Samsung has just revealed their Galaxy S21 smartphone lineup,
and we’ve already preordered our top-spec Ultra model, so we figured we would see
exactly how it compares to Apple’s iPhone 12 Pro Max to see if we have a new flagship King!
So in this video, I’m gonna go through all of the specs, I’m gonna compare all of the features,
and I’m even gonna look at the performance of the new Snapdragon 888 chip compared to the A14 Bionic
in the iPhone to see if the new Galaxy S21 Ultra is right for you, so let’s jump right into it.
FIrst off, it comes with a new design that’s more rounded than before,
and the camera bump looks way different, being kind of built into the frame.
To me, it seems like they did this because the camera bump is so massive, looking just as big
as it was on the Note 20 Ultra which was much thicker than the one on the iPhone 12 Pro Max.
AND FINALLY, the bixby button is now gone, so I’m glad Samsung gave up on that!
They’re also going all matte this year, like with this new matte finish,
and I personally really like how it looks, and it should feel good in the hand as well,
weighing just 1 gram heavier than the iPhone 12 PRo Max.
The display this year is absolutely killer. It’s 6.8” larger,
so just slightly bigger than APple’s 6.7” display, but it features a higher 3200x1440 resolution.
The main issue we had last year with the S20 Ultra was that we had to lower the resolution
to use the 120hz mode, but on the S21 ultra, you get both 120hz and full res at the same time!
And if you’re worried about battery life, Samsung solved this issue by using adaptive refresh rate,
which automatically adjusts between 10hz and 120hz depending on the content you’re
viewing just like Apple has been doing for years with their ProMotion iPad Pros.
This is absolutely huge because you no longer have to choose between resolution and refresh rate,
while the iPhone 12 Pro is STILL limited to 60hz, which at this point, is just embarrassing.
Not only that, but the S21 Ultra’s display can now reach 1500 nits while viewing HDR Content,
compared to 1200 nits on the iPhone.
So based on all of that, the S21 Ultra’s display kills the iPhones
in basically every way, there’s just no competition here.
As far as the battery, the one on the Samsung is a much larger 5000 maH, so it should definitely
last longer than the one on the 12 Pro Max, even with 120hz mode enabled, which is very impressive.
The S21 Ultra will come with 128GB of storage
and 12GB of RAM at the base price, which is twice as much RAM as you get on the iPhone,
and you can even get up to 16GB of RAM if you buy the maxed out 512GB Model.
But as we already know, iPhones are very RAM efficient, so we’ll have to test it out
ourselves when we get our hands on the S21 Ultra, so subscribe right now if you want to see that!
One of the biggest drawbacks to the S21 Ultra is that they finally ditched
the microSD card slot, which was one of the main reasons people bought Galaxy phones in the past.
And just as expected, there is no longer a charger or earbuds in the box,
which is kinda funny because Samsung mocked Apple for doing this on their iPhone 12 lineup.
But because of that, Samsung was able to get the price down to $1200 instead of last year’s
$1400 for the S20 Ultra, which was definitely way too expensive and led to a drop in sales.
Now before I get into comparing the chips,
I want to mention a few more spec differences and features.
As expected, the S21 Ultra gets both Sub6 and mmwave 5G, but something new this year is an
Ultrawide band radio chip, which Apple already introduced with the iPhone 11 Pro.
Along with that, they released their new Galaxy Tags,
which can be used to track devices and items like your keys,
and as we already know, Apple has had their own version in the works for over a year now.
And this ultra wideband radio chip will also give you more features like using your phone
as your car key, and Samsung already partnered with Audi,
BMW, Ford and Genesis to get this feature up and running on new cars.
One major feature is the addition of Wifi 6e, which is unique because it uses a brand new
frequency band, compared to WIfi 6 on the iPhone which uses the existing 5GHz band,
so kep in mind that you’ll need a new WIfi 6e router if you want to take advantage of this.
Samsung is also for the first time adding S-pen support to their S21 lineup,
so you no longer need to wait for the Note model if you really want that pen! But this time, it
doesn’t fit into the phone itself, so it doesn’t have a little spring-loaded button on the bottom.
Instead, Samsung is selling a couple of cases that have a slot to hold the S-pen,
but this can be an issue because the case is gonna make it even more wide and large,
and some people just don’t like using a case.
The S-pen isn’t included in the box, it’s actually a $40 purchase by itself,
or you can get it bundled with a case for $70, which isn’t a bad deal at all.
And as we know, the iPhone still doesn’t support any sort of stylus,
probably because Apple wants you to buy an iPad on the side to use the Magic Pencil.
And one more thing, the S21 ultra features Qualcomm’s brand new under display fingerprint
sensor which is 1.77x larger than the previous one, and it should be faster as well.
This is actually crazy because even the old version was faster than Face ID,
with the only issue being reliability, so the larger size should definitely help with that,
and we’re really excited to test it again.
Now let’s finally get into performance and compare the new Snapdragon 888 chip to Apple’s A14 Bionic.
In terms of Geekbench 5, we used results from Qualcomm’s own reference device
by XDA developers, compared to my personal iPhone 12 Pro Max.
In terms of Geekbench 5, the iPhone is a massive 40%
faster in terms of single-core performance, which will make it very snappy for common tasks.
ANd in multi-core the iPhone is still around 9% faster, even with only 6GB of RAM compared to 12
on the Samsung, and even though the S21 ultra uses LPDDR5 RAM compared to LPDDR4x on the iPhone, so
it looks like the snapdragon is a bit behind, but it’s still extremely fast.
Now getting into GFXBench, I ran the Aztec Ruins 1080p offscreen test
on my iPhone and it scored 101 FPS compared to 86FPS on the S21 Ultra,
so it’s an even bigger gap in this test in terms of graphics.
However, in the Manhattan test, the S21 Ultra beat the iPhone by 28%, so is pretty huge,
so we’ll have to see how they compare for gaming when we get them later.
But considering processor performance,
it seems like the iPhone is still holding the crown for most powerful smartphone.
With that, let’s finally get into the cameras,
and there are a ton of changes this year with the S21 ultra!
It now has 5 cameras total, including a 40MP selfie camera that destroys
the 12MP selfie cam on the iPhone 12 Pro Max, just like it did before.
The Main camera on the S21 ultra still uses a 108MP sensor
which utilizes binning if you don’t want to use that mode.
But a major difference this year is the fact that it now uses a Laser autofocus system,
which is extremely important because the absolute biggest
issue with last year’s S20 Ultra was major autofocusing problems.
Laser autofocus should now fix that, and according to Unbox Therapy’s video, even the 8K 24fps video
mode utilizes this, so thankfully, we can now finally use this mode without autofocusing issues,
but it still looks like optical image stabilization is turned off in this mode.
They’ve also got a really handy video recording feature this year,
Director’s view, which allows you to view and switch between angles on the fly,
while on the iPhone, you can’t even switch from the rear camera to the selfie camera.
And now, the S21 Ultra can finally record 4k 60fps video on any of the 4 cameras,
just like the iPhone, which was a big drawback last year on the S20 Ultra.
As far as the ultrawide camera, it features a 12MP sensor, just like the one on the iPhone.
And now, the S21 Ultra has not one, but two telephoto cameras, both with 10MP sensors,
with one of them being an optical 3x zoom, with the other being an optical 10x zoom.
This is actually a really good idea because the 3x camera features a decent
F2.4 aperture, letting in a ton of light, while the 10x has a REALLY bad F4.9 aperture,
so it should only be used exclusively for long-range zoom shots when you really need it.
Now I don’t know if you know this, but last year’s s20 ultra only actually had
a 4x optical zoom lens, so the s21 should do a much better job, and it should absolutely smoke
the iPhone 12 Pro Max which only has a 2.5x telephoto lens.
So in terms of the cameras, I honestly believe that the S21 Ultra will now smoke the iPhone
in terms of camera quality, no questions asked, but of course,
we’ll have to see when we finally get it in later this month on the 29th when it launches.
So with all of that said, I honestly believe that at just $100 more expensive
than the 12 Pro Max, the new S21 Ultra is gonna be the better flagship phone,
even if the performance doesn’t quite match up.
But if you preorder it on the 14th, Samsung should also be giving you $200
of credit to buy Samsung accessories like the case, the s-pen and the fast charger.
The main drawback this year is the lack of an SD card slot,
so if that is a big issue for you, let us know down in the comments below.
If you wanna see our full comparison and camera test videos,
click that circle above to subscribe so you don’t miss out on that! And be sure to check
out one of those two videos right there. Thanks for watching, and we’ll see you in the next video!