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Samsung Galaxy M20 Review price in India


Samsung Galaxy M20 Review: Better than Redmi Note 6 Pro?


Samsung Galaxy M20&nbsp

Samsung Galaxy M20, the South Korean giant’s latest salvo has launched as part of an all-new Galaxy M-series. As evident by Samsung teasers, the Galaxy M20 and Galaxy M10 have launched as India-first products which gives an idea of how much important is the Indian market to the company. No surprises there as Samsung is now aiming to take on  Xiaomi and Realme devices with a slight change in strategy.

Samsung is attempting to change the face of the affordable premium smartphone market with the Infinity-O display, bigger batteries, premium design, and a killer price. The South Korean handset maker seems to have cracked the code when it comes to affordable smartphones. Samsung had been stuck in that affordable smartphone vortex for some time now. It had churned out models before with standard fat bezels, standard battery capacities, a price which did not find favour in a lot of buyers, especially when the market is flooding up with Chinese smartphone makers, and most of them all, that cheap factor when you hold a smartphone.

With the launch of the Samsung Galaxy M20, we can be sure for the prospective buyer market that they will not be disappointed with the M20 considering the features and specs it comes with. We had already been using the Galaxy M20 for a week now alongside the Galaxy Note 9, again from Samsung. Of course, it may sound foolish to compare the Galaxy Note 9 with the Galaxy M20, but looking at just the basic performance, barring the price factor, the Galaxy M20 seems to tick all the major boxes. We shall talk about the M20 in detail in the following paras.

Pros

Battery life

Notch display looks good

Cons

No anodised aluminium back

Back panel scratch prone

No protective case or preloaded screen guard

Samsung Galaxy M20 Review: Looks, build, design, and display

The first impression we had of the Galaxy M20 was that the display was stunning. The M20 does not get an AMOLED display. The Galaxy M20 display is a PLS TFT touchscreen one with 1080×2340 pixels. The display sports a host of vibrant colours. The Galaxy M20 sports for the first time, an Infinity-V display with dimensions of 6.3-inches with 83.6 per cent screen-to-body ratio. Samsung had mentioned about bringing notched displays to their smartphone range last year. The announcement was surprising as Samsung was already making the Infinity-Edge displays but restricted on the Galaxy S-series but finally a welcome one. The display looks good enough considering the price tag.

One of the cool features we found on the Infinity-V display was the face unlock animation. Push the power button, and you can see the edges of the Infinity-V display camera housing light up with continuously running lines. We admit we did play around with the face unlock quite sometimes. The display did not show any instances of light bleeding.

Samsung has not provided any screen protector with the device. We think they should have provided considering many other affordable smartphone manufacturers rivalling the Galaxy M20 do offer it in the retail box.

Speaking about protectors, we did find the absence of a body protector missing and Samsung should note this. The design looks robust with the simple glass front housing the bezel-less Infinity-V display. Interestingly the display looks premium. The rear panel takes a leaf from the affordable premium design rulebook with a fingerprint sensor at the back. The fingerprint has a small border which does not feel much, so if you are one of those people who unlock their phones without looking at the sensor, be prepared to miss it. However, we found the rear panel very prone to scratches. We would recommend buyers to get at least a protective case along with the smartphone. The Galaxy M20 gets the 3.5mm jack headphone jack as well.

The Galaxy M20 looks smart with the chunky sides making gripping the phone easier; however, the phone could feel a bit weird to some users considering the raised display.

Samsung Galaxy M20 Review: Software and performance

The Samsung Galaxy M20 runs on Android 8.1 Oreo out-of-the-box with Samsung’s Experience 9.5 UI on top. App transitions are smooth, and we found no noticeable lags during normal daily usage. The Galaxy M20 is powered by Samsung’s own Exynos 7885 64-bit which runs on eight ARM Cortex A53 cores. The processor welded to a Mali-G71 GPU and 4GB of RAM.

Normal gaming was a breeze while graphics intensive games like PUBG Mobile and Real Racing 3 ran on medium settings quite normally with no lags. However, gaming for longer periods means the phone’s core heat ups. However, any graphics intensive game will heat the phone. The Galaxy M20 withstood almost all basic apps, multi-tasking, and heavy browsing with up to 25 tabs at the same time.

Software performance on the whole for the Galaxy M20 is decent and comparable to most smartphones of today. We performed the Antutu benchmark test in which the Galaxy M20 scored 106,445. On the Geekbench benchmark app, it scored 1314 for single core test and 4101 for the multi-core test which proved its mid-range to affordable credentials.

Samsung Galaxy M20 Camera

We found the camera quality decent. The Galaxy M20 sports a 13-megapixel primary shooter with a second 5-megapixel for depth control. The 13-megapixel rear primary sensor gets an f/1.8 aperture with PDAF. The 5-megapixel shooter gets an f/2.2 aperture value and depth sensor as well.

Daylight photos look decent. The composition looks good enough. We did notice an imbalance in whites with some photos looking overexposed. The Pro Mode is also available. However, only ISO, Exposure, and photo temperature are changeable. Other features of the camera include LED flash, panorama, and HDR. The M20 is capable of 2160p@30fps, and 1080p@30fps.

The selfie camera is an 8-megapixel unit with an HDR feature. Selfies in daylight look clear and composed enough. The front shooter gets HDR and is capable of 1080p@30fps. Camera features are good enough, and overexposed images usually are rare.

Samsung Galaxy M20 Battery

The Galaxy M20 shines in the battery segment. We managed to get out a decent amount of juice from the 5,000mAh battery for two days. The device’s gargantuan battery back meant we could pull close to a massive 3-day life with normal usage. Battery capacity is one of the significant factors for buying a phone, and the M20 makes up just brilliantly for it.

We did some intensive gaming, and we were amazed on as to how the Galaxy M20 stands up to the abuse in a classy manner. If there’s one thing we love of the Galaxy M20, it’s the battery and the display. The battery also gets fast charging support.

Samsung Galaxy M20 ratings

Design: 7/10

Display: 8/10

Performance: 7/10

Cameras: 6/10

Battery: 10/10

Overall: 7/10

Samsung Galaxy M20 Review: Price and Verdict

At a starting price of Rs. 10,990, Samsung has made sure that it leaves no stones unturned when it comes to providing features and in terms of design, the Galaxy M20 looks different. We used the Galaxy M20 as our secondary daily driver for a week, and we never actually found ourselves reaching for the charger even once during the day, even after gaming, Internet browsing, calls, and texting. One minor let down was that Samsung would be bringing the Galaxy M20 with the Android Oreo setup, but some reports and the update schedule list on Samsung Members app have pointed towards the fact that the Galaxy M20 will get the Android 9.0 Pie update in August this year.

The entire M-series launch shindig from Samsung seems to point affordable premium smartphone users in the correct direction and is a current departure from the copy paste design we have in our smartphone market right now. So much so, that we have difficulty sometimes identifying smartphones from same or different manufacturers.

Ironically, a decade back, Samsung had made a name in the super-premium smartphone segment with the Galaxy Note series. However, in the smartphone market of today, Xiaomi Redmi Note series are the ones who are getting all attention. The Galaxy M20 will, in the highest sense of probability, will affect that. So the question of the hour is whether the Galaxy M20 will stand up to the immensely popular Redmi Note 6 Pro. Our answer is yes. Samsung has put in all the best features – bezel-less Infinity-V display, Face Unlock, ultra-wide angle camera, big battery, we will not be surprised if the Galaxy M20 displaces the other major players. But here’s what makes it even better.

All-in-all, we loved the Galaxy M20 with its massive battery specs and wide-angle cameras and cool animations. However, we would suggest buying a protective cover with the Galaxy M20 because the rear panel is scratch prone. Lastly, the Galaxy M20 is one of the better budget smartphones we have seen in a long time. You go Samsung!





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