The choc of the new

Available in five colours including this sweet-looking but Profanisaurus-sounding ‘phantom brown’, Samsung’s new flagship phone is one bold design statement

If the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G were a burger, it would come with all the trimmings: cheese, bacon, the finest organic greens, flecks of gold leaf for effect, and the sweetest gherkins anywhere on the globe.

But while some can’t stand pickles, there’s nothing to dislike about the extras loaded onto this particular whopper.

You get two zoom cameras, one of them with a frankly unbelievable-sounding 10x optical zoom, and an Exynos 2100 chipset that’s a claimed 20% faster than its predecessor. The OLED screen has a variable refresh rate of up to 120Hz; and starting at £1149, it’s still wildly expensive but costs less than last year’s S20 Ultra.

In some ways, Samsung’s S21 line-up doesn’t actually look as good as last year’s. You’ll pay almost £800 for a plastic S21, and the S21+ even has to go without curved glass.

So are smartphones, like life in general, getting worse by the year? The Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G doesn’t think so. It has one of the best curved screens in the world, and cameras that’ll let you see what your neighbours are up to during lockdown.

There’s only one real omission: a charger. But with Apple now no different, perhaps the Ultra has earned its chance to give the iphone 12 Pro Max a run for its slightly excessive money.