Galaxy S21 Ultra—$200 cheaper but still not competitive

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  The Galaxy S21 Ultra. [credit: Ron Amadeo ]

Next up on the review bench is Samsung’s latest flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S21 Ultra. Like most Samsung phones, it’s technically competent and features a new Snapdragon 888 SoC, a new 10x optical zoom camera, and Samsung’s, uh, interesting approach to charging. The big news is that the S21 Ultra is $200 cheaper than the S20 Ultra, and there aren’t many features missing. Cheaper is good! But other phones still offer better value for money.

There’s not much new about the Galaxy S21 design. The phone has the usual metal frame with big glass panels on the front and back. The front looks almost exactly like previous models, with slim bezels and a centered front camera hole in the display. The sides of the display are curved ever so slightly, which serves no purpose and make the edges of videos a tiny bit distorted. This is Samsung’s second generation of 120Hz display, and it comes without the tradeoffs of the first generation. Previously, the Galaxy S20 could only run either at max resolution or at 120Hz but not both at the same time. The S21 120Hz display comes with no such compromises.

The back contains most of the major design changes. The most noticeable is the crazy new camera bump, which is integrated with the corner of the phone. The whole camera bump is actually aluminum, as the aluminum sides wrap around the corner of the phone and join another flat aluminum plate that houses all of the cameras. The rest of the back remains glass. This year Samsung offers a matte finish to the glass, which does a great job hiding fingerprints.