Samsung’s Galaxy S20 Ultra might be the company’s top smartphone, but a performance leak for the upcoming Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Plus shows it could be the Android phone to beat.
While Samsung isn’t expected to launch two models of the Note 20 until later on in 2020, on Geekbench a Samsung device codenamed ‘SM-N986U’ has popped up. As the Note 10 Plus 5G used SM-N976U as its model number, logic dictates this new model number could refer to the Note 20 Plus.
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Flagged by Twitter user Ice Universe - a regular smartphone information leaker - the Geekbench entry for what is believed to be the Note 20 Plus shows it will come with an octa-core processor capable of running up to 3.9GHz.
The official name of the chip wasn’t mentioned beyond being tagged as ‘Kona’. But that’s the codename used internally by Qualcomm for its Snapdragon 865 series of chips.
Given the Geekbench listing shows the chip’s processor can top the 3GHz mark, thereby beating the 2.85GHz top speed of the Snapdragon 865’s ‘Gold’ performance core, we can hazard a fairly strong guess that this chip might be the Snapdragon 865+, a supercharged version of Qualcomm’s flagship chip.
In the Geekbench 5 test, this Kona chip pulled in a single-core score of 985 and managed to hit a score of 3,220 in the multi-core test, which outpaces the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra based on our testing.
Interestingly, the Geekbech listing showed the 5G-capable chip in the Note 20 Plus was partnered with 8GB of RAM, which is less than the 12GB the Note 10 and Galaxy S20 come with. But this listing is probably for a prototype of the Note 20 Plus, so we’d expect the final version to come with 12GB of RAM.
In real-world terms, this all means the Note 20 Plus is shaping up to be one of the most powerful Android phones around. The Galaxy S20 Ultra made light work of games, so we’d expect the next Note phone to easily chew through the most demanding mobile games and apps.
Before phone performance fans get too excited, it’s worth noting that Samsung uses the Snapdragon chip in the US and Chinese versions of its Galaxy phones; in the UK, Europe and other regions the company uses its own Exynos chips instead. These CPUs don’t tend to deliver quite the same results as the Snapdragon chips, but the Note 20 Plus will certainly have the best Exynos chip Samsung has.
From the leaks and rumors so far, we already have a good idea there'll be two versions of the Note 20, and both Note 20 phones should inherit the S20 Ultra’s quad-camera setup.
As such, when the Note 20 Plus arrives, likely sometime around August, it will be an expression of the very best Samsung can do in the smartphone world, with an improved 120HZ refresh-rate display, powerful performance, and cameras to take on the upcoming iPhone 12 and Google Pixel 5.
