Samsung Galaxy M20 Review

Samsung has seen its number one market share position in India swallowed by Xiaomi, in exactly the same way that it overtook Nokia many years ago.

The company has tried to respond in several different ways over the years, but very few of its recent low-cost offerings have been competitive enough in our reviews and ratings.

The Korean giant has used its youth-focused J-series and software features such as S Bike Mode to address the budget market, but that just can't compare to the big screens, powerful processors, and tonnes of storage that Xiaomi and others offer at the same prices.

It's finally time for a complete strategy reset, and so now we have the brand new Samsung Galaxy M-series. The two newly announced models,

The Samsung Galaxy M10 ₹ 7,990 (Review) and Samsung Galaxy M20 ₹ 10,990, are launching in India before anywhere else, which shows how important it is for the company to recapture this market.

HIGHLIGHTS

Samsung Galaxy M20 takes on big hitters from Xiaomi, Asus, and Realme

It has a nearly borderless screen with an 'Infinity-V' waterdrop notch

Camera performance is sub-par, but battery life is quite good

On the one hand, the new Galaxy M series represents a major shift for the company in terms of design and specifications. There is no doubt that these phones are targeted for the Xiaomi, Honor, Realme, and the category of Asus.

It seems that almost Samsung had come into the market with a checklist and tried to find out every last little thing which these companies are in the race to do each other for each other.

Read More: Samsung Galaxy A9 (2018) Review

Today, we have more capable and high priced Galaxy M20 for two models to review. Let's know whether Samsung's gambling has paid, and whether it is finally able to achieve value, features and performance.

Samsung Galaxy M20 design

Simply put, this phone does not look like any Samsung phone and nor does it look like. It is very normal and can pass for anything from any other manufacturer. Head-on, this is actually indistinguishable from the Realme U1 (review) or Oppo F9 16,168 (review) for example.

Samsung Galaxy M20 Review

However, more than a criticism from Samsung, it says that there is little scope for personalities while reducing the features of a phone for such minimalism.

The biggest farewell from Samsung's previous designs is the water-style-style 'Infinity-V' footprint at the top of the screen, which is just too big to fit for the front camera. The screen measures 6.3 inches diagonally, keeping the aspect ratio and the rounded corners in view of current trends of 19.5: 9.

The bottom of the screen is a small part of the chin - Interestingly, if you keep the Galaxy M20 and Galaxy M10 in the side, you will see that they look similar except that the long screen in the Galaxy M20 and the narrow chin Is the screen-to-body ratio more than 90

The top and side borders around the screen look narrow, but the sides of this phone are quite upstairs. It helps keep the earpiece within the frame above the screen's top.

There is an ambient light sensor, but it can not be seen. The proximity sensor is on the left side of the notch and it is not that the placement has hurt its functionality.

Both the Galaxy M20 and the Galaxy M10 will be sold in the same color, Ocean Blue and Charcoal Black. The review unit of our Galaxy M20 is Ocean Blue, which is standing outside.

However, more than a criticism from Samsung, it says that there is little scope for personalities while reducing the features of a phone for such minimalism.

The biggest farewell from Samsung's previous designs is the water-style-style 'Infinity-V' footprint at the top of the screen, which is just too big to fit for the front camera. The screen measures 6.3 inches diagonally, keeping the aspect ratio and the rounded corners in view of current trends of 19.5: 9.

The bottom of the screen is a small part of the chin - Interestingly, if you keep the Galaxy M20 and Galaxy M10 in the side, you will see that they look similar except that the long screen in the Galaxy M20 and the narrow chin Is the screen-to-body ratio more than 90

The top and side borders around the screen look narrow, but the sides of this phone are quite upstairs. It helps keep the earpiece within the frame above the screen's top.

There is an ambient light sensor, but it can not be seen. The proximity sensor is on the left side of the notch and it is not that the placement has hurt its functionality.

Both the Galaxy M20 and the Galaxy M10 will be sold in the same color, Ocean Blue and Charcoal Black. The review unit of our Galaxy M20 is Ocean Blue, which is standing outside.

Read More: Samsung Galaxy M30 Review

It is quite dark with a bright finish and a very fine grainy pattern, which gives it some depth. Samsung did not say exactly what material he used for the rear shell, but it is very difficult.

The back and sides of this phone are a single molded shell with no seam or antenna line. We are happy to know that despite being shiny, the phone's rear is not slippery at all.

The edges of this phone are round, but it is massive as a whole, thanks to the 5000mAh battery - more on that in a bit. It is quite thick and heavy, and we felt weight after using it for extended periods. Galaxy M10 is much lighter than it is but it is not clearly a huge battery.

The Galaxy M20 has a USB Type-C port at the bottom, unlike its less expensive siblings, the micro-USB port. The speaker grill is also on the bottom, while in the Galaxy M10 it is on the lower rear.

Another big difference between the two phones is that the Galaxy M20 has a fingerprint sensor on the rear - there is not even one in the less expensive model. We found the sensor slightly higher to reach our index fingers while reaching the phone comfortably.

Samsung Galaxy M20 Review

Everything else is quite standard - 3.5mm audio socket on the bottom, power and volume buttons on the right and two nano-sim on the left as well as a tray for a dedicated microscope card slot.

There is a small ridge around the dual rear camera module, which helps prevent the lens from being scratched, but does not spread at all.

Overall, while the Samsung Galaxy M20 does not have a distinct identity, it is more than enough to pick up in the sub-money market. 15,000 markets. Each design option is designed to support a feature that Samsung needs to present.

Samsung Galaxy M20 specifications and software

The most interesting thing on the spec sheet of the Galaxy M20 is its new EXynos 7904 processor. This weirdly named entity was launched less than two weeks ago, and was specially designed for the value smartphone segment in India.

There are two high-performance ARM Cortex-A73 cores which are running at 1.8 GHz and six Power-efficient ARM Cortex-A53 Core 1.6GHz, as well as a Mali-G71 GPU.

Samsung Galaxy M20 Review

Samsung sometimes uses similar processors in many models in many years. Since this is our first experience with Exynos 7904, our benchmarks will tell us how it competes against Qualcomm and MediaTek models, which other manufacturers use in this segment.

Galaxy M20 with 3GB RAM and 32GB storage Rs 10,990 or 4 GB RAM and 64 GB storage Rs 12,990. We have a later configuration for the review, and a quick look at the market shows that there are not many RAM or storage in many other models at this price level, which can benefit Samsung.

The remaining specs are found more in this price bracket. The screen resolution is 1080x2340 with the density of 409ppi. 5000mAh battery, and Samsung says the bundled 15W charger will fill it quickly. Ten minutes of charging is enough to enjoy a three-minute video or 11-hour music playback.

The primary rear camera is 13-megapixel unit with f / 1.9 aperture, while the secondary camera has a 5-megapixel sensor and 120 degree field of view. The front camera has an 8-megapixel resolution. Dual VoLTE is supported, and you can use VoLTE at SIM any time.

It seems that when Samsung comes in the box, Samsung cuts the corners. In addition to the 15W charger and the USB Type-C cable, there is only one SIM eject pin - there is no protective case or screen guard, and there is no headset in one page out of Xiaomi Playbook.

Viewing Android 8.1 is a little disappointing, but at least it was up-to-date with our security patches in January 2019, during our review. The Galaxy M20 runs the Samsung Experience UI because the company's new forest UI is still in its beta testing phase. If you have recently used a Samsung phone, you will not find anything new or different here.

Unfortunately, one thing that has not changed, is the curiosity to advertise Samsung everywhere. The moment we booted this phone for the first time, we got confused with them.

The entire lock screen is now an advertisement - Samsung has integrated an app called Glance, which shows a different photo or promotional item every time you wake up this phone. Not only are the captions distracting, but they displace useful information.

In the first few hours before using this phone, we look at repeated clickbit messages to drive traffic to websites or apps. Sometimes we were motivated to vote for cricketers or consumer product brands. Some of them were just flat of advertisements.

When we finally set up a new lock screen background image, Stories managed to disable it by selecting 'Wallpaper' instead of wallpaper and stories, but we should not dig it as much as we wanted to detect this workaround.

If we had bought this phone, then we would be greatly infiltrated by this level of intrusion, and we really think that Samsung needs to return its monetization efforts.

In addition, we also got general spam barrage from the My Galaxy app and some other preloaded apps. No matter how many useful features are available in a Creator's custom UI, this is something that makes us long for stock Android.

Samsung Galaxy M20 performance, battery life, and cameras

We had no problem using Samsung Galaxy M20 for day-to-day activities. Apps and Lite games run without any hassle, and we've done a lot of multitask heavily.

There was only a slight signal on rare occasions in the UI, but we were not enough to worry. Sometimes it took about one second to work in face recognition, which was annoying, but the fingerprint sensor was very quick.

Samsung Galaxy M20 Review

The screen is bright and crisp, which has good viewing angles. The videos looked very good and the games in which Asphalt 9: Legends and PUBG mobile were okay on the medium settings. We thought that the upper part of this phone is a bit hot during gaming, which is not ideal.

Samsung's UI also has well enough optimized notch. The use of single-hand was a bit difficult, because of how big the phone was and due to adjusting our grip, it was sometimes weird due to its weight.

We were curious to see how the new Exynos 7904 SoC does in the benchmark, and it did a great job for this segment.

Our AnTuTu score was 107,540, which is in the neighborhood of Kwakem's Snapdragon 632 or snapdragon 636. Geekchain gave us 1,315 for single-core performance and 4,094 for multi-core performance.

The graphics score was disappointing, the GFXbatch's T-Rex view at just 22fps and the Manhattan 3.1 footage was running at only 7.1fps.

Battery life was exceptionally good in everyday use. We started our day to unplug the phone around 8 a.m., and used it normally, with little photography and some small gaming sessions, and still had about 60 percent left in the evening.

We were able to stretch till the middle of the next day without charging. However, our HD Video Loop Test lasted only 12 hours, 53 minutes, which was relatively disappointing, and other phones in this price class do better with a small battery.

The camera app is easy to use and has been well laid out. Most of the options and modes are within easy reach, and it is always good to be able to start recording videos with a single tap. We found that the camera was fast to lock the focus and it did not seem to have much shutter lag.

Just above the shutter button is a selector for two cameras, but it's easy to forget which camera is selected. The application remembers that you were using the last, so it does not default to the primary camera every time it is opened.

You can enable a running floating shutter button from the settings, which can be useful. There are many stickers to choose from, some of which have to be faced automatically, and you can buy more through the Galaxy App Store.

There is a lack of options in Pro Mode - you can control only metering, exposure compensation, ISO and white balance. Samsung Mall integration lets you take photos of objects to find similar people in many online stores, and the results in our experience were very good but were not very specific.

A notable quote is that Live Focus Mode works only on faces. You can not use it to get profound effects on ordinary objects shots, as you can do on almost every other phone.

There is a beautification mode, but there are no AI enhancements, which are using some other brands, especially Honors, to separate themselves.

The quality of the photos was quite disappointing. We did not see the details and sharpness of the type used by the phone in the sub-rupee. 15,000 price clause The shots taken in the day looked good on the phone's own screen, but a close inspection revealed that the textures were not very realistic and the details were lost.

On the positive side, all the shots were in focus and the colors were quite lively. Quality was also poor when using secondary camera with wide lens, and was an important fish-eye distortion.

Samsung Galaxy M20 Review

Low-light performance was equal. Many of our shots were able to watch, even when a lot was taken straight down the road or with artificial light. There was a lot of speed and a great loss of detail.

The video was fine too. The recording goes up to 1080p, and there is no stabilization that is probably understood at this price level. We kept a lot of focus while recording moving objects.

The effects of depth in shots made in Live Focus mode seem quite artificial for us. It also did not help that face beautification was going on by default, and too much dialed. Beautification is also enabled by default when we switch to the front camera. Speaking about which, Selfie was also just acceptable.

Verdict

Contrary to some of its current rivals, Samsung has immense brand power. Many people have recently opted for other options on the basis of specifications and features, so after closing that gap, Samsung stands to re-acquire many customers.

Buying a Samsung phone does not feel like a gamble in that way, which can be with less established brands. Korean giants are capitalizing on their galaxy M-series marketing, through under-sourcing of the vast Galaxy network, spreading 1,650 service centers across 6,000 taluks across India.

We have reviewed the high-end version of the Samsung Galaxy M20, which has 4GB RAM and 64GB of storage, which is priced at Rs. 12,990 At the same price, Xiaomi Redmi Note 6 Pro 1 12,130 (review) provides the same specification with almost the same Qualcomm Snapdragon 636 processor and better battery life.

Realme U1 (review) and Asus Zenfone Max Pro M290 15,990 (review) both have 3 GB of RAM and 32 GB storage, but our tests have more powerful processors and better battery life.

The race between these models is quite stiff. It seems that the Galaxy M20 does not meet all the advantages of its competitors, but at least this is very competitive for the first time. We hope this is the beginning of a new era for Samsung.

Samsung Galaxy M20 Review