Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G review

25 January 2021


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  • ?
  • Anonymous
  • s%N
  • 26 Jan 2021

I'm surprised nothing was mentioned in the article about the benchmark difference between the Ultra and the standard S21 considering the only difference should be the amount of ram?

    • D
    • AnonD-973296
    • GYi
    • 26 Jan 2021

    i0S...Never...Again, 26 Jan 2021Samsung should start giving 4k120 along with 8k. The 8k foo... moreshould 8K video even be a thing on phones, i feel like we should leave that to Cine and prof grade cameras

      114hr Endurance with QHD@120hz. 👍👍👍
      Meanwhile, Apple 12 Pro Max with lower resolution and pedestrian 60hz topping out at 95hr.
      Samsung charging a premium and delivering premium.

      Let's all maintain a few minutes of silence for all those "High refresh consumes excessive battery life" guys that plague every comments section with the same old thing.

        • M
        • MrDong
        • xZI
        • 26 Jan 2021

        Daddidoo, 26 Jan 2021The new exynos is battery efficient now 114h endurance rati... moreYes it is, but sustained performance turns out to be lackluster compared to the SD variant though better than Exynos 990. You should watch Gary Explains sustained performance video, it compared S21 Ultra SD vs. Exynos.

        So this phone is only ideal for media consumption but I think gaming will be poor with high battery consumption.

          Looking at those two images of the Under the display fingerprint scanner, it's clear why Samsung wasn't the fastest last year. The larger surface area will read fingerprints more easily and accurately.

            Samsung should start giving 4k120 along with 8k. The 8k footage isn't as good as others
            (Mi 10t pro with similar sensor did great 8k footage) but I am pretty sure they'll do a great job with 4k@120fps. Even last year's devices did 4k120.

              • S
              • Stephen
              • vaX
              • 26 Jan 2021

              My S21 ultra 256gb gets hot very easily

                • F
                • Frmg
                • P4K
                • 26 Jan 2021

                I liked the better protection system for camera lenses without excess of glazed area.

                  • R
                  • Ricky Li
                  • 8xX
                  • 26 Jan 2021

                  was not 15w wireless charging speed?

                    • B
                    • Bobby
                    • xIx
                    • 26 Jan 2021

                    And there is not MST for samsung pay! why samsung why! :-(

                      • ?
                      • Anonymous
                      • JT5
                      • 26 Jan 2021

                      Daddidoo, 26 Jan 2021The new exynos is battery efficient now 114h endurance rati... moreNot really.

                      S20 Ultra was tested at 60Hz all the time.
                      21 Ultra was always switching.

                      They need to lock at 60Hz to proper test. Because the adaptive could mislead people to think endurance is better or worse according to how phone decided to act.

                        The new exynos is battery efficient now 114h endurance rating compare to last year s20 ultra 87h

                          I really dig the warmer tone of the S21 Ultra.

                            AnonD-546724, 26 Jan 2021Don't want to ruin the party but benchmarks are now ... moreyes, exactly, but nobody wants to know that they have bought an overcharge phone. its the allure of owning an expensive phones that gets them going, just like what apple have been doing for the past years

                              • ?
                              • Anonymous
                              • gBV
                              • 26 Jan 2021

                              Anonymous, 26 Jan 2021The main camera is equivalent to 24mm. But it's actual... moreI need to correct my last part. The raw file wasn't from the OnePlus 8 Pro, so my statement is not valid. Though it was correct that the Xiaomi 10 Ultra had noticeably less blue color noise in the shadows than the S20 Ultra despite only 1/13s exposure time instead of 1/4s.

                                • ?
                                • Anonymous
                                • 3{E
                                • 26 Jan 2021

                                actually I DO miss all those features they leave out. I'd rather prefer microsd over a big internal sotrage. If the phone locks out or breaks you can pull the memory card and take with you your data before bringing it to the customer service. They keep on leaving features... no microsd, no irda, no audio jack, no removable battery, now no charger (!). And devices still cost an eye

                                  • ?
                                  • Anonymous
                                  • JT5
                                  • 26 Jan 2021

                                  Alex, 26 Jan 2021And even Arena points that "almost as if the camera wa... moreTo make photo brighter.
                                  A very weird fetish ppl have today.

                                  They want very dark places to be bright as if you had lighting around, like photographers bring sometimes.

                                    • A
                                    • Alex
                                    • qC@
                                    • 26 Jan 2021

                                    And even Arena points that "almost as if the camera was not stabilized". Samsung seems to be utilizing the worst ("cheapest") OIS hardware out there. I noticed that difference between my S10 and S9: for the same light conditions S10 gives larger ISO/exposure.

                                      • ?
                                      • Anonymous
                                      • gBV
                                      • 26 Jan 2021

                                      Anonymous, 25 Jan 2021So, main camera is 26mm and periscope is 240mm. But Samsun... moreThe main camera is equivalent to 24mm. But it's actually not really a "10x optical zoom" setting, because 10x optical zoom means that the focal length is 10x as high. Only then the physical magnification is 10 times as large as the magnification of the main camera. But the focal length of the periscope camera is 30.6mm whereas the main camera has 6.7mm. So the magnification is actually only 4.6 times as large. That's the reason why it needs to use a smaller sensor than the main camera. A true optical zoom setting decreases neither the sensor size nor the megapixel count. (Though in this case, due to diffraction, only the 3x camera would have benefited from a higher megapixel count).

                                      Recently, a website has shown a raw file comparison in low light conditions with the S20 Ultra (not S21 Ultra) and has uploaded the dng files. It seems that 108 to 12 megapixel pixel binning doesn't work perfectly. Despite a noticeably longer exposure time, the 12 megapixel raw file didn't really look better than the raw file of a Xiaomi 10 Ultra, this means that the 10 Ultra should produce less noisy raw files in extremely low light conditions at the same exposure time. Also a OnePlus 8 Pro produced a noticeably less noisy dng file (than the S20 Ultra) with a similar exposure time. The worst raw file was from Huawei, who doesn't offer pixel binning raw files.

                                        • A
                                        • Alex
                                        • qC@
                                        • 26 Jan 2021

                                        Alex, 26 Jan 2021So the Preview turned out to be true: image quality is terr... moreAnd horrible low light main cam performance is just a reminder how useless those 64MP and 108MP gimmicks are. Every engineer will tell you that one big pixel captures light way more accurately than 4 small ones. But no, companies keep releasing 108MP monsters - for those users who judge phones by the specs.

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