Not according to Steve: he decided what the market *needs*. Fortunately, he doesn't run the company any more. Along with a host of other decisions made by other 'markets', there is an endless supply of brain dead lemmings.
What the hell are you talking about? Democracy is in no way synonymous with the "free market".
And as you well know, the market doesn't demand anything, people don't know what they want until you show/tell them. Don't blame consumers for Samsung and other companies making crap phones.
This phone is classic example of designed for obsolescence approach. they got the number of cameras and zoom ranges right but the camera sensors completely wrong. Wide angle cannot be less than 24mp but they chose 12.. main camera should not go beyond 48mp if you have 3x zoom too , so what's the point of 108mp? 3x zoom can't be less than 48mp I but they gave 12mp. these are just bad sensor choices making the phones obsolete within months if not already because these are artificially limited in thru our uses,. then removal of sdcard for a camera focused phone . I hate manufacturers who play this game of designed obsolescence.
Just saying, when i use a case its just for drop protection. If it protects from scratches or prevents other stuff getting scratched, then is that bad? Wjats with the 'already have' thing?
The camera will switch over to the ultra-wide angle for close-up macro shots since it now has auto-focus drive. I can't tell any difference in the main module.
So one can't shoot closeups with the 10x (240mm FF equivalent) telephoto? I do most of my almost macro work with 200-800mm FF equivalent lenses. Shooting up close with wide angle lenses is useless for wildflowers and most insects like butterflies. Either the critters are scared away, the image is ruined with shadows or the flowers are trampled in order to get close enough.
While I haven't used it on an S20/21 or Ultra, maybe the Open Camera app will give you more control over the camera selection and exposure? Andrei, I know you (have to) test any Smartphone's camera with the manufacturer's own software, but I often wonder if Open Camera or a similar 3rd party software isn't better at using a given device's hardware capabilities? Might be worth an article down the road.
" I think what Samsung should do in the future is create four models of the S series, three being the same as the current line-up but renaming the Ultra to Ultra+ ”
...urgh, no thanks! Why can't we drop those monikers, don't have different variants, drop all these storage options, have only flagships, clean up the lineup like: Samsung 22-S, Samsung 22-M, Samsung 22-L, Samsung 22-XL.
It might be true for an actual camera, but you can go much closer and nearer to subject if you use ultrawide on a smartphone camera compared to telephoto.
I feel like overall, although the devices have some flaws (no SD Card, IR Blaster, and MST are the big ones), the S21 Ultra represents as step in the right direction.
The 100x zoom is still a gimmick, but the 3x and 10x cameras are decent. I bought the 512 GB and so far it's been pretty good. With these updates, I'd be more willing to consider Samsung over the competition, unless of course they step up their game.
The camera island on the S21 is brilliant in its design. Much like on the S21 Ultra, this is an aluminium cover that protects individual recessed glass elements for the three main camera modules. Samsung harmonised the camera design between the S21 and S21+ by dropping the ToF sensor from the latter in comparison to the S20+ - which is fine by me as frankly I never really used it even though it was my daily driver for the past year.
I am assuming system wide dark theme was not turned on during battery life test. So by how much roughly will the battery life improve if dark mode is turned on?
I mostly like my S21 Ultra a lot, but I still hate a lot about the software. Even as OneUI has improved greatly over the years, there's some really stupid stuff here or there. Like I should be able to disable or uninstall Samsung's duplicate apps (calendar, contacts, clock, etc.) without adb. But that's fine, there's a workaround for that, so that's just annoying.
What really annoys me that I can't work around as far as I'm aware is that I can't disable half of the unnecessary notifications that Samsung gives me. Like constant notifications when my Bluetooth headset battery is low (and if I swipe them away they come right back for each percent lost). Or a notification for do not disturb being on (even though DND is in my quick settings). Or a notification that I need to unlock my phone after a reboot to see more notifications. Android has settings to turn notifications off, but Samsung doesn't let me flip the switch on ones they think I need to be forced to see.
And other than that, I dislike the scoped storage issues with Google Photos, and the fact I can't set Samsung's camera app to go directly to Google Photos instead of their inadequate Gallery app. And I'm slightly disappointed that the S21 removed ANT+ support. And I hate that I can't set the power/side button to the devices menu like I did with my Pixel 4XL. But I worked around that with sideActions set to go directly to SmartThings instead.
But still, overall I really like it. It's faster than my Pixel 4XL, has a better camera (though I continue to dislike Samsung's post-processing in general, it sometimes smears things), I missed having the capability to use the S-pen compared to my even older Note8, and the fingerprint reader over face scanning is a huge bonus in the Covid era.
I just really don't get why Samsung wastes their time on duplicate apps nobody wants, or why they prevent the user from actually taking control over their experience. Oh well. At least there's workarounds for most of it.
They messed up the split screen multitasking imo. It's still has the advantage of keyboard pop not bumping the top half off the screen, but swiping home now minamises BOTH screens , where it should normally only minimise the active screen
Yeah, they really f*cked up with the screens. Less than 400 PPI in an S-series? My last Sammy was an S6 Edge, and that f*cking thing had a 577 PPI screen.
Sure, younger me couldn't really tell the difference to a good 1080p 5-incher, but it simply doesn't make sense to decrease the resolution *after* display sizes have increased so much that the sharpness of QHD is actually noticeable to the average user.
Glad they added back a flat screen option, I've always despised curved displays (I didn't buy that S6 Edge, it was handed down). But all in all, it sounds more like an A92+ than an S21.
To make things worse, it's a pentile/non-full-rgb matrix, so it's going to look worse than a 1080p LCD of the same size. Why pay $1000 when you can get a QHD 120Hz in the Mi 11 for a couple hundred less?
I saw USCC now has unlimited plans that were cheaper than the plan I was on. The wife went in to switch our lines over and came back with an S21 basic for me to place my S7. At $13/m over a 30 month contract, we will only be paying $400 for the phone.
My last plan was technically unlimited, but only in the sense that going over 2GB would drop me into 3G speeds with no overage. But now with truly unlimited, I no longer have artificial caps on speed, only have to compete with congestion. For an extra $10/m, I could get 25GB of "high priority" data, and $20/m extra, 50GB. I'm fine with best effort and no artificial limits.
- Design, the back camera metal to glass camera island is hard to repair, how do you even do it, meaning once the battery is busted, you cannot do a DIY easily on these phones at all. It makes them harder than iPhones, which have Glass glued onto the back panel making them have official repair being expensive than a display.
- No 3.5mm jack, No SD card slot. More features removed and they are True Flagship ?
- No more charger shipped in the box copying Apple.
- Display resolutions reduced hard. $1000 for a 1080P grade display, it's pure rip off. Worse than Apple.
- S21 base edition has plastic back, really horrible.
AT won't even mention anything, but all praise. Shame. This is what the computing looks like now, a disposable tech product which is useful nly for social media bs. What about the filesystem issues, never mentioned at all. Scoped Storage kills NAND performance HARD, it's a known fact and no acknowledgement of that all. Another year another new shiny product just spend more $1000 money because it looks amazing !! Just like all Youtubers out there.
People say it's for nature and environment, but nope it doesn't matter just buy new shiny product every year regardless of the drop in the features on HW and SW.
Hi Andrei, thanks for your brilliant review. However, please take note, that all of the first 10x zoom shot on the exynos are a total anomaly! the phone takes, much, much much better photos at 10x, it looks like the shot are not take by the 10x camera, check out the EXIF please, it does not state f/4.9.
I talk about the exynos version. The S21U I didn't check because it looked good, but i noticed immediately that the 10x exynos are not even close to what they should be.
Yes.... the S21U (E) 10x shots are all are all looking great and are on the correct module...I don't know what you're seeing, maybe you're confusing it with the S21 (E) which is the regular non-Ultra phone.
> Design, the back camera metal to glass camera island is hard to repair, how do you even do it, meaning once the battery is busted, you cannot do a DIY easily on these phones at all.
You can remove and replace that part easily, along with the whole back cover, as well as a battery replacement, the same as any other phone we've had since removable batteries had been retired.
I've covered the SD card, 1080p, and the plastic (which is absolutely fine). The charger I didn't mention because I don't consider it very important. Scoped storage doesn't affect performance in everyday usage and I did not notice it at all.
Okay I checked Teardown and yes you are correct. I was thinking Metal frame of camera island is a part of the phone frame.
Absolutely fine ? not even Apple does it for $400 USD priced entry level iPhone SE, they have a glass back with AL frame. This is extreme cost cutting from Samsung and shameless. Since iPhone moved plastic backs a long time back. Why it is okay in the $800+ price tag territory, they will creak badly after time and with heated gaming sessions and all that expansion and contraction they will wear out.
Again for such price tag the charger needs to be packed in the box. A 100% unoriginal idea from Apple should not be excused but at-least should be covered from your publication when you called out 3.5mm jack for S20 reviews which no one even cared to mention.
Yeah it doesn't but that Scoped Storage has huge issues, the Issuetracker is filled with developer complaints and Commonsware blog listed out so many issues. And here's Dolphin Emulator developers saying the huge performance impact.
When you have a significant advantage on Journalism you should use that to show to the world on these, Camera comparisons are great but you know who read these ? only people who visit AT and they are too common, not saying should not do them but AT is a tech focus site and if you guys do it some other blogs might pick them up & most important of all, Google and Samsung might as well notice.
Yeah it doesn't even matter if you cover or not now, because it's been there since 2 Android iterations already and Google is decided to yank the Filesystem.
Yes, reviews on Anandtech have become a marketing place. And it seems Android is going the Apple way. We need a new system. Andrei should stop being so defensive and become more objective.
Can you comment about black clipping at minimum brightness? Back when you were testing s10 you would show minimum brightness graphs i really miss those they were important for me.
Black clipping on the S21U occurs at 7% levels at minimum brightness after which it has accurate gamma, it's a bit better than the S10 but still not great. On the S21 it clips at 7% as well, but has garbage high gamma up until around 13% after which it is fine. I'll add the graphs tomorrow.
Upon further inspecting of all photos, i have noticed the bad blurry, grain and out of focus early firmware characteristic, i can confirm that nothing of that edge blurriness, lack of sharpness and softness is not present in AUB9. The 10x zoom shots are stunning, and the night shots without night mode are also very much improved.
I say as much in the review that there are firmware updates. Unfortunately I can't delay testing arbitrarily in hope that Samsung updates their camera software, nor am I going to redo the testing for a given review.
If Samsung has improved the camera, that's great, and I'll cover that in the next round-up.
While I respect Anandtech, a majority of professional (smartphone only) reviewers disagree with your assessment of the Ultra 21 and in my experience I can second their very positive experiences with the camera and the rest of the phone's refinements. Especially compared to the S20 Ultra.
The prices keep skyrocketing so the used market is holding fast. Oneplus 5-6 phones are still expensive. A phone with old motherboard, battery, USB port, etc.. no thanks.
First time I skipped the galaxy s phones, the downgrades are just unacceptable. Since the s7 i used the sdcard for extra storage, now without an sdcard the 256gb that's on the s21 just isn't enough, why isn't there a 512gb option on the s21? The base s10 had a 1tb option and I had the 512gb myself, makes no sense 🤷🏼♂️
So s21/s21+ > s21u for camera experience and s888 > e2100 for image quality. This strongly implies that the s21/s21+ with s888 would offer the best overall camera implementation of all the variants, but unfortunately this combination isn't featured in the article.
Any hope of adding some shots from a s21/s21+ with s888 to the comparison?
To me the s888 ultra shots all looked notably better (sharper, better shadow / mid / highlight detail, improved lens correction) with the occasional exception of better highlight detail when the e2100 chose a darker exposure and the one shot where the s21u s888 wasn't in focus. The grass / foliage processing on the e2100 is particularly terrible so it could just be that the scenes you chose exaggerated the e2100's weak spots.
It looks like samsung used the stock qualcomm image processing stack for s888 models and is testing beta internal software on the e2100 ones.
I enjoy your excellent commentary on the computational photography capabilities of phone camera systems in your phone reviews. Have you considered including supplementary commentary from someone who has done dslr / lens reviews though to add a more photographer centric perspective though?
Uh pretty much from the first sample the Exynos was doing better, far better texture, though the SD caught up in a few subsequent samples, so this generation I say the processing is too close to call. Generally the SD variants had a better track record though.
Can anyone confirm whether the S21 with the Snapdragon has dual frequency GPS? Sorry if I missed it in the article. Dual frequency GPS is supposed to yield a huge accuracy boost, and maybe time to positioning too.
All the benchmark graphs are missing the S21, but Andrei is talking as though they include the S21. The graphs only show variations of the S21 Ultra, not the regular S21. Can we get the S21 results included?
Does Arm plan to succeed the A55 low power cores with a credible upgrade? Experts here have talked about this before, how the A55 is hopelessly outclassed by several generations of Apple low power counterparts at this point. Why have they iterated the A7x cores but not the A5x?
Does anyone have insight into why Samsung's SoCs are so bad? It doesn't make sense for a company that owns the fabs, gets to develop the process nodes, and design the SoCs to be so far behind, spanning maybe a decade now. Is there no advantage, no synergies or co-optimization opportunities, in such complete vertical integration? It's supposed to be an advantage for Apple to design its own SoCs and cores. Why is it not an advantage for Samsung to do that and to*also* have the fabs and node development? Is there a talent issue? I wonder if maybe there just aren't enough engineers operating at the necessary level of skill to populate all these companies. The actual human cognitive science of how these teams do what they do is a black box, and apparently TSMC and Apple are able to do things that Samsung, Intel, and GF are not, and the difference is surprising.
Until we can see the results of the raw images processed in something like Lightroom, we won't really know what we can get from this system. The smaller the sensor, as a general rule, the greater the improvement from raw shooting. But as far as I can tell, nobody has published a raw sample library and I search every day.
Again, Huawei's Kirin 9000 knocks it out of the park. A better chip all-round. Samsung's 5nm is not even as good or roughly on par with TSMCs 7nm. Getting an SD870 looks like a better deal this year, but if Huawei manage to produce a $800 Kirin 9000 device that would be the best of the best. I am amazed how their massive GPU doesn't throttle as much as both Adreno 660 and MP14 in the E2100.
The guy wasn't paying attention. The Adreno throttled far more than it was supposed to with the whole SoC settling down at 3W when it should have nearly 5W to use. And in several benchmarks the Kirin wasn't that fast either, so he's completely confused. And yes slow and wide has always been better but that only applies to the Mali comparison.
underwhelming. on the system performance page we can clearly see the s20 ultra w/ sd 865 being barely slower and you say the performance is outstanding. Sure, it is outstanding, but it isn't an improvement over the last gen. Battery life, again, similar. the only improvement is the gpu and the display efficiency.
Have the S21, previously the S20+. Far prefer the S21, flat screen...it's in a case so makes no difference. Screen res, well since the S20+ required you to go FHD to use 120Hz then it makes very little difference and I use it a lot every day. Fingerprint reader is waaaaaaaaay better, like orders of magnitude better. The S20+ was awful for the delay in recognising your print, much faster on the S21. The S21 just feels faster overall as well. Perfectly happy especially since Samsung did a very good trade-in on the S20+, plus selling the free tag and phones meant it cost very little overall.
Thanks Andrei for the review. Just one fly in the "currently on sale in the US" for the S21 Ultra: yes, that's correct, but only the 128 GB storage version is on sale, the others are "out of stock". And, absent an option for expandable storage, I wouldn't buy a premium phone with less than 256 GB. Videos and photos eat storage.
Excellent review, as usual, Andrei. I was hoping to see a few video samples as well. I've found, by looking at other online samples, that there are significant differences in low light video processing between the SD888 and the Exynos 2100, I was wondering if you found similar results in your tests. Cheers!
Note that the actual price can be well below half of MSRP if you buy directly from Samsung and trade in an older phone.
I'm paying $285 instead of $849 for the S21 256 GB model. I'm trading in a Galaxy S10E. I feel like the S21 is a steal for $285.
Also, Samsung is on Rakuten with 10% off, so I'm getting $28.50 back. So now we're down to $256.50.
I'm getting a "$100 Samsung credit" as well, but I haven't looked into that. I guess it's for the Samsung store? Maybe I can get some earbuds or something.
I'm not clear on their statement math, but the bottom line is that I got the phone for just over $250. (I think they assessed sales tax on the full list price of the phone though – I'm not sure if that's normal or locale-specific.)
no headphone jack = no buy, it's an open and obvious conspiracy to make billions in revenue from crappy wireless headphones.
no front speakers = no buy, I don't care if most people don't notice the difference, how the hell can you purposefully make subpar products for ~14 years straight? Front stereo speakers are obviously superior, you can listen to youtube in landscape mode or use a small kickstand, you can use the phone with a gamepad, and get full sound without having to mess with bluetooth, headphones, or the crappy sidefiring speaker which isn't even close, stop making excuses.
Also, all phones should be 100% rated for underwater use. Obviously the battery should be replaceable when it starts to degrade. Again, it doesn't benefit a manufacturer to make an indestructible phone. But it would be a great idea for any company with low market share.
Android royally sucks. We're ~14 years in or something now, SoCs have increased in power and have 12GB RAM, but they still can't do the very basics of what I could do with Windows 98SE or 2000, namely, have multiple windows open/loaded into RAM and switch between them instantly. Press alt-tab on your computer a few times and tell me how long that takes. Compare that to phone "app switching" and phone "keyboard lag". The OS and apps are poorly written, there is no excuse for that. Removing features, garbage obfuscated slow UI. Crap.
Of course this is just the beginning. Every single day, humanity just makes excuses for mediocrity and ends up getting screwed by billion-dollar companies. At least if I'm going to have a $1000 brainwashing/tracking device, I want it to be designed properly. And yes, I could do better on all accounts. There's a giant hole in the market for an... ACTUAL GOOD PHONE.
Mass market just mindlessley consumes. Remember that Android had Windows like Filesystem which was the most powerful feature ever on smartphone. Google killed it in the name of Security. Esp all the images that you download on these latest Android 10+ phones, you cannot see any image or file under fileexplorer because its in the app own folder and once you uninstall all of it is wiped clean. It's ultimate kick in the gut for Android. On top no MicroSD card.
But it's all great, because it looks good ? not to me anyways with that ugly screen hole and bump of camera module. It's great because it's the trend nowadays. These stupid smartphones are ruining more than anything with their social media junkware and addiction to teens all over the world and have some status quo as well.
AT should have done some great deep dive on how OS is getting sandbagged to emulate and copy Apple in HW and SW but they do not give a shit. It's all spec benchmarks, Camera. Not even damn cost, not even specifications get pointed out. Fucking $1000 phone with plastic ? What the hell ? No charger as well, they even axed MST.
But nope. It's a great device, tmrw Apple will kill Lighting port, you will see AT praise It's the future along with all Shills on youtube and other so called tech blogs.
Windows is also sadly in a state of perpetual derangement, with it's as a service model bullcrap and their anti computing, they shove all that touch based garbage UWP UI into Win32 and pollute the UX of Windows as a powerful Desktop OS to a sandbagged corporate siphon for data on userbase and ship broken trash and use them as guinea pigs to push stable software for Win10 Enterprise customers.
I think that locking down the file system is a good and obvious security move, though it shouldn't come at any cost to the user. There should be obvious folders for things like photos, and those should not be cleaned out by uninstalling an app.
Google is a hopelessly bad company at this point though, and I would never trust them to design a good OS. They're not good enough, and they're just enjoying their market share because no one seems interested in launching a new OS, for mobile or more broadly.
OSes could and should be massively more secure. It's a dimwitted myth that computers have to be insecure. If I were designing an OS, the user wouldn't know anything about a "file system" and there's no way anyone would be able to see system/OS folders and files. That's a huge information security leak. Of course apps would have no awareness of the system directory tree either. In fact, I might even physically isolate the OS on its own flash storage – a little 16 GiB of NAND or Optane would be more than ample. It could have all sorts of layered security measures, in software and hardware.
I'd give users enormous control over things like their files, photos, etc. More user-friendly than Android for sure. But they don't need access to OS innards, and they don't need the "file system" abstraction – it doesn't add any value to the UX. Entire categories of Windows exploits would disappear if users didn't have access to system folders.
Good question. I guess I lean toward yes, it would be possible to mod. Maybe something like a Developer Mode would be the way to implement it. If the file system is locked down, and OS files are locked down, by default for non-modding users, that should be good enough to obtain the security benefits in terms of exploit resistance.
Exploits would be much less important if 9X% of users were immune. Well even modded systems would be immune to the sorts of exploits that are common now, all the memory bugs, overflows, use after frees, ROP, etc. A good OS would be formally verified (like seL4) and written in a new, advanced, and inherently secure programming language (secure against memory bugs, among other things). So I think modding would be cool, and I also think any desktop and laptop should be thoroughly upgradeable on the hardware side, so removable SSDs and RAM and maybe FPGA slots. I'm fine with non-upgradeable phones, but it would be sweet if they could achieve the same or better thinness while having a removable battery. Non-removable batteries don't seem to have given the use any benefits in terms of thinness, since the phones didn't get thinner. If anything, they're slightly thicker now, which is a shame, and I think the tech media has underexposed this fact – there was no benefit. And iPhones didn't get any thinner from removing the headphone port, which was supposed to be motivated by space savings. The media didn't seem to notice that the thickness didn't change...
Wow you are a miserable shit and you don't know what you are talking about. As for the headphones all you have to do is get a usb-c adaptor and you can plug your headphones in.
Huawei is back and forth on this issue, generally the Mates are better and the P's are worse, IIRC P20 was the worst I've ever seen, but in the scope of this review my attention was on the Samsungs' tele samples.
Just wanted to chime in to thank you for the hard work you put into these reviews Andrei. The comments section seems to be increasingly grievance-driven and glib these days, but as a long time reader I appreciate that you’re still able to provide more technical detail than most other reviewers despite not having a huge budget (eg to purchase and spend forever testing every variant).
To those moaning about video testing, Youtube is a better forum for that kind of thing anyway. You won’t find in depth screen or platform analyses on there though.
Hello Andrei, thanks A LOT for this comprehensive review. It seems you consider Huawei like the reference for low light AND use of a better set-up for intermediate levels of zoom.
Regardless of the OS, where Huawei falls behind Samsung now ?
Any thoughts on existing or upcoming phones the size of the base S21, but with flagship specs?
As someone who strongly prefers the smaller size of the S21, I'm annoyed that I need to compromise on this generation of phones. Either I get top specs but have to deal with the larger size that I don't like, or I have to go smaller and take a real hit. I've tried holding phones the size of the S21+/Ultra and its just not comfortable. I guess I have small hands (oh no).
Is there any noticable difference in radio reception between snapdragon and exynos? I had the exynos version and both wifi and 4g were worse compared to my 7 pro side by side.
Extremely well done camera comparison. Amazing work. Are those flares on HDR section normal? Looks like you forgot to clean the lenses. This little detail(cleaning the camera lens) can make a really major difference.
Though I got to say, regardless of review quality, the galaxy S phones just aren't good anymore. It's sad, they used to be the go-to phones, but between samsung removing hardware/firmware abilities and google doing the same for android, phones really plateaued. Haven't had a reason to have faster hardware in years since google's trying their hardest to prevent interesting software from even running that would need the speed. I'd say battery life would be interesting since the s21 and other phones have bigger batteries than previous gens, but android bloat keeps defeating advancements in batteries.
Shoutout to the xperia 1 ii though. at&t forced me to buy a new phone from a very small subset due to their whitelisting of VoLTE devices, and the xperia was the only one I saw which: Has a headphone jack, has an sd card, can be bootloader unlocked without having to reverse engineer anything, has various custom roms, doesnt ship with the SAF nightmare that is android 11, and is still a new phone covered by carriers. It's not quite as great as the oneplus 5 i had before, and costs quite a bit more, but if telcos are going to force upgrades, it's slim pickings for an actual flagship these days.
Samsung camera software, a total mess, a lot of inconsistency as you said, noise at low iso and exposure, weak processing to remove noise. They are behind Apple, Huawei, Google at least 3 years, before p20 pro era. Try s21 with pixel camera app in low/medium light condition, or indoor, you will be blown away, it's like having another sensor. Instead of pushing MS crap on their phones(onedrive, office and others), they should make a partnership with Google to improve their camera software. If you are trying for several years in a row to improve you camera software, image processing, and you are not able to do it, then ask for help(from Google).
This phone doesn't live up to my potencia at all it keeps kicking me out when I'm on YouTube doing videos I'm switching to the s22 ultra this phone Is terrible at taking night pictures and pictures in general especially when I'm walking as well this phone has been giving me problems especially YouTube or playing video games or anything else like that this phone isn't for me at all this phone has terrible night mode photography and videos a waste of a thousand dollars down the drain
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cosmotic - Monday, February 22, 2021 - link
The edge of the bulge scratches everything it touches, no matter how brief. DO NOT BUYbcronce - Monday, February 22, 2021 - link
Inside the Otterbox, none of the phone touches a flat surface.TheinsanegamerN - Monday, February 22, 2021 - link
If you need a case to prevent scratching of surfaces BY the phone, your phones design is rubbishiphonebestgamephone - Tuesday, February 23, 2021 - link
Lets just say its an extra, the main being drop protection.sonny73n - Tuesday, February 23, 2021 - link
And they keep making slippery phones. Add to them premium price tags. I'm taking about Apple and Samsung and the US market is flooded them.bcronce - Wednesday, February 24, 2021 - link
Welcome to a democracy. It's what the market demands. This is why the USA is actually a hybrid and doesn't directly let the people vote.FunBunny2 - Wednesday, February 24, 2021 - link
"It's what the market demands. "Not according to Steve: he decided what the market *needs*. Fortunately, he doesn't run the company any more. Along with a host of other decisions made by other 'markets', there is an endless supply of brain dead lemmings.
flyingpants265 - Wednesday, February 24, 2021 - link
What the hell are you talking about? Democracy is in no way synonymous with the "free market".And as you well know, the market doesn't demand anything, people don't know what they want until you show/tell them. Don't blame consumers for Samsung and other companies making crap phones.
squariesfri - Friday, February 26, 2021 - link
Sad....https://pickedbox.com/coupon/turbotax-coupon-code/
sharath.naik - Saturday, April 3, 2021 - link
This phone is classic example of designed for obsolescence approach. they got the number of cameras and zoom ranges right but the camera sensors completely wrong. Wide angle cannot be less than 24mp but they chose 12.. main camera should not go beyond 48mp if you have 3x zoom too , so what's the point of 108mp? 3x zoom can't be less than 48mp I but they gave 12mp. these are just bad sensor choices making the phones obsolete within months if not already because these are artificially limited in thru our uses,. then removal of sdcard for a camera focused phone . I hate manufacturers who play this game of designed obsolescence.maxnix - Thursday, February 25, 2021 - link
Like no charger nor cable, let alone no high speed charger because you already have one, right?iphonebestgamephone - Thursday, February 25, 2021 - link
What right?iphonebestgamephone - Thursday, February 25, 2021 - link
Just saying, when i use a case its just for drop protection. If it protects from scratches or prevents other stuff getting scratched, then is that bad? Wjats with the 'already have' thing?Maxpower27 - Monday, February 22, 2021 - link
Counterpoint: no, it doesn't.TwoMetreBill - Monday, February 22, 2021 - link
Jewelry is the most important characteristic of a smartphone.Kangal - Tuesday, February 23, 2021 - link
Shine bright like a diamond........apparently Samsung think consumers care most about the Ads for the phone.
rrinker - Tuesday, February 23, 2021 - link
Sadly, far too many consumers do. They have no idea what they are buying, only that it is the newest thing, bright and shiny, and has more megapixels.UltraWide - Monday, February 22, 2021 - link
What about the macro focus issues from the S20 Ultra? Is that problem solved with the S21 Ultra?Andrei Frumusanu - Monday, February 22, 2021 - link
The camera will switch over to the ultra-wide angle for close-up macro shots since it now has auto-focus drive. I can't tell any difference in the main module.TwoMetreBill - Monday, February 22, 2021 - link
So one can't shoot closeups with the 10x (240mm FF equivalent) telephoto? I do most of my almost macro work with 200-800mm FF equivalent lenses. Shooting up close with wide angle lenses is useless for wildflowers and most insects like butterflies. Either the critters are scared away, the image is ruined with shadows or the flowers are trampled in order to get close enough.eastcoast_pete - Tuesday, February 23, 2021 - link
While I haven't used it on an S20/21 or Ultra, maybe the Open Camera app will give you more control over the camera selection and exposure?Andrei, I know you (have to) test any Smartphone's camera with the manufacturer's own software, but I often wonder if Open Camera or a similar 3rd party software isn't better at using a given device's hardware capabilities? Might be worth an article down the road.
Sharma_Ji - Tuesday, February 23, 2021 - link
Obviously notAndrei Frumusanu - Tuesday, February 23, 2021 - link
You can do that, minimal focus distance is about 20cm, but the quality really isn't great.Kangal - Wednesday, February 24, 2021 - link
" I think what Samsung should do in the future is create four models of the S series, three being the same as the current line-up but renaming the Ultra to Ultra+ ”...urgh, no thanks!
Why can't we drop those monikers, don't have different variants, drop all these storage options, have only flagships, clean up the lineup like: Samsung 22-S, Samsung 22-M, Samsung 22-L, Samsung 22-XL.
Sharma_Ji - Tuesday, February 23, 2021 - link
It might be true for an actual camera, but you can go much closer and nearer to subject if you use ultrawide on a smartphone camera compared to telephoto.FunBunny2 - Wednesday, February 24, 2021 - link
"or the flowers are trampled"not to mention distorted into a guppy's mouth.
CrazyElf - Monday, February 22, 2021 - link
I really like the direction Samsung is taking with updates too. 4 years of security and 3 years of Android updates.https://www.samsungmobilepress.com/pressreleases/s...
I feel like overall, although the devices have some flaws (no SD Card, IR Blaster, and MST are the big ones), the S21 Ultra represents as step in the right direction.
The 100x zoom is still a gimmick, but the 3x and 10x cameras are decent. I bought the 512 GB and so far it's been pretty good. With these updates, I'd be more willing to consider Samsung over the competition, unless of course they step up their game.
Psyside - Monday, February 22, 2021 - link
1. The 100 x is not gimmick, but it should not be used for photos, but to orient into into the enviorment or to locate very distant objects.2. The larest feb 15+ updates made the zoom and the overall quality of the zoom shots much better
3. The 10x zoom shotsof exynos version in this review are cropped main/3x sensor shots,not f/4.9
sonny73n - Tuesday, February 23, 2021 - link
Who cares about BS "security" updates. All you'll get is more spywares from the ad company and your government.Tunnah - Monday, February 22, 2021 - link
Got a double paragraph:The camera island on the S21 is brilliant in its design. Much like on the S21 Ultra, this is an aluminium cover that protects individual recessed glass elements for the three main camera modules. Samsung harmonised the camera design between the S21 and S21+ by dropping the ToF sensor from the latter in comparison to the S20+ - which is fine by me as frankly I never really used it even though it was my daily driver for the past year.
sanjeev2.k - Monday, February 22, 2021 - link
I am assuming system wide dark theme was not turned on during battery life test. So by how much roughly will the battery life improve if dark mode is turned on?Andrei Frumusanu - Monday, February 22, 2021 - link
It doesn't affect our tests, unless I also enable the browser dark mode.jhoff80 - Monday, February 22, 2021 - link
I mostly like my S21 Ultra a lot, but I still hate a lot about the software. Even as OneUI has improved greatly over the years, there's some really stupid stuff here or there. Like I should be able to disable or uninstall Samsung's duplicate apps (calendar, contacts, clock, etc.) without adb. But that's fine, there's a workaround for that, so that's just annoying.What really annoys me that I can't work around as far as I'm aware is that I can't disable half of the unnecessary notifications that Samsung gives me. Like constant notifications when my Bluetooth headset battery is low (and if I swipe them away they come right back for each percent lost). Or a notification for do not disturb being on (even though DND is in my quick settings). Or a notification that I need to unlock my phone after a reboot to see more notifications. Android has settings to turn notifications off, but Samsung doesn't let me flip the switch on ones they think I need to be forced to see.
And other than that, I dislike the scoped storage issues with Google Photos, and the fact I can't set Samsung's camera app to go directly to Google Photos instead of their inadequate Gallery app. And I'm slightly disappointed that the S21 removed ANT+ support. And I hate that I can't set the power/side button to the devices menu like I did with my Pixel 4XL. But I worked around that with sideActions set to go directly to SmartThings instead.
But still, overall I really like it. It's faster than my Pixel 4XL, has a better camera (though I continue to dislike Samsung's post-processing in general, it sometimes smears things), I missed having the capability to use the S-pen compared to my even older Note8, and the fingerprint reader over face scanning is a huge bonus in the Covid era.
I just really don't get why Samsung wastes their time on duplicate apps nobody wants, or why they prevent the user from actually taking control over their experience. Oh well. At least there's workarounds for most of it.
Edwardmcardle - Friday, February 26, 2021 - link
They messed up the split screen multitasking imo. It's still has the advantage of keyboard pop not bumping the top half off the screen, but swiping home now minamises BOTH screens , where it should normally only minimise the active screenWereweeb - Monday, February 22, 2021 - link
Yeah, they really f*cked up with the screens. Less than 400 PPI in an S-series? My last Sammy was an S6 Edge, and that f*cking thing had a 577 PPI screen.Sure, younger me couldn't really tell the difference to a good 1080p 5-incher, but it simply doesn't make sense to decrease the resolution *after* display sizes have increased so much that the sharpness of QHD is actually noticeable to the average user.
Glad they added back a flat screen option, I've always despised curved displays (I didn't buy that S6 Edge, it was handed down). But all in all, it sounds more like an A92+ than an S21.
Retycint - Tuesday, February 23, 2021 - link
To make things worse, it's a pentile/non-full-rgb matrix, so it's going to look worse than a 1080p LCD of the same size. Why pay $1000 when you can get a QHD 120Hz in the Mi 11 for a couple hundred less?DJ XtAzY - Monday, February 22, 2021 - link
Anything on the video quality, or was that in a different article?BedfordTim - Tuesday, February 23, 2021 - link
Also anything about the fingerprint sensor? Poor Amazon reviews were one of the reasons I chose a P30Pro over the S20 last time.Edwardmcardle - Friday, February 26, 2021 - link
I think the ultrasonic is the best available, works with screen off and this generation is exceptionally fast and accuratebcronce - Monday, February 22, 2021 - link
I saw USCC now has unlimited plans that were cheaper than the plan I was on. The wife went in to switch our lines over and came back with an S21 basic for me to place my S7. At $13/m over a 30 month contract, we will only be paying $400 for the phone.My last plan was technically unlimited, but only in the sense that going over 2GB would drop me into 3G speeds with no overage. But now with truly unlimited, I no longer have artificial caps on speed, only have to compete with congestion. For an extra $10/m, I could get 25GB of "high priority" data, and $20/m extra, 50GB. I'm fine with best effort and no artificial limits.
Silver5urfer - Monday, February 22, 2021 - link
These phones are not Flagships.- Design, the back camera metal to glass camera island is hard to repair, how do you even do it, meaning once the battery is busted, you cannot do a DIY easily on these phones at all. It makes them harder than iPhones, which have Glass glued onto the back panel making them have official repair being expensive than a display.
- No 3.5mm jack, No SD card slot. More features removed and they are True Flagship ?
- No more charger shipped in the box copying Apple.
- Display resolutions reduced hard. $1000 for a 1080P grade display, it's pure rip off. Worse than Apple.
- S21 base edition has plastic back, really horrible.
AT won't even mention anything, but all praise. Shame. This is what the computing looks like now, a disposable tech product which is useful nly for social media bs. What about the filesystem issues, never mentioned at all. Scoped Storage kills NAND performance HARD, it's a known fact and no acknowledgement of that all. Another year another new shiny product just spend more $1000 money because it looks amazing !! Just like all Youtubers out there.
People say it's for nature and environment, but nope it doesn't matter just buy new shiny product every year regardless of the drop in the features on HW and SW.
Psyside - Monday, February 22, 2021 - link
Hi Andrei, thanks for your brilliant review. However, please take note, that all of the first 10x zoom shot on the exynos are a total anomaly! the phone takes, much, much much better photos at 10x, it looks like the shot are not take by the 10x camera, check out the EXIF please, it does not state f/4.9.Please reconsider to redo the test shots, thanks.
Andrei Frumusanu - Monday, February 22, 2021 - link
All of the 10x S21U shots are great and are f/4.9 per EXIF, so I don't know what you're talking about.Psyside - Monday, February 22, 2021 - link
I talk about the exynos version. The S21U I didn't check because it looked good, but i noticed immediately that the 10x exynos are not even close to what they should be.Check this 10x AUB9 shot,
https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/camera-performa...
Andrei Frumusanu - Monday, February 22, 2021 - link
Yes.... the S21U (E) 10x shots are all are all looking great and are on the correct module...I don't know what you're seeing, maybe you're confusing it with the S21 (E) which is the regular non-Ultra phone.Psyside - Monday, February 22, 2021 - link
Damn, it could be! i will check from my desktop, really, really sorry if that's the case!s.yu - Wednesday, February 24, 2021 - link
Actually, the 3x shots all look cropped, that's what's strange.Andrei Frumusanu - Monday, February 22, 2021 - link
> Design, the back camera metal to glass camera island is hard to repair, how do you even do it, meaning once the battery is busted, you cannot do a DIY easily on these phones at all.You can remove and replace that part easily, along with the whole back cover, as well as a battery replacement, the same as any other phone we've had since removable batteries had been retired.
I've covered the SD card, 1080p, and the plastic (which is absolutely fine). The charger I didn't mention because I don't consider it very important. Scoped storage doesn't affect performance in everyday usage and I did not notice it at all.
Silver5urfer - Tuesday, February 23, 2021 - link
Okay I checked Teardown and yes you are correct. I was thinking Metal frame of camera island is a part of the phone frame.Absolutely fine ? not even Apple does it for $400 USD priced entry level iPhone SE, they have a glass back with AL frame. This is extreme cost cutting from Samsung and shameless. Since iPhone moved plastic backs a long time back. Why it is okay in the $800+ price tag territory, they will creak badly after time and with heated gaming sessions and all that expansion and contraction they will wear out.
Again for such price tag the charger needs to be packed in the box. A 100% unoriginal idea from Apple should not be excused but at-least should be covered from your publication when you called out 3.5mm jack for S20 reviews which no one even cared to mention.
Yeah it doesn't but that Scoped Storage has huge issues, the Issuetracker is filled with developer complaints and Commonsware blog listed out so many issues. And here's Dolphin Emulator developers saying the huge performance impact.
When you have a significant advantage on Journalism you should use that to show to the world on these, Camera comparisons are great but you know who read these ? only people who visit AT and they are too common, not saying should not do them but AT is a tech focus site and if you guys do it some other blogs might pick them up & most important of all, Google and Samsung might as well notice.
https://www.xda-developers.com/dolphin-emulator-li...
Yeah it doesn't even matter if you cover or not now, because it's been there since 2 Android iterations already and Google is decided to yank the Filesystem.
https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/128591846
https://commonsware.com/blog/2017/11/14/storage-si...
ksheltarna69 - Monday, September 27, 2021 - link
Yes, reviews on Anandtech have become a marketing place. And it seems Android is going the Apple way. We need a new system.Andrei should stop being so defensive and become more objective.
theblitz707 - Monday, February 22, 2021 - link
Can you comment about black clipping at minimum brightness? Back when you were testing s10 you would show minimum brightness graphs i really miss those they were important for me.Andrei Frumusanu - Monday, February 22, 2021 - link
Black clipping on the S21U occurs at 7% levels at minimum brightness after which it has accurate gamma, it's a bit better than the S10 but still not great. On the S21 it clips at 7% as well, but has garbage high gamma up until around 13% after which it is fine. I'll add the graphs tomorrow.Psyside - Monday, February 22, 2021 - link
Upon further inspecting of all photos, i have noticed the bad blurry, grain and out of focus early firmware characteristic, i can confirm that nothing of that edge blurriness, lack of sharpness and softness is not present in AUB9. The 10x zoom shots are stunning, and the night shots without night mode are also very much improved.Andrei Frumusanu - Monday, February 22, 2021 - link
I say as much in the review that there are firmware updates. Unfortunately I can't delay testing arbitrarily in hope that Samsung updates their camera software, nor am I going to redo the testing for a given review.If Samsung has improved the camera, that's great, and I'll cover that in the next round-up.
Psyside - Monday, February 22, 2021 - link
Thanks for everything you qre a legendPsyside - Monday, February 22, 2021 - link
Are&TheinsanegamerN - Monday, February 22, 2021 - link
Those camera jumps are UGLY AS SIN. good thing we don’t put a bigger battery in and flatten the bottom of the phone!Chaser - Monday, February 22, 2021 - link
While I respect Anandtech, a majority of professional (smartphone only) reviewers disagree with your assessment of the Ultra 21 and in my experience I can second their very positive experiences with the camera and the rest of the phone's refinements. Especially compared to the S20 Ultra.Psyside - Monday, February 22, 2021 - link
Andrei stated that most if not all shots are on early firmware, the camera was quite bad at launch.Psyside - Monday, February 22, 2021 - link
He will redo the comparison in future articlesmixmaxmix - Monday, February 22, 2021 - link
s21+ battery life is better than s21U ?Samus - Monday, February 22, 2021 - link
$800-$1200 for a phone that'll lose value faster than a Chrysler. I'll consider it next year when you can pickup a refurb for $400.flyingpants265 - Wednesday, February 24, 2021 - link
The prices keep skyrocketing so the used market is holding fast. Oneplus 5-6 phones are still expensive. A phone with old motherboard, battery, USB port, etc.. no thanks.shabby - Monday, February 22, 2021 - link
First time I skipped the galaxy s phones, the downgrades are just unacceptable. Since the s7 i used the sdcard for extra storage, now without an sdcard the 256gb that's on the s21 just isn't enough, why isn't there a 512gb option on the s21? The base s10 had a 1tb option and I had the 512gb myself, makes no sense 🤷🏼♂️flyingpants265 - Wednesday, February 24, 2021 - link
microSD is super great. I have my entire music collection on my phone and a crapload of movies.Pinn - Monday, February 22, 2021 - link
All those cameras are giving me trypophobia (don't look it up).Samus - Monday, February 22, 2021 - link
lolBearded2021 - Monday, February 22, 2021 - link
Excellent review. Were the battery tests for s21 ultra done at 1080p or 1440p resolution?Andrei Frumusanu - Monday, February 22, 2021 - link
1440p.Bearded2021 - Monday, February 22, 2021 - link
Thanks. Any idea if display power consumption is measurably lower at 1080p with these new displays and if so, is it significant?Andrei Frumusanu - Monday, February 22, 2021 - link
It's not, the software rendering part is extremely minor and has never had any significant impact on battery life.snowdrop - Monday, February 22, 2021 - link
So s21/s21+ > s21u for camera experience and s888 > e2100 for image quality. This strongly implies that the s21/s21+ with s888 would offer the best overall camera implementation of all the variants, but unfortunately this combination isn't featured in the article.Any hope of adding some shots from a s21/s21+ with s888 to the comparison?
Andrei Frumusanu - Monday, February 22, 2021 - link
The SD888 isn't definitive in having the better image quality.And no, I'm in Europe so getting Snapdragon Galaxies is hard, I have no plans to further attempt anything beyond the S21U.
snowdrop - Tuesday, February 23, 2021 - link
To me the s888 ultra shots all looked notably better (sharper, better shadow / mid / highlight detail, improved lens correction) with the occasional exception of better highlight detail when the e2100 chose a darker exposure and the one shot where the s21u s888 wasn't in focus. The grass / foliage processing on the e2100 is particularly terrible so it could just be that the scenes you chose exaggerated the e2100's weak spots.It looks like samsung used the stock qualcomm image processing stack for s888 models and is testing beta internal software on the e2100 ones.
I enjoy your excellent commentary on the computational photography capabilities of phone camera systems in your phone reviews. Have you considered including supplementary commentary from someone who has done dslr / lens reviews though to add a more photographer centric perspective though?
s.yu - Wednesday, February 24, 2021 - link
Uh pretty much from the first sample the Exynos was doing better, far better texture, though the SD caught up in a few subsequent samples, so this generation I say the processing is too close to call. Generally the SD variants had a better track record though.JoeDuarte - Monday, February 22, 2021 - link
Can anyone confirm whether the S21 with the Snapdragon has dual frequency GPS? Sorry if I missed it in the article. Dual frequency GPS is supposed to yield a huge accuracy boost, and maybe time to positioning too.JoeDuarte - Monday, February 22, 2021 - link
All the benchmark graphs are missing the S21, but Andrei is talking as though they include the S21. The graphs only show variations of the S21 Ultra, not the regular S21. Can we get the S21 results included?JoeDuarte - Monday, February 22, 2021 - link
Does Arm plan to succeed the A55 low power cores with a credible upgrade? Experts here have talked about this before, how the A55 is hopelessly outclassed by several generations of Apple low power counterparts at this point. Why have they iterated the A7x cores but not the A5x?Does anyone have insight into why Samsung's SoCs are so bad? It doesn't make sense for a company that owns the fabs, gets to develop the process nodes, and design the SoCs to be so far behind, spanning maybe a decade now. Is there no advantage, no synergies or co-optimization opportunities, in such complete vertical integration? It's supposed to be an advantage for Apple to design its own SoCs and cores. Why is it not an advantage for Samsung to do that and to*also* have the fabs and node development? Is there a talent issue? I wonder if maybe there just aren't enough engineers operating at the necessary level of skill to populate all these companies. The actual human cognitive science of how these teams do what they do is a black box, and apparently TSMC and Apple are able to do things that Samsung, Intel, and GF are not, and the difference is surprising.
nandnandnand - Thursday, February 25, 2021 - link
I think the Cortex-R82 points to further improvements to the efficiency cores being possible. Or Apple's own take on efficiency cores.Maybe we'll find out about an A55 successor within the next few months, before TSMC 3nm kicks off.
nandnandnand - Thursday, February 25, 2021 - link
Also, I think the "Helios" Neoverse E1 is better than A55, even discounting its SMT capability.TwoMetreBill - Monday, February 22, 2021 - link
Until we can see the results of the raw images processed in something like Lightroom, we won't really know what we can get from this system. The smaller the sensor, as a general rule, the greater the improvement from raw shooting. But as far as I can tell, nobody has published a raw sample library and I search every day.s.yu - Wednesday, February 24, 2021 - link
Just get a compatible version of Gcam running. With SD Samsung it's the easiest to find.tkSteveFOX - Tuesday, February 23, 2021 - link
Again, Huawei's Kirin 9000 knocks it out of the park. A better chip all-round.Samsung's 5nm is not even as good or roughly on par with TSMCs 7nm.
Getting an SD870 looks like a better deal this year, but if Huawei manage to produce a $800 Kirin 9000 device that would be the best of the best.
I am amazed how their massive GPU doesn't throttle as much as both Adreno 660 and MP14 in the E2100.
iphonebestgamephone - Tuesday, February 23, 2021 - link
Maybe being slow and wide is the best?s.yu - Wednesday, February 24, 2021 - link
The guy wasn't paying attention. The Adreno throttled far more than it was supposed to with the whole SoC settling down at 3W when it should have nearly 5W to use. And in several benchmarks the Kirin wasn't that fast either, so he's completely confused.And yes slow and wide has always been better but that only applies to the Mali comparison.
iphonebestgamephone - Thursday, February 25, 2021 - link
Yeah the sd samsung seems to throttle too much, while the mi 11 doesnt want to throttle.yeeeeman - Tuesday, February 23, 2021 - link
underwhelming. on the system performance page we can clearly see the s20 ultra w/ sd 865 being barely slower and you say the performance is outstanding. Sure, it is outstanding, but it isn't an improvement over the last gen. Battery life, again, similar. the only improvement is the gpu and the display efficiency.s.yu - Wednesday, February 24, 2021 - link
I have to agree.flyingpants265 - Friday, February 26, 2021 - link
Slower? The speed is not going to matter for 99% of users so I'm not sure what you're talking about there. Who cares?The Android OS and software suck so bad. We've had 14 generations of laggy phones now..
iphonebestgamephone - Saturday, February 27, 2021 - link
”The Android OS and software suck so bad. We've had 14 generations of laggy phones now..”So what they care about is lag? Half a second of stutter is what they care more about, than the general speed?
theblitz707 - Wednesday, March 3, 2021 - link
I dont get when people say android lag. My s10+ never lag in daily usageprobedb - Tuesday, February 23, 2021 - link
Have the S21, previously the S20+. Far prefer the S21, flat screen...it's in a case so makes no difference. Screen res, well since the S20+ required you to go FHD to use 120Hz then it makes very little difference and I use it a lot every day. Fingerprint reader is waaaaaaaaay better, like orders of magnitude better. The S20+ was awful for the delay in recognising your print, much faster on the S21. The S21 just feels faster overall as well. Perfectly happy especially since Samsung did a very good trade-in on the S20+, plus selling the free tag and phones meant it cost very little overall.eastcoast_pete - Tuesday, February 23, 2021 - link
Thanks Andrei for the review. Just one fly in the "currently on sale in the US" for the S21 Ultra: yes, that's correct, but only the 128 GB storage version is on sale, the others are "out of stock". And, absent an option for expandable storage, I wouldn't buy a premium phone with less than 256 GB. Videos and photos eat storage.Andrei Frumusanu - Tuesday, February 23, 2021 - link
True for the 256GB, but the 512GB is also in stock at $1,179.99 which is less than the 128GB MSRP.pse - Tuesday, February 23, 2021 - link
Excellent review, as usual, Andrei. I was hoping to see a few video samples as well. I've found, by looking at other online samples, that there are significant differences in low light video processing between the SD888 and the Exynos 2100, I was wondering if you found similar results in your tests. Cheers!Andrei Frumusanu - Tuesday, February 23, 2021 - link
Frankly speaking any results right now are outdated as Samsung is pushing out firmware updates at a fast pace with the cameras behaving differently.We'll revisit everything in a few weeks/months.
The hard truth - Tuesday, February 23, 2021 - link
There's no talk about the video aspect of the camera in this review. Therefore this review is incomplete and poor.JoeDuarte - Tuesday, February 23, 2021 - link
Note that the actual price can be well below half of MSRP if you buy directly from Samsung and trade in an older phone.I'm paying $285 instead of $849 for the S21 256 GB model. I'm trading in a Galaxy S10E. I feel like the S21 is a steal for $285.
Also, Samsung is on Rakuten with 10% off, so I'm getting $28.50 back. So now we're down to $256.50.
I'm getting a "$100 Samsung credit" as well, but I haven't looked into that. I guess it's for the Samsung store? Maybe I can get some earbuds or something.
I posted a screenshot of the deal/order here: https://imgur.com/a/7iPWqw6
I'm not clear on their statement math, but the bottom line is that I got the phone for just over $250. (I think they assessed sales tax on the full list price of the phone though – I'm not sure if that's normal or locale-specific.)
ottonis - Tuesday, February 23, 2021 - link
First of all, many thanks for this huge test/review! Really very informative and useful information.However, is there test planned on the video capabilities of these phones?
flyingpants265 - Tuesday, February 23, 2021 - link
no headphone jack = no buy, it's an open and obvious conspiracy to make billions in revenue from crappy wireless headphones.no front speakers = no buy, I don't care if most people don't notice the difference, how the hell can you purposefully make subpar products for ~14 years straight? Front stereo speakers are obviously superior, you can listen to youtube in landscape mode or use a small kickstand, you can use the phone with a gamepad, and get full sound without having to mess with bluetooth, headphones, or the crappy sidefiring speaker which isn't even close, stop making excuses.
Also, all phones should be 100% rated for underwater use. Obviously the battery should be replaceable when it starts to degrade. Again, it doesn't benefit a manufacturer to make an indestructible phone. But it would be a great idea for any company with low market share.
Android royally sucks. We're ~14 years in or something now, SoCs have increased in power and have 12GB RAM, but they still can't do the very basics of what I could do with Windows 98SE or 2000, namely, have multiple windows open/loaded into RAM and switch between them instantly. Press alt-tab on your computer a few times and tell me how long that takes. Compare that to phone "app switching" and phone "keyboard lag". The OS and apps are poorly written, there is no excuse for that. Removing features, garbage obfuscated slow UI. Crap.
Of course this is just the beginning. Every single day, humanity just makes excuses for mediocrity and ends up getting screwed by billion-dollar companies. At least if I'm going to have a $1000 brainwashing/tracking device, I want it to be designed properly. And yes, I could do better on all accounts. There's a giant hole in the market for an... ACTUAL GOOD PHONE.
Silver5urfer - Wednesday, February 24, 2021 - link
Mass market just mindlessley consumes. Remember that Android had Windows like Filesystem which was the most powerful feature ever on smartphone. Google killed it in the name of Security. Esp all the images that you download on these latest Android 10+ phones, you cannot see any image or file under fileexplorer because its in the app own folder and once you uninstall all of it is wiped clean. It's ultimate kick in the gut for Android. On top no MicroSD card.But it's all great, because it looks good ? not to me anyways with that ugly screen hole and bump of camera module. It's great because it's the trend nowadays. These stupid smartphones are ruining more than anything with their social media junkware and addiction to teens all over the world and have some status quo as well.
AT should have done some great deep dive on how OS is getting sandbagged to emulate and copy Apple in HW and SW but they do not give a shit. It's all spec benchmarks, Camera. Not even damn cost, not even specifications get pointed out. Fucking $1000 phone with plastic ? What the hell ? No charger as well, they even axed MST.
But nope. It's a great device, tmrw Apple will kill Lighting port, you will see AT praise It's the future along with all Shills on youtube and other so called tech blogs.
Windows is also sadly in a state of perpetual derangement, with it's as a service model bullcrap and their anti computing, they shove all that touch based garbage UWP UI into Win32 and pollute the UX of Windows as a powerful Desktop OS to a sandbagged corporate siphon for data on userbase and ship broken trash and use them as guinea pigs to push stable software for Win10 Enterprise customers.
JoeDuarte - Thursday, February 25, 2021 - link
I think that locking down the file system is a good and obvious security move, though it shouldn't come at any cost to the user. There should be obvious folders for things like photos, and those should not be cleaned out by uninstalling an app.Google is a hopelessly bad company at this point though, and I would never trust them to design a good OS. They're not good enough, and they're just enjoying their market share because no one seems interested in launching a new OS, for mobile or more broadly.
OSes could and should be massively more secure. It's a dimwitted myth that computers have to be insecure. If I were designing an OS, the user wouldn't know anything about a "file system" and there's no way anyone would be able to see system/OS folders and files. That's a huge information security leak. Of course apps would have no awareness of the system directory tree either. In fact, I might even physically isolate the OS on its own flash storage – a little 16 GiB of NAND or Optane would be more than ample. It could have all sorts of layered security measures, in software and hardware.
I'd give users enormous control over things like their files, photos, etc. More user-friendly than Android for sure. But they don't need access to OS innards, and they don't need the "file system" abstraction – it doesn't add any value to the UX. Entire categories of Windows exploits would disappear if users didn't have access to system folders.
iphonebestgamephone - Friday, February 26, 2021 - link
So no modding on your os?JoeDuarte - Wednesday, March 3, 2021 - link
Good question. I guess I lean toward yes, it would be possible to mod. Maybe something like a Developer Mode would be the way to implement it. If the file system is locked down, and OS files are locked down, by default for non-modding users, that should be good enough to obtain the security benefits in terms of exploit resistance.Exploits would be much less important if 9X% of users were immune. Well even modded systems would be immune to the sorts of exploits that are common now, all the memory bugs, overflows, use after frees, ROP, etc. A good OS would be formally verified (like seL4) and written in a new, advanced, and inherently secure programming language (secure against memory bugs, among other things). So I think modding would be cool, and I also think any desktop and laptop should be thoroughly upgradeable on the hardware side, so removable SSDs and RAM and maybe FPGA slots. I'm fine with non-upgradeable phones, but it would be sweet if they could achieve the same or better thinness while having a removable battery. Non-removable batteries don't seem to have given the use any benefits in terms of thinness, since the phones didn't get thinner. If anything, they're slightly thicker now, which is a shame, and I think the tech media has underexposed this fact – there was no benefit. And iPhones didn't get any thinner from removing the headphone port, which was supposed to be motivated by space savings. The media didn't seem to notice that the thickness didn't change...
iphonebestgamephone - Friday, March 5, 2021 - link
Ok thenRude Russy - Tuesday, March 9, 2021 - link
Wow you are a miserable shit and you don't know what you are talking about. As for the headphones all you have to do is get a usb-c adaptor and you can plug your headphones in.tuxRoller - Wednesday, February 24, 2021 - link
Has the huawei always used such strong edge detection/enhancing?Some of the shots bring to mind me an aggressive comic inker.
s.yu - Thursday, February 25, 2021 - link
Huawei is back and forth on this issue, generally the Mates are better and the P's are worse, IIRC P20 was the worst I've ever seen, but in the scope of this review my attention was on the Samsungs' tele samples.asfletch - Wednesday, February 24, 2021 - link
Just wanted to chime in to thank you for the hard work you put into these reviews Andrei. The comments section seems to be increasingly grievance-driven and glib these days, but as a long time reader I appreciate that you’re still able to provide more technical detail than most other reviewers despite not having a huge budget (eg to purchase and spend forever testing every variant).To those moaning about video testing, Youtube is a better forum for that kind of thing anyway. You won’t find in depth screen or platform analyses on there though.
Giro - Wednesday, February 24, 2021 - link
Hello Andrei, thanks A LOT for this comprehensive review.It seems you consider Huawei like the reference for low light AND use of a better set-up for intermediate levels of zoom.
Regardless of the OS, where Huawei falls behind Samsung now ?
trajan - Wednesday, February 24, 2021 - link
Any thoughts on existing or upcoming phones the size of the base S21, but with flagship specs?As someone who strongly prefers the smaller size of the S21, I'm annoyed that I need to compromise on this generation of phones. Either I get top specs but have to deal with the larger size that I don't like, or I have to go smaller and take a real hit. I've tried holding phones the size of the S21+/Ultra and its just not comfortable. I guess I have small hands (oh no).
flyingpants265 - Friday, February 26, 2021 - link
Yeah exactly, oh no. All the phones on the market are crap, but you're complaining that your hands are too small..Edwardmcardle - Friday, February 26, 2021 - link
Is there any noticable difference in radio reception between snapdragon and exynos? I had the exynos version and both wifi and 4g were worse compared to my 7 pro side by side.darkich - Saturday, February 27, 2021 - link
Extremely well done camera comparison. Amazing work.Are those flares on HDR section normal? Looks like you forgot to clean the lenses.
This little detail(cleaning the camera lens) can make a really major difference.
Andrei Frumusanu - Wednesday, March 3, 2021 - link
They are cleaned, those are just results of the camera optics.Steven Choi 4321 - Tuesday, March 2, 2021 - link
Again, it is not the hardware. It is about the operating system. Android is 100 times hard to learn for the normal public like me.Rude Russy - Tuesday, March 9, 2021 - link
What are you talking about? its as simple as IOS. I guess you just must be really stupid?redchar - Tuesday, March 2, 2021 - link
Great review, as always!Though I got to say, regardless of review quality, the galaxy S phones just aren't good anymore.
It's sad, they used to be the go-to phones, but between samsung removing hardware/firmware abilities and google doing the same for android, phones really plateaued. Haven't had a reason to have faster hardware in years since google's trying their hardest to prevent interesting software from even running that would need the speed. I'd say battery life would be interesting since the s21 and other phones have bigger batteries than previous gens, but android bloat keeps defeating advancements in batteries.
Shoutout to the xperia 1 ii though. at&t forced me to buy a new phone from a very small subset due to their whitelisting of VoLTE devices, and the xperia was the only one I saw which: Has a headphone jack, has an sd card, can be bootloader unlocked without having to reverse engineer anything, has various custom roms, doesnt ship with the SAF nightmare that is android 11, and is still a new phone covered by carriers. It's not quite as great as the oneplus 5 i had before, and costs quite a bit more, but if telcos are going to force upgrades, it's slim pickings for an actual flagship these days.
markiz - Monday, March 8, 2021 - link
"The flat display and the lower resolution do however feel very conventional, and not-quite flagship like."Ah, I see, so you are responsible for the plague :)
Edwardmcardle - Friday, April 9, 2021 - link
Did you notice any difference in other areas of the chip? WiFi, GSM / 4G, AI etc?OMZ - Friday, April 30, 2021 - link
Samsung camera software, a total mess, a lot of inconsistency as you said, noise at low iso and exposure, weak processing to remove noise. They are behind Apple, Huawei, Google at least 3 years, before p20 pro era. Try s21 with pixel camera app in low/medium light condition, or indoor, you will be blown away, it's like having another sensor. Instead of pushing MS crap on their phones(onedrive, office and others), they should make a partnership with Google to improve their camera software. If you are trying for several years in a row to improve you camera software, image processing, and you are not able to do it, then ask for help(from Google).Moongoddess - Thursday, March 10, 2022 - link
This phone doesn't live up to my potencia at all it keeps kicking me out when I'm on YouTube doing videos I'm switching to the s22 ultra this phone Is terrible at taking night pictures and pictures in general especially when I'm walking as well this phone has been giving me problems especially YouTube or playing video games or anything else like that this phone isn't for me at all this phone has terrible night mode photography and videos a waste of a thousand dollars down the drain