By Christopher Mata/Staff Writer, Technology Page Editor
For years, Samsung has had events similar to the Galaxy Unpacked 2020 event, a place to announce their new consmer line of products. The products that they typically showcase are new phones, smartwatches, audio devices, accessories and more.
The event is normally a live-streamed PowerPoint show with animated or filmed commercials of the products. Leading up to it, Samsung teases the event on its Twitter with various animated short commercials that are very cryptic on what’s to come.
The live stream is available on YouTube and lasts about two hours. The event normally takes place during February, with the products typically available during March. This year Samsung announced products that took many people by surprise.
New Flagship Phones
The Galaxy Unpacked 2020 event gave us a new line of flagship phones, the S20, S20 Plus, and the S20 Ultra 5G. They have also announced a folding phone called the Galaxy Z Flip. All of Samsung’s phones this year offer the whole punch display (the camera hole in the middle of the top portion of the screen).
The S20 lineup of phones had a big emphasis on cameras. All three phones have three cameras, with the S20 Plus and S20 Ultra having an additional depth-sensing camera. The new cameras are capable of zooming into incredible lengths S20 and S20 Plus have a 10x zoom and the S20 Ultra has a 100x zoom.
The S20 and S20 Plus have two 12 megapixel cameras and one 64 megapixel camera. The S20 Ultra has one 12 megapixels, one 48 megapixel and one 108 megapixel camera. The video and picture quality has been upped to 8k at 24fps and 4k at 60fps.
The three phones also have many spec improvements such as 12 gigabytes of ram for the S20 and S20 Plus. They also have an option for 16 gigabytes of ram for the S20 Ultra. For comparison, the 13-inch Macbook Pro has eight to 16 gigabytes of ram. Internal storage ranges from 128GB to 512GB with 1TB of upgradeable memory.
The display of the phones are now 120Hz refresh rate, making the overall screen experience better. To withstand all this power, the phone’s batteries have been upgraded, for the S20 its 4000mAh, for the S20 Plus its 4500mAh, and for the S20 Ultra it’s 5000mAh.
Finally, 5G is now rolling out to everyone, slowly but surely, and Samsung is hoping for this new technology. All the S20 line of phones are said to support 5G and 4G LTE. However, the Galaxy Z Flip will only support 4G LTE. The S20 starts at $999, the S20 Plus at $1,199, and the S20 Ultra at $1,399.
New Folding Phone
Instead of flipping vertically, the Galaxy Z Flip now folds horizontally. Samsung claims that its engineers have managed to bend glass. They claim to have done this with a very thin piece of glass rather than the thickness that regular phones have.
When the phone is folded, it is 73.6mm by 87.4mm(about 2.89in by 3.44in). Unfolding the phone gives us a display of 6.7 inches across (from the bottom right to top left), which is the same size as the Galaxy S20 Ultra screen. The phone is also equipped with a screen on the outside to be used when it’s folded.
The Z Flip has one 10 megapixel selfie camera and two 12 megapixel cameras on the outside. One camera is an Ultra Wide and the other is a wide-angle camera. The phone will be able to record videos at 4k but not at the S20 lineup resolution set at 8k.
The battery of the phone is a dual battery, with a combined 3300mAh. On the Samsung website, it states that this device is compatible with wireless power share. All in all, this phone is impressive with all of its capabilities. This phone sells for $1,379.99.
Improved Wireless Earbud Experience
Galaxy Buds came out last year with the S10, and this year they have unveiled the Galaxy Buds Plus. The new version has the same look, except for some slight adjustments; they have the same feel of the old ones. The new buds offer some improvements over the last generation, but none is significant enough to prompt people to go out and replace their old ones.
The Galaxy Buds Plus have added more battery capacity. The regular Galaxy Buds have up to 13 hours of power — six hours in the actual buds and seven hours of charge in the case. Galaxy Buds Plus have upped that number to 22 hours — 11 of them are the individual buds outside the case and the rest with the case. The battery has also been improved from 58mAh to 85mAh. According to ubergizmo.com, Milliamps per hour (mAh) is electric power over time, the bigger the number equals to more power the battery can store.
Microphones have also been improved. Samsung has put a second one on the outside and one on the region where your ear meets the bud. They have added a “two-way dynamic speaker system and boosted driver” for better audio quality.
Samsung has listened to public outcry from people annoyed about having an LED indicator for the battery indicator. Now they have an actual pop up that tells you the battery percentage.