This is an interesting position for me to be in. As an overall brand, I’m not the biggest fan of Samsung these days.
I feel they buy their market position more than they earn it. They pour advertising dollars into media to sway consumer behavior and manipulate search engine popularity algorithms. They set a toxic tone of mocking rivals in their ads, but quickly copy those same rivals when it benefits their profits. They were one of the higher profile phone manufacturers caught cheating benchmarks back in the day, and likely copied Apple’s update policy of slowing down older phones. As a corporation, they’ve abused their market position to inflate prices on components. Their PR has been the most punitive I’ve ever worked with (and failed to work with), over several media publications.
While I appreciate individual products, I don’t like Samsung as a company.
Which is why it feels funny writing a defense for one of their most expensive phones. I’m not the guy for this job, but I’ll try my best.
The Note 20 Ultra is a great phone at a very good price.
First, I should lay the rest of my cards on the table…
I used to be “That Guy” about the Note line.
When the Note first launched it was audacious. It seemed comically large, had a fine point active stylus, and delivered a bleeding edge combination of new hardware and software that often took rivals an entire year to match.
The Note was an extreme expression of mobile computing.
The Note landed broad consumer appeal for years as a premium “mini-tablet” that could make phone calls. The term “phablet” was coined almost exclusively to describe the Note. Nerd debates raged over whether the Note’s features inspired consumer loyalty, or if it was simply the only mainstream choice for a large premium phone.
I was a particularly vocal Note supporter in the early years. From the Note 2 through the Note 4, other phones would get reviewed, but few would keep my SIM card for long. I always returned to the Note. The Note 4 remains one of my all-time favorite devices, and I still find regular uses for it today.
My passion for the Note started waning with the Note 5. Samsung had mocked rivals for sealing up the phone case and preventing battery replacements.
Then here was this new breed of Samsung with glass backs, no SD card expansion, and non-user-accessible batteries. We’d get SD cards back the next year, but the Note 5 era was important for a second reason.
The Galaxy S6 came in a larger screen “Plus” option.
We Note fans at the time probably didn’t see it, but this was the first generation of evidence to answer the Nerd Debate of years past. Was the Galaxy Note’s popularity built on the platform or was it simply the big screen?
For a broad collection of consumers, the big screen was the big selling point, and this idea accelerated after the failure of the Note 7. Exploding batteries, class action lawsuits, and Samsung’s high-profile PR recovery. As consumers replaced the cursed Note 7, the main replacements didn’t come from other manufacturers. Samsung replaced Notes with more Galaxy S series devices. That cemented the idea of the biggest Galaxy S phone as Samsung’s new crown jewel.
I’ve been poking around the Note 20 Ultra for a couple weeks…
It’s a solid productivity pocket computer. It’s powerful enough (even if it rarely outright wins many performance showdowns). It’s big. It’s bold. It has that signature feature of a built-in stylus silo. It’s peak “slab of glass”. I’m not sure we could make a phone more “Note” in 2020 than Samsung has with the Note 20 Ultra.
However, this phone’s reception has been a bit more mixed than in years past.
A combination of high price tag, and a lack of “WOW”, contributing to a more tepid response from online taste makers and tech influencers. Plenty of armchair tech “experts” waxing philosophical about the worth-it-ness of this phone. Does it JUSTIFY the high price?
It does. Period.
The frustrating aspect of reviewing and assessing a product like this, the Note seems to have become one of the most visible victims of Samsung’s own artificial hype machine.
Tech commentary as entertainment depends on novelty. YouTube tech reviewing exists as an embargo-week, tent pole, immediate knee jerk excitement machine. Once that high wears off, the topic is dead on YouTube’s platform. Samsung helped create that. Samsung helped fuel it. Now one of Samsung’s best products is suffering from it.
Because the Galaxy Fold 2 is a little better than the Fold 1.
What will better satisfy our thirst for novelty, and keep more eyes on YouTube longer?
The more refined productivity phone, which is more durable, more practical, and offers a wonderful WORK accessory which rewards the user for occupying BOTH hands?
-OR-
The MUCH more expensive, less practical, less durable, entertainment device that feels like almost TWO phones in your pocket, and swivels out to become an awkward square tablet with a fragile screen?
Yes. It’s neat that you can more easily put the Fold 2 down to watch a video on half the screen (LG fans could have told you about that for a lot less cash), but it’s not as solid an experience for real work on the go.
Where we acknowledge the Note has historically been mis-sold to many consumers…
Techies have a poor track record accounting for specialty hardware. If a phone has a standalone feature, uses different build materials, or exotic hardware, techies have proven to be terrible at judging how R&D costs are rolled into a product.
Now that the Note isn’t the crown jewel big-screen phone, the general sentiment shifts. Now we’re questioning the “value” of the Note. The Note impresses less when we can get other big screen phones, with the same processor, at significantly lower prices.
It shouldn’t be me pointing out how that kind of commentary misses the point.
A phone is more than a processor.
We’ve seen this play out far too often in tech commentary, and with almost gleefully toxic results. It’s not a great look for our community how frequently “enthusiasts” seem to enjoy a lack of competition, and how often we overlook consumers with different needs.
Techies have turned on specialty hardware and niche players. Cloaked in a commentary which SOUNDS like it’s trying to protect consumers from buying things they don’t need or want. No one should suffer “GIMMICKS”, but too frequently, positive recommendations line up more with devices that already prove popular on monetized platforms.
The nuance is evaporating.
Someone might pay more for a different form factor at the expense of some processing power. Someone might choose a different hardware feature for a specific kind of lifestyle use. Some gadgets are built to cater to a smaller demographic, and those devices deserve the proper consideration for their niche, instead of trying to force every conversation around this idea of the mythical “AVERAGE CONSUMER”.
Average Consumers Buy Average Phones
We can lay that to rest right now.
We never need to water down the review of an ultra-premium, workhorse, gaming, or content creation phone ever again. We don’t need to spell out this idea to “AVERAGE CONSUMERS”, because those consumers aren’t shopping specialty or premium devices. It’s lazy reviewing to pick up a phone with niche features and blabber on about protecting the concerns of a mainstream audience.
The only reason to continue reviewing with that conversation in mind is to ALWAYS appeal to the largest, most popular audience, which is better for your YouTube and search metrics, and is more profitable. You don’t make much money when you speak directly to the smaller groups of consumers that actually shop these niche devices. Panning specialty phones just because they aren’t as mainstream, you’ll always glow in the back-patting of the internet echo chamber “cool kids” lunch table.
Which brings us back to the Note.
The Note has always been a specialty device.
The Note enjoyed a surge of success early in its life as consumers started enjoying larger screens, but many early Note owners ignored the more advanced work features. It felt good to know you had a phone that existed on the bleeding edge of tech, but not many phone enthusiasts really drove those phones to their limits.
The industry adapted. More manufacturers released large screen devices. Samsung pushed more yearly innovation into the Galaxy S. The Note became a second half of the year offering, catching up to the Galaxy S, not blazing the new trail.
But the specialty nature of the Note remains. It’s an incredible engineering challenge balancing the demands of power users, keeping phone sizes somewhat in check, and sacrificing internal space for a hole in the phone to include a tiny little pen. That engineering and product development costs more.
If you’re complaining about the price/performance of the Note against other phones with the same processor, or phones that have slightly larger batteries, then you’ve completely missed the point. If you’re upset about Samsung not finding some magical WOW factor for the Note this year, then I have to assume you’re just not very good at tech.
If you’ve ever said anything as reductive as “It’s just a Galaxy S with an S-Pen”, I immediately know you have little to contribute to a broader tech discussion.
Blackberry keyboards cost more. Surface Duo hinges cost more. LG Quad DACs cost more. Samsung S-Pens cost more.
Specialty features cost more.
The Note 20 Ultra is an incredible productivity monster, but it is a specialty phone. There is nothing to justify. There is no controversy over whether this phone is “worth it”. Samsung does not need to impress or “wow” people who don’t value stylus support. It’s not for those people.
The Note just isn’t the novelty act anymore…
This is better for all the consumers who were over-buying on features or power they didn’t need.
The conversation surrounding the Note now pivots, and it’s a little more important to correctly identify WHO the Note is for. The Note becomes a higher profile brand name in a collection of devices that are purposely built to sit at the less popular kids lunch tables.
I really shouldn’t be the guy defending this phone, but make no mistake, the Note is the best at what the Note does. It will not get better than a Note.
However, this line no longer benefits from the automatic Samsung Sycophant recommendation. Consumers seem less impressed with the idea of “buy it because it’s the bestest”. It’s no longer the flashiest, most expensive, most outlandish phone release of Samsung’s line up. Now we actually need to use some critically thinking skills, and weigh the merits of a stylus against other compromises.
Now the Note properly joins the conversations we’ve been having about other specialty gadgets. IF the Note feature set is what you want, you will not find a better option.
Do you NEED what the Note has to offer?