The Samsung Galaxy S21 Is Here: Polished, and at a Lower Price
The Samsung Galaxy S21 series promises to brand the "everyday epic." But Samsung's three new phones—the $799 S21, the $999 S21+, and the $1,199 S21 Ultra—are more everyday than ballsy, primarily fixing and refining the S20 line'due south concepts rather than doing anything radical.
The three new phones are $200 to $400 less expensive than last year's flagships, reflecting pandemic-straitened budgets. They double downward on concluding year'south hope of 100x zoom, simply insist that this year they're getting it correct. They bring the Due south Pen to Samsung's not-Note phones. And they are the first Samsung phones certified for the upcoming C-band 5G networks, which future-proof them for the next few years.
Samsung's S20 line, which came to market just every bit the pandemic hit, sold fewer units than the S10 around launch time, according to research firm One thousand Science. The S20'due south high prices turned off folks getting laid off en masse, expensive millimeter-moving ridge 5G didn't turn out to exist a selling bespeak across Verizon, and the S21 Ultra'due south 100x, 108MP photographic camera suffered from serious focus-lock issues. The company managed to redeem itself later in the year with the excellent Galaxy Note 20 Ultra and affordable Galaxy S20 Iron.
The pandemic didn't become u.s. off our phones, Samsung'southward Drew Blackard said. Information technology didn't even get us off our 4G networks, as folks stuck at home used every screen and parallel connexion they could to maximize bandwidth. I've seen this at my house, where my daughter uses her laptop for school, her tablet for cartoon, and her phone for TikTok and social media.
"We're exploring new means to stay shut with the people and things that thing the most, and our smartphones are the all-time devices to assist u.s. stay continued," Blackard said. "Short-form video shot directly from smartphones is taking off as a new expressive medium. We're all relying on our devices more than e'er."
The pandemic yr also saw a "bifurcation" in the smartphone market, Blackard said. "On one hand, we see some customers increasingly prioritizing value...[but] on the flip side [are people who] want an ultra-premium," he said.
"From the ultimate experience of super-intelligent, industry-leading pro-grade camera and video capabilities for S21 Ultra, to a core flagship experience available across S21 serial, nosotros await frontwards to offer amazing experiences at a greater value to our consumers," Samsung Electronics President TM Roh said in a argument.
Iii Flavors
As with last yr'due south lineup, in that location are three sizes of S21. You lot can meet more than details on our comparison of the iPhone 12 serial vs. the S21 series. In brief, they have half dozen.2-inch, half dozen.seven-inch, and 6.eight-inch screens, all 120Hz. The Ultra'due south screen is brighter than last yr's screens at one,500 nits to last yr's one,200, Samsung said. The S21 and S21+ have very like specs overall; the S21 Ultra amps everything up with a higher-res screen, more than cameras, amend zoom, a bigger battery, and more storage.
All three phones have an ultrasonic fingerprint sensor that Samsung didn't detail, but we remember information technology's the larger, faster 2d-generation sensor Qualcomm announced this week. Samsung said the new sensor is "ane.7x larger," which jibes with Qualcomm's clarification.
In the US, all iii phones will use Qualcomm's new Snapdragon 888 chipset. Exterior the US, it'll vary; some models will use a Samsung Exynos processor. Expect there to exist four or five different global models with different processors, numbers of SIM slots, and available 5G bands. Equally always, yous should purchase the unit of measurement designed for your country.
The Milky way S21 Ultra comes in black and silver, plus titanium, navy, and brown in some countries. The S21+ comes in violet, silver, and black. The S21 comes in violet, gray, pink, and white. Samsung is likewise promising gold and carmine versions of the smaller phones, just not in every state, and it isn't clear if they'll be in the Usa.
For this video, we physically stacked the S21 Ultra upwardly confronting iPhone 12s and other flagships to compare their sizes and pattern features.
At that place's no charger or headphones in the Galaxy S21 boxes. That'due south a step back for Samsung, which tries to pigment this as a "sustainability" issue.
"We discovered that more and more than Milky way users are reusing accessories they already accept and making sustainable choices in their daily lives to promote improve recycling habits. To back up our Galaxy community in this journey, we are transitioning to removal of the charger plug and earphones in our latest line of Galaxy smartphones," Samsung EVP Patrick Chomet said in a statement.
The phones accuse at upwards to 25 watts wired and 15 watts wireless.
Shoot Your Shot
Samsung'due south dorsum on its 108MP business organisation, with a twist. The Galaxy S21 Ultra has a new main 108MP sensor that's now paired with laser autofocus, then the phase detection on the sensor doesn't slow you downwards the fashion it did with the S20 Ultra. Its 100x zoom uses two other lenses: a 10-megapixel 3x optical at f/2.4 and a new, 10-megapixel 10x optical at f/4.9, both with faster dual-pixel autofocus. Final year's Galaxy phones excelled at 5-10x zoom; these two lenses, working together, promise quality zoom at 30x or college.
That's been paired with some new software to improve both zoom shots and night mode. At very high zoom levels, information technology'south difficult to concord the telephone still; you lot tin now lock your image digitally earlier you hitting the shutter push button. Night fashion has besides been improved through better AI.
The S21 Ultra has 2 other cameras every bit well: a 12MP 120-degree ultra-wide camera, which is now fairly standard, and a 40MP front-facer with phase-detection autofocus.
The lower-spec Galaxy S21 and S21+ have photographic camera setups much closer to the previous S20+. On the front is a 10MP camera, and on the dorsum are a 12MP ultrawide, a 12MP primary, and a 64MP "hybrid optic" 3x telephoto. I'm a little concerned near the use of "hybrid optic" hither, which implies that it may not actually exist an optical zoom camera but just a 64MP sensor doing a 3x crop for a zoom result.
All the lenses have stabilized video recording at 60fps, every bit well as 4K video recording. All 3 phones have "director's view," which uses the Snapdragon 888's triple image-signal processor to capture views from three rear cameras at the same time and let you lot select among or integrate them. You lot can shoot with the front and rear cameras at the same time, too. (Samsung phones used to have that feature, but it was discontinued for a time.)
There's also an improvement to Samsung's single-take mode, which captures 10 seconds of video and chops it up into stills and short videos.
Write This Down
The S21 Ultra is the first S-series phone to support Samsung'south South Pen, the active Wacom stylus that has previously been an exclusive characteristic on the Note series. (For what it's worth, Samsung says information technology'll continue to produce Notation phones—at least for now.) The phone doesn't come with an Southward Pen; you'll have to buy it separately, along with a instance that accommodates it.
For now, Samsung says, the S21 Ultra will only have the most basic S Pen features of writing and drawing. In recent years, the company has played around quite a lot with new S Pen features, such every bit activating commands by drawing symbols in the air; the S21 won't support those gestures. It volition work with existing Southward Pens from existing Note phones, though, so if y'all have an old Note, you can use the S Pen hither. I too suspect it will work with any Wacom-compatible stylus and wait forward to testing that.
Oh Say Can You C-Band
One big step forward is that the Galaxy S21 series are the starting time Samsung phones to support C-band, the new 5G frequencies carriers are currently in the process of paying almost $eighty billion to acquire. C-band networks, probably largely from Verizon and AT&T, volition begin to launch late this year or early on 2022, and they'll likely offering four or v times the speed of 4G or "nationwide" 5G.
Samsung tells me all three phones will back up 5G bands two/five/12/25/30/41/48/66/71/77/78 and millimeter-wave. That includes everything the US and Canadian carriers are currently using or plan to employ over the next few years. Other than these phones, only the iPhone 12 serial have currently been FCC-certified for C-band.
The phones' X60 modem promises other network enhancements, only we'll have to test them to find out more than. Nigh notably, the X60 lets carriers combine their 5G spectrum in more ways, which could help both AT&T and Verizon'south "nationwide" 5G networks.
The S21+ and S21 Ultra both have the confusingly named UWB, which is a totally unlike technology than Verizon's heavily advertised "UWB 5G." This UWB is a nigh-field positioning technology that tells you where devices are in relation to each other.
"Nosotros recently launched SmartThings Notice to help you quickly and easily locate your Galaxy devices, fifty-fifty when offline. Nosotros took this a step further with Galaxy S21+ and S21 Ultra, which uses expanded UWB capabilities to apply the AR finder so yous tin can send virtual messages to other Milky way users during your search," Samsung mobile CTO KJ Kim said in a statement.
Of the three S21 phones, only the Ultra has Wi-Fi 6E, the new Wi-Fi standard that uses a higher frequency to offer much faster Wi-Fi speeds. There are relatively few Wi-Fi 6E devices around right now—iPhones don't have it, and few routers do—but it's going to spread in 2022.
Preorders of the new phones begin on January. 14 at 11 a.m. The phones hitting shelves on January. 28. If you preorder, you'll get accessory credit on Samsung.com—$100 for an S21, $150 for an S21+, and $200 for an S21 Ultra—forth with a free Smart Tag, a Tile-similar locator device. Nosotros will have a review closer to the launch date.
How Volition It Compete?
Galaxy S21 phones go up confronting Samsung's own remaining S20 and Notation xx phones, especially the pop S20 Fe, and Apple's iPhone 12 series, besides as flagships such equally OnePlus phones and the LG Fly. The Galaxy S20 FE is only $600 at Best Buy right now without merchandise-in or activation, and information technology gets cheaper with either of those options.
Plenty of people, I'm sure, will buy the S21 series by default. They need a new phone, and Samsung is reliable, so they'll become the latest Samsung. The big question is whether anything about the S21 volition actively button upgrades. Will it be a new, working super-zoom? Will it be much better night photography? My experience with the Galaxy S20 Ultra shows that I'k going to have to get the phone into my easily to be able to tell.
Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/mobile-phones/41325/samsung-galaxy-s21-updates-the-s20-with-few-big-changes
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