Friends+Design
- Solid build quality, with a balanced weight profile
- Feels comfortable to hold
- Pretty responsive fingerprint sensor on the back - it also has a good placement, allowing you to reach the sensor easily
- The front has modern, sharp looks with the water-drop notch and minimal bezels
- The plain plastic build on the rear feels a bit cheap in this segment - and Samsung could have at least gone with a better quality plastic here, perhaps with some sectional lamination like the Honor 10 Lite and Realme 2 Pro
- The rear panel is also a fingerprint and smudge magnet, and you will find yourself wiping it clean often during the day
- The design, therefore, is conflicting - as the M20 looks really premium on the front with that lovely waterdrop display - but the back feels like it belongs in a lower price segment
- Overall, the design isn't quite as premium as the Honor 10 Lite, Nokia 5.1 Plus or Realme 2 Pro
Display
- Excellent, sharp, vivid, 'Infinity-V' display, with a water-drop notch - Samsung has always impressed with its display panels and this display is no exception - it offers deep colours with good brightness levels and contrast - it is definitely one of the best displays you can get in this segment, giving the Realme 2 Pro's waterdrop display a run for its money
- Supports Widevine L1 standard, which means it is capable of delivering true HD quality videos on platforms like YouTube and Prime Video
Software
- Samsung Experience UI is now fairly clean and light, apart from being customizable - and well-optimised for the phone
- The entire lock screen is now an ad – Samsung has integrated an app called Glance that shows a different photo or promotional item each time you wake this phone from sleep - not only are the captions distracting, but they displace useful notifications - though, thankfully, this can be disabled
Performance
- Performance is pretty decent, and daily use is smooth, but the new Exynos 7904 chipset falls below the Snapdragon 636 (the main chipset in the competing phones) in terms of performance - so you will not get the same level of performance as say a Redmi Note 6 Pro
- The phone also gets slightly warm under stress
Camera
- The second camera on the rear (part of the dual rear camera setup) is an ultra wide-angle camera - with the secondary lens, you will be able to capture more area in a single frame - the camera app lets you switch between the standard field of view and an ultra wide field of view with a simple tap - offering you some useful versatility in framing shots
- Overall image quality though from the rear camera set is pretty average - colours reproduction isn't great as photos often look washed out - in comparison, the Redmi Note 6 Pro tends to offer more detail and more accurate colours in similar lighting conditions
- The M20's camera also does not offer the best dynamic range
- The rear cameras also suffer greatly in low-light - indoors, photos lack sharpness and detail and often come out soft and noisy
- The 8MP selfie camera is average too - it does a decent job at capturing colours and facial features, and it produces good selfie portraits, but it tends to blow out the background quite a bit
Audio
- The single speaker port on the bottom is average - the sound gets muffled especially on higher levels
Connectivity
- Uses the modern Type-C USB port - which is great to see in the segment
Battery
- Superb 2-day battery life, with a gigantic 5000mAh battery, makes the M20 a true road warrior
- Supports fast charging - it takes around two hours to charge the M20 from zero to 100 per cent, which is pretty decent for a phone that packs this large battery
Verdict
- Overall, Samsung shows a lot of potential in this price segment, after a long time, with the M20 - it presents a solid choice, especially for Samsung fans, and those that are looking for a particularly strong battery life
- Yet, it also leaves you wanting a bit more - the M20 lacks that attractive look and feel that phones like the Honor 10 Lite, Realme 2 Pro and Nokia 5.1 Plus bring to the segment - the performance is also not the best in the bucket, and cameras are just average - the M20 is therefore better than Samsung's previous attempts in the budget range, but perhaps still not quite good enough for users looking for the best value
