Overview

After an ample number of leaks and speculated rumours, Samsung Electronics have finally unveiled their cutting-edge flagship smartphone: the Samsung Galaxy S21 Series. The S21 series incorporates three regular chapters— the Samsung Galaxy S21, S21 Plus and the S21 Ultra.

Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra is the earliest of the flagships to get launched in 2021. And this time, Samsung has embarked on a journey of improvements rather than innovation. It endeavours to clear the fault lines and refine the last year’s S20 Ultra, offering us a rarefied and polished flagship with all the top-of-the-line technology. Unveiled through their second-ever virtual launch event, here are the details of the novel flagship.

Design and Display

Samsung unfolds a modish design which appears more elegant, smooth and dazzling to the eyes. The new Contour Cut design looks iconic as it amalgamates the camera housing onto the metal chassis of the phone, materializing a sleek and seamless design aesthetic. Apart from it, the S21 Ultra has the usual flares of a curvy delineation we see in S-series of smartphones. It features a glass-back, protected by Corning Gorilla Glass Victus, kept intact within the Aluminium chassis. Withal, Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra comes in two colour choices- the Phantom Black colour featuring a matte body, and the Phantom Silver colour featuring a hazy, silver-like back.

Being that tall-cousin of the family, Galaxy S21 Ultra hallmarks a 6.8-inch Dynamic AMOLED display. The display deems finest of all faceting a 1440p Panel, with the support of 120Hz refresh rate at Quad HD resolution. Samsung boasts it to be their most intelligent screen yet as it can dynamically switch between 10Hz to 120Hz as per your display contents. In addition, the display is 25% brighter now as it peaks at 1500nits and claims a 50% improved contrast ratio. The panel is still curved around the edges and houses a tiny punch-hole cut for the selfie camera.

CPU and Performance

The biggest snarl-up for the last year’s Galaxy S20 series was the Samsung’s Exynos chipset. While the phones with the Snapdragon processor held up pretty good, the International releases with the Exynos chipsets remained as a drag- performing poorly, bad optimisation, heating issues, and overall substandard efficiency. This time, however, Samsung has stroked back with their new 5nm based Exynos 2100 processor.

Samsung Exynos 2100

The Exynos 2100 is designed on a 5nm TUV process node, featuring an 8-core tri-cluster CPU architecture. Upon ditching their custom Mongoose cores, finally, the new Exynos chipset features one Cortex X1, three Cortex A78, and four Cortex A55 cores. The three cores are clocked at 2.9GHz, 2.8GHz and 2.2GHz respectively.

While it has been confirmed that Samsung has a partnership coming up with AMD for their bleeding-edge chipset, the Exynos 2100 limits itself to a Mali GPU this time. Samsung Exynos 2100 features a 14-core Mali G78 GPU.

The new chipset boasts a 10% increase in performance, a 20% decrease in power consumption and 40% better GPU performance.

Read: Everything about Smartphone Processors or SoCs

That being said, the Galaxy S21 Ultra also gets the aid of Samsung Knox Vault – Samsung’s own chipset level security platform – which is mostly available in Samsung’s upper-midrange and flagship phones only. Additionally, the phone comes with LDDR5 RAM, 5G connectivity and UFS 3.1 for storage.

Cameras

The Contour Cut in Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra houses an array of 4 lenses. It features the return of 108MP primary camera, a 12MP ultra-wide lens, a 10MP Telephoto lens (3x) and a 10MP periscope-zoom lens (10x).

Features:

• 4K Video recording at 60FPS across all cameras.
• 8K Video support.
• Remosaic Technology for better detailed pictures (108MP)
• 12MP Nona-binning technology for Night Mode (combines 9 pixels into 1 single pixel)
• 12bit HDR photos (64x richer colour data and 3x wider dynamic-range)
• 10x periscope zoom with only two folds (ensures better zoomed images)
• Zoom-lock to reduce shaky images.
• Laser Autofocus for improved focus and precise distance measurement.
• Director’s View mode to switch between multiple lenses while recording.

Not to forget, the phone still retains a 40MP, f/2.2 punch-hole camera embedded within the screen for selfies and video streaming.

Battery and Charging

A massive 5,000mAH battery powers the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra to help endure your daily usage. The phone supports up to 25W fast charging with 3.0 PD (power delivery). It also supports 15W wireless charging and 4.5W reverse wireless charging.

However, the nightmares are back again. Just like the headphone jack, it’s the power brick this time- they are gone. Ironically, mocking Apple for removing the charging brick out of the box, Samsung – as usual – went on to follow the trend. We still get a USB-C charging cable inside the box.

Other Features

The notable buzz of the new S21 Ultra is the inclusion of S Pen support. The phone now hallmarks the S Pen and Wacom Stylus support for notetaking, sketching, navigating, and pretty much anything (however, it does not support air commands since it isn’t Bluetooth enabled). Even though the S Pen stylus isn’t available inside the box, customers can additionally purchase it from Samsung’s official website. The company has also featured a new case that can house the S Pen if you are interested.

The Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra runs on OneUI 3.1 based on Android 11. The launcher now has a dedicated Google Feed, as well. Apart from it, Galaxy S21 Ultra supports Wi-Fi 6E for higher bandwidth and a faster internet connection. Similarly, the phone also supports Sub6 / mmWave 5G bands for ultra-fast, low-latency connection. Features like Samsung DeX, Samsung Wireless DeX (desktop experience support) and ANT+ are still present.

For security, Galaxy S21 Ultra houses an under display, ultrasonic fingerprint sensor. While it is not official yet, the fingerprint sensor might just be Qualcomm’s 3D Sonic Sensor Gen 2, which attributes 77% larger fingerprint reader area and 50% faster performance.

Read: 11 Best Magisk Modules You Need to Try

Price and Availability

Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra is available for pre-order in India and it will be available for purchase starting from January 29.

Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra Summary

• Display: 6.8 inches; HDR10+ Dynamic OLED 2x Display
• Resolution: WQHD+ (3200 x 1440 pixels)
• Chipset:
  • Samsung Exynos 2100 5G (5nm) – Global
  • Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 5G (5nm) – USA/China/Korea
• CPU:
  • Exynos – Octa-core (1×2.58 GHz Cortex-A76 || 3×2.40 GHz Cortex-A76 || 4×1.84 GHz Cortex-A55)
  • Snapdragon – (1×2.84 GHz Kryo 680 || 3×2.42 GHz Kryo 680 || 4×1.80 GHz Kryo 680)
• GPU: Mali-G78 MP14 / Adreno 660
• RAM: 12GB RAM with 256/128GB storage, 16GB RAM with 512GB Storage, non-expandable (LPDDR5, UFS 3.1)
• OS: OneUI 3.1 based on Android 11
• Rear Camera:
  • Primary 108MP (wide, f/1.89), Laser AF, OIS
  • Secondary 12MP (ultra-wide, 13mm, f/2.2),
  • Tertiary 10MP (telephoto, f/2.4), 3x optical zoom, OIS
  • Quaternary 10MP (periscope, f/4.9), 10x optical zoom, OIS
• Front Camera: Primary 40MP (wide, f/2.2), punch-hole
• Battery: 5000mAh, 25W Fast-Charging (50% in 30min), 15W wireless charging, 4.5W reverse wireless charging
• Audio: Stereo Speakers tuned by AKG, no headphone jack
• Security: Ultrasonic Fingerprint sensor, Knox Security
• Sensors: Fingerprint sensor, Accelerometer, Barometer, Gyro sensor, Geomagnetic sensor, Hall sensor, Proximity sensor, Ambient Light Sensor
• Connectivity: 5G connectivity (Sub6 / mmWave), WIFI 6E, Bluetooth 5.2, UWB, NFC,
• Colors: Phantom Black, Phantom Silver (Samsung exclusive Phantom Titanium, Phantom Navy, and Phantom Brown)

Mohit Aryal

Tech enthusiast and a movie fanatic.