(upbeat music)
- This is the Samsung Galaxy,
hold on.
Yeah, that's better.
This is the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra.
And I know what you're thinking.
Another year, another big Samsung phone, am I right?
Well, actually, no, this year's first big Samsung phone
is the Galaxy S21 Ultra.
And it's different because this is our third Ultra phone.
There was the S20 Ultra the Note 20 Ultra and now this.
And three iterations means that Samsung
has had time to work out all of the kinks.
Now in Samsung world Ultra
means that it should be the biggest and best version
that you can get.
And last year, the original S 20 Ultra
was not that much better than the regular S 20s.
The camera had issues,
and it was a lot more expensive.
This year the Galaxy S21 Ultra is much better.
The camera's improved,
and the price has dropped by 200 bucks.
So it starts at $1,200.
So I guess third time's a charm.
So we have to start with the obvious thing
about Ultra phones.
They are huge.
The screen on the Galaxy S21 Ultra is 6.8 inches diagonally.
And if you're keeping count
and you know that Samsung is keeping count,
that makes this phone 0.1 inches bigger
than the iPhone 12 Pro Max screen.
But the S21 is taller and narrower than the Max
and therefore to me, it's just much easier to hold.
See, Samsung has kept the curved edges on the screen
and actually don't mind it here, I think it works.
And it means that the bezels are that much smaller
and the phone can be that much narrower.
The iPhone 12 Pro Max just feels way bigger,
because it's wider.
As long as we're comparing the Samsung phone to the iPhone
let's just get it all out of the way right at the top.
Right now I think some of you are going to disagree with me
but I think the Galaxy looks better.
I do love the new squared off edges on the iPhone,
but you know what?
The camera bump here is one of those things
that we forgot looks weird,
because we got so used to camera bumps,
but it is it's weird.
And so Samsung's fix for the camera bump
is to make the metal rails on the side curve right into it.
And I actually think it looks slick as hell.
And it means that the camera glass here
is just a little bit recessed.
Although yes, there are just a lot of camera holes here
and that, that does look weird.
Speaking of the back it's Gorilla Glass Victus
also same on the front,
and it has this matte finish, which is pretty nice.
And yes, it is Phantom black,
and it does look very black in person.
It also resists fingerprints pretty well,
but it might be a little bit more delicate
than I would want it to be.
We just set this down a concrete to get a shot
and it's already got a little bit of scratch on it,
where you can see silver underneath.
Maybe that was a dumb idea, but, now you know.
Anyway, look you're only getting this phone
if you love big phones
and Samsung is just better at
making big phones than Apple is.
They've been doing it for way longer.
Samsung's version of Android
lets you size text how you want.
It can have a little side rail
on the side that you can swipe in for extra functions.
It makes it fairly simple to split screen apps,
lets you turn apps into little pop-up windows
that shrink down to floating bubbles.
You can just do a lot more with these phones.
Look, the size of these phones they're basically tablets
and Samsung is just better at putting tablet options
into its software.
So big phone, good, right?
Well sure but,
honestly it's not that hard to find a big Android phone.
The point of the S 21 Ultra
is to be the most powerful and capable Android phone,
price be damned
and right now, yeah, this is that.
Let's come back to the screen.
It's 3,200 by 1440 pixels
and you can set it to have an adaptive refresh rate
so it can dynamically change from 10 to 120 Hertz.
That makes scrolling and animation smooth
but it saves battery life
when there's nothing moving on the screen.
And on the S 21 Ultra for the first time,
you can have both maximum resolution,
and higher refresh rate at the same time.
You don't have to pick one or the other.
Actually a funny story about the screen,
usually when Samsung launches a big new phone,
it will talk for like an hour about it's screen tech
but with this one, they're just like, yep,
this is the best screen.
And yep, it is.
I mean hell sometimes I would even switch the color
from natural which I usually prefer to vivid
just to feel more alive.
I think the screen looks great.
This is also the first mass market phone
with a new Snapdragon 888 processor from Qualcomm.
So it has Wi-Fi 6E both kinds of 5G,
has better graphics,
and of course it's fast.
It benchmarks really well,
though of course the iPhone still beats it.
But to me, the important thing is that feels fast
and there's never any lag.
And for the first time in an S series phone,
there's support for Samsung styluses, the S pen
they're separate and I assume they'll work fine.
Samsung didn't send us one.
So I can't test it.
But looking at the demos,
if you've ever used a Note,
it's going to probably be about the same experience here,
minus support for Bluetooth.
Now the $1,200 base model has 128 gigs of storage
and 12 gigs of RAM.
For 50 bucks more, you can step up to 256 gigs of storage
and there's a 512 model that has 16 gigs of RAM
and it's 180 bucks more.
And really you should get one of those models
with more storage because
in order to cut the price on this phone
down from where it was last year,
Samsung had to take some stuff out.
So, you know,
we know they took the AC adapter out of the box,
because Apple did so of course Samsung is going to do it,
but they also cut the micro SD card slot.
And that move felt inevitable,
but it is kind of a bummer to not have expandable storage,
especially for a phone that can shoot 8K video
and let you take 108 megapixel photos if you want to.
But for me, none of the specs that I've just rattled off,
the positive or the negative
were as important to my experience of using this phone
as the next spec.
It has Qualcomm's newest, fastest and biggest
fingerprint sensor in the screen.
There's a much bigger area that you can tap to unlock.
And I do mean just tap.
It's just like boop, unlocked.
Boop, unlocked.
Boop.
It's great.
And also, you know, it works if you're wearing a mask.
And speaking of great, battery life.
On this phone for the review,
I turned on all the bells and whistles.
I had max resolution adaptive refresh rate,
always on screen, I had the brightness cranked
all the way up most of the time,
and then I spent days and days shooting tons of photos,
and testing out 4K and a little bit of 8K video
and I never killed the battery
until basically halfway through day two.
There's a 5,000 milliAmp battery in this thing,
and I think it's enough.
(upbeat music)
Really though the thing that Samsung wants to separate
the Ultra Galaxy phones from the other Galaxy phones
are the cameras.
The Ultras are the ones that get
Samsung's 108 megapixels sensor,
and they're also the ones that get longer telephoto lenses.
So, okay.
What do we got here?
Five cameras.
There's the main 108 megapixel sensor at F 1.8,
which kicks out 12 megapixel images by default,
there is a 12 megapixel ultra wide.
Then there are not one
but two 10 megapixel telephoto lenses,
one at a 3 X zoom in one at a 10 X zoom.
And the other hole here is for the laser auto focus sensor.
Then the fifth camera is the
40 megapixel selfie camera on the front,
which does 6.5 megapixels by default
but you can get the full 40 megapixels if you want.
So let's start with that 108 megapixel camera,
because it is the heart of this whole system.
It is a second generation Samsung sensor.
The first one was in the original Galaxy S 20 Ultra
and that 108 megapixel sensor was a whiff.
It had focus problems which Samsung later had to fix
on the Note 20 Ultra with a laser for autofocus,
which is also here but other than that though,
it just wasn't really worth the hype.
Samsung's regular cameras
on the regular S 20s were almost as good.
Now with the Galaxy S 21 ultra,
well now it's good.
I haven't had any shutter lag.
I haven't had any misfocus issues
and things like the narrowed plane of focus
seemed a little bit better too.
It is a noticeable step up from last year.
In fact, there's really only one other smartphone camera
that's even in the same league as his phone.
And it is not the Pixel 5 which I gotta say
has really fallen behind this year.
Now the other phone that's worth talking about here
is the iPhone 12 Pro Max
which also has a larger sensor compared to the other iPhone.
So, you know what?
Let's just look at some samples.
So I think this first photo
is a really good representative example
of what the S 21 Ultra can do.
I set the focus point through the fence and
I love that it grabs sharpness,
and detail of everything behind the fence,
whole lighting of the fence itself had a little bit of blur.
Plus the colors here are super accurate to what I was seeing
during that shoot.
Here's a night mode shot,
and let's just get into the S21 Ultra versus the 12 Pro Max.
I prefer how Samsung exposed the bike here,
but I think both are good.
And just look at the detail on the tire thread in the shot.
Mwah!
Here's another comparison photo,
and you can start to see how these cameras
have different opinions on how to expose things.
Samsung still wants to make things
just a little bit brighter than I like
while Apple has honestly learned its lesson
and is happy to leave contrast and shadows in.
Now here's comparing portrait mode,
and again, Samsung kind of just over does it
with the colors a little bit,
but I do think it has slightly better sharpness.
Comparing ultra wides, both seem fine.
I think it comes down to just choices and preferences
and color and exposure.
On the whole, I do think the iPhone
has a very slight edge in these comparisons,
but it's very slight.
On the other hand, the S 21 has a bunch of other tricks
and this year I think they're more than just gimmicks.
So let's talk about zoom.
There's both a 3X zoom and a 10X optical zoom here,
which means that you can get better images in zoom,
and that sort of sub 10 X range
without having to resort to weird crop shucks
that Samsung sometimes does.
So here's an example,
starting at the main sensor going in at 3X and then 10 X,
all very good.
Then Samsung still has this space zoom feature
that's supposed to let you get to 100 X
I guess it's better than last year.
You can kinda get something decent
at 30X and very good light,
but of course at a 100 X, it's still a mess.
But that 10 X zoom with its Periscope lens,
it really does yield better results
that you can get from other cameras
and the iPhone specifically.
So if you start here,
this is a very challenging low light shot,
but then you zoom in at 10 X and yeah
the galaxy definitely wins at that zoom level.
Then there's video and
there's a bunch of Samsung camera tricks here as well.
So for example, it can now shoot
4K 60 out of every single camera lens,
that seems gimmicky but I've noticed
a significant improvement in quality shooting
out of the ultra wide camera.
It can also still do 8K video,
but now you can pull out a slightly better still
out of the 8K if you want.
It also has a director's mode built in
so you can get a preview of what's happening
from every single lens and switch between them
as you're shooting.
I wish you could record them all as separate streams
and edit them in post but
that's probably too much to ask for.
As for the results,
well, we're very happy with the stabilization
how to adjust exposure on the fly during a shot
and the sharpness.
This is a very good video camera.
And I also have, I have to say
I love Samsung's pro modes for both photo and video.
It's nice to have them built into the main camera.
Samsung's also got a raw option for photos too
but you know what?
I'm going to save talking about that
until we can look a little bit closer
at it versus Apple's pro raw some other time.
Oh yeah, Samsung also does other gimmicks.
So here's me goofing with single take two,
which combines all of Samsung's gimmicks
into one single button that you can press.
Keep doing stuff.
Here's where I'm landing.
The camera system on the Galaxy S 21 Ultra is very good
I think the best you can get on Android right now.
But you probably wanna know what I think of it
compared to the iPhone 12 Pro Max.
Well, look, if you took 50 photos
of each of the main cameras on these phones,
I think that 30 would be a toss up
based on your personal preference.
Then the S 21 would be clearly better on,
I don't know seven or eight or nine
and the iPhone 12 Pro Max would be clearly better
on like 11, 12 or 13.
So very, very close,
and I think the story is about the same on video,
but the Galaxy S21 has a bunch of other stuff
that you can do built into the camera,
and unlike in previous years with Samsung,
some of those new tricks are really good.
One last thing with the camera and to me,
one of the most important things,
here's a selfie portrait mode shot
with the wind making my hair go nuts.
The S 21 handles the portrait stuff fine,
but pay attention to the lines on my face.
What you are seeing here is that you can finally,
finally turn all of the face smoothing off.
I mean, it makes me look like an old man now,
but that's what I am.
So, thank you.
All right, let's talk software.
Here's how Samsung's versions of Android work.
They get way too messy and complicated,
and then we all complain
and then eventually Samsung simplifies things
and then the cycle starts again.
And right now we are heading towards
the land of Samsung complication.
One UI is still good for big screens,
but there's just too many options.
I mean, look at quick settings.
Most of this stuff doesn't mean anything
to the average person.
And then I don't know.
Let's check on the default weather widget
on the home screen.
Oh, look, there's an ad built into the software.
Cool.
Then there's Bixby,
which is Samsung's digital assistant,
and it is surprisingly not total trash.
If you set it up and you set smart things up for your home
and you just live that whole Samsung life
it's totally passable,
but it's also not necessary.
The Google assistant is still here on this phone
and it's still better.
You do have to use some third-party software
to remap the button, but look it up,
it's totally worth it.
Then there's the texting situation.
Here in the US for whatever reason
Samsung is being made to ship Samsung messages by default,
whereas everybody else gets Android messages
and therefore RCS directly from Google.
Now, some US carriers do support RCS in Samsung messages
but only kinda so, AT&T doesn't do
RCS that works with other carriers for example.
There's also this cross carrier messaging initiative
which doesn't seem like it's doing anything
and it's still a mess
so look RCS problems aren't Samsung's fault,
but as the biggest seller of Android phones in the US
you would think Samsung would be trying harder
to fix this problem.
But if you know,
you can install Android messages and you'll be fine.
And that's the story with every Samsung phone.
If you know your way around Android,
you can make this S21 Ultra,
an amazing and powerful and efficient phone.
You can set the left of the homescreen feed to Google,
instead of Samsung's weird content deals feed.
You've got all those multitasking options.
You've got wireless desks
to turn this into a desktop computer.
You just have to know how to do it all.
And if you do, it's great.
And if you don't, it's a little confusing.
So that is the Samsung Galaxy S 21 Ultra.
It has the fastest speeds, the best camera system
and the nicest screen of any Android phone right now.
It has a battery that lasts more than a full day.
It has a new beautiful design,
and some iffy software choices.
Look, I don't think it's going to convince anybody
to switch away from something like an iPhone 12 Pro Max
but it is basically an equivalent phone
if you prefer Android to iOS.
And if you're wondering how the
smaller Galaxy S 21 phones compared to this thing,
that review is coming up next week,
But I will just tell you this
It is a little bit disappointing
but if you want the best Galaxy phone,
you do have to get the biggest one.
And make no mistake,
this is the best Android phone if you're willing to deal
with the screen size and the price.
I don't know how long the Galaxy S 21 Ultra can hold on
to that best Android phone crown,
but it definitely has it right now.
Everybody, thanks so much for watching.
Let me know
do you think the S 21 ultra is for you?
Do you love the Phantom black?
Talk about that in the comments and also
ask me what you want to know about the regular
smaller Galaxy S 21,
because I am working on that review right now.