Admittedly, the Note 20 Ultra can’t replicate full PC levels of performance (not even the fastest gaming phones can manage that), but it will easily let remote workers run Google Docs or uncomplicated Microsoft Office files. Samsung’s Dex feature allows you to plug your phone into a monitor and start working on a bigger screen. Plus, you can even use the Note 20 Ultra like a mini PC. You can also start taking notes, even if the phone is locked – handy if you’re caught in a pinch during a meeting or video call. The S Pen is smarter than ever, with new gesture controls that allow you to go back, go to the home screen, and more. The screen size lends itself brilliantly to use with the S Pen stylus, which is included in the phone’s now $999 price tag.
Compared to the Note 10 Plus that it replaces, the Note 20 Ultra’s screen has grown another 0.1 inches – making it a whopping 6.9 inches in total. With the Note 20 Ultra, Samsung has taken everything one step further.
Samsung’s Note series has always been aimed at business people looking to get stuff done while on the move.
It also seems more future-proofed, and crucially, it's no longer first-generation tech. However, the Z Fold 2 5G is inarguably the better cell phone – it has better cameras, it’s faster, and it has a larger battery. However, it manages to maintain the worst of both, and lacks the purity of vision that the Surface Duo benefits from. The foldable design wants to combine the best of a phone with the best of a tablet. It uses the Snapdragon 865+ processor with 12GB of RAM, and a choice of either 256GB or 512GB of storage. It’s a neat trick, but at the moment, there aren’t that many apps optimized to take advantage of the setup.Īs ever with Samsung’s flagships, the Z Fold 2 5G has power in abundance. You can even stand the phone up like a laptop, allowing you to use the bottom half of the folding display as a keyboard and the top half as a regular window.
You can then use the two apps side-by-side, or you can even stack two apps on one side of the screen, with a third on the opposing side.
Multitasking should be a breeze – simply swipe from the right-hand side, and a tray of suggested apps will appear. The large fold-out screen stands at 7.6-inches across the diagonal, making it perfect for working on documents. The tiny front screen has been enlarged, and Samsung is promising that the hinge is significantly more durable. Samsung’s big folding phone has entered its second generation, and looks significantly better than the original Galaxy Fold. With that being said, though, the cameras lack the refinement of phones that cost less than half the price – and it doesn’t support 5G, either. We also don’t know quite how durable the Surface Duo will be, either, though it should avoid most of the issues that have befallen other phones with folding screens.Īll told, if you’re after a device that will let you easily work from home (or even just away from the office), the Surface Duo is probably your best option. The Surface Duo is perilously expensive, starting at $1,399 for the base 128GB storage version.
You should also be heartened to hear that Microsoft has committed to ensuring the Surface Duo gets the next three versions of Android, starting with Android 11. It might be powered by last year’s Snapdragon 855 processor and 6GB of RAM, but the Surface Duo should still be able to power through everything you can reasonably expect of a mobile phone. It’s even compatible with the Surface Pen, which can make note-taking and annotating documents easier than ever. The Surface Duo swoops in to solve this problem by giving you two 5.6-inch screens, which stand at a whopping 8.1 inches when folded out.īeyond that, you also get the full complement of Windows apps pre-installed and fully optimized for the Surface Duo’s unique screen layout, meaning you have no excuses for slacking off outside the office. Perhaps the biggest hindrance to mobile productivity is not having two screens.