11/03/2020

The archive contains older posts which may no longer reflect my current views.

# The Galaxy S20 Ultra is a beast of a phone. The screen is gorgeous and clear and bright, setting it to the 120Hz refresh rate really does make it feel a lot smoother and faster. The whole thing is snappy, especially when you start dialling back the animations.

It makes the Huawei Mate 20 Pro feel like a toy by comparison and that wasn't exactly a small device.

Everything about it is "ultra" except for the one thing which really should be: the camera setup. The reports from various reviewers are, sadly, true; there are definite issues with autofocus, particularly at shorter distances. Samsung have said they'll fix it with a software update and need to get it out soon. It's not in the same league as the Note 7 burning battery fiasco but to have the tent-pole feature on your flagship not live up to expectations is another reputational problem they can ill afford.

My wife is upset, very upset, with hers (she uses the cameras a lot more than I do) and annoyed that I convinced her to get one. She's this close (holds fingers up to indicate something very small) to returning it.

I've been doing a quick bit of testing and have been able to work round most of the issues by using different modes and zoom levels but obviously shouldn't have to and mucking about with options and manual zoom removes that element of spontaneity, the ability to point and shoot that we have become so used to on smartphones.

It's a real shame as the performance on longer shots is great, the cameras are obviously good quality just let down by software. It's almost as if Samsung spent so much time on getting the distance features sorted that they forgot the other end of the spectrum and tweaked things too far. They just need to dial it back a bit and get the balance right.

We've got 14 days within which to return them should we want, theres been one update already (the March security update) and talk of a second update which is supposed to target camera issues but that's only been seen in South Korea, so Samsung had better get their act together.

# The World Health Organisation has now officially declared Covid-19 a pandemic - it was only a matter of time.

There have been confirmed cases at work in other buildings (both London and New York) and were just waiting for it to hit ours. It's inevitable considering the overcrowded public transport network.

At the moment I'm supposed to be going to provide support at our large disaster recovery site next week but, at this rate, we could all end up working at home in the not too distant future.