Review – Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G: The S21 On Steroids
When Samsung first announced their Ultra line of smartphones, I genuinely thought they went out of their minds. You see, the Android manufacturers have the tendency of getting every possible new technology and cram them into a single device. That’s how you get all those sophisticated experimental models with various features such as folding screens, motorized camera and etc. That is until I take a deep look into the specifications and found out that the Ultra line still stays true with its original series but heavily emphasizes the camera and battery life performance.
Design
If you read my review of the Samsung Galaxy S21, I’m a big fan of the latest Galaxy S chassis design. The S21 Ultra share a lot of the same design concept with some minor differences here and there. It is rather unfortunate the S21 Ultra only comes in two colour options- Phantom Black and Phantom Silver. Personally, I would love to have the Phantom Violet version to be available as well but hey, that’s Samsung HQ’s strategy.
The camera bump is wider than the rest of the Galaxy S21 family because of the additional sensor modules. Particularly the zoom camera and laser autofocus module. The overall construction is solid and feels great to hold in the hands and it doesn’t feel top-heavy despite a large camera module. That’s a great balanced design in terms of internal component layout.
Going around the phone, you’d see the corners and edges are rounded which makes this big phone a joy to hold in the hands. That is probably the reason why Samsung has retained the curved edge display on the S21 Ultra, making it easier for users to navigate on the touch screen.
All in all, if you’re used to heavy phablets, the S21 Ultra would not surprise you.
Display
The 6.8-inch Edge Quad HD display uses the Dynamic AMOLED 2X panel. Honestly, that is a mouthful of mumbo jumbo jargons which basically mean it is Samsung’s top of the line display. The panel easily covers a wide range of the sRGB colour gamut depending on which colour profile you choose. It can even go up to 100% sRGB and 99.76% of DCI-P3 colour space with the Vivid colour profile.
The 120Hz refresh rate is a joy to use even if you only use the phone for normal browsing and social media. There’s no specific option to lock the refresh rate at 120Hz as the OS will handle the transition in order to save battery life.
In short, this 1440p AMOLED display is not just fancy with its name. The colour is looking nice on it, and the 120Hz high refresh rate makes it a great device for all-purpose.
Performance
Samsung Exynos 2100, 12GB RAM and 512GB internal storage. Let that sink in for a while. It is 2021 flagship-level specs and you can continue to argue whether Snapdragon or Exynos is better but the point is, this is the chip that can push literally everything you throw at it. Social media, entertainment and even graphical demanding games will perform just fine on this device.
We’re having a smooth gameplay experience with Genshin Impact on maximum graphical settings. The downside is the heat generated from all those workloads. It can be very annoying especially since some of the heat is dissipated through the glass touch screen. Frankly speaking, it is the common problem for all the existing chips when you try to push their limits. You can either reduce the graphical settings or MacGyver your way to cool the phone.
Camera
Samsung is placing a lot of its resources on the S21 Ultra’s camera module. There is a total of four cameras whereby half of them are telephoto. Obviously, peer pressure plays a big role that leads us to this design outcome – having a 3x optical zoom alongside another 10x periscope camera. Topping off all of them is the ability to go 100x digital zoom. The actual real-world usage statistics will remain a mystery to us.
Photo taken with main camera using 108MP mode.
100% crop
Here’s the same scene showing what you can do with the 100x dual telephoto lens. Honestly, the 30x zoom photo is very usable with the exception that 100x is somewhat OK for WhatsApp.
So what you think of the S21 Ultra camera system?
Battery Life
The Galaxy S21’s 5000mAh battery can easily last you a full day of use without having to bring around a power bank. Even with adaptive display mode enabled (120Hz), we’re just losing about 10% of the longevity compared to 60Hz.
From the moment I unplugged the phone during the morning, left home at 9 am and I still got 30% left when I reached home at 8 pm. That’s pretty impressive considering all the performance packed into this package.
Unfortunately, you’re no longer getting a charger in the box. It is not that easy to charge a 5000mAh battery without feeling it takes forever. My suggestion is to invest in a good USB-PD charger and that should last you through many years and various electronic devices.
Should You Buy the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G?
The Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra is targeted at the high-end market whereby customers are willing to spend for a top-of-the-line smartphone. They wanted a flagship device with excellent performance, top-notch camera performance and a big display. In short, it is also can be considered as a kind of status symbol whereby purchasing this phone means you are holding the best of everything one can get right now in the market. If you’re not a fan of big and heavy phones, you can always consider the S21 Plus or even the regular S21.
Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra
SRP: RM5299 (12GB RAM + 256GB Storage)
