SAMSUNG GALAXY S21 REVIEW

The Samsung galaxy S. 21 is $200 cheaper than last year. 

Hey, what's up. So the Samsung galaxy S. 21 is $200 cheaper than last year. That's a big deal we're so used to the prices of phones going up and up and up year after year that when you do see a big jump down in price. Because there was a conscious decision made here to offer more value so basically, every smartphone that's not the highest in the thing they can make is fundamentally a balancing act to try to check just the right set of boxes and combine just the right set of features to appeal to the most buyers and that's especially if your Samsung because they've got this goal to be the default smartphone to keep their top spot top of mine but the customer is more educated than ever as a No pressure anything but you gotta check the right set of boxes or else what. We got just 21 a drop this year I think checks all the most important boxes most people care about performance battery camera and smart sacrifices they've made to get to drop the price by 200 Bucks. Almost no one will notice. Will you first of all let's just start with the big one the design I said I think it's nice it's actually grown on me I started with like I don't really hate it and then it went somewhere up to I kinda like it and now I think it's one of the best honestly if you're gonna have a camera bump own it this phone looks good in gray looks even better in this purple and gold teddy fresh contrast combo and looks even better in an icon skin link below, but generally like I said in my S. 21 orchard view this purposeful design bringing the metal camera bump straight to the sides where it wraps around the rails that's nice that's a good call but this camera will play here is the only piece of metal on the back of the phone the rest is plastic. And you barely notice it's still coated in the same way with this like super fine smoothest texture still has the same sheen to it it is lighter when you're holding it than the glass phones the S. 21 plus in the S. 21 ultra but to be honest I'm way more focused on the smaller footprint than the weight this goes all the way down to a 6.2-inch display state expected to be decently like anyway and 6.2 inches by the way still plenty of screens is a little bit smaller but it is a pretty big screen so the plastic definitely not something you immediately feeling go all they did a bad job you'll barely notice so let's talk about that screen there's a couple things going on here it's still a really great Samsung display is very bright and readable outdoors has great color and HDR cert it's perfectly flat even flatter at the edges than the slightly curved S. 21 ultra so I like this flatness a lot on this colorway you do get a little bit of the gold rails kind of peeking around the sides which can make it look a little bit cheaper ideally it's just like thin black bezels and then nothing that lookssleek but overall great display same great larger ultrasonic fingerprint reader is the ultra same size-tiny selfie camera cut out even though it's a different selfie camera and there's no way you notice from watching this YouTube video but they dropped the resolution from 1440 P. to 1080 P. but the reason most people won't notice is 1 it's still a pretty sharp display 1080 P. on 6.2 inches is up over 400 pixels per inch, it's not like a bad pixel density but 2 last year to switch to 120 hurts you had to use the screen at 1080 P.. And so you couldn't use 1440 P. and 20 hurt at the same time and I was kind of a bummer but the same thing I guess running the numbers did the research understood that most people like the 20 hertz and would take 1080 P. for that every time said I would do is 1080 P. every time and it's under 20 hurts now would have been better if we could use both like we can on the ultra yeah. But will most people even notice. I don't think so there's also a couple of even smaller things missing no S. pen support on the regular S. 21 like the older I got and the variable refresh rate goes from 48 hertz 220 hertz instead of 10 220 hurts so very small differences that Samsung has weighed against how much money they can save and whether people notice or not I absolutely did not notice any difference in responsiveness or performance this phone has been a great performer as being a performance honestly this is the 1 area where they still did go super high end this phone has the same chip the snapdragon triple 8 in this region and it's every bit as much of a performer as it is on the trip it does have 8 gigs of ram instead of 12 or 16 but I never found I noticed any hesitation or performance or worse multi-tasking where I was wishing I had all that ran back now they could have gone with a lower and ship this the 7 series they could have put a snapdragon 765 G. in this phone like a lot of others have in their phones at this price and it would have been yet another savings that could have made that we probably wouldn't have really noticed actively as a difference in performance but they didn't this is still the fastest chip in a phone so I really do appreciate that all the same capabilities from the ultra as far as software enabled by the chip they're all still here and I didn't notice a difference in ram I used to just like I use the ultra had no problems with lag or choppiness at all so throughout all of Samsung's absolutely packed software you know the dozens of embedded when you I. features and maximum customization it's definitely nice to have a smaller phone that still performs almost exactly like the bigger phone now these cameras on the back there another area where you've course the difference between this and the ultra, the ultra we already knew was all about giving you the big numbers the ultra camera experience that's the focus of this phone on this phone I think they've done a great job balancing taking the features out of the ultra that most people probably won't need. Or even notice and actually, one thing that this phone does on camera is better than the ultra. Man I don't know that see if you can guess that couldn't pause this video could write down what you think this camera might do better in the ultra and hit play we'll see if you're right so these triple cameras on the back of the S. 21 and are essentially the same cameras from the S. 20 the main camera doesn't ultra-wide and a 3 X. telephoto so no crazy 100 X. space soon just a reasonable maximum of 30 X. but at the end of the day if you don't do a ton a huge zoom and still have the same sort of zoom lock re consuming all the way into the end of the camera and it'll stabilize a software that's probably about as good as most people will need it's not quite sharp at that range is the ultra but will you notice there's no laser autofocus here either although I found with the smaller sensor it still has no focus issues and then there's the same snapdragon triple 8 so all the same capabilities like single take note 8 K. video the director's note all that stuff is still here so what is it do better than the ultra well the one thing with the word culture in it is the ultra-wide camera here on the S. 21 it's actually a little bit wider than the ultra-wide on the ultra, you can see it labels it 0.5 X. versus 0.6 secs but it's a little noticeably whiter actually didn't notice it before checking the numbers it's great also I just wanna shout out Simpson's portrait mode for getting consistently better and better over time will be my hot take for this video but I think Samsung's portrait mode is now the best in any smartphone put it over the iPhone put it over the pixel seriously impressive stuff so don't let the lack of holes in the back of the camera for you this is still a very capable camera system the lack of laser autofocus the lack of zoom past 30 X. the lack of a macro mode built-in I noticed them because I'm a camera nerd but most people won't actually miss that stuff it's a great camera and there are a couple other small things here there's a 4000 bar battery which is of course a bit smaller than the 5000 powers on the bigger one yes but it's still a big battery and it lasted all day getting 5. Less hours of screen on time no problem I could kill it in a day if I'm hammering it all day with a lot of GPS in a lot of screen on time but aside from that it's fine it's a no worry battery there's no expandable storage but that's also gone from the entire line up and so is M. S. T. which was this cool trick that lets Samsung phones use magnetic pulses to replicate credit card functionality so I could pay with stuff at terminals that don't support NFC some people are gonna hate that this is gone but that's another bet Sampson had to make that most people weren't using it those are like the 2 most sorely missed features for me and a lot of enthusiasts expander storage and M. S. T. was super useful but the whole line dropped by $200 so there's gonna be stuff that they cut out and that's the calculus they made is okay that's not getting a whole 20 use will get those but at the end of the day I think Samsung checked the right set of boxes with the S. 21 and it's also only 50 Bucks to upgrade and double the storage to 200 56 gigs which is pretty important since you no longer have expandable storage and if you're taking lots of photos and 8 K. videos you might want that so that's another great calculus to make but overall this is no doubt the best bang for the Buck and Alaina I think it's gonna be super common early to compare the S. 21 to the ultra which is a lot of what I did in this video but this phone costs $400 more so when you compare this phone up against this competition which is a bunch of other phones sitting around 67 800 Bucks it's going to compare pretty favorably it's gonna have the highest and ships can have 1 of the nicest screens great fingerprint readers great cameras system and stuff it's missing which is the stuff that Samsung is hoping you probably won't care too much about or even notice I think that my direct calculations on so this is it is the standard package I have no problem recommending the sound but I'm also very curious to see how the rest of the competition will be attacking S. 21 all year for the rest 202125. Anyway that's been it's definitely watch the S. 21 ultra video record a like button if you haven't seen it already that's pretty much it okay G. as in the very next.

Samsung Galaxy S21 Specification:

• Body: 151.7x71.2x7.9mm, 169g; Glass front (Gorilla Glass Victus), plastic back, aluminum frame; IP68 dust/water resistant (up to 1.5m for 30 mins).
• Display: 6.20" Dynamic AMOLED 2X, 120Hz, HDR10+, 1300 nits (peak), 1080x2400px the resolution, 20:9 aspect ratio, 421ppi; Always-on display.
• Chipset: International - Exynos 2100 (5 nm): Octa-core CPU (1x2.9 GHz Cortex-X1 & 3x2.80 GHz Cortex-A78 & 4x2.2 GHz Cortex-A55), Mali-G78 MP14 GPU. USA/China - Qualcomm SM8350 Snapdragon 888 (5 nm): Octa-core (1x2.84 GHz Kryo 680 & 3x2.42 GHz Kryo 680 & 4x1.80 GHz Kryo 680; Adreno 660 GPU.
• Memory: 128GB 8GB RAM, 256GB 8GB RAM; UFS 3.1.
• Rear camera: Wide (main): 12 MP, f/1.8, 26mm, 1/1.76", 1.8µm, Dual Pixel PDAF, OIS; Ultra wide angle: 12 MP, f/2.2, 13mm, 120˚, 1/2.55" 1.4µm, Super Steady video; Telephoto: 64 MP, f/2.0, 29mm, 1/1.72", 0.8µm, PDAF, OIS, 1.1x optical zoom, 3x hybrid zoom.
• Front camera: 10 MP, f/2.2, 26mm, 1/3.24", 1.22µm, Dual Pixel PDAF.
• OS/Software: Android 11, One UI 3.1.
• Video capture: Rear camera: 8K@24fps, 4K@30/60fps, 1080p@30/60/240fps, 720p@960fps, HDR10+, stereo sound rec., gyro-EIS; Front camera: 4K@30/60fps, 1080p@30fps.
• Battery: 4000mAh; Fast charging 25W, USB Power Delivery 3.0, Fast Qi/PMA wireless charging 15W, Reverse wireless charging 4.5W.
• Misc: Fingerprint reader (under display, ultrasonic); NFC; FM radio (Snapdragon model only; market/operator dependent); Samsung DeX, Samsung Wireless DeX (desktop experience support), Samsung Pay (Visa, MasterCard certified), ANT+, Bixby natural language commands and dictation.