PHOTO GALLERY
We highlight the zoom strengths of the Galaxy S21 and compare its results to the iPhone 12 Pro
wireless charging and PowerShare, which allows you to top up compatible devices such as the Galaxy Buds or Galaxy Watch 3 by placing them on the back of the phone.
There are two things it doesn’t include. The first is a microSD card slot, which means that the 128GB or 256GB of onboard storage is all you get. That’s disappointing, but I have a harder time accepting the lack of a charger in the box. Taking a leaf from Apple’s book, the S21 comes with only a charging cable (USB-C to USB-C). This is a U-turn from a company that mocked Apple’s decision to remove its own charger at the launch of the Note20 in August 2020.
Why has Samsung done this? It claims that most of its consumers already own charging plugs and thus don’t need a new one with every upgrade. Yet most previous Samsung owners will only have USB-A to
USB-C plugs, so they’ll have to buy a new charger from Samsung’s website to use the new cable anyway. A more cynical view would be that this is a new method for Samsung to make more money (25W chargers cost £29 if you order at the time of purchase).
Camera questions
While the camera system’s look has changed, the hardware is almost identical to the phone that came before it. This means a main 12MP (f/1.8) camera, a 12MP (f/2.2) ultrawide unit and a 64MP (f/2.0) telephoto zoom, with a 10MP (f/2.2) selfie camera in a hole-punch notch at the top of the screen.
The bigger difference is the camera software. The S21 offers a range of new shooting modes, including 8K Video Snap: this lets you grab a still image from an 8K video recording. Then there’s Director’s View, which displays a live feed of all three camera lenses while recording, allowing you to switch between them with a tap.
The new Vlogger View setting captures video from the front and back cameras simultaneously, in a similar way to Nokia’s “Bothie” mode. It doesn’t stop there: Single Take 2.0 captures footage using all of the cameras simultaneously and now includes a dynamic slow-motion option that records different sloweddown clips in one piece of footage. Finally, virtual lighting is available in portrait mode, while a zoom-lock feature has been added to the phone’s 30x “Space Zoom”, which helps neutralise shaky hands at greater zoom lengths. Theoretically.
The S21’s trio of cameras perform exceptionally, no matter what light conditions you happen to be snapping in. Images captured using the main camera in well-lit environments are astonishing, with impressive dynamic range and rich, bold colours that leap off the screen.
With the phone’s night mode switched on, the S21 did a better job than the iPhone 12 Pro at capturing street lights without blowing them out, wh il e simultaneously boosting the brightness of dark alleyways without adding an artificially warm hue. If you take a look at the port rait comparison with the iPhone 12 Pro above, you’ll certainly spot the difference, and you might also noti ce that the S21 has more defined edges around the subject. Nevertheless, the iPhone has the edge when it comes to portraits with a subtlety that the S21 lacks.
“The Samsung Galaxy S21’s trio of cameras perform exceptionally, no matter what light conditions you happen to be snapping in”
However, the S21’s telephoto capabilities are more mixed. On the one hand, I was impressed with the pictures taken on or below 10x zoom, with zero evidence of shaky hands and very little visual noise. On the other hand, pictures captured at 20x and 30x zoom proved useless du e to came ra sh ake.
It ’s a si mi lar st ory with th e S21’s ultrawide camera. Detail capture at the centre of the frame isn’t bad at all, but move towards the edge and you will soon spot the telltale signs of a softening, as well as occasional chromatic aberration.
When it comes to video, the S21 can record at up to 8K resolution at 24fps, although if you’re short on space (a 20-second clip at 8K consumes roughly 200MB) then you can bump the resolution down to a fully stabilised 4K at 60fps. The S21’s 8K recording feels like a gimmick, especially since you need an 8K TV to properly view the footage.
Punchy display
Stretching out across a diagonal of 6.2in, the S21’s screen is the same size as the previous model and it relies on the same FHD+ (2,400 x 1,080) resolution. The S21 uses Samsung’s Dynamic AMOLED 2x panel too, which means that it supports a maximum refresh rate of 120Hz in supported games and applications.
In testing, the S21’s sRGB colour accuracy impressed, with an average Delta E of 2.08 and coverage of 95.8% in the phone’s “Natural” setting. Peak brightness reached 652cd/m2 with the auto brightness setting engaged and I measured a maximum luminance of 1,100cd/m2 when viewing HDR content.
If you prefer your images punchy then switch to Vivid, which covers 96.2% of the DCI-P3 co lour space. Here, though, colour accuracy isn’t such a strength, wi th an average Delt a E of 4.93 and a ma ximum (for reds) of 14.95. So, while colours will certainly live up to the vividn ess of the colour profile’ s name, they probably won’t be accurate.
Turn of speed
Following in the footsteps of Apple and Huawei at the tail end of 2020, the Exynos 2100 has a maximum clock speed of 2.9GHz and is the first mobile chipset from Samsung built using a 5nm fabrication process. The S21 also comes with 8GB of RAM.
This means the S21 is the fastest Samsung smartphone to date, with 50% higher multicore processing speeds than last year’s S20 in Geekbench 5. It lags slightly behind Apple’s A14 Bionic chip, but there’s no shame in that.
In the demanding GFXBench GL Car Chase benchmark, the S21’s integrated Mali-G78 GPU more than holds its own against other flagship phones. I doubt you’ll ever come across a game that won’t play smoothly on this phone at its native resolution.
This raw power doesn’t affect battery life. In PC Pro’s video-rundown test, which involves playing a looped video at a screen brightness of 170cd/m2 with Flight mode engaged, the S21 lasted 18hrs 56mins before requiring a top-up. That’s only a marginal increase on last year’s model, but it’s significantly better than the iPhone 12, which the Samsung Galaxy S21 outlasted by roughly two hours under identical conditions.
Decision time
Not a huge amount has changed, so if you grabbed a S20 last year then you might want to hold onto it for a little while longer. If, however, you’re eager to start 2021 with a new handset, either by replacing an out-of-date model or making the move from
Apple to Android, then the S21 is a smart choice; the slightly lower price helps too.
The disappointing decisions to remove the microSD slot and bundled charger are the only blots on the copybook; otherwise the S21 represents another sublime flagship phone from Samsung. If you can live without both of those things there’s no doubt that the Galaxy S21 will be a brilliant sidekick for whatever 2021 decides to throw at you.
SPECIFICATIONS
Eight-core 2.9GHz/2.8GHz/2.2GHz Samsung Exynos 2100 8GB RAM Mali-G78 MP14 graphics 5G 6.2in 120Hz AMOLED screen, 1,080 x 2,400 resolution 128GB/256GB storage triple 12MP/64MP/12MP rear camera 10MP front camera Wi-Fi 6 Bluetooth 5 NFC USB- C connector 4,000mAh battery Android 11 71 x 7.9 x 152mm (WDH) 171g 1yr warranty
“The Galaxy S21 is the fastest Samsung phone to date, with 50% higher multicore processing speeds than the S20”