iPhone 11 vs Samsung Galaxy S20: which one is right for you?

(Image credit: Apple, Samsung)

The iPhone 11 against the Samsung Galaxy S20 is a battle many wonder about. Both phones are mid-range and mid-range phones from the most well-known high-end handset makers. If you're looking for a good balance between price and featured, both should be on your shortlist, so we're here to help you decide which one will get you your money's worth.

The iPhone 11 was released in 2019, with the iPhone 12 taking its place as Apple's mid-range 2020 phone with the newest features - but the iPhone 11 received a price drop and some great additional discounts among best.

iPhone 11 deals

means it's still a really tempting phone.

The Samsung Galaxy S20 is newer than the iPhone 11, having been released in early 2020. It includes a fuller spec list in many key areas – including 5G, which the iPhone 11 lacks – but comes with a correspondingly higher price.

Both rank among the

best smartphones

available today, especially if you want to spend less than the actual cost of flagship phones, but don't want to sacrifice too many features. We'll dig into all their differences and help you figure out which phone best suits your priorities.

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iPhone 11 vs. Samsung Galaxy S20: Design

The iPhone 11 is all curvaceous

(Image credit: Apple)

The iPhone 11 follows Apple's recent design language - all curves. It has a mostly edge-to-edge display, with a notch at the top for Face ID, and comes in red, green, purple, yellow, black and white.

Around the screen is a black border, with the aluminum edge of the phone visible around it, in the color of your choice. The back is glossy glass, with a raised square for the dual camera lenses.

The Samsung Galaxy S20 has a look that's both more pushed and a bit more anonymous. The screen is even more edge-to-edge, with only a burst of body around the edges. The front camera is just a circle cut out of the screen near the middle at the top. It definitely looks like it's from the near future, but since it's a little less recognizable in appearance, it looks a lot like many Android rivals.

The S20 also has a glass back, although the colors blend slightly better with the metal frame on the sides - on the iPhone the glass back and metal sides both have a color theme, but are intentionally a little different, because the glass is glossy and the aluminum is matt.

The S20 has a raised rectangular section on the back for its triple camera system. The Samsung S20 comes in Grey, Blue and Pink finishes.

iPhone 11 vs Samsung Galaxy S20: Display

The Samsung screen has a higher resolution

(Image credit: Samsung)

There's a huge difference in screen technology here, and it's generally in Samsung's favour.

The Samsung Galaxy S20 has a 6.2-inch OLED display with a resolution of 3400x1440. It also supports a 120Hz refresh rate, although you have to lower the resolution if you enable it, otherwise it remains at 60Hz.

The iPhone 11 has a 6.1-inch LCD screen with a resolution of 1792x828, with only support for a 60Hz refresh rate.

OLED screens have self-emitting pixels, which means they generate their own light, unlike LCD screens, which require a separate backlight from the LEDs behind them. This means OLED screens have better control over levels of brightness and can produce much deeper blacks, which is especially great for movies and photos. It's clearly noticeable here, especially with the S20 supporting HDR video playback, which the iPhone doesn't. not.

The S20 screen also has a much, much higher resolution – it has almost four times the number of pixels in roughly the same amount of space, which makes it massively sharper. Its screen has 563 pixels per inch, compared to 326 ppi for iPhone.

Now 563ppi is really overkill - phones don't need to be

this

detailed to still have smaller pixels than the eye can discern. However, the iPhone's 326 ppi is a little too low that you'll never notice the pixel structure, so there's a real benefit to get the higher resolution from the Samsung.

120Hz support is really nice, but it's more of a bonus than an essential. It makes animations smoother and is useful in games to make them react faster, but its uses are more about feel than big practical benefits. It's also a big battery pig, which is why it's optional - it can easily reduce battery life by 10%.

The iPhone 11 has a killer feature – Apple's True Tone technology

(Image credit: Apple)

Both phones support the P3 wide color gamut and both offer impressive accuracy.

There's nothing wrong with the iPhone 11 screen, but there's no denying that the S20 is superior in almost every way.

The only downsides are that OLED screens fade quickly when you look at them off the angle (but you're usually looking at phones directly, so that's not really an issue) and that OLED screens have dim images that cause them to burn if you tend to have the same things on them all the time, for example if you use your phone as a clock display at work or similar.

For most people, this isn't much of a problem - it usually takes years to manifest visibly, and will only occur to such a degree in specific cases.

But there's an extra feather in the iPhone 11's cap. Its display includes Apple's True Tone technology, which changes the screen's white balance to match the ambient light in the room in which you are, so that the white on the screen looks more like a white piece of paper in real life.

It's so much easier on the eyes and makes reading on the phone so much more enjoyable If you try it it's very hard to go back - but if you want to make sure the colors are accurate you end up turn off sometimes.

iPhone 11 vs Samsung Galaxy S20: Battery life

The iPhone 11 outstrips the Samsung here, likely thanks to its lower resolution screen and highly efficient Apple-made processor. Exact battery life will depend on all sorts of factors - including screen brightness , how often you use intense apps, and whether or not you're using 5G (we'll get to that shortly) - but the iPhone 11 tends to offer somewhere between 10 percent and 20 percent more longevity.

Both phones should be able to last you a full day of regular use, but the iPhone 11 is more likely to have more, to keep you going through a particularly draining day on the battery, or to survive two days of use. light use. when you really need it. It just gives you more flexibility.

However, while both phones support fast charging from high power adapters, the Samsung S20 comes with a 25W unit in the box and the iPhone 11 only comes with a 25W unit. 5W. You can buy a 20W adapter for faster iPhone charging, but Samsung's default still beats that – and Samsung supports up to 45W, for incredibly fast charging. , although the iPhone lasts longer away from a cable, it is easier to quickly charge the Samsung - you can get a lot of charge in a short time.

Both phones support wireless charging, including faster modes (7.5W on iPhone, 15W on Samsung), but only Samsung supports reverse wireless charging, so you can charge (for example) a pair of wireless headphones or a colleague's phone from your own in a pinch. This is a nice feature to have, but we don't think it's essential.

iPhone 11 vs. Samsung Galaxy S20: Features

The S20 can use its USB-C port for Samsung's DeX feature

(Image credit: Samsung)

We just mentioned USB-C on the Samsung S20 and Lightning on the iPhone 11. There's a bit more Samsung-friendliness here, as it means you can connect USB-C accessories to use on the phone. .This can be useful with external storage for your files and photos, for example, or even for attaching a real microphone for recording sound.

You can actually connect some USB accessories to iPhones using an adapter for the Lightning port, but that of course adds more adapters to your bag.

The S20 can also use its USB-C port for Samsung's DeX feature, which turns the phone into a tiny desktop computer – you plug it in and it can power a display, with keyboard and mouse support. We've always liked the promise of this (your computer and files travel everywhere with you), but you're limited to certain apps that work well in DeX mode. It's fine for document work, but not really useful in a creative context beyond writing blueprints or spreadsheets.

None of these phones have a 3.5mm headphone jack. Either way, you'll need an adapter if you want to use headphones with a standard wired connection. There are headphones with USB-C or Lightning plugs that plug directly into them, but they usually don't have tend to be headphones like musicians.

The really big feature offered by the Samsung S20 that the iPhone 11 doesn't offer is 5G. You can get the S20 with or without 5G (although it's only 5G in the US), so if that's not something you're interested in, you can save some money.

5G delivers some truly amazing speeds, and if you're spending a lot of time in an area where it's active, it could be essential for you. slower than expected.

If you're planning on having this phone for a few years and want to make sure it's future-proof, it's a good option that only the S20 offers here. For an iPhone with 5G, you'll have to step up iPhone 12.

If you think it's unlikely you'll be able or need to take advantage of 5G speeds, then it's not such a loss on the iPhone (or the S20 version without).

iPhone 11 vs. Samsung Galaxy S20: Software

There are obvious software differences

(Image credit: Apple)

One obvious difference here: the iPhone 11 runs iOS 14, while the Samsung Galaxy S20 runs Android with Samsung's One UI customization.

We're not going to get into the philosophical merits of either version here, or subjective feature or interface preferences - just the more practical things for creatives.

There are plenty of big name services available on both platforms with good consistent apps – from Microsoft to Evernote to Google apps and Slack etc. There is little choice between them there.

However, the Apple App Store tends to be better for higher quality creative apps or other niche apps. We say "tends to be" because again, it depends exactly on your needs and the kind of thing you want to do.

But apps like LumaFusion for video editing, or Pixelmator for image editing, are exclusive to the App Store, and there's nothing as advanced as either of these. these options on Android, to give two examples. There are powerful niche apps on both, such as FiLMiC Pro, but they are rarer.

Apple's platform is better for security, as it's more reliable for updates. (Android is also more susceptible to malware, but that's not really a widespread problem, and we'll assume you reasonable not to install apps downloaded from random sites).

Apple supports its phones for years with both extra features (which are obviously much appreciated) but also security updates to fix browser or operating system issues - and those updates arrive on all phones at the same time.

Android phones in general are less reliable at knowing when updates are coming, and don't guarantee as long of an update life as Apple. Samsung's policy is that you'll get two major system updates Android operating system and monthly security updates for the S20.

But keep in mind that Apple currently offers all of its updates up to the iPhone 6S, released in 2015 (and those updates will continue into 2021).

So while it's obviously fair to choose Android because you prefer it, if longevity and security are a concern, Apple has the edge.

iPhone 11 vs. Samsung Galaxy S20: Camera

iPhone 11 vs Samsung Galaxy S20: iPhone 11's camera is dual-lens

(Image credit: Apple)

The iPhone 11 offers a dual-lens camera, with a wide-angle lens (i.e. the phone's 'normal' camera lens) and an ultra-wide lens, which offers zoom 0.5x (and a 120° field of view) compared to wide angle.

The wide-angle lens is f/1.8 with a 12 MP sensor, while the ultra-wide is f/2.4 also with a 12 MP sensor. There's a software-driven Portrait mode, one of the best Night modes on the market for taking great photos in low light, optical stabilization (on the wide angle only) and Apple's Smart HDR and Deep Fusion systems for merging several photos into one. best photo automatically.

The front camera is an f/2.2 lens with a 12MP sensor, and also includes Portrait mode, this time with 3D depth sensing thanks to Face ID facial recognition technology.

For video, the iPhone 11 does 4K up to 60 fps. Apple's image stabilization for video is incredible when handheld - not far off what high-end action cameras can do. range.

There are obvious differences in the software

(Image credit: Samsung)

The Samsung S20 has a triple-lens rear camera system, including an f/1.8 wide-angle with a 12MP sensor; an f/2.0 3x telephoto with a 64MP sensor; and an f/2.2 ultra-wide lens with a 12MP sensor. 12MP. The front camera is an f/2.2 lens with 10MP sensor.

The high resolution of the zoom lens means that the phone can offer up to 30x total zoom when you factor in digital zoom, although you'll reduce the quality significantly at this point.

You also get optical image stabilization, Portrait mode and low-light mode, and there's both 4K video recording and 8K video recording at 24 frames per second.

Generally speaking, the camera quality of the iPhone 11 is slightly better than the Samsung S20, although the difference isn't huge. Samsung's images are often a little too saturated and too sharp, which can be aesthetically pleasing (especially for sharing online), but isn't as natural overall. if you wish it.

However, the Samsung has the most flexible camera system, including that zoom lens (8K recording is just a boast at this point, not exactly a useful feature for most people).

We think most creative users will prefer the photos taken by the iPhone 11, but choosing the extra options Samsung gives you is entirely understandable.

iPhone 11 vs. Samsung Galaxy S20: Performance

The Apple A13 Bionic processor in the iPhone 11 was the fastest phone chip in the world and was only surpassed by...the Apple A14 in the iPhone 12. The performance of the iPhone 11 is without equal - it can edit 4K video with ease, open apps instantly, and generally handle anything you throw at it.

But the Samsung - which has a Qualcomm processor in some countries and Samsung's own Exynos in others - is no slouch. It's also smooth and fast, and has 12GB of RAM (8GB in the version 4G) to ensure it can handle everything you want to do with apps and multitasking.

iPhone 11 vs. Samsung Galaxy S20: Price

The iPhone 11 received an official price drop when the iPhone 12 launched and replaced it as the latest and greatest non-business iPhone. The iPhone 11 starts at $599 / £599 / AU$999 with 64GB of storage, or you can upgrade to 128GB for $649 / £649 / AU$1,079, or 256GB for $749 / £749 / AU$1,249.

The Samsung Galaxy S20 only comes in one storage size: 128GB. The official price is £799 / AU$1,349 for the 4G version (it's not available in the US), or of $999 / £899 / AU$1,499 for the 5G version. However, you won't really need to pay those prices - after a while on the market, and with all the deals going on, it's still less than that now.

You can expand the S20's storage capacity using a microSD card – that's not the case with the iPhone 12, which is fixed at the amount you buy.

iPhone 11 vs. Samsung Galaxy S20: Conclusion

Which one is for you?

(Image credit: Apple, Samsung)

This decision here really comes down to price. Both are high quality phones that offer good performance and specs for their price. Under normal circumstances, the iPhone 11 is significantly cheaper than the Samsung S20, and so if you're budgeting more at this level, then it's a great choice - you get a very sharp screen, plenty of performance and great durability for security. and features. You can also choose the iPhone if camera accuracy is a priority for you, or if battery capacity away from a charger is vital.

However, if money isn't an issue, or if you find the S20 for the same price as the iPhone 11, then the benefits of screen, 5G and storage capacity will make it the winner. most tempting option for many people - the screen in particular, because it's the biggest way to interact with the phone, and it's a major upgrade on the Samsung.

The final decider may simply be Apple's platform versus Android - if you're deep into either ecosystem then it's certainly easier to stick with what you already like. As we mentioned, Apple tends to be better at long-term updates and timely security updates.

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