Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra (Exynos) Review By Alex Hong

Hey there, Alex here. This is the Galaxy S21 Ultra. The bigger brother of the S21 I previously reviewed, and the best that Samsung has to offer at this point in time, at least when we’re talking about the traditional smartphone design. So let’s take a closer look at the phone, and see how good it really is. Like the S21, the S21 Ultra has that new design language where the camera bump is better integrated into the design of the phone. However, I feel like the wider camera bump doesn’t look as nice as the one on the S21, and it seems to wobble around a bit more.

In this situation, I really wished that they at least included a case in the box, but unfortunately, for the sake of the environment, all we’re getting is a USB-C cable. Anyway, build quality is great with the metal body and matte glass back, and it is IP68 rated as well. My only minor complaint is probably just the weight, which is a bit heavy for my taste, but I think it’s something that most people will get used to. As expected from a flagship Samsung phone, the display is simply stunning. Nice colours, very good brightness, and it supports variable refresh rates up to a 120Hz even at QHD+ resolution.

Combine that with the above average sounding pair of stereo speakers, the multimedia experience is really great. I just wished that it had a flat display like the S21. The curve isn’t that obvious this time round, but a flat display would work better with an S-Pen. And yeah, this is the first phone from the S Series to support the S-Pen. You’ll need to buy the S-Pen separately, or just use the S-Pen from the Note Series, but it works like you would expect and supports up to 4096 levels of pressure.

It doesn’t support Air Action gestures, but that’s not really a big deal for me since I’m mostly just using it for drawing. It’s also great for folks who want finer controls on their phone for things like video editing for example. Also worth noting, is how much better and less finicky this new Ultrasonic fingerprint sensor is. It now works reliably even when my fingers are dry, unlike the previous generation sensor. As mentioned in the title of this video, this is the Exynos version of the phone.

My experience with it has been mostly pretty good. Games run really well on the phone, and it’s just a really smooth experience, especially with the higher refresh rate. It still warms up fairly quickly during heavy use, and I think it feels a bit warmer compared to the S21. This could be due to glass being a better conductor of heat or maybe it’s just the higher resolution display, but either way, it’s not really an issue for my type of usage. Unless you are playing Genshin Impact at higher graphics settings or using the camera a lot under a hot sunny day, it doesn’t really get too warm most of the time.

It is also worth noting that the S21 no longer has a microSD card slot, but with 256GB of storage out of the box, and considering how built-in storage typically performs better than external storage, I don’t think it’s a big deal. Battery life has been pretty decent for me too. I can get a full day of regular use out of the phone pretty easily, but if I really push it hard, it is possible to drain it before the end of the day. Anyway, I recorded the amount of battery drain while using the phone, so you can pause the video if you want to take a closer look. I should probably also mention that the phone only supports up to 25W charging, which is pretty slow by today’s standard.

But since the battery life is more than good enough for a day of usage, I don’t think it’s a big deal. Anyway faster charging will probably wear out the battery a little quicker. And of course it supports wireless charging as well. The S21 Ultra is running Samsung’s OneUI 3.1 based on Android 11, and it’s actually my favourite Android software experience these days, even more so than OxygenOS or Google’s own Pixel experience. It does have quite a few Samsung services built in, but you can choose not to use them if you don’t want to.

It has a small handful of preloaded apps as well that can be uninstalled or disabled, and during setup we’re given the choice to select what Samsung apps we want. I also like the look and feel of the UI, it has a ton of useful features built-in, and there are a lot of nice customisation options. I’m not just talking about things like gaming mode, long screenshot, and multitasking features. These are pretty common these days. For me, it’s the small little touches like being able to turn off fast charging, being able to change the image format of screenshots, or the option to remove location data from a photo before sending.

To me, it’s pretty impressive that Samsung was able to package all of those features into a user interface that looks cohesive and performs well. On top of all that, Samsung have announced that they will be providing 4 years of security updates for the phone. And considering that my Note8 received a security update earlier this year, I have no doubt that Samsung will follow through on their promises. In terms of camera hardware, the S21 Ultra is packed to the gills. It has 4 rear cameras covering a wide range of focal lengths, and 3 of them have optical image stabilisation.

I do wish that the capture speed could be a little faster, but other than that, it’s pretty solid all round. Colours look a bit more natural to me this time round, the main camera is able to capture good looking images in most lighting conditions, the ultra wide angle camera works quite well, and the periscope telephoto camera has even more range compared to the Note20 Ultra. And, the new stabilisation feature for that camera works really well too. Even though the extra cameras can sometimes struggle a bit in low light because the sensors aren’t as good, using Night mode will typically let me get usable looking shots at least. The weakest link here is probably just the 3X telephoto camera since it has to rely on digital zoom to fill in the gaps between 3X and 10X zoom.

But apart from that, the camera experience is pretty great. Anyway, I’ve uploaded everything I took with the phone at original resolution. So if you want to see whether the camera is good enough for your needs, just check out the link in the video description below. Overall, I think the S21 Ultra is one of the best Android phones around right now. There are a few areas like charging speeds for example where it’s not the fastest.

But everything else is either very good, or class leading. Some folks might be concerned about the processor, but based on the comparison by Tom The Tech Chap, and my experience with other Snapdragon 888 phones, I think the difference between Snapdragon and Exynos is not that big this year. It is a pretty pricey phone for sure if you’re just looking at the launch pricing, but these days, you can find good deals for it pretty easily. So yeah, if you’re looking for a flagship Android phone, the Galaxy S21 Ultra is a pretty great option. Thanks for watching this video, and see you guys on the next one.

Source : Alex Hong