Update Samsung Galaxy Ultra S21 Price Review – Readers voted the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra the best phone of the year. There’s been stiff competition, particularly from the Google Pixel 6 series, of which the vanilla model was our Editors’ Choice for 2021. But it’s now been a year since the phone launched, so how’s the Galaxy S21 Ultra In 2022?
Of course, the 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 a 2022 lens. Not only do we have the Galaxy S22 series right around the corner — which we know from all the leaks will include a Note-flavored Ultra variant — but we also Have heavy hitters from OnePlus, Google and Xiaomi to think about.
Update Samsung Galaxy Ultra S21 Price Review
With all that in mind, is this phone still worth buying today? Let’s dive into our long-term Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra review and find out.
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For our first phone review in January 2021, we awarded the Galaxy S21 Ultra a rating of 4.5/5 stars, placing it among the best phones of the year. We’re impressed with what the phone has to offer in the key handling, display and camera departments. Especially compared to the Galaxy S20 Ultra, which we weren’t that impressed with, especially in terms of its design.
Six months after the phone’s release, we’re still impressed. Even compared to Samsung’s new lineup of foldable phones, the Galaxy S21 Ultra is still worth the purchase. Its starting price of $1,200 hasn’t stopped us from continuing to recommend it.
After six months have passed, it’s time to give the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra the long-term review it deserves.
So far, the closest and latest 2022 Android competitor to the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra we’ve seen is the OnePlus 10 Pro, a phone you can’t even buy outside of China. Interestingly, most of the phone’s specifications match or fall short of the Galaxy S21 Ultra.
The Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra & S21 Review: The Near Perfect And The Different
For example, the battery sizes are the same (5,000 mAh). The displays are also very similar: huge WQHD AMOLED screens with 120 Hz adaptive refresh rates. Meanwhile, the Galaxy S21 Ultra has a higher maximum amount of RAM (up to 16 GB) and a higher maximum amount of internal storage (up to 512 GB). The camera specs of the Galaxy S21 Ultra are also much higher than those of the OnePlus 10 Pro.
Except in two areas, the specs of the Galaxy S21 Ultra are still better than the OnePlus 10 Pro.
In fact, the OnePlus 10 Pro beats the Galaxy S21 Ultra in only two areas: the processor and charging speeds. The processor in the 10 Pro is the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, which is the flagship for 2022. The Galaxy S21 Ultra’s year-old Snapdragon 888 and Exynos 2100 will by definition be no match for it. However, these chipsets are still monsters – just not as a monster as the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1.
Indeed, the 10 Pro’s charging speeds are the one thing Samsung can’t compete with. The 10 Pro’s speeds are literally three times faster than the Galaxy S21 Ultra for both wired and wireless connections. This is a shame and we sincerely hope that Samsung fixes this discrepancy with the Galaxy S22 series.
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Outside of the Android ecosystem, Apple’s iPhone 13 Pro Max launches in late 2021 and is a notable competitor to the Galaxy S21 Ultra. Again, Apple’s A15 Bionic processor is slightly more powerful, but not so much that it meaningfully separates the day-to-day experience. Samsung’s 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 premium 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 specs. Even a year later, the phone can compete with other premium flagships. On the software side, the phone has already received an update to Android 12 with Samsung’s own One UI 4 improvements on top. You can read more about what’s new in the link below.
Great features are integral to making a great phone, but design is just as important. After all, poor design can make a phone look dated a year later, just because it will stick out like a sore thumb compared to its more modern counterparts.
Fortunately, while testing the phone for the long-running Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra review, I never felt that it didn’t look or feel great. This is notable because this is not the case for the 2020 model. It’s great that Samsung has moved away from the brutal – and I’ll put it simply: ugly – design on the Galaxy S20 Ultra. The S21 Ultra’s subdued camera bump built into the side of the device and curved (but not too curved) sides give it a minimalistic elegance that can still look stylish five years from now.
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Of course, it’s still a huge and heavy phone. Weighing up to 229g – depending on the model – the Galaxy S21 Ultra will be a brick in your pocket if it even fits there. Holding its massive frame will be a bit of a burden if you don’t have quite large hands, and trying to use the device with one hand is just silly.
However, people who want phones in this category already know and have accepted this. People like me wish there was a way to get all the specs and features of the Galaxy S21 Ultra in a smaller, lighter form factor, but that’s not going to happen anytime soon. For what it is, the Galaxy S21 Ultra is still a beauty.
One of our biggest gripes with the Galaxy S20 Ultra is its camera. Despite some stellar hardware, the phone struggled with some basic tasks, such as autofocus. However, the Galaxy S21 Ultra fixes all the problems we had with its predecessor, which is easily one of the best smartphone cameras in 2021 – or any year.
Galaxy S21 Ultra Camera vs: Apple iPhone 13 Pro Max | HUAWEI P40 Pro Plus | Google Pixel 6 Pro
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Not surprisingly, the camera is still amazing today. Not only does it take great pictures, but the dual telephoto system – which includes a periscope lens – allows for a lot of flexibility. Focus is no longer an issue and the latest One UI 4.0 software is rich in shooting options, including classic portrait and night modes. Combined with the aforementioned Snapdragon 888 processor, photo and video capture is lightning fast.
Speaking of video, the phone can shoot up to 8K at 24 fps or 4K at 60 fps, with the latter also available from the front-facing camera. All of the rear cameras benefit from solid stabilization, and Samsung has a few additional software tools to help with capturing footage as well. Director’s View lets you switch between wide and zoom lenses as you shoot, or you can use Single Names to automatically generate moment-by-moment clips and different photos.
Below you can see some photos taken with the Galaxy S21 Ultra after receiving the One UI 4.0 update at the end of November 2021:
Of course, nothing is ever perfect, and the Galaxy S21 Ultra’s camera still has room for improvement. Samsung can still oversaturate colors in certain cases, for example, and sometimes the software becomes a little overzealous with sharpening processing.
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However, if those two things bother you, you can always use Samsung’s new Expert RAW camera app. The app essentially removes Samsung’s computing systems from the equation and gives you full access to the S21 Ultra’s camera hardware. We wouldn’t recommend this to casual users, but if you think generic camera software is taking things too far, you’re probably not a casual user yet.
When Samsung coined the “Ultra” moniker, it was clear that the company was reserving the title for phones that had everything you could ever want. In fact, some might even argue that the ultra phones we’ve seen so far have been overkill in some areas – for example, 16GB of RAM is completely unnecessary.
Unfortunately, the Galaxy S21 Ultra doesn’t live up to its name in several ways. This is where the phone is missing.
Both of Samsung’s other ultra phones so far – 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 it’s quite disappointing.
Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra 5g Smartphone Review
Of course, expandable storage is starting to look a lot like headphone jacks, by which I mean they’re disappearing from premium flagships at an astonishing rate. Samsung could be forgiven here for simply going with the trend, 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 can shoot 8K video, which records files at an average of 10MB per second. Of course, the 512 GB variant of the phone solves this problem, but a microSD card slot would be cheaper and more user-friendly.
Rumors suggest that the Galaxy S22 Ultra may also lack expandable storage, so that’s accurate
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