The Galaxy Note 20 and Galaxy Note 20 Ultra today officially hit both digital and physical store shelves the world over, releasing as Samsung's second major flagship line of the year. Their commercial debut follows a two-week pre-order period which was available in some shape or form in virtually every market where the smartphone duo can now be legitimately purchased.
Given how much this year already crippled Samsung's potential performance in the consumer electronics space (and any other market for luxury goods, really), the company has been unsurprisingly active in promoting its newest releases. Ultimately, it managed to evade a big annual drop-off the economists continue to fear on a daily basis. Meaning pre-order performance was just a tad behind the Galaxy Note 10 series, which is pretty decent considering everything that's happened in 2020 so far.
A pretty uneventful period, all things considered
Granted, this is a product range used to breaking records of all sorts, not growing content with avoiding basic pitfalls of product launches, but Samsung will likely take a boring last-minute win instead of risking any more drama in 2020.
We've already put out plenty of content letting you know all there is and isn't to know about the Galaxy Note 20 range – this is crucial stuff that helps you stay at the top of your game as an informed consumer, so if you're considering pulling the trigger on either one of the two phablets, make sure to read our in-depth review of the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra to figure out where its strengths and weaknesses lie, and just avoid the Galaxy Note 20 in the meantime. And any period following or leading to that point, because for all of the Ultra's qualities, the regular Galaxy Note 20 is the most blatant attempt at abusing cheap psychology tricks into upselling us to the Ultra. The irony of us still recommending the higher model aside, buy the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra for the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra – not for the absolutely ridiculous price tag attached to the entry-level model that instantly makes the Ultra look like the best deal since the original Google Nexus.
The shortest version of this story is that neither device is bad per se but the Galaxy Note 20 costs almost double than what those specs require you to spend nowadays if you're willing to play ball with other brands, while the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra is a decent iterative improvement, of which Samsung has had plenty of in the past – except this one had the unfortunate luck of getting stuck between a rock and a hard place due to the Exynos team's failings. The rock would be the Exynos 990 in that analogy, at least compared to the alternative.On the bright side, so much of what they just do outright better is tied to software and agnostic of hardware. The Galaxy Note 20 series delivers on a range of upgrades that will be easy to notice if you're coming from something like the Galaxy Note 9, but it also continues to exacerbate the gap between flagship Galaxy models, which has to be one of the most concerning practices we've seen Samsung exhibit in recent years – from a consumer standpoint, naturally.
So, if you're planning on getting either the Galaxy Note 20 or Galaxy Note 20 Ultra in the near future, try to keep all of your distribution options in mind seeing how not even buying directly from Samsung itself is always the smartest play. Especially since a new smartphone costs so much money – why should you eat all of the associated costs if some guy named Jeff will give you better trade-in value than the actual manufacturer?
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SamsungGalaxy Note 20
