Galaxy S20 Ultra: Samsung’s new flagship phone could be more powerful than your laptop

Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra brings smartphones much closer to laptops, at least in terms of efficiency and performance. Here’s a complete breakdown.

Samsung Galaxy S20 series was launched on February 11. (Samsung)

Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra could be more powerful than some of the laptops available in the market right now. Of course, there's a difference between the form factors and use cases of the two. But, how many smartphones offer 16GB of RAM? Yes, you read that right. Samsung's new flagship has 16GB of RAM, something that many laptops can't boast of. And it's not just the RAM that puts Samsung back on top of the 'performance-driven' devices list.

What sets the Galaxy S20 Ultra apart from the crowd, and even most of the budget laptops, other than its RAM capacity is its over 1TB of storage space. Like we said, laptops and smartphones are radically different and they are built for different use cases. But how many laptops in the market right now can boast of having nearly 1.5TB of storage space? Probably, not many. That's Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra at its best.

However, RAM and storage space are not the only things that make put the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra on top of the list of performance driven devices' list. The newly launched smartphone has many features that make it eligible to compete with laptops and PCs -- devices that once attracted a hoard of power users.

Let's break it down.

A smarter display

One of the most important reasons why laptops and PCs used to attract heavy duty users was because of their displays. Smartphones, in the past, used to come with smaller displays that would easily fit into users' hands. But that trend has changed in the past couple of years. Now we are smartphones with tablet sized displays hitting the stores. The Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra with its 6.9-inch display is the latest entrant in this series. It's giant screen makes it ideal for users to perform tasks, such as edit images and even videos, on the go. What adds to the overall allure is the fact that users don't have to carry that extra load on their backs. Instead they can now fit their PCs in their pockets.

But wait, there's more. The Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra does not only come with a bigger display but it also has a better screen. It comes with a 120Hz display that offers a resolution of 3200x1440 pixels. Most budget laptops, on the other hand, come with 60Hz display or in best case 90Hz display. The Galaxy S20 Ultra with its 120Hz display is clearly a winner in this department.

Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra was launched on February 11. (Samsung)

Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra was launched on February 11. (Samsung)

An efficient camera

Before we get into the length of this argument, let's just first agree on one thing -- laptops are not designed to offer a decent camera performance. Most budget smartphones come with a web camera with a 720p resolution. The Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra, on the other hand, comes with a quad rear camera setup with a108-megapixel wide angle sensor at the back and a 40-megapixel sensor at the front.

What makes Samsung's 108-megapixel sensor standout, other than the obvious, is its 108-megapixel ISOCELL Bright HM1. This sensor is capable of producing high quality 8K videos at 24 frames per second. In addition to that, the sensor, according to Samsung, offers 3x zoom at a 12-megapixel resolution, which is still better than what budget laptops with their web cameras have to offer.

On the hindsight, webcams on laptops are not built for snapping pictures but only for video calls, but at a time when 5G technology is being deployed and 6G is becoming the new buzzword, a slightly better resolution for video calls won't probably hurt anyone.

5G processor

Now, let's talk about the brain of the chipset -- the processor. The Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra is powered by Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon 865 chipset that was launched in December last year.

By comparison, budget laptops such as the Asus VivoBook S14 S430FA, Acer Aspire 5, HP 15q ds0029tu, HP Pavilion Gaming 15, Lenovo Ideapad S145, that are priced under ₹50,000, come with 8th generation of Intel's Core i5 processor that is coupled with 8GB of RAM and up to 1TB of storage. Now, an interesting thing to note here is that Intel's 8th generation Core i5 processor is almost two years old now. The company had launched it back in October 2017, which makes these laptops outdated.

What gives additional brownie points to the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra is the support for 5G connectivity, something that remains missing in most budget laptops at the moment.

Technology is evolving at a rapid pace and smartphones are in the heart of this evolution. This evolution is narrowing the gap between mobile computing and the laptops at an exponential pace. And the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra, in all its glory, is just the beginning of this race wherein mobile computing overtakes laptops and PCs..