Thread Rating:
  • 1 Vote(s) - 5 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
The Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra & S21 Review: The Near Perfect and The Different
#1
Lightbulb 
Quote:
[Image: X-T30_DSF4234_678x452.jpg]

After many years of ever-increasing flagship device prices, this year Samsung is taking a quite different approach with the new Galaxy S21 series – not only stopping the price increases, but actually reducing this year’s flagship line-up prices compared to the 2020 predecessors.

This year, Samsung is also more notably differentiating the specifications of the devices – there’s still a base model, a larger “+” model, and the super-sized “Ultra” model, however only the Ultra model has managed to come out rather unscathed, with the two other traditional models finding themselves with technical compromises that we haven’t seen in past years, such as lower resolution, last-gen panels, different build materials and designs, on top of the usual different camera configuration.

Today we’re reviewing the Galaxy S21 Ultra in both Exynos and Snapdragon SoC flavours, as well the baseline Galaxy S21 – contrasting two very different devices in Samsung’s new series, coming in at two very different price points.

Starting off with the core hardware components of the new S21 series, the new flagships are amongst the first devices in the market powered by Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 888 SoC as well as Samsung LSI’s new Exynos 2100. The two new silicon chips this year are more similar to each other than in previous years – both featuring almost identical CPU setups and both being manufactured on the same process node, only leaving more significant differences on the part of the GPUs and other multimedia design aspects.Ahead of our full device review today, we spun off a dedicated SoC-centric two weeks ago which goes into more technical details of how this year’s new silicon chips perform as the baseline computing platforms for 2021 devices, so I would recommend readers mostly interested in those technical details to read that piece ahead of continuing with the other aspects of the new S21 series today.

As a short summary, I’d say that this year’s SoCs are to be viewed as smaller incremental improvements over last generation iterations – at least on the Snapdragon side of things which applies to north American variants of the new S21 series. Other global customers of the S21 series which will be seeing the Exynos variants being deployed in their devices, while not having fully caught up to the Snapdragon’s performance and power efficiency, will however see extremely large generational improvements compared to what we’ve seen in the Exynos-powered S20 series, so this year’s differences between the two SoC types will be smaller.

In terms of DRAM and storage configurations, the S21 and S21+ come with 8GB of LPDDR5 in either 128GB or 256GB storage configurations. The larger S21 Ultra features generally 12GB of RAM alongside its 128 and 256GB configurations, however also sees a 16GB top-of-the-line version with 512GB storage.

Samsung this year has dropped the microSD slot for storage expansion, marking the S21 series as the second time Samsung has removed this feature after the S6 series a few years ago. Back then, baseline storage capacities landed in at 32GB up to a maximum of 128GB, and Samsung had reintroduced the microSD slot in the S7 series which only went up to 64GB of internal capacity.

I’m not too sure what Samsung’s reasonings were with the removal of the slot on the S21 series this year – but I do have to admit I haven’t used a microSD in a few years now following increases of the baseline storage capacities of phones. A further consideration is that the industry has utterly failed to transition away from slow microSD cards onto newer standards. Samsung’s own UFS Card standard announced back in 2016 has seen zero adoption in the mobile market – I’m not actually aware of SoCs who actually sport a second UFS controller to actually enable these cards. I’m also not aware of any phone supporting the UHS-II microSD interface standard, so again quite standards failure here in the broader industry.

The silver lining here is that Samsung does employ 128GB as the base storage, and for the first time ever, the 256GB storage option upgrade this year only costs $/€/£50 – a much cheaper upgrade not only compared to past years, but also cheaper than the up-sell many contemporary competitors are offering today, and for the first time an upgrade that I would consider of actual good value and which I wouldn’t hesitate recommending.

In terms of other feature discrepancies between the S21 Ultra and its cheaper siblings, one of note is that the new model is the only one in the line-up which features a new Broadcom WiFi 6E compatible BCM4389 chipset, whereas the S21 and S21+ features the same WiFi 6 module from last year. This is the first time Samsung has actually differentiated the models within a flagship series in this manner – so although WiFi 6E isn’t widespread yet and most users likely are still lacking a proper compatible router, it does mean the Ultra is theoretically more future-proof in this regard.

For US users particularly, one other feature removal of the S21 series is the lack of MST payment options. This should be largely irrelevant in most of the rest of the world, but Samsung is removing an important and unique differentiation factor for the S-series in America – if you’ve been relying on it for smartphone payments, it’s something to keep in mind as it’s now gone.

The Galaxy S21 Ultra – The True Flagship

As we’ve noted, Samsung’s differentiation between the various S21 models is greater than ever before – making the new S21 Ultra the only real (almost) no-compromise device in the series this year. In many regards, the new Ultra is actually the new pinnacle of smartphone flagship technologies, with Samsung going all-out in almost every aspect.

Starting off with the biggest ticket item on the spec list, the new S21 Ultra’s display is the most technically impressive piece of technology in the new phone. Still at QHD 3200 x 1440 resolution, Samsung now also actually allows native software rendering at the full 120Hz refresh rate.

Furthermore, this is now as Samsung calls it an “Adaptive Refresh Rate” display, which in the S21 Ultra implementation not only means coarse software-based refresh rate switching between 60 and 120Hz modes, but also fine-grained transparent hardware-based LFD (low frequency drive) refresh rate switching down to 10Hz. Although with a few quirks, this is currently the most cutting-edge high refresh rate display implementation in any mobile phone in the market right now, essentially solving almost all battery draw concerns of the much-praised 120Hz HFR mode of modern flagships.  It really seems to be an outstanding display in every regard.
...
Continue Reading
[-] The following 3 users say Thank You to harlan4096 for this post:
  • Mohammad.Poorya, silversurfer, Ultimo
Reply


Forum Jump:


Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)
[-]
Welcome
You have to register before you can post on our site.

Username/Email:


Password:





[-]
Recent Posts
Microsoft Edge fixes 0-day vulnerability...
Microsoft released...harlan4096 — 10:12
AnyDesk 8.0.9
AnyDesk 8.0.9:   ...harlan4096 — 10:10
AMD Confirms RDNA 3+ GPU Architecture F...
AMD Zen5-based Strix...harlan4096 — 10:08
Adobe Acrobat Reader DC 24.001.20629 (Op...
Adobe Acrobat Read...harlan4096 — 10:06
FastCopy 5.7.5
FastCopy 5.7.5: ...harlan4096 — 10:04

[-]
Birthdays
Today's Birthdays
No birthdays today.
Upcoming Birthdays
No upcoming birthdays.

[-]
Online Staff
There are no staff members currently online.

>