Unboxing Samsung's Galaxy S21 and S21 Ultra By Mashable

- Hey everyone, it's Brenda Stolyar, Mashable's tech reporter, and today we're going to be unboxing Samsung's new Galaxy S21 and S21 Ultra so, let's get it into it. So, we are going to start with the S21 unboxing, but before I even open these up, these boxes look a lot thinner than usual, than Samsung's past boxes, I should say, and that's because they don't include a charging brick. So, they definitely jumped on the trend of just skipping the charging brick altogether. But I... if you're like me, you probably have tons of them laying around. Otherwise you'll have to purchase them separately.

Alright, let's start with the S21. Okay. This is the violet S21 and I think... no, it is definitely the only one with the dual tone camera module, which looks pretty nice. It's like a gold, but it also kind of looks pink sometimes in the light.

Okay, let's take off the plastic. Oops, okay. Oh! Let's turn it on. Shall we? Okay, so yeah, and then it's also got that same gold metal on the sides, and then the back is made of plastic, which I'm fine with because I think that it still looks really nice, and it also means you don't have to be as careful with it. Don't have to put a case on it.

It's also really light in general. And then, yeah, you have your triple camera your 6.2 inch display on the front and we'll get into all the other details after the S21 Ultra. I'm going to leave that one here. Alright. Here is the S21 Ultra.

I'm particularly excited about this one because the S20 Ultra was really ugly. Okay. So, this is the "Phantom Black. " It also comes in a silver. You have this really intense camera module with four, five, six, why did I just say six, why are there so many lenses? This is your quad camera module.

And then you have the 6.8 inch display on the front. This one is made out of glass and metal on the sides so it's certainly a lot heavier than the S21. Let me power that one on. And then as far as the rest of the stuff in the box, you do get what I think is a charging cable. Yeah.

So at least they give you that. You definitely get a charging cable in both boxes so, let's just hope you have a power brick laying around. Why is this so difficult to open? There we go. Okay. So, it is a type C to type C so, all you'll need is that type C charging brick and you'll be good to go.

So that is literally the only extra thing that comes with the phone is a charging cable which, again, makes for a thin box, which I'm okay with because storing these things is a nightmare when they're super thick and bulky. Okay. So this is literally what comes inside at each box. That's it. Not much.

But that's fine. We've all collected enough accessories in our time, in our lifetime at this point. So here it is. I mean, looking at these, just... without holding these, they look like they're made out of the same material because there is a matte finish on the glass of the Ultra and then on the plastic of the S21.

So they both actually look exactly the same. I know a lot of people have been criticizing the S21 for being made out of plastic, you know, because it is a flagship phone but I'm totally okay with it. Again, it's lighter, it's... I think grippier as well, which makes it nice because you don't have to worry about dropping it. I mean, this definitely feels a bit more luxurious, I'd say, a little more premium, but I think with the matte finish, you really can't tell the difference unless you are physically holding them and can feel the weight.

But yeah, overall I think these are a lot nicer than last year's models. I mean, those were nice too, but I think these have a stronger look to them. They're definitely more pronounced, and they're actually phones I'd want to show off. I don't know. They just look really nice.

I like them. Good job, Samsung. Good job on this design. So let's walk through the S21. Again, you have the metal frame.

You have the plastic back. You got your type C port. And then as far as the cameras go, I do want to point out the camera in general because with the S20 it was a literal piece of glass that sat on top of a phone, and now this is integrated into the metal frame itself so you don't have to worry about A) scratching, B) glass or accidentally, you know, cracking it. And then it's also just a smaller camera bump which is really nice. It doesn't really like wobble as much as the last one did I'd say.

Same with the Ultra. Let's do a wobble test. I mean, it's not too bad. It's fine. It's better than what it was.

I'm going to get to the S21 Ultra in a second because I do have the S20 to compare it to. That was just a monstrosity and should have never been released the way that it looked. Anyway. So, as far as cameras go, the S21 and the S21 plus have the same cameras. So, you have a 12 megapixel wide angle lens, a 12 megapixel Ultra wide angle lens, and then a 64 megapixel telephoto lens.

And it can also zoom up to 30 times using Samsung's proprietary space zoom technology. I'm excited to test out space zoom on the S21 to see if there's just any improvements to clarity.30 times was already pretty nice. I'd say that was like the sweet spot with space zoom, where you could still get that clarity.100 times was God awful so, we will see. But you can't do 100 times on the S21 or S21 Plus anyways, so it doesn't matter. Alright.

And then on the front you have a 10 megapixel selfie camera. Both phones do have the same features, so I will go through that on the Ultra. But yeah, that's the S21. So it also comes in a few other colors, including gray, white, and pink in addition to this violet. I did see the pink in person and as much as I love this purple, the pink was like a really nice peachy color so I'd probably prefer that one over this one, but yeah, it's nice to have some pops of color in any phone, really, because I feel like that's becoming a bit rare nowadays.

Okay so, I will get into more details about what you can also do on the S21 as I move on to the Ultra. So, goodbye to the S21 for now. Just going to set that one here. So this is the S21 Ultra. Let's go through some of the specs.6.8 inch display on the front. Again, the back is made of glass but it has that really nice matte finish, and then you have the metal on the sides.

This is a heavy... this is a heavy boy in my hands, I will say. This one's a lot heavier, but I mean that comes with the territory of an Ultra phone. Let's go through the cameras. The front has a 40 megapixel selfie camera.

So the S20 Ultra also had a 40 megapixel selfie camera, and it was very intimidating to have such a high definition camera as your front-facing. Selfies were a little scary but, I got used to it after a while. I still think it's absolutely bizarre to have that kind of camera on the front. I don't think it's necessary. I think 10 megapixels is more than enough.

But on the back you have that same integrated camera, which is nice because, I will show... this is what last year's model looked like. So, I talked about that glass camera module that sat on top and it's just... aside from the fact that it's very thick and just really ugly, you can literally see the space zoom logo. I don't know why they did that.

I don't know why anyone would do that. Thankfully, they got rid of that on this one but yeah, it just quite literally is like stuck on top and there were a lot of reports where people easily broke it. When you drop the phone that's basically what it's landing on or even just placing it down on a table. The only way to kind of either protect it or to level out the back was to put a case on it, and this is already a very thick and heavy phone, so putting a case on it wasn't too fun. But I mean, even at, like, first glance, you can just see that this looks so much nicer and it's also $200 cheaper.

This one is... or starts at $1,199.99, and then this one started at $1,400 so you get a nicer phone for less money. Just, you know, a win all around. So, as far as cameras go, you have four sensors here. So there's a 12 megapixel wide angle, a 108 megapixel Ultra wide angle, and then two 10 megapixel telephoto lenses.

So Samsung swapped out the 48 megapixel telephoto lens on the S20 Ultra for two of the 10 megapixel telephoto lenses. It's supposed to help improve with space zoom, particularly because... I don't know if I mentioned this but 100 times space zoom on the Ultra created the noisiest photos I've ever seen. And it just was like, you didn't want to post that. Like, you didn't want to show anybody that.

I would post photos of it to prove that, yes, you can go in at 100 times on a subject, but it was just really bad. And if anything, I figured it was just Samsung trying to prove that they could do it, in general, because, obviously that's rare for a smartphone to do, but yeah, these are supposed to improve the image quality on 100 times, zoom. I still don't know what I need 100 times zoom for but I'm going to test it out. I'm going to see if they've made their improvements. Obviously, they were listening in that respect because there was no one that had nice 100 times zoom photos.

So I'll have to test that out. So I'll have to test that out and see if it lives up to its new expectations. Let's go into... processors. In case you haven't noticed, neither of the phones have a micro SD slot.

So Samsung has discontinued that additional feature on the S21 line. - Screen on, talk back tutorial. Talk back is a... screen off. - Okay.

So Samsung discontinued that on the S21 line. As far as storage capacity goes, the S21 has eight gigabytes of ram and 128 gigabytes of internal storage. That goes all the way up to 256 gigabytes, and then the S21 Ultra has 12 gigabytes of Ram and 128 gigabytes of internal storage which can be increased up to 512 gigabytes. But of course, any increase in storage means that you're going to have to pay a little bit more, if not a lot more, depending on which model you choose. Okay.

So all three phones have a 120 Hertz refresh rate but what Samsung did this year, is that they added an adaptive refresh rate instead. So on the S20, you can choose between 60 Hertz and 120 Hertz, which means if I choose 120 Hertz it's going to constantly scroll in 120 Hertz. Here it goes into an adaptive mode, so that means that depending on what it is that is on your screen and that actually requires 120 Hertz, whether that's animations or scrolling through social media, it knows when to kick into 120 Hertz and that mainly helps with battery life. I'm not really sure if I'm going to be able to tell a difference. Like I'm not going to scroll through and realize that it's under 120 Hertz because... but the adaptive feature shouldn't really make that much of a difference.

It's not a deal breaker. It still comes with that high refresh rate so, should be fine. Now, that I have bashed the S20 Ultra and we can forget that this design ever happened, just going to put this phone to the side. Okay, let's go through features. Okay.

So, the one complaint with space zoom is that when you would zoom in 100 times on a subject, it was just really shaky and that's partly why it resulted in a really unclear image. You had to make sure that your hand was super still when taking a photo. So, now they introduced zoom lock. So basically when you zoom in on a subject, it'll stabilize the image and you'll see this little frame in the corner turn yellow, and then when you capture the shot it should result in a much smoother looking image. I'm going to have to actually test that out fully when I go outside and zoom in on actual real things, and not a Rubik's cube.

Anyway, I'm excited to test it out because the ability to zoom in on 100 times is really cool but what's not cool is the photos that I got with it on the S20 Ultra because, again, those were awful. So I will be testing that out and letting you know how that goes in my full review. And then the Ultra also has an improved bright night sensor so it's supposed to capture better images in low light, which I'm also excited to test out. There are improvements to portrait mode as well. It's supposed to be better at separating the subject from the background, so.

I do remember with the S20 Ultra, there were some issues with recognizing the subject and adding blur to places where there should not have been blur so I'm also excited to test that out as well and then you also have some additional studio lighting features so that means... and then there are also studio lighting features so you can add some cool effects to your portrait photos. And then for video, Samsung added something called director's view, where you can see all of the different lenses and shoot with each one simultaneously, which is... pretty fun. I mean, I'm not the type that needs that intense of features when shooting video, but you know, it's nice to have that option.

There's also a blogger mode, so I can see myself and then whatever is in front of me if you're into that kind of thing. Okay. And then with the Ultra specifically, Samsung has added the ability to use a stylus with it. The accessory is sold separately, so on top of paying for this phone, you're going to have to drop another $40 for the stylus. They also have cases, because there's literally nowhere to store it.

There's literally nowhere to store it on the phone so, unless you want to carry it around separately, you'll have to get a case which has a placeholder for it. It's also worth mentioning... so you can only do the basics with that particular stylus, like take notes, sign documents, edit photos. It's with the S Pen Pro, that isn't coming out until later this year, that you can take advantage of the Bluetooth functionality. So that means waving it in the air and triggering different gestures, like switching between camera modes, using it to take selfies.

So that one's a bit cooler. That's the one that's included on, or that's the one that's similar to the one that you get with the Note line. I'm not really sure if a stylus makes sense with the Ultra but I mean, if you're into that kind of thing as well, I'm not judging. Some people want a stylus, but don't want to commit to the Note line. And then the entire S21 lineup is 5G enabled.

So you do get millimeter wave and some 6, depending on your area, if there even is 5G available. Again, not again... I've said it before, and I will say it again, 5G is not a selling point for these phones. It's really just future-proofing. Unless, you know, you really do live in an area where 5G is strong, up and running.

But if you don't plan on purchasing or upgrading to another phone for a few years, then it does make sense. So that is our unboxing of the S21 and the S21 Ultra. A lot of these improvements can be categorized as incremental compared to last year's versions. I don't see it as incremental. I mean, they completely redid the design.

They are improving on camera features so I'm excited to test those out. And, I mean, they did take away certain things like the micro SD card slot. Let me take that again. There are some compromises, obviously, that have been made including the fact that the S21 is made of plastic instead of glass, and there is no micro SD card slot on any of these models. But, I mean, they did manage to lower the price instead of either keeping the price the same or increasing it, and I still think that they pack a ton of great features.

They look really nice, they feel really nice. So I'm really excited to see if both the S21 and the S21 Ultra hold up on their promises, and I will be testing them out fully in the days to come.

Source : Mashable