Second Opinion Reviews

Second Opinion #108: Samsung S21 Ultra Review


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Ryan reviews the S21 Ultra. It's way better than the S20 and laterally better than the Note 20 Ultra.

  • Pricing
    • The tiny one starts at $799 but comes with reduced features and a plastic back! Oh no!
    • S21+ is $999
    • S21 Ultra is $1199 which is technically $100 cheaper than the Note 20 Ultra from August 2020
    • Display
      • First S-line phone with adaptive 120hz
      • Rounded design makes it look smaller
      • For some reason, not flat like the other S21 models
      • Physicals
        • Look and feel, build quality
          • Footprint
            • It’s a bit taller, a bit less wide than the N20U
            • It weighs a ton though
            • Battery
              • 5000 mAh
              • It lasts for two days easily, but I still charge at night, but I don’t feel bad if I don’t
              • Charging
                • 25w charging, no more 45w option – but that’s ok
                • The brick was NOT in the box – laughing at Apple still? No? Great!
                • Ports
                  • Type C is all you need
                  • Speakers
                    • Not radically different than N20U
                    • Buttons
                      • No bixby button
                      • Buttons on the right
                      • Specs
                        • CPU
                          • 888
                            • 875 is for premium minus products… what is Qualcomm doing?
                            • RAM
                              • 12GB; but you could have 512GB storage with 16GB of RAM
                              • Storage
                                • This model has 256GB of storage but we have no Micro SD now!
                                • What’s going on here?
                                • Software
                                  • Android 11 is nice out of the box but nothing major changed as far as I can tell
                                  • Camera
                                    • It’s a bit smarter with macro shots now, using the wide lenses to pretend to be a macro lens
                                    • Zoom is more nuanced now, with “Space Zoom” gone but present in implementation
                                      • 3x zoom and 10x zoom have their own 
                                      • Final thoughts
                                        • Did you want an S Pen? You can have one now… but without bluetooth, the best part
                                        • Did you want a real Note instead? Note 20 Ultra might be last option for you unless you like the Flip and Flop and Fold models for $1500 base prices
                                        • It’s an improvement above the S20U although it’s a side-grade from the Note 20 Ultra
                                        • Attributions
                                          • Free Music Archive: Beat Doctor – Organic (electric edit)
                                          • Connect With The Nexus
                                            • Support us on Patreon
                                            • Discuss this episode on our Subreddit
                                            • Copyright

                                              Second Opinion is released under a Creative Commons — Attribution 4.0 International license. Feel free to use any or all of it as long as you link back to https://thenexus.tv/so108.

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