By launching the premium Galaxy S21 series early, Samsung has got a head start over the competition.
The company has incorporated top-notch camera hardware, a powerful new Exynos 2100 silicon and a massive battery in the Galaxy S21 Ultra, the alpha model of the three newly launched phones, the other two being the generic Galaxy S21 and S21 Plus.
All three are slated to hit stores later this month from January 29 onwards. The prices of the Galaxy S21, S21 Plus and S21 Ultra start at Rs 69,999 (8GB RAM + 128GB storage), Rs 81,999 (8GB RAM + 128GB storage) and Rs 1,05,999 (12GB RAM + 256GB storage), respectively.
I have been using the Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G for almost a week and here are my thoughts on the premium Samsung phone.
Design, build quality and display
Samsung has done a fantastic job with Galaxy 21 Ultra's chiseled metallic unibody design. It is unique and visually appealing, particularly the Phantom Black model with a matte finish.
It has a massive 6.8-inch display with tall stature, which borderlines on mini-tablet size segment, and yet it is very easy to hold the device. Unlike the Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max, which has broader width and squared edges, Samsung has crafted Galaxy S21 Ultra with a narrow width, and also the edges across all sides are curvaceous. I have to note that the tall build may still come off big for people with small hands, but optimised OneUI software feature offers a shortcut-slide panel just at volume rocker. This makes things so much easy to operate the phone single-handedly.
As far as the build quality is concerned, Samsung has not compromised on anything. It has incorporated AL7s10 series aluminum rail around the edges and the phone's front and back is protected by Corning's latest Gorilla Glass Victus, the sturdiest glass shield on any Android phones in the market.
Add to that, the Galaxy S21 Ultra comes with an IP68 water-and-dust-resistant rating, meaning it can sustain pressure up to 1.5 meters (around five feet) for close to 30 minutes underwater,
The Galaxy S21 Ultra has best the display for a phone in the market. It features a 6.8-inch WQHD+ (3200 x 1440p) Dynamic AMOLED 2X screen, pixel density of 515 ppi (pixels per inch), and offers a peak brightness of 1500nits.
It has one tiny camera at the top and the rest is a fully functional display. It has an 89.8% screen-to-body ratio with uniform thin bezels around the edges. I had a wonderful time watching multimedia content on the gigantic phone.
With Adaptive Display mode, the phone can intuitively switch the screen refresh rate from 10Hz to 120Hz refresh. This will ensure the phone users have the best viewing experience while watching high-resolution videos and playing graphics-intense games. In other scenarios, the refresh rate is reduced so that there is less power consumption and extend the battery life of the device.
Also, the Galaxy S21 Ultra has an improved ultrasonic in-screen fingerprint sensor. It works like a charm and with less False Rejection Rate (FRR). I did not face any pressing issue to complain about.
Performance
Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G comes with a proprietary 5nm class Exynos 2100 octa-core chipset. It is touted to consume 20-percent lower power and deliver 10-percent higher overall performance than the 7nm predecessor (Exynos 990 in the Galaxy S20 Ultra).
Also, The octa-core CPU comes in an improved tri-cluster structure made up of a single powerful Arm Cortex-X1 core that can offer up to peak CPU speed of 2.9GHz, three high-performing Cortex-A78 cores, and four power-efficient Cortex-A55 cores delivering more than 30-percent enhancement in multi-core performance than the predecessor.
The Exynos 2100 is paired with Arm Mali-G78 Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) to deliver a top-notch 40% performance boost while doing power-intense tasks such as Augmented Reality(AR), Virtual Reality (VR), or Mixed Reality (MR) related games and applications.
Add to that, Samsung has incorporated a dedicated Neural Processing Unit (NPU). The newly-designed tri-core NPU architecture will enable the phone to intuitively minimize unnecessary operations for high effective utilization and support for feature-map and weight compression.
The powerful Exynos 2100 chipset can perform up to 26-trillion-operations-per-second (TOPS) with more than twice the power efficiency than the previous generation.
It runs Android 11-based OneUI 3.1 and comes in two configuration 12GB RAM with 256GB storage and 16GB RAM with 512GB storage. For the first time, Samsung has dropped to option to add a microSD card slot in a premium Galaxy S series. This ensures faster memory processing and reduces the lag.
As far as real-world performance is concerned, the Galaxy S21 Ultra works buttery smooth be it playing Asphalt 9: Legends or recording 4K videos. It never showed any sign of lag-ness or faced over-heating issues.
On the Geekbench performance testing application, it scored an impressive 1073 and 3483 points on single-core and multi-core tests, respectively.
One can also see the massive difference of improvement in the Galaxy S21 Ultra over the S20 series is the rate of battery draining. The new phone consumed less power while streaming videos (via Wi-Fi) on the screen with full brightness.
With 5,000mAh, the new Samsung phone consistently lasted a full day (active hours 6:00 am to 11:00 am) with more than 20 percent juice left.
It should be noted that Samsung, like Apple, has decided to remove the charging adapter and the earphones inside the retail box. The company now offers just the Type-C-to-Type-C cable. So, users have to buy it separately along with the Galaxy S21 series device.
It supports 25W fast wired charging and 15W wireless charging in addition to the wireless reverse charging PowerShare feature.
Samsung has revealed that the Galaxy S21 Ultra supports the S Pen stylus, a first for any Galaxy S series model. However, the accessory will be made available only in the coming months.
Also, Galaxy S21 Ultra comes with a 5G modem and whenever the infrastructure gets ready in India, users will be able to experience super-fast wireless internet download speed around 1Gbps if not more.
Camera
The Galaxy S20 Ultra houses a quad-camera module-- 108MP (f/1.8) wide + 10MP Telephoto lens (with f/2.4, 3x zoom, OIS) + 10MP Periscope Telephoto lens (f/4.9 with PDAF, OIS, 10x zoom, 100x Space Zoom) + 12MP (f/2.2) ultra-wide-angle lens-- backed by Laser AutoFocus, Time-of-Flight sensor and LED flash. It also supports 12-bit RAW file photo option, and upto 8K videos at 24fps (frames per second).
It takes spectacular photos in all light conditions and I have to say, the company has done a wonderful job of optimising both the hardware and software to make the Galaxy S21 Ultra the best camera phone in the Android ecosystem. It even comes close to matching the iPhone 12 Pro Max's camera in some aspects such as taking perfect still images in natural light.
Samsung has excelled in delivering the 100X Space Zoom feature in the Galaxy S21 Ultra over the predecessor. It takes spectacular pictures of the Moon in the night and Apple's premier mobile doesn't even come closer to such long-range photos.
Also, the director's view offering multiple videos with various angles of view by changing cameras gets a big thumbs up from me. This value-added will certainly find takers among video bloggers and also amateur art students to do short documentary projects.
The Portrait and Macro mode shots captured on the Galaxy S21 Ultra are really top-class not just over the predecessor but also better compared to any premium Android phones in the market.
On the front, it features a 40MP wide camera with an f/2.2 aperture. The Galaxy S21 Ultra takes wonderful selfies with Auto HDR mode and is even capable of recording 4K videos at 30/60 fps.
Final thoughts
Prior to the launch, the South Korean company had a lot at stake for the S21 series to succeed, as the predecessor S20 Ultra was marred with camera issues.
But, having used the Galaxy S21 Ultra for a week, I am happy to note Samsung has got itself a winner. It has finally delivered the true 'Ultra' flagship phone with the S21 series and really lives up to the reputation.
Right now, the Galaxy S21 Ultra is the best Android phone. The company has done a fantastic job in bringing major improvements to the Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G not just with camera hardware but also with power-efficient chipset Exynos 2100 over the predecessor Galaxy S20 Ultra (with Exynos 990).
Having said that, it is still early days. We are just only one month into 2021 and expect at least a dozen premium phones to make their debut through the year.
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