WEBVTT

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as usual i have sequestered myself consuming

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no media about the galaxy s21 and s21

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ultra so i get to have my very own fresh

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reaction and you know what the first thing i want to say about

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these is who does samsung think they are exactly like oneplus they've lowered the

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prices but they've also gotten rid of or

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reduced some of the things that make the galaxy s series

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the s series this this is pretty though

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wow that matte like

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blasted finish on the s21 looks

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absolutely fantastic and like the contrast with the with like

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the glossy aluminum mid plate that looks really

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good doesn't it it almost distracts you from the fact

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that samsung threw so much shade at apple about not

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including chargers with their phones and then went and didn't include a

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charger with their phone i get it you guys gotta save a buck okay you

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lowered the prices at least to samsung's credit they lowered the prices of the

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phones but don't pretend this is anything other than a cost-saving measure if apple

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really cared about the environmental impact of providing all those chargers

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what they would have done is what xiaomi did which is

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allow you to have a charger if you want or not have a charger if you don't need

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it and not charge you extra for it and there's a couple other things about

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these devices that make them less samsung s series for me and more

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like one plus so for example the s21 and the

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s21 plus are both only available with a maximum

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of eight gigs of RAM now it's lp ddr4x

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memory it's freaking fast but only eight gigs

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of memory and only up to 256 gigs of storage

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and on top of that they actually got rid of the microsd slot

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so on the bottom you've got your sim slot you've got your speaker port you've

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got your usb type c charging and data port on the left

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you've got no bxp button whatsoever on the top you

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got a couple of microphones for noise cancellation then over on the right you got your

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volume rocker and your lock button and that is pretty much it for the physical buttons

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feeling the hand on the s21 really nice

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s21 ultra also nice especially after

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having played around with the iphone 12 quite a bit lately i do appreciate

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rounded corners on devices that don't kind of

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stick into your hand but that's not to say that i appreciate

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everything here so the s21 and s21 plus

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are the first s-series devices that i can remember

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that actually use 1080p class displays the ultra

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has a 1440p class display and both of

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them are running 120 hertz so you get that really nice fluidity

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oh so nice but as part of

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the apparent cost saving measures that samsung has gone to here

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they've done away with 1440p displays now in fairness

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samsung already shipped their devices by default and in fact even the s21 ultra

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ships by default running at 1080p resolution in order to

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save power even though it has more physical pixels

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than that but it's just a weird move backwards to

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me to go to a 1080p display personally i can't tell the difference at this screen

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size but if you've got really sharp eyes 1440p

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can look a little bit nicer which isn't to say though that the displays on these

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phones aren't gonna look freaking awesome the s21 and s21 plus

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both max out at 1300 nits meaning that

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like i said before with the s20 the odds are that for people buying this phone

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this is going to be the best HDR content consumption display

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in the building you live in while the s20 ultra

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actually maxes out at 1500 nits

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i'm a little curious about the speakers that's one of the things that tends to be a cost saving measure when you're

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trying to lower prices still stereo

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man this display looks good

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actually pretty darn loud too let's take something with dialogue though

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i did have to change the default display profile from vivid to

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natural in order to make sdr content look good but it should be noted i

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didn't feel like i had to do the same thing with HDR content so your mileage may vary

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there remember HDR content includes metadata in the

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video itself that tells the display how to behave so

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this really unfortunate thing happened between shoot days one and two of this a big

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rock chip really nice actually both of them sound great one area samsung didn't cost down

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at all is in the soc so both of these are

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featuring snapdragon 888s in the north america region and then exynos 2100s outside of

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that and these are pretty sick cpus both of them are built

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using samsung's new five nanometer process and both of them are using new ARM x1

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cores so just like we saw in previous generation snapdragon socs or

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exynos for that matter you've got four low power cores for high efficiency

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and four high power cores for higher performance but

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here instead of four lower power cores and then four of the same high power

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cores we've actually got three cortex a78s

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which are pretty high performance but built using ARM's traditional balance

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of power consumption and performance we've also got

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a single x1 core so this is

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ARM's attempt to kind of steal some of apple's thunder when it comes to single

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threaded performance now as for whether it actually gets

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there well maybe not yet but it's definitely a

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step in the right direction just like the news that samsung is

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continuing to work with AMD on some kind of Radeon mobile graphics

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it could be a huge step in the right direction i would be

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very excited to see not just the generational improvements that we're

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seeing in CPU GPU and ai performance like we are now

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but like a big like huge multi-generational leap in GPU

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performance because that could be an absolute changer for them now i want

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to talk about another compromise while unlike the s21 the s21 ultra

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does have flagship class memory and storage configurations going up to 16

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gigs of RAM and 512 gigs of storage both of them

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have kind of mediocre charging

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capabilities so we've got a 4 800 milliamp hour battery here 4000 here this is a small

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upgrade this is basically the same as last gen both of them max out charging over a

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wire at 25 watts wirelessly at just 15 watts

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and with reverse charging that's a measly four and a half watts

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compared to some of the chinese phones out there these are like

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these are numbers that are like half of what's available on the market in some

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cases less than half but i've got to say that i appreciate

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samsung's conservative approach here as someone who cares about the longevity of

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my device i actually go out of my way to charge my battery

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with a wire at just one amp so that's just five

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watts and the reason that i do that is because there's less risk i mean the

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last thing samsung needs is another phone that like lights on fire all over the place and it

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helps your battery last longer so if you're the kind of person who keeps your phone for longer than a year or two you

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should seriously consider charging at lower rates even if your phone does

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support crazy 65 watt charging or like you know

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25 35 watt wireless charging now let's run through some of the additional

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differences between the ultra and the regular s21 honestly for me it's at the point where

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these are such completely different classes of products i don't even really

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understand why they share the s21 name they've both got 5g connectivity that's included with

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the snapdragon 888 but the ultra has wi-fi 6e

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instead of just regular wi-fi 6. which isn't a huge speed advantage

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but it could be a big advantage in terms of congestion so if you live in an

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apartment or something like that wi-fi 6e could mean that you're fighting a lot

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less with your neighbors assuming you have a wi-fi 6e router and

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getting better wi-fi speeds on your mobile device another big

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difference is that while they both do have 120 hertz displays which gives you

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that sexy smoothness only the

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ultra goes down to 10 hertz with its variable refresh rate technology

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the regular s21 and the s21 plus even though i don't have it on hand

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only go down to 48 hertz which means they could end up being slightly less

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power efficient depending on the application finally

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we've got the cameras these are two very different classes of

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cameras the regular s21 has a 12 megapixel main shooter which

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isn't that crazy except that for years samsung

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kind of chased the megapixel race and now they're going oh you know what

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maybe apple's got a point and it's better to just capture more light as

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opposed to being able to capture a ton of pixels under ideal lighting

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situations so the s21 has a 64 megapixel

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telephoto and then a 12 megapixel ultra wide

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moving over to the s21 ultra we get a honking 108 megapixel main shooter

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so the megapixel race is back two 10 megapixel telephotos and then a 12

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megapixel wide and the reason for two telephotos

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is that they're doing some like trippy ai

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combination thing for a theoretical maximum

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of 100 times zoom now i'm expecting that

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to be a gimmick but who knows maybe i'll be pleasantly surprised so we're gonna go regular wide

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angle taking a picture of the little dude adama jig over there i'm gonna go

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3x zoom take another picture i'm gonna go 10x zoom wow that actually

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looks really good and this stabilization is like freaking outstanding i think 10x

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looks like it might be the sweet spot it's definitely over sharpened but that's obviously way

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more detail left in the image than if we just tried to zoom in the main shooter

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and this is on the ultra and then we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna step it up

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let's go 30. oh cool so when you press the little

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preview up here it actually locks the stabilization uh well you

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can't really see it now because i'm not zoomed into something but it actually works really well that's that's super

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cool so you gotta kind of frame the way you want it you just press that

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and then it'll like hold your frame there we go

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30x is just a blurry mess like we could have just as easily digitally zoomed

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this and 100x is yeah i don't know

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man maybe maybe maybe the ai is doing a little bit there

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looks a little less over sharpened but there's like almost no color saturation

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in it finally there's the difference in selfie cameras the ultra gets a

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40 megapixel selfie camera which is like what

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and then it's just a regular 10 megapixel one on the s21 and s21 plus

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i can okay to samsung's credit

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the natural color of the selfie camera is like outstanding like they're not

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doing any of that stupid beautifying and smoothing or if

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they are it's really not much that looks like really

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that looks really natural you ready for some 8k brandon

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yeah i can already tell even looking at this tiny display that it's like

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hot garbage i can already tell even looking at this tiny display that it's

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like hot garbage wow the microphone's great though like if i was vlogging on this

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thing i think i'd be stoked can do 4k 60.

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oh man that just like already looks better than the 8k mode

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whatever it doesn't it doesn't matter you know what they've got it they got a market there they got to market their

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shiz now for the most important test for me the ultra actually has support

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for samsung's s pen which isn't to say that it

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comes with one or even has a place to put one in fact you've got to buy it as

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a separate accessory i think it's like 40 us dollars or something like that and

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then you also have to get a case that has somewhere to put your s pen so

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it's like uh okay but to their credit apparently

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they've worked on intergenerational compatibility and while some people are

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curious about whether the note 20 pen works i actually want to take it back a couple

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more steps and see if my note 9 pen will work

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wait it totally works that's freaking awesome i i actually

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love the s pen for no reason other than scribbling on

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screenshots and sending them to people it's really nice or like

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writing down the dimensions of a room for my trip to ikea like i'll scribble

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on my picture or this one so you can record a gif of

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any video you watch just like going like this

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going like that boom you can save it you can share it it's like

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freaking awesome if you're a social media nerd

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or whatever the case may i just wish there was somewhere to put it

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so that's sort of a downer but hey at least it works so that's cool

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it's really nice to see samsung putting that kind of effort in unless it just

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like worked on its own i don't know but uh honestly one of the reasons that i

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have decided to stick with the note 9 for so long is to see how well it does last

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i've given samsung a hard time in the past for not providing enough software

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updates for their devices and not supporting them in the long term and overall other than the couple of

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drops that have shattered the back glass on this thing the experience of using it today

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is basically like it has always been

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and i think they've done a pretty darn good job of it for me so i'm

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i'm still getting software updates it's still not sluggish

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i'm pretty happy and it's getting me to the point where i'm getting closer

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anyway to being able to recommend samsung in the same way almost that i would apple

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apple's still way better but hey improvements improvement

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speaking of apple i actually told you guys on ShortCircuit that i was going

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to do a full review of at least one of the iphone 12 series so

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the one that i've been driving is the 12 pro and the reason i didn't end up doing it is i just

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i didn't have anything to say so i'm going to change gears for a little bit

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and i'm going to tell you some of the notes that i had down if you guys actually cared

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and then i'm going to just put that to rest so

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i have stopped being disingenuous about your eco friendliness if you actually

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cared about the environment there's lots of other things you could do to

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to help save the environment i didn't like the the hard edges

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the notch is a piece of um hole punch is a piece

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too but the notch is worse i guess i i can't wait for

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for that trend to go away forever i missed 3d touch

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still 3d touch was amazing 60 hertz blows

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um some of the apps are better so that's cool some of them are worse so that's

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less cool face id sucks in a pandemic because i'm wearing a mask all the time

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i think one of the reasons that my iphone reviews tend to end up really

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nitpicky and people label me as a hater is that it's just mostly good

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it's fine it's an iphone the only things i can really talk about

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are the things that are like wrong and a lot of the things that are wrong are

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things that have always been wrong and they just don't seem to get about fixing like not adding t9 dialing

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so there that's why i didn't do it as for whether i'm gonna review this

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i don't know what do you think is it worth trying to switch to yeah 120 hertz

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display would be really nice so smooth i'm going to miss my s pen

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though i'm not going to get a stupid like case

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with a pen holder in it it's ridiculous i'm a

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naked phone guy no case if i review it'll be over on on

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Linus tech tips but that's that's it that's it for ShortCircuit for today oh

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oh yeah also they launched their smart tags but i'm not gonna unbox a

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smart tag like what on earth would i say about it so good for them good job samsung