It happened again, Apple put out a great new iphone that impresses everyone, and a few
months later Samsung takes the flagship crown away from them, and once again I want to switch,
but of course I probably won’t even though the S21 is no doubt a far better phone.
In this comparison I’ll be skipping the specs and focusing on the real world differences
I noticed between these that most people don’t talk about, including 2 big issues with the
S21 that I haven’t heard anyone test or talk about, and the areas it absolutely kills
the 12 Pro Max.
Let's start with the look and feel in your hand. In our hands on comparison I complained
that the S21 was super thick compared to the iPhone and with a massive camera bump, and
that’s true, but in the real world I didn’t feel any less comfortable in the hand.
In fact, it actually feels a bit more comfortable mostly due to it being a more narrow phone,
and even though I really like the flat edges of the new iphones, they definitely make the
new iPhones feel thicker in the hand which is why apple had to cut battery capacity to
make them thinner.
Because of this, the S21 actually feels thinner in the hand even though its not. With that,
the matt glass on the back feels a lot more grippy which is probably why it captures fingerprints
so easily where the iPhone rejects them.
Flipping the front we have a ton of differences. It's interesting to see Samsung starting to
back out from its curved screen obsession, with the ultra model still having a curve
but less than before which shows the bezel more, but still less than the iPhone with
its completely flat display.
The technically larger 6.8” display doesn’t actually seem any larger because of this and
its wider aspect ratio, so the iPhones 6.7” display actually seems larger, that is once
you’ve used it for a while and the notch stops being so noticeable, at least until
you start watching videos which I’ll talk about in just a bit.
At this point I'm over that notch that is required for face ID, especially with having
to wear a mask so often. I know the latest iPhone beta allows you to unlock your phone
with your Apple watch which is cool and all, but it also makes me wonder what took them
so long.
After using the S21 with its new under display fingerprint sensor, I’m sold that this is
finally a way better way to go and I think Apple is know this as well. I don’t think
I’ve had a single issue with this new sensor. It unlocks every single time, its incredibly
fast, and you don’t have to be really precise like you did with previous samsungs.
Jerry rig compared the sensor to the S20’s and its way bigger so it makes sense why we
have such an improvement. Apples Face ID does have its advantages but seeing the current
rumors that the iPhone 13 may have under display touch id and them adding touch id to iPad
Air 4 it seems that Samsung chose wisely when they decided to go with a cutout instead of
a notch.
Go ahead and let me know which you prefer down in the comments below.
One thing that keeps shocking me every time I use the latest samsungs are the Speakers.
Wow do they sound good. I was expecting the same loudspeakers from the Note 20 but no,
Samsung made improvements once again.
They didn’t get any louder than the Note 20 but they sound more rich, where as Apple
traded mids quality for more volume in the iPhone 12’s. Go ahead and take a listen
for yourself.
On top of the sound quality improvement the back of the phone has way less vibrations
when listening at full volume which was a big complaint of mine with the S20. With that,
stereo sound is more balanced which is great for watching movies, and because of that call
quality and loudness is also great.
If you guys caught our hands in comparison I complained that HDR video looked quite disappointing.
Video looked a bit dull both in the shadows and also in the highlights where the iPhone
looked very bright and like real HDR video.
Along with that, the S21 would only let me scream in 1080P even though the display was
set to full resolution, where the iPhone would let me stream 4K.
Thankfully most of that has been fixed. Youtube was updated a few days later and now it gives
us 1440P HDR video which is noticeably sharper than 1080P, but still not as detailed as oversampled
4K on the iPhone if you have good eyes and fast enough mobile data, which gets quite
interesting but I’ll talk about this in just a sec.
The biggest difference came from a samsung software update and the HDR video went’
from a flat dull SDR looking image to what's probably the best looking HDR I’ve ever
seen. Highlights are almost too bright now, looking clearly better than the iPhone which
was the previous best.
Take that and add in the wider aspect ratio display that doesn’t have a big notch cutting
into your video, and the best speakers I’ve heard in a smartphone, and the media experience
smokes the iPhone 12 Pro Max.
And it doesn’t stop there. That new super bright 1500 nit display is fantastic in the
sun when using auto brightness. It’s technically sharper than the iPhone, but in real world
use you can’t really notice a difference.
What you can notice is the 120hz that is now able to run at that high resolution which
is a gamechanger. That paired with fast animations makes the S21 feel so much quicker when you
pick it up after using the iPhone, and you notice it even more when going back.
Now the iPhone’s A14 is technically faster than the S21’s snapdragon 888, scoring about
24 percent better performance in multi-core tests and a massive 41 percent in single core.
There's no doubt that Apple is absolutely killing it in the processor space, and their
5nm chips are way more powerful than the competition, but does it really matter in the real world
when that chip is placed in a slim phone? No not really.
The samsung seems to be just as fast at launching applications, and because of that 120hz display
everything feels much snapper. And don’t get me started about gaming which is one of
my biggest complaints about the 12 Pro Max.
We have an insane amount of performance from that A14 chip, but when pushing it hard the
12 Pro Max starts to overheat and then the screen end up dining to try to keep the head
down. I had that issue both indoors and even outdoors when it was cold, and vadim had that
issue when he did his gaming comparison against the S21.
So the iPhone 12’s graphics are technically 43% faster in benchmarks, but in the real
world once you game for 10 to 15min that extra performance is erased due to thermals where
the S21 didn’t have any issues with thermals due to their use of graphics thermal pads
to remove heat from the SOC.
This is a massive bummer on a brand new expensive phone, and an issue that Apple really needs
to fix with vapor chamber cooling or these graphite sheets which are said to be even
better.
And while were talking about performance I have to mention battery life and RAM. The
S21 has double the RAM of the iPhone but it doesn’t matter most of the time. Both phones
keep apps open for a long time and I couldn’t tell a difference in real world use, but I
definitely could as far as battery life.
The much larger 5000 mah battery has the upper hand, even with 120hz enabled at full resolution,
probably because of the new 5nm X60 modem and the new screen that automatically drops
down to 10hz to save power. At the end of the day you get about 2 extra hours of screen
on time.
I’m realizing that I’m sounding like a samsung fanboy, and I’m definitely not,
so let's get into a few big issues with the S21 that are alarming.
The first one is 5G data speeds. When we did a 5G speed test in our initial comparison
and the iPhone smoked the Samsung which didn’t make sense.
After more testing and real world use, I noticed that the S21 shows stronger reception. In
place I usually get 2 out of 4 bars on the iPhone the Samsung will show 4 or 5 bars out
of 5 which is awesome at a glance, but that doesn’t tell the whole truth.
In wide open areas the S21’s new X60 modem is consistently faster than the iPhone, for
example reaching 198mbps compared to 165 testing one after the other, but the weird thing is
the difference between the upload speeds, 70mbps compared to 39. Same thing goes for
lower signal areas outdoors, with the S21 getting 43 down compared to 20, but on the
upload side it gets less than 1 compared to 3.
What's even more interesting is when I’m in tougher indoor locations like basements.
The S21 shows a stronger data signal but the speeds are actually lower, 26 compared to
46, and for download 15 compared to 33.
I’m not sure why this is, my only bet is that the iPhone has stronger antennas, but
overall the iPhone has noticeably better reception in tough areas and it has been noticeable
when using the phone at my office or home.
The other issue is low light photos. During the day the S21 ultra takes amazing photos
and not only with the 10x zoom camera which has much better quality than the iPhones 2.5x.
Honestly I was shocked by how good the software is beating out the iPhone in white balance
and contrast, being much more true to life.
If we go back a few years ago the Samsugn would struggle with this but now its clearly
better, and we also have a massive difference in macro photos thanks to the new extra 3x
lens that gets automatically swapped to resulting in some great macro photos.
Overall the S21 is a shockingly good camera system with tons of daytime detail especially
if you swap to the 108 megapixel mode. My only issue with it are the night time shots,
specifically software where you can have glitches that ruin photos or atleast add having artifacts
and noise that shouldn’t be there where the iPhone is super clean.
We actually did a blind camera comparison against these two and the results were very
interesting and also fun, so go ahead and check out that video after this one and test
which photos you prefer without them being labeled.
The last issue I have with the S21 is that Samsung is still limiting manual brightness
quite a bit compared to the iPhone to save battery life, but I think they should give
us full control since the battery life is already so good.
I do have to mention the S-Pen support that the iPhone doesnt’ have, but personally
I’m not a fan of using them even on the note’s and the S21 doesn’t have a slot
for it. I do have the flip folio case that has a slot for it, but the case is quite wide
and fairly uncomfortable to use even for large hands.
The last thing I want to quickly mention is Magsafe, and I definitely missed being able
to use my wallet even though it slips off easily, and even more so my home charger and
in car charger which is super convenient.
Of course i do prefer iOS and how well it integrates with the rest of the ecosystem
and most of my friends and family have iPhones, so that's the biggest thing holding me back
from switching, but if you’re not limited by that I would absolutely say go for the
samsung. It's definitely the better phone overall and if I could take samsungs hardware
and run iOS on it that would be an absolute dream.
But let me know you’re thought down in the comment section below and go ahead and check
out our blind camera comparison right over there. Click above to subscribe and help up
hit 600K subs before our two year mark march, that would be awesome.
This has been Max and I’ll see you in the next video!