Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra 5G (S&D) (Open Box)

I don't use face recognition so I can't say how well it works, but for the first week at any rate, the on-screen fingerprint reader has been amazingly easy to use. I don't use my phone super heavy and it's not uncommon to have 70% or more battery when I put it on the wireless charger at night, and it's *significantly* less picky about placement on the wireless charger than the old phone (note 8). The car has wireless charging and it's also much better charging there; the old one would often not be in the right place and not get any electrons, where this never fails to juice up. I got the Note 20 because it's the last Note (currently) that has an SD card slot; I'm absolutely against some company gouging me hundreds of dollars extra for a 256GB phone when a 512GB SD card is under 50 bucks. The drawback to that is this phone came with pretty much nothing at all but a charging cable, which isn't really adding any value. It took me some time to find a way to get the SD card slot open, without their custom tool, because on this phone at least the hole is waaayyyy too small for a paper clip. I finally unwound the spring from an ink pen, which was small enough and stiff enough to release it. Seriously leave out the cable that probably everyone in the world has by now and put that tool in! It's needed for the SIM even without an SD card. Speaking of SIM, moving my line to this phone was trivially simple. The phone was apparently on T-Mobile previouisly and I'm on Verizon, and everything worked flawlessly right from the phone. Put the SIM in, turned it on, and followed the instructions. Done. I got a Note because, well, I've been a Note fanboy since the 4, when my old Droid with the hardware keyboard gave up the ghost, because of the S-Pen. It's not something I use every day, but when I do use it, there is literally no alternative that works like the S-Pen. If Samsung ever stops putting that on their phone I'll probably move on to something more affordable. This is my first ever refurb, and this one at least is exactly what one would hope; it physically indistinguishable from a brand new phone. Even close observation in the light reveals no scratches or blemishes, it hasn't crashed or exhibited any wonky behaviour (knocks on head), and it's significantly snappier than the old one. That's not just because it has more resources, I think it's because the UI has been tweaked. For example when scrolling a long list this phone's "inertia", how long it scrolls untouched after a flick up or down, is much higher than the old phone, so it's considerably faster to browse by scrolling. I'm sure other improvements have been made as well, and together they translate into a much more responsive feel. The OS itself is similar to the Note 8, really, but it has even more bloat and unremovable cruft in it. For exampe there's "AR" functionality now, but even though I have nothing AR, and if I do it's highly unlikely I'll use this phone in conjunction with it. There's an "AR Zone" that can't be disabled, can't be removed, can't be told not to nag me with notifications, can't be managed in the slightest. Seriously Samsung, get off your high horse. You don't know what I want my phone to do; fine if you want to have that enabled by default, why do I care? But can't disable it or remove all the massively huge list of permissions? Want to rub some salt in there for me? It's also considerably more in-your-face nagging about things; like I haven't figured out how to get it to stop nagging me to save passwords for web sites, as if the last fifteen times I'd change my mind. Stuff like that isn't helpful, it's obtuse and rude. Migration was a PitA, but that's normal, so I mention it anecdotally. Samsung's "Smart Switch" does make it less than heinously atrocious, but "Everything" isn't (everything), and it still took me days to get all my appointments and other things loaded in. Once I find my browser bookmarks and get them in I'll finally be done. Least favorite part of getting a new phone is setting the @*&#% up. I can back up and restore a computer with trivial ease but no phone maker yet is smart enough to do that with a phone. Pathetic. I considered only four stars because of the missing SD card tool. Not sure how many folks would be able to figure out how to open it with the hole being about 2/3 the diameter of a paper clip, which is by the way what Verizon recommends using if one can't find the tool. I have no straight pins so I don't know if they work, but if I did I'd still want to file the point off to be sure I didn't damage anything. But overall a VERY happy camper. If you like Android it's likely you'll be satisfied with this phone, and if you've never had an S-pen you'll probably be hooked. lol