With the Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra and the Galaxy Z Fold 2, Samsung has a few new phones that offer large screens and great prices to match.
The Note 20 Ultra is the latest version of Samsung’s line of Galaxy Note phablets, featuring the largest display Samsung has ever offered in a conventional smartphone. The Galaxy Z Fold 2 is anything but conventional – it’s a foldable phone that follows on from last year Galaxy Fold, with hopefully enough design improvements to prevent the rocky launch of its predecessor.
If you have $ 1000 and change – a lot and a lot of change – to spend on a new handset, which of Samsung’s two behemoths should you choose? In this Galaxy Z Fold 2 vs. Galaxy Note 20 Ultra face-off we will see how Samsung’s large screen devices compare.
Galaxy Note 20 Ultra vs Galaxy Z Fold 2 specs
| Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra | Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 2 (rumored) | |
|---|---|---|
| Start price | $ 1,299 | ~ $ 1,780- $ 1,980 |
| Screen | 6.9-inch AMOLED (QHD; 120Hz) | 7.6-inch interior OLED (120Hz); 6.2 OLED exterior |
| Processor | Snapdragon 865 Plus | Snapdragon 865/865 Plus |
| FRAME | 12GB | 8GB-12GB |
| Storage | 128GB, 512GB | 256GB, 512GB |
| Behind cameras | 108MP wide; 12MP telephoto with 5x optical zoom; 12MP ultra wide | 12MP and 108MP main camera; 12MP ultra wide; 64MP camera with 3x lossless zoom |
| Front camera | 10MP | 10MP |
| Battery size | 4,500 mAh | TBA |
| Great | 6.48 x 3.04 x 0.32 inches | TBA |
| Weight | 7.33 ounces | TBA |
Galaxy Note 20 Ultra vs Galaxy Z Fold 2: Price and availability
It’s not every day that a $ 1,299 phone looks like buying bargain, but welcome to the world of folding phones. Samsung has not announced a price for the Galaxy Z Fold 2, but considering that the company touts the upcoming phone tout as ‘premium high-tech experiences’, we would not expect too much from a discount of the $ 1,980- cost of the original Galaxy Fold.
That’s almost $ 700 more than what the 128 GB version of the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra will cost you. Raise your storage to 512GB, and you pay $ 1,449 – an eye-popping figure in most cases, but probably hundreds of dollars less than what the Galaxy Z Fold 2 costs.
you can order the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra in advance As of this writing, with the phone reaching stores on August 28th. In a week and a half later, Samsung will reveal more details about the Galaxy Z Fold 2, including presumably the price. Rumors suggest that the foldable phone will ship in September.
Galaxy Note 20 Ultra vs Galaxy Z Fold 2: Design and display
A comparison of Galaxy Note 20 Ultra vs Galaxy Z Fold 2 is truly a face-off between a phone that embodies a more traditional design and a next-generation device. The Note 20 Ultra looks like many other phones available in the market today, though with a much larger display than you will find on most handsets.
The Galaxy Z Fold 2 is also large, but in a different way. When they are close, it looks like two conventional phones stacked on top of each other. But open the device, and you open it to a tablet-like screen. Because the new Fold with the notch removes the front cameras contained in the original device, the interior screen has grown to 7.6 inches. Meanwhile, there’s also an external display on the Fold 2 that you use when the phone is closed – it’s now a 6.2-inch cover screen, up from the 4.6-inch screen on ‘ and the original Fold.
It’s not often that a Galaxy Note has the smaller screen of two devices, but that’s the case here, at least when the Galaxy Z Fold 2 opens. The Galaxy Note 20 Ultra has a 6.9-inch AMOLED display, but that is dwarfed by the 7.6-inch panel that opens and closes on the folding phone. For this version of the Fold, Samsung has included a layer of ultra-thin glass to give the display a more polished feel. The fold of the Fold 2 also opens its screen at different angles.
The highlight of the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra’s display is a refresh rate that changes dynamically, scaling up to 120Hz when you are engaged in activities that could benefit from smoother scrolling in graphics. Samsung says that the Galaxy Z Fold 2 also adopts this dynamic 120Hz technology.
Galaxy Note 20 Ultra vs Galaxy Z Fold 2 cameras
We will for sure not know until Samsung reveals the specs for the Galaxy Z Fold 2.. But the cameras on their foldable phone and the ones recorded on the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra could be pretty close.
Samsung has shown images of the rear camera array on the Galaxy Z Fold 2, and it contains three lenses, all stacked on top of each other. Open the Fold up, and a single front camera looks at you from a punch-hole cut in the main screen of the phone. That sounds an awful lot like the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra camera setup – a single shooter up front, and a triple lens array on the back. The primary difference is that the Note 20 Ultra includes a laser autofocus sensor, and the Fold 2 does not appear – at least based on the images Samsung has shared.
That makes us think that maybe Samsung will use some other cameras in the rear array of the Fold 2 than what you get with the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra. That phablet has a 108MP main lens, enlarged by a 12MP ultra-wide camera, and a 12MP telephoto lens capable of 5x optical zoom.
The missing sensor on the Galaxy Z Fold 2 could mean that Samsung will opt for a lower megapixel count on the main lens of the folded phone – say the 12MP main shooter like the one on the Galaxy S20 Plus. That phone has a 64MP telephony capable of a 3x zoom, and it is rumored that the Galaxy Z Fold 2 will do the same. That leaves the ultra-wide lens, which will likely be a 12MP sensor. Of course, those are speculations at this point.
Galaxy Note 2 Ultra vs Galaxy Z Fold 2: Specifications and performance
It’s unclear which processor will power the Galaxy Z Fold 2, but if we have to guess, it’s going to one of Qualcomm’s top-of-the-line chipsets. When the Galaxy Fold debuted last year, Samsung went with the Snapdragon 855, the best system-on-chip currently available, and it will likely follow the same course with the sequel.
That would mean a Snapdragon 865 or Snapdragon 865 Plus. The latter is a variation on Qualcomm’s flagship mobile processing platform, with a faster core speed in its CPU and faster graphics display than the 865. It also happens to be the chipset that powers the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra. So whatever chipset Samsung packs for the Galaxy Z Fold 2, that fold-out should deliver similar performance as Samsung’s phablet, especially if both devices have 12GB of RAM. (The Note 20 Ultra does; the Galaxy Z Fold 2 probably will.)
One of the Snapdragon 865 variants used in the Galaxy Z Fold 2 will mean another feature that comes with the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra – 5G compatibility. Qualcomm requires the Snapdragon 865 to be paired with a 5G modem, so you’d expect the Fold 2 to adopt that feature.
Galaxy Note 20 Ultra vs Galaxy Z Fold 2 battery
The battery can be an area of concern as you wait for the Galaxy Z Fold 2 to arrive. All Samsung has said is that the new version of its rechargeable battery will last the entire day of battery life, on account of two power packs that are in the different halves of the Galaxy Z Fold 2. The original Fold uses the same approach with both batteries equal to 4,380 mAh. That translates to just over 10 hours of battery life on our test, which goes through web browsing over LTE until a device is on power.
Some rumors had suggested a slightly smaller battery for the Galaxy Z Fold 2, which worries us if the new phone can live up to Samsung’s claim. We’ll get a better idea on September 1st, once Samsung confirms the specs for the Z Fold 2. That said, in everyday use the original Galaxy Fold’s battery has kept nice, so it’s going to be interesting to see if anything changes one way or another with the Fold 2.
Battery life should be no problem with the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra, which uses a 4,500 mAh power pack, and should be able to count on the dynamic refresh level of the screen to conserve battery life. Samsung also includes a 25W charger with the Note 20 Ultra, which helps to recharge the battery quickly. (Samsung says to expect a 50% charge after 30 minutes.) We do not know what kind of charger will come with the Galaxy Z Fold 2, though, if Samsung sticks to the capabilities of the older Fold, then the rechargeable wireless charger can .
Galaxy Note 20 Ultra vs Galaxy Z Fold 2: Special Features
The Galaxy Z Fold 2 and Galaxy Note 20 Ultra may both come from Samsung and run the same version of software – that is Android 10 with Samsung’s OneUI 2.0 interface – but they offer users two very different mobile experiences.
For the Note 20 Ultra, it’s all about the S Pen, the stylus that accompanies every Note phablet. For this iteration, Samsung has improved the responsiveness, with latency reduced to 9ms for the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra. (S Pen latency is 26% by default Galaxy Note 20, so that’s a big edge for the larger of Samsung’s two phablets.) The S Pen also builds on the steering-based controls added in previous years with new navigation gestures and improved accuracy when converting handwritten notes into text.
The original Fold introduced features such as multitasking and continuity of the app, in which you could open the fold-out and continue using the app you opened on the outside screen without missing a beat. We would expect the Galaxy Z Fold 2 to retain that feature.
Because the Fold 2 is now a page out of the Galaxy Z Flip’s book by letting you set the device at different angles, we expect the Z Fold 2 to get the features of the Z Flip Flex mode. Allows you to use different parts of a partially open folding screen for different purposes.
Galaxy Note 20 Ultra vs Galaxy Z Fold 2: Outlook
The Galaxy Note 20 Ultra uses a proven design for anyone who wants to stay productive when they become mobile. With the Note 20 Ultra, you get a large screen that can handle a 120Hz refresh rate, powered by the fastest processor available for Android phones. Insert the S Pen – always the highlight of any Galaxy Note release – and you have a very capable device.
The Galaxy Z Fold 2 is more of a mystery at this point – because there are still many that we do not know about the device. So far, Samsung has explained how it hopes to improve on the original Fold, and once we know the rest of the specs of the sequel, we’ll be better positioned to judge whether the Galaxy Z Fold 2 foldable devices in the mainstream can take.
The Galaxy Note 20 Ultra is the safer choice at this point, but there is enough intrigue to pick up the Galaxy Z Fold 2 that we hope to pick up in the coming weeks.
