, giant rectangle that can get stuck or scratch elements if you don’t have a case to level your phone’s Z axis.

The 6.9-inch at 120 Hz AMOLED looks good, and this maximum refresh rate definitely contributes to the S Pen’s functionality. The tip of the pencil has a very opaque drag across the screen, feeling like a graphite pencil (it’s a little scary, I think it was scratching the screen!), not to mention gloriously without lag. But Samsung has left a baffling limitation of the S20 series: the display is only 120 Hz in 1080p mode. Go ahead, get the most out of your phone at $1300, and it’s at 60 Hz, so you lose some of that responsiveness.

I tried the S Pen’s new gestures, such as doodling in the air to take a screenshot. These are difficult-to-use devices, some of the typical features of Samsung’s kitchen sink that few people will use. But the S Pen itself is still a forged and rare stylus. My wife and daughter use Galaxy Note phones to draw and take notes, and a more responsive S Pen stylus will only improve it. I need to verify the note synchronization with Microsoft OneNote, but the new Microsoft features to link to the 20 Ultra note are not yet available.

I am very excited about the adjustments made to the camera. The Galaxy S20 Ultra has a 108 megapixel camera, but it doesn’t work well. Here we have again this camera of 108 megapixels, with an optical zoom of 5x of 12 megapixels and an ultra wide angle of 12 megapixels, and is painting, thanks to a new module of laser self-concenting. To check, I temporarily took a series of shots of nearby objects, followed remote objects, and remained closed. I didn’t see the pulsed concentrate I felt on the S20 Ultra, and all the images were concentrated. It’s promising.

The changes in Pro Video seem like fun. Samsung allows you to play a lot with the sound of the videos: you can turn the front and back microphones on and off, or even use a USB or Bluetooth microphone. Combined with 8K recording, this can be a big step forward for audio clarity.

I have not yet gone to get a smart concept of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 processor of the phone or its universal 5G. I hope the functionality of the 5G is similar to that of the S20, which means right on AT-T and Verizon, but after OnePlus phones on T-Mobile, because OnePlus devices get faster software updates from 5G radio.

Honestly, I still feel uncomfortable with the lifestyle of a $1,299 phone in 2020. At least there are a lot of exchanges and buy-in-one-in-one-free gifts. And the cheapest phones don’t have the things that this one has: the triple layer 5G, for example, or an 108 megapixel camera or an 8K record. All these features are exaggerated, but there is room for some exaggerations in the world. I’ll go through more details as we do a full review, so come back soon.

Sascha Segan, PCMag.com’s senior cell phone analyst, has reviewed tons of smartphones, tablets and other devices over nine years with PCMag. He is the head of our Fastest Mobile Networks project, one of the hosts of PCMag Live’s daily web screen and speaks in the media on cellular issues. His comments have been published on ABC, BBC, CBC, CNBC, CNN, Fox News and in San Antonio, Texas newspapers in Edmonton, Alberta.

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Sascha Segan, PCMag.com’s senior cell phone analyst, has reviewed tons of smartphones, tablets and other devices over nine years with PCMag. He is the head of our Fastest Mobile Networks project, one of the hosts of the PCMag Live Web daily screen and speaks in the media about cellular issues. His comments have been published on ABC, BBC, CBC, CNBC, CNN, Fox News and in San Antonio, Texas newspapers in Edmonton, Alberta.