Update Best New Phone 2021 Review – Readers chose the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra as the best phone of the year. It faces some serious competition, most notably the Google Pixel 6 series, whose vanilla design was our Editors’ Choice for 2021. But we’re a year away from the phone’s launch, so how does the Galaxy S21 Ultra stack up? In 2022?
Obviously, this phone is still a favorite among our readers, so we know how you all feel. Today, however, we get to see the Galaxy S21 Ultra through the lens of 2022. Not only do we have the Galaxy S22 series – we know from all the leaks that it will include a Note-flavored Ultra variant – but we also have heavy hits from OnePlus, Google and Xiaomi .
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With all this in mind, is this phone still worth buying today? Let’s take a long look at the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra and find out.
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For our original phone review in January 2021, we ranked the Galaxy S21 Ultra among the best phones of the year, giving it 4.5/5 stars. We were impressed with what the phone had to offer in the main processing, display and camera departments. Especially compared to the Galaxy S20 Ultra, we weren’t too impressed, especially with its design.
Six months after the phone was launched, we’re still in awe. Even compared to Samsung’s new foldable phones, the Galaxy S21 Ultra is still expensive. Its starting price of $1,200 has not stopped us from continuing to recommend it.
After another six months, it’s time to give the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra the long-term review it deserves.
So far, the closest and most recent Android 2022 competitor to the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra that we’ve seen is the OnePlus 10 Pro – a phone you can’t even buy outside of China. Interestingly, most of the features of this phone are comparable or weaker than the Galaxy S21 Ultra.
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For example, the battery size is the same (5,000 mAh). The displays are also very similar: large WQHD AMOLED screens with a 120 Hz refresh rate. Meanwhile, Galaxy S21 Ultra has higher RAM (up to 16 GB) and higher internal memory (up to 512 GB). The Galaxy S21 Ultra’s camera specs are also better than the OnePlus 10 Pro.
Apart from two areas, the spec sheet of Galaxy S21 Ultra is still better than OnePlus 10 Pro.
In fact, the OnePlus 10 Pro beats the Galaxy S21 Ultra in only two areas: processor and charging speed. The processor in the 10 Pro is Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, which is the flagship of 2022. The Galaxy S21 Ultra’s Snapdragon 888 and Exynos 2100 are, by definition, no match for it. However, these chipsets are still monsters – not the same monster as the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1.
In fact, the only thing Samsung can’t compete with is the 10 Pro’s charging speed. 10 Pro is three times faster than the Galaxy S21 Ultra for both wired and wireless connections. It’s a shame and we sincerely hope that Samsung corrects this imbalance with the Galaxy S22 series.
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Outside of the Android ecosystem, the Apple iPhone 13 Pro Max was launched in late 2021 and is a serious competitor to the Galaxy S21 Ultra. Again, Apple’s A15 Bionic processor is slightly more powerful, but not to the extent that it makes a difference in everyday life. The Samsung phone remains competitive in the display, storage and charging departments. The Galaxy S21 Ultra also offers a more flexible and robust camera package than Apple’s latest iPhone.
Regardless, the point is that even in 2022, the Galaxy S21 Ultra is still a beast of a phone when it comes to raw materials. Even after a year, the phone can still compete with other flagships. In terms of software, the phone has already received the Android 12 update, with Samsung One UI 4 on top of it. You can read more about the news at the link below.
Great specs are important in making a great phone, but design is just as important. After all, an outdated design can make a phone obsolete in a year, as it sticks out like a sore thumb compared to its modern counterparts.
Fortunately, when I tested the phone for this long-term Samsung Galaxy S21 review, I never felt that it looked or felt good. That’s important because it wasn’t a 2020 model. It’s good that Samsung has moved away from the brutal – and I’m just saying: ugly – design of the Galaxy S20 Ultra. The S21 Ultra’s raised side-mounted camera and curved (but not too curved) sides give it a minimalistic elegance that will still look modern five years from now.
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Of course, it’s still a big and heavy phone. Weighing up to 229g by design, the Galaxy S21 Ultra feels like a brick in your pocket, if it even fits there. If you don’t have big hands, its large frame is difficult to hold and using the device with one hand is a fool’s errand.
However, people who want a phone in this category already know and accept this. People like me wish there was a way to get all the specs and features of the Galaxy S21 Ultra in a smaller and lighter way, but that’s not going to happen anytime soon. Either way, the Galaxy S21 Ultra is still beautiful.
One of our biggest gripes with the Galaxy S20 Ultra was its camera. Despite having excellent hardware, the phone struggled with some basic functions such as autofocus. However, the Galaxy S21 Ultra overcomes all the problems of its predecessor, making it one of the best smartphone cameras in 2021 or any year.
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Surprisingly, the camera is still amazing today. Not only does it produce beautiful images, but its dual-telephone system, which includes a periscope lens, allows for versatility. Focusing is no longer a problem, and the latest One UI 4.0 software is packed with photography options, including classic portraits and night modes. Combined with the aforementioned Snapdragon 888 processor, taking photos and videos is super fast.
Speaking of video, the phone can shoot up to 8K at 24fps or 4K at 60fps, the latter also available from the front-facing camera. The rear cameras all use dynamic stabilization, and Samsung has a few additional software tools to help you take pictures, too. Director View lets you switch between wide and zoom lenses while you’re shooting, or you can use Single Take to automatically create short time-lapse clips, as well as separate shots.
Below you can see some photos taken with the Galaxy S21 Ultra since it received the One UI 4.0 update at the end of November 2021:
Obviously, nothing is perfect and the Galaxy S21 Ultra’s camera still has room for improvement. Samsung can still fill the color in some cases, for example, sometimes the software is a little hard and the process of strengthening.
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If those two things annoy you, you can always use Samsung’s new Raw Pro camera app. This app takes Samsung’s computer systems out of the equation and gives you full access to the S21 Ultra’s camera hardware. We don’t recommend it for casual users, but if you feel like a generic camera app is going too far, you’re not a casual user anyway.
When Samsung coined the “Ultra” moniker, it was clear that the company was reserving the name for phones that have everything you could want. In fact, some might even argue that the Ultra phones we’ve seen have been too much in some places – for example, 16GB of RAM isn’t really necessary.
Unfortunately, the Galaxy S21 Ultra doesn’t live up to its name in some ways. This is where the phone falls short.
Samsung’s other Ultra phones to date – the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra and the Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra – have expandable storage. The Galaxy S21 Ultra is the odd one out here, and that’s a shame.
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That’s right, expandable memory is starting to look like headphone jacks, meaning they’re disappearing from premium products at an incredible rate. Samsung could be forgiven for bucking the trend here, but I think we should hold anything with the word “Ultra” in its name to a higher standard.
This is especially disappointing when you remember that the phone is capable of shooting 8K video, recording files at an average of 10MB per second. Of course, the 512GB variant of the phone will solve this problem, but the microSD card slot will be cheaper and more convenient for users.
Rumor has it that the Galaxy S22 Ultra may also lack expandable storage, so that’s fine
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