as usual i have sequestered myself consuming
no media about the galaxy s21 and s21
ultra so i get to have my very own fresh
reaction and you know what the first thing i want to say about
these is who does samsung think they are exactly like oneplus they've lowered the
prices but they've also gotten rid of or
reduced some of the things that make the galaxy s series
the s series this this is pretty though
wow that matte like
blasted finish on the s21 looks
absolutely fantastic and like the contrast with the with like
the glossy aluminum mid plate that looks really
good doesn't it it almost distracts you from the fact
that samsung threw so much shade at apple about not
including chargers with their phones and then went and didn't include a
charger with their phone i get it you guys gotta save a buck okay you
lowered the prices at least to samsung's credit they lowered the prices of the
phones but don't pretend this is anything other than a cost-saving measure if apple
really cared about the environmental impact of providing all those chargers
what they would have done is what xiaomi did which is
allow you to have a charger if you want or not have a charger if you don't need
it and not charge you extra for it and there's a couple other things about
these devices that make them less samsung s series for me and more
like one plus so for example the s21 and the
s21 plus are both only available with a maximum
of eight gigs of RAM now it's lp ddr4x
memory it's freaking fast but only eight gigs
of memory and only up to 256 gigs of storage
and on top of that they actually got rid of the microsd slot
so on the bottom you've got your sim slot you've got your speaker port you've
got your usb type c charging and data port on the left
you've got no bxp button whatsoever on the top you
got a couple of microphones for noise cancellation then over on the right you got your
volume rocker and your lock button and that is pretty much it for the physical buttons
feeling the hand on the s21 really nice
s21 ultra also nice especially after
having played around with the iphone 12 quite a bit lately i do appreciate
rounded corners on devices that don't kind of
stick into your hand but that's not to say that i appreciate
everything here so the s21 and s21 plus
are the first s-series devices that i can remember
that actually use 1080p class displays the ultra
has a 1440p class display and both of
them are running 120 hertz so you get that really nice fluidity
oh so nice but as part of
the apparent cost saving measures that samsung has gone to here
they've done away with 1440p displays now in fairness
samsung already shipped their devices by default and in fact even the s21 ultra
ships by default running at 1080p resolution in order to
save power even though it has more physical pixels
than that but it's just a weird move backwards to
me to go to a 1080p display personally i can't tell the difference at this screen
size but if you've got really sharp eyes 1440p
can look a little bit nicer which isn't to say though that the displays on these
phones aren't gonna look freaking awesome the s21 and s21 plus
both max out at 1300 nits meaning that
like i said before with the s20 the odds are that for people buying this phone
this is going to be the best HDR content consumption display
in the building you live in while the s20 ultra
actually maxes out at 1500 nits
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
trying to lower prices still stereo
man this display looks good
actually pretty darn loud too let's take something with dialogue though
i did have to change the default display profile from vivid to
natural in order to make sdr content look good but it should be noted i
didn't feel like i had to do the same thing with HDR content so your mileage may vary
there remember HDR content includes metadata in the
video itself that tells the display how to behave so
this really unfortunate thing happened between shoot days one and two of this a big
rock chip really nice actually both of them sound great one area samsung didn't cost down
at all is in the soc so both of these are
featuring snapdragon 888s in the north america region and then exynos 2100s outside of
that and these are pretty sick cpus both of them are built
using samsung's new five nanometer process and both of them are using new ARM x1
cores so just like we saw in previous generation snapdragon socs or
exynos for that matter you've got four low power cores for high efficiency
and four high power cores for higher performance but
here instead of four lower power cores and then four of the same high power
cores we've actually got three cortex a78s
which are pretty high performance but built using ARM's traditional balance
of power consumption and performance we've also got
a single x1 core so this is
ARM's attempt to kind of steal some of apple's thunder when it comes to single
threaded performance now as for whether it actually gets
there well maybe not yet but it's definitely a
step in the right direction just like the news that samsung is
continuing to work with AMD on some kind of Radeon mobile graphics
it could be a huge step in the right direction i would be
very excited to see not just the generational improvements that we're
seeing in CPU GPU and ai performance like we are now
but like a big like huge multi-generational leap in GPU
performance because that could be an absolute changer for them now i want
to talk about another compromise while unlike the s21 the s21 ultra
does have flagship class memory and storage configurations going up to 16
gigs of RAM and 512 gigs of storage both of them
have kind of mediocre charging
capabilities so we've got a 4 800 milliamp hour battery here 4000 here this is a small
upgrade this is basically the same as last gen both of them max out charging over a
wire at 25 watts wirelessly at just 15 watts
and with reverse charging that's a measly four and a half watts
compared to some of the chinese phones out there these are like
these are numbers that are like half of what's available on the market in some
cases less than half but i've got to say that i appreciate
samsung's conservative approach here as someone who cares about the longevity of
my device i actually go out of my way to charge my battery
with a wire at just one amp so that's just five
watts and the reason that i do that is because there's less risk i mean the
last thing samsung needs is another phone that like lights on fire all over the place and it
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
should seriously consider charging at lower rates even if your phone does
support crazy 65 watt charging or like you know
25 35 watt wireless charging now let's run through some of the additional
differences between the ultra and the regular s21 honestly for me it's at the point where
these are such completely different classes of products i don't even really
understand why they share the s21 name they've both got 5g connectivity that's included with
the snapdragon 888 but the ultra has wi-fi 6e
instead of just regular wi-fi 6. which isn't a huge speed advantage
but it could be a big advantage in terms of congestion so if you live in an
apartment or something like that wi-fi 6e could mean that you're fighting a lot
less with your neighbors assuming you have a wi-fi 6e router and
getting better wi-fi speeds on your mobile device another big
difference is that while they both do have 120 hertz displays which gives you
that sexy smoothness only the
ultra goes down to 10 hertz with its variable refresh rate technology
the regular s21 and the s21 plus even though i don't have it on hand
only go down to 48 hertz which means they could end up being slightly less
power efficient depending on the application finally
we've got the cameras these are two very different classes of
cameras the regular s21 has a 12 megapixel main shooter which
isn't that crazy except that for years samsung
kind of chased the megapixel race and now they're going oh you know what
maybe apple's got a point and it's better to just capture more light as
opposed to being able to capture a ton of pixels under ideal lighting
situations so the s21 has a 64 megapixel
telephoto and then a 12 megapixel ultra wide
moving over to the s21 ultra we get a honking 108 megapixel main shooter
so the megapixel race is back two 10 megapixel telephotos and then a 12
megapixel wide and the reason for two telephotos
is that they're doing some like trippy ai
combination thing for a theoretical maximum
of 100 times zoom now i'm expecting that
to be a gimmick but who knows maybe i'll be pleasantly surprised so we're gonna go regular wide
angle taking a picture of the little dude adama jig over there i'm gonna go
3x zoom take another picture i'm gonna go 10x zoom wow that actually
looks really good and this stabilization is like freaking outstanding i think 10x
looks like it might be the sweet spot it's definitely over sharpened but that's obviously way
more detail left in the image than if we just tried to zoom in the main shooter
and this is on the ultra and then we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna step it up
let's go 30. oh cool so when you press the little
preview up here it actually locks the stabilization uh well you
can't really see it now because i'm not zoomed into something but it actually works really well that's that's super
cool so you gotta kind of frame the way you want it you just press that
and then it'll like hold your frame there we go
30x is just a blurry mess like we could have just as easily digitally zoomed
this and 100x is yeah i don't know
man maybe maybe maybe the ai is doing a little bit there
looks a little less over sharpened but there's like almost no color saturation
in it finally there's the difference in selfie cameras the ultra gets a
40 megapixel selfie camera which is like what
and then it's just a regular 10 megapixel one on the s21 and s21 plus
i can okay to samsung's credit
the natural color of the selfie camera is like outstanding like they're not
doing any of that stupid beautifying and smoothing or if
they are it's really not much that looks like really
that looks really natural you ready for some 8k brandon
yeah i can already tell even looking at this tiny display that it's like
hot garbage i can already tell even looking at this tiny display that it's
like hot garbage wow the microphone's great though like if i was vlogging on this
thing i think i'd be stoked can do 4k 60.
oh man that just like already looks better than the 8k mode
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
shiz now for the most important test for me the ultra actually has support
for samsung's s pen which isn't to say that it
comes with one or even has a place to put one in fact you've got to buy it as
a separate accessory i think it's like 40 us dollars or something like that and
then you also have to get a case that has somewhere to put your s pen so
it's like uh okay but to their credit apparently
they've worked on intergenerational compatibility and while some people are
curious about whether the note 20 pen works i actually want to take it back a couple
more steps and see if my note 9 pen will work
wait it totally works that's freaking awesome i i actually
love the s pen for no reason other than scribbling on
screenshots and sending them to people it's really nice or like
writing down the dimensions of a room for my trip to ikea like i'll scribble
on my picture or this one so you can record a gif of
any video you watch just like going like this
going like that boom you can save it you can share it it's like
freaking awesome if you're a social media nerd
or whatever the case may i just wish there was somewhere to put it
so that's sort of a downer but hey at least it works so that's cool
it's really nice to see samsung putting that kind of effort in unless it just
like worked on its own i don't know but uh honestly one of the reasons that i
have decided to stick with the note 9 for so long is to see how well it does last
i've given samsung a hard time in the past for not providing enough software
updates for their devices and not supporting them in the long term and overall other than the couple of
drops that have shattered the back glass on this thing the experience of using it today
is basically like it has always been
and i think they've done a pretty darn good job of it for me so i'm
i'm still getting software updates it's still not sluggish
i'm pretty happy and it's getting me to the point where i'm getting closer
anyway to being able to recommend samsung in the same way almost that i would apple
apple's still way better but hey improvements improvement
speaking of apple i actually told you guys on ShortCircuit that i was going
to do a full review of at least one of the iphone 12 series so
the one that i've been driving is the 12 pro and the reason i didn't end up doing it is i just
i didn't have anything to say so i'm going to change gears for a little bit
and i'm going to tell you some of the notes that i had down if you guys actually cared
and then i'm going to just put that to rest so
i have stopped being disingenuous about your eco friendliness if you actually
cared about the environment there's lots of other things you could do to
to help save the environment i didn't like the the hard edges
the notch is a piece of um hole punch is a piece
too but the notch is worse i guess i i can't wait for
for that trend to go away forever i missed 3d touch
still 3d touch was amazing 60 hertz blows
um some of the apps are better so that's cool some of them are worse so that's
less cool face id sucks in a pandemic because i'm wearing a mask all the time
i think one of the reasons that my iphone reviews tend to end up really
nitpicky and people label me as a hater is that it's just mostly good
it's fine it's an iphone the only things i can really talk about
are the things that are like wrong and a lot of the things that are wrong are
things that have always been wrong and they just don't seem to get about fixing like not adding t9 dialing
so there that's why i didn't do it as for whether i'm gonna review this
i don't know what do you think is it worth trying to switch to yeah 120 hertz
display would be really nice so smooth i'm going to miss my s pen
though i'm not going to get a stupid like case
with a pen holder in it it's ridiculous i'm a
naked phone guy no case if i review it'll be over on on
Linus tech tips but that's that's it that's it for ShortCircuit for today oh
oh yeah also they launched their smart tags but i'm not gonna unbox a
smart tag like what on earth would i say about it so good for them good job samsung