Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra long-term review
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- Anonymous
- gm%
- 16 Jul 2021
DD, 16 Jul 2021Keep dreaming. LolGo and Google which is the no 1 smartphone band and then you keep dreaming as your Apple will soon be no. 3 after Xiaomi takes the no. 2 spot very soon.
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- DD
- Q0y
- 16 Jul 2021
Anonymous, 16 Jul 2021They have already surpassed Apple long back. They are alrea... moreKeep dreaming. Lol
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- Hemedans
- fuZ
- 16 Jul 2021
Anonymous, 16 Jul 2021Chinese skins are featured rich as a well, lot of features ... moreI will be honest never used MIUI before, but used Lot of BBK, Emui and other Chinese Oems, and they don't come close to Samsung solutions.
What features you used which are better and not available in Samsung?
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- Anonymous
- gm%
- 16 Jul 2021
DD, 16 Jul 2021All those tanks and armies, still can't reach the leve... moreThey have already surpassed Apple long back. They are already the number one smartphone company in the world
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- Anonymous
- gm%
- 16 Jul 2021
Anonymous, 16 Jul 2021Awww Huawei boy got salty... Dual PD AF is a lot more clos... moreDon't forget the focus lock that helps at long zoom range.
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- DD
- Q0y
- 16 Jul 2021
Chackla, 16 Jul 2021Samsung even makes army tanks and weapons btw. Samsung rule... moreAll those tanks and armies, still can't reach the level of Apple. Lol
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- Anonymous
- asP
- 16 Jul 2021
Shui8, 16 Jul 2021So with DPAF its more advanced? Lol. Quality depends on ima... moreAwww Huawei boy got salty...
Dual PD AF is a lot more closer to omni directional AF in focusing speeds in real world compared to regular AF on Huawei's 10x zoom.
Even the images at 30x, Samsung blows Huawei out of the water.
You talk about image processing is better on Samsung? Sure... Even if it wasn't, one can use gcam on S21 Ultra zoom lens and extract even better image quality. You can't do that with Huawei p40 pro.
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- Anonymous
- yZ6
- 16 Jul 2021
Hemedans, 15 Jul 2021samsung Ui has never been the fastest, but you choose Samsu... moreChinese skins are featured rich as a well, lot of features absent on one ui that are present on Chinese skins
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- Anonymous
- yZ6
- 16 Jul 2021
Hemedans, 15 Jul 2021most people don't talk about Samsung bloatware because... moreThe problem is that there are some people on this site who can't stop bashing Chinese skins like miui, but they'll praise OneUi instead.
So many people blame miui for not working smoothly on some 50-100$ device, yet they become silent when oxygen OS or one ui struggle on 50-100$ devices
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- Anonymous
- yZ6
- 16 Jul 2021
AnonD-762416, 16 Jul 2021Harman Kardon is Samsung. Everything in your Xiaomi is Sam... moreSo what? S21 Ultra still failed to beat mi 11 Ultra for phone of the year despite them having all Samsung
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- JT
- dPU
- 16 Jul 2021
I love mine. Had it for 4 months already and no problems whatsoever and the looks of the phone still impress me like day one.
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- Tarso
- p37
- 16 Jul 2021
Well, nice review, I'm divided between him and Mi11 Ultra which I was more atracted, now my attraction increases but I gonna wait for the long term review of Xiaomi's device to finally buy
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- LoLoL
- ph{
- 16 Jul 2021
one month ago I had Mate 40 pro, lack of google services (yeah, I knew it before got it) i sold it.
Now I got this one S21 Ultra so i can truly compare both flagships.
somehow, browsing the phone doing daily stuff Huawei felt more comfortable, no stucks/lags on galaxy, but huawei felt a little bit more nicer, but its like 51% huawei and 49% samsung.
Cameras setup and quality without questions Mate 40 pro wins. To be honest i was expecting more from samsung for daily taking pics and so on...
also both are biggest flaghsips and both are amazing..
oh yes, one more important topic, both having curved screens, but on samsung "curve" do not feel at all, this is so good!!
If Huawei would have google services I think I would keep with it...
but having samsung is also no problems. happy to have it :)
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- FarFan
- eCi
- 16 Jul 2021
When people will learn to distinguish "good" and "best" which means enormous?
Five cameras is not good - this is best versatility which is enormous. Colors are most vivid but not close to real ones. 100x zoom is amazing but used only to impress for few times in life.
Screen is not good - it is best in class, but too big, useless curves, max brightness to use as lamp
Processor is best! But they can't use it properly to avoid lags of system
Removed all physical accessories: charger, memory slot, headphone port.
Updates of android are fastest! But lack some features.
And all this perfection add weight! It weights as a real brick, phones with 7000mah battery weight less
Best at everything, but not good at anything.
- S
- SgRepeat
- KS2
- 16 Jul 2021
walkman8, 16 Jul 2021I'll look into the mentioned flaws as a 5-month s21 Ul... moreYou can change the default cropped selfie view.
Go to Camera settings > Settings to keep, and enable Selfie angle.
This will keep the angle you last used for the front camera instead of switching back to the cropped angle.
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- Chackla
- NsB
- 16 Jul 2021
Rkm, 16 Jul 2021Samsung bought Harman which owns AKG, Bang and Olufsen, JBL... moreSamsung even makes army tanks and weapons btw. Samsung rules the display market. apple iphone screens are made by Samsung
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- S21 Ultra Ned
- 0aA
- 16 Jul 2021
This phone is perfect in every way.
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- Rizal
- AWZ
- 16 Jul 2021
Even if it equipped with 5000 maH, the battery is still drain quite much. I am not sure why, perhaps I charged it with Huawei charging plug (40W).
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- walkman8
- 3qx
- 16 Jul 2021
I'll look into the mentioned flaws as a 5-month s21 Ultra user:
"but it's still an all-black phone and that's rather dull"-I disagree, this is the best looking phone I've ever owned, and I've owned several HTC smartphones back in the day. I actually hate the childish trend of rainbow-colored smartphones, plus they're more attractive for thieves.
"would've preferred it to be lighter if not also thinner, but the big issue with handling is that it's top heavy, and rather significantly so."-I agree about the first 2 points, disagree with the last one. I hadn't felt that, it's surprisingly well balanced considered the camera hardware.
"One thing we'd like to mention regarding design is the very unfortunate positioning of the microphone pinhole at the bottom"-that never occurred to me,like ever. Unless you're drunk and tired, but I'd never hold my $1000 phone in that state of mind.
"Finally, let's address the invisible elephant in the room, and that's the airiness of the box."-I agree 100% on that.
"A lot of its competitors use more curved screens and have zero accidental touch issues, whereas the S21 Ultra does get a lot of them."-I never had issues with that. Granted, most of the day it's in the case, but in the evening I use it "naked" and never had that issue. I was actually surprised and expected accidental touches.
"Despite being the fastest and smoothest Samsung ever, the Galaxy S21 Ultra is not the smoothest phone around."-that's true, they really need to work on that. But at least I never had to reset or hard reset my device, which was often the case in my older Samsungs.
"After the last update which took the security patch level to June 2021, with our use case, we've always hit 5 hours of screen-on-time in a day, and we even managed 6 a few times."-I've had 7-9 hours SOT constantly. Granted, with lighter use and more efficient settings. But I am very happy with the battery life, especially considering the fact Samsung designed the chips, which never is good news.
"It's time for the Korean company to really up its charging game."- maybe just a little bit. Like, make the 45 w chargers you used to provide able to charge the phone in 50 minutes and it's ok, I don't mind it.
"Duplicate apps"-surprisingly, I found Samsung's apps to be far better than Google's alternatives (Messages, Chrome,Calendar,Gallery), all except for keyboard and voice assistant.
"The ultrawide photos are good, but definitely not the best we've seen from ultrawides lately"-agreed, p40 pro and op9pro beat it out of the park easily
"The ultrawide produces barely decent photos at night, far from outstanding or wow-inducing."-agreed
""default is cropped" situation"-I barely used the selfie cam, but I guess it can get annoying.
2 things you forgot to mention: video recording in 4k60fps, 8k and Hyperlapse mode are comically badly executed, even after the updated.
Secondly, again you forgot to mention the overheating issues, just like you did with mi11. You might not notice it in breezy seasons, but in summer days it's definitely not something you won't notice.
All in all, with all the flaws mentioned, this is still the most balanced smartphone of 2021. Mi 11 Ultra was very close, but Xiaomi hurried up too much with trying to beat Samsung by quickly releasing mi11u and that resulted with half-baked software.
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- S21U
- fFC
- 16 Jul 2021
AnonD-986036, 16 Jul 2021Much more advanced, yes. The autofocus and the sensor are l... moretf r u said? im using both S21U n iphone 12 pro(for ipad integration), and with latest update which is yesterday, the lowlight cam on S21U r far more superior. im dare to day its the best today.