This is the Samsung Galaxy S21 5G.
It's still a good phone today in 2022, should you buy it,
and if you already have it, is it time for an upgrade?
It was released in January 2021 along with the S21 Plus and S21 Ultra.
This one was sort of an entry into the S series, not quite budget but not quite premium either.
It was a top tier phone but without that Ultra touch to it.
They had to bring down a few things and miss out on some features while
at the same time keeping the most important ones.
The ones that make the user experience what it is.
They actually managed to do a lot of things well on this phone.
It's got that under display fingerprint sensor that works amazingly well to this day,
really fast, reliable and easy to set up.
They kept the IP68 rating for water and dust resistance,
good quality stereo speakers, 5G, 8 gigs of RAM...
These are all things that really add to the experience of using the phone day-to-day.
But what I like most about this phone is the design. It just looks really nice and premium.
It actually looks almost the same as the new S22 model.
Comes in four colors, that's gray, white, violet and pink.
Now, it does have a plastic back that's one of the ways they tried to keep the price down,
but I really don't mind it.
Doesn't feel cheap or anything like that it has this matte texture and it's actually pretty
similar to the matte glass backs we saw on a lot of other models, at least to the touch.
And it still supports wireless and reverse wireless charging. So
it is plastic, but plastic done well.
You know what they say, glass is glass after all... Shout out Zack.
So this one by not having another back is a bit less prone to cracks.
Has an aluminum frame and gorilla glass victus on
the front with improvements in both drop and scratch performance, so that's good.
Speaking about glass, what's underneath is a 6.2 inch dynamic AMOLED display with a resolution of
1080x2400 and that 120HZ adaptive refresh rate, and it's just as smooth as it gets.
It just makes the phone feel really fast.
Like I might have mentioned in previous videos, I never thought high refresh rate screens are
that important on smartphones and I am using and testing a lot of older
iPhones and they're all capped at 60HZ and using other Android
devices that do have a high refresh rate it never was a huge difference.
But you can really feel it with this one. It's just really snappy and fluid all around.
It's also really sharp, has excellent colors and
it gets bright enough peaking at 1300 nits when you're using it outdoors and stuff.
So the display is a huge plus with this one.
Well... Actually, no... S21 Plus is a huge plus.
This one is just... It's good. It's a good display.
On the performance side of things, as with other Galaxy phones, there's two versions of this one.
The US version is powered by the Snapdragon 888 chip,
while the international version has the Exynos 2100.
There's been a bunch of videos explaining the difference between the two so I'm not gonna get
into that, but I will leave a link to a video that explains it really well down in the description.
In short, the Snapdragon version is a bit better all around
and since I'm in Serbia I have the Exynos version. Just my luck.
Don't get me wrong, both chips are great. But in benchmarks, Snapdragon version definitely
does perform a bit better while the Exynos is geared towards endurance a bit more.
But the gap seems to get smaller each year.
You probably won't notice a huge difference day to day.
It's still really fast and snappy on my end a year and a half after its release.
There's an occasional stutter here and there when you really stress it out. For example when I was
setting it up for the first time installing like 100+ apps and logging into everything
with the screen at max brightness and trying out the camera, I got it to slow down a few times,
but it was pretty brief and in most situations it performed great.
One more thing I noticed though, it does tend to get a bit warm especially when recording
4k 60fps video after about 20 minutes it got hot enough that
it was uncomfortable to hold and it did take some time to cool down afterwards.
That's just something to take into account,
but like I said in the few weeks that I've been using it, it performed great overall.
When it comes to the battery, it's 4000mAh,
supports 25W fast charging, 15W wireless charging and 4.5W reverse wireless charging,
It's a solid performer. Not the best out there but it should get
you through the day on most occasions and gets around five to six hours of
screen on time maybe a bit more with the adaptive refresh rate turned on.
When you turn it off though,
it keeps the screen capped at 60HZ, but the battery life improves significantly,
giving you an extra 2-3 hours in my testing which is not a small difference by any means.
But since I do really like the 120HZ display on this phone,
I tend to keep it on most of the time and take the hit on the battery life.
But what about you?
Leave a comment below, would you turn off that adaptive refresh
rate for the battery gains or keep it on for swiping gains?
Jumping straight into the camera.
Triple setup on the back - 12MP f/1.8 wide lens,
64MP telephoto f/2.0 with a 3x zoom and a 12MP ultrawide, f/2.2.
It supports 8k video recording 24fps, 4k 60fps,
and as you go down resolution the fps game only goes up.
1080p at 240fps and 720p at 960fps. It's not great quality but it's super slow motion.
You also get the 10MP f/2.2 front facing camera that can also do 4k 60fps.
It is a nice setup overall. You get the three focal lengths,
night mode is great, colors, dynamic range, it's really nice in low light and you get
the portrait video mode which is basically the same thing as cinematic mode on iPhones.
I'm not really sure how I feel about that yet, but it is there and it is a nice option to have.
You can be sure that this one is going to
punch out really nice pictures and videos in most situations.
Great package!
While we're on the topic, it comes in a slim box without the charging brick.
Just the USB-C cable and some instructions and stuff.
But I guess we should have gotten used to that by now.
If you are looking for a charger to go with it,
you can always go with something like Anker's 25W USB-C Super Fast Charger.
It's great quality and a great price to go with it. This video is not sponsored
by Anker in any way, but I really love their products and I will leave some
affiliate links in the description if you want to pick up a charger for yourself and
help support the channel along the way no additional cost to you of course.
Now, you can't get this phone new directly from Samsung anymore,
but it is available on their website as Certified Renewed for $675. Alternatively,
you can jump on Amazon and get it renewed there for around
$450, which for the 128GB model is in my opinion a much better deal for this one.
At that price of $675, I'm not sure I would be able to recommend it,
there are just much better options out there like the Pixel 6 for example.
But if you bring that number down to $450 on Amazon,
I do believe it's still a really good choice.
Samsung upped their game when it comes to software support,
so the S21 is guaranteed to get four years of software updates. That's Android 15!
So you can be sure that this phone still has a lot of life left in it
and it's a really nice overall purchase for 2022 at that lower price point.
If you want to take a look at some iPhones instead, check out this playlist right here.
I would really appreciate it if you could subscribe to the channel,
it really does mean a lot, and I'll see you in the next one soon.
Okay, bye.