The Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra & S21 Review: The Near Perfect and The Different
by Andrei Frumusanu on February 22, 2021 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Samsung
- Mobile
- Galaxy S21
- Galaxy S21 Ultra
Camera - HDR
We swivel to the main sensor capture experience and quality. Luckily, I was able to get captures on a very sunny day to really stress the HDR processing the cameras, which isn’t always straightforward to do on winter days.
[ S21U(S) ] [ S21U(E) ]
[ S21(E) ] [ S20+(E) ] [ Note20U(S) ]
[ iPhone 12 Pro ] [ Mate40 Pro ] [ Mi 11 ]
[ Mi 10 Pro ] [ Pixel 5 ]
[ X-T30 ( ) ]
In the first shot what’s quite obvious is the lens flare that affects most of the phone cameras in this scene. Unfortunately, anti-reflective coatings aren’t something that are very prevalent in the mobile smartphone camera industry so it’s something you probably won’t see a lot of vendors put much effort in.
Disregarding that, the new S21 phones are all doing extremely well, and generally being able to outperform all other phones in terms of the dynamic range they’re able to capture, which sees a slight improvement to the Note20 Ultra.
There are processing differences between the Exynos and Snapdragon, particularly visible on the ultra-wide angle module, with much better retention of shadow detail on the part of the Snapdragon unit.
[ S21U(S) ] [ S21U(E) ]
[ S21(E) ] [ S20+(E) ] [ Note20U(S) ]
[ iPhone 12 Pro ] [ Mate40 Pro ] [ Mi 11 ]
[ Mi 10 Pro ] [ Pixel 5 ]
[ X-T30 ( ) ]
This shot is also very demanding as shooting against the sun isn’t your recommended capture style.
Although the S21 phones are doing very well, I would say they’re falling more notably behind the iPhone 12’s processing which is able to get much more dynamic range out of the shot.
[ S21U(S) ] [ S21U(E) ]
[ S21(E) ] [ S20+(E) ][ Note20U(S) ]
[ Mate40 Pro ] [ Mi 11 ]
[ Mi 10 Pro ] [ Pixel 5 ]
[ X-T30 ( ) ]
Here, I thought the S21 phones fell flat with their HDR. The S20 and Note20Ultra more accurately retained the highlights of the scene while the S21 and S21 Ultra’s pictures histograms looks empty in the last 10-15% of levels, even though this is in the broad sun.
[ S21U(S) ] [ S21U(E) ]
[ S21(E) ] [ S20+(E) ] [ Note20U(S) ]
[ iPhone 12 Pro ] [ Mate40 Pro ] [ Mi 11 ]
[ Mi 10 Pro ] [ Pixel 5 ]
[ X-T30 ( ) ]
For once not facing the sun, we’re seeing different characteristics between the phones. The S21 Ultra compared to the Note20 Ultra is able to showcase much better fine details both in highlights as well as the shadows. Oddly enough, while the bright areas are generally the same for the Exynos model, it suffers a lot in the shadows and blacks.
[ S21U(S) ] [ S21U(E) ]
[ S21(E) ] [ S20+(E) ] [ Note20U(S) ]
[ iPhone 12 Pro ] [ Mate40 Pro ] [ Mi 11 ]
[ Mi 10 Pro ] [ Pixel 5 ]
[ X-T30 ( ) ]
The tendency of the Exynos doing worse in the shadows continues on in this scene. It’s to be noted that all the phones here had trouble with colour temperature which was far too warm, though the S21 improved upon the S20.
[ S21U(S) ] [ S21U(E) ]
[ S21(E) ] [ S20+(E) ] [ Note20U(S) ]
[ iPhone 12 Pro ] [ Mate40 Pro ] [ Mi 11 ]
[ Mi 10 Pro ] [ Pixel 5 ]
[ X-T30 ( ) ]
This scene was interesting as the Snapdragon and Exynos did very different approaches in terms of capture although both came to a very similar result. The Exynos’s exposure was half of that of the snapdragon, and allowed it to retain highlight details in the clouds, although the Snapdragon’s lower ISO capture allowed it for more details in the shadows.
[ S21U(S) ] [ S21U(E) ]
[ S21(E) ] [ S20+(E) ] [ Note20U(S) ]
[ iPhone 12 Pro ] [ Mate40 Pro ] [ Mi 11 ]
[ Mi 10 Pro ] [ Pixel 5 ]
[ X-T30 ( ) ]
In more high dynamic range scenes, the S21 phones again do extremely well against the competition, although the generational differences are rather small. Again, we see very large differences in the blacks between the Snapdragon and Exynos phones in this scene when you look at the UWA image and the car on the right.
[ S21U(S) ] [ S21U(E) ]
[ S21(E) ] [ S20+(E) ] [ Note20U(S) ]
[ iPhone 12 Pro ] [ Mate40 Pro ] [ Mi 11 ]
[ Mi 10 Pro ] [ Pixel 5 ]
[ X-T30 ( ) ]
In less demanding shots like this one, the differences between the phones are much more minor in terms of exposure, but we are seeing large colour and detail variations. I have no idea what happened to the Snapdragon S21U as the grass on the right looks horrible compared to the Exynos S21U, which in turn looks worse than the Note20 Ultra, which is by far the most accurate phone in this scene.
HDR Daylight Verdict: Generally good, but extremely inconsistent
Generally, my view of the S21’s daylight performances are very much typical of a fresh Samsung device: a very much inconsistent processing mess. The S21 Ultra has extremely capable hardware, but the problem is that as with every last Galaxy S launch over the last few years we’re seeing very odd processing results. Sometimes the phone can capture great shots with dynamic range and detail far better than any other device, and sometimes it falls flat on its face. The fact that the Note20 Ultra is able to often beat out the new S21 Ultras in picture quality means that this is solely a software issue, and the firmware of the new phones just isn’t mature enough.
Since getting the phones and capturing the image samples on the day-1 firmware update, I’ve since gotten 2 further updates on the Exynos and one on the Snapdragon model, both always stating improved camera quality and improvements, which I would very well believe to be accurate and change the results showcased here. After all, Samsung on the S10 and S20 has released camera updates months into a device’s lifecycle, and I wouldn’t be surprised for the same to happen to the S21.
Generally speaking, the results of the S21 series are both good and bad because of this. There are hints of superb image quality, marred with general inconsistencies. The issues are more prevalent for the Ultra phones than for the simpler baseline models. I feel like Samsung has a swiss army knife here in terms of a camera solution, but all the knives and tools are dull.
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Silver5urfer - Wednesday, February 24, 2021 - link
Mass market just mindlessley consumes. Remember that Android had Windows like Filesystem which was the most powerful feature ever on smartphone. Google killed it in the name of Security. Esp all the images that you download on these latest Android 10+ phones, you cannot see any image or file under fileexplorer because its in the app own folder and once you uninstall all of it is wiped clean. It's ultimate kick in the gut for Android. On top no MicroSD card.But it's all great, because it looks good ? not to me anyways with that ugly screen hole and bump of camera module. It's great because it's the trend nowadays. These stupid smartphones are ruining more than anything with their social media junkware and addiction to teens all over the world and have some status quo as well.
AT should have done some great deep dive on how OS is getting sandbagged to emulate and copy Apple in HW and SW but they do not give a shit. It's all spec benchmarks, Camera. Not even damn cost, not even specifications get pointed out. Fucking $1000 phone with plastic ? What the hell ? No charger as well, they even axed MST.
But nope. It's a great device, tmrw Apple will kill Lighting port, you will see AT praise It's the future along with all Shills on youtube and other so called tech blogs.
Windows is also sadly in a state of perpetual derangement, with it's as a service model bullcrap and their anti computing, they shove all that touch based garbage UWP UI into Win32 and pollute the UX of Windows as a powerful Desktop OS to a sandbagged corporate siphon for data on userbase and ship broken trash and use them as guinea pigs to push stable software for Win10 Enterprise customers.
JoeDuarte - Thursday, February 25, 2021 - link
I think that locking down the file system is a good and obvious security move, though it shouldn't come at any cost to the user. There should be obvious folders for things like photos, and those should not be cleaned out by uninstalling an app.Google is a hopelessly bad company at this point though, and I would never trust them to design a good OS. They're not good enough, and they're just enjoying their market share because no one seems interested in launching a new OS, for mobile or more broadly.
OSes could and should be massively more secure. It's a dimwitted myth that computers have to be insecure. If I were designing an OS, the user wouldn't know anything about a "file system" and there's no way anyone would be able to see system/OS folders and files. That's a huge information security leak. Of course apps would have no awareness of the system directory tree either. In fact, I might even physically isolate the OS on its own flash storage – a little 16 GiB of NAND or Optane would be more than ample. It could have all sorts of layered security measures, in software and hardware.
I'd give users enormous control over things like their files, photos, etc. More user-friendly than Android for sure. But they don't need access to OS innards, and they don't need the "file system" abstraction – it doesn't add any value to the UX. Entire categories of Windows exploits would disappear if users didn't have access to system folders.
iphonebestgamephone - Friday, February 26, 2021 - link
So no modding on your os?JoeDuarte - Wednesday, March 3, 2021 - link
Good question. I guess I lean toward yes, it would be possible to mod. Maybe something like a Developer Mode would be the way to implement it. If the file system is locked down, and OS files are locked down, by default for non-modding users, that should be good enough to obtain the security benefits in terms of exploit resistance.Exploits would be much less important if 9X% of users were immune. Well even modded systems would be immune to the sorts of exploits that are common now, all the memory bugs, overflows, use after frees, ROP, etc. A good OS would be formally verified (like seL4) and written in a new, advanced, and inherently secure programming language (secure against memory bugs, among other things). So I think modding would be cool, and I also think any desktop and laptop should be thoroughly upgradeable on the hardware side, so removable SSDs and RAM and maybe FPGA slots. I'm fine with non-upgradeable phones, but it would be sweet if they could achieve the same or better thinness while having a removable battery. Non-removable batteries don't seem to have given the use any benefits in terms of thinness, since the phones didn't get thinner. If anything, they're slightly thicker now, which is a shame, and I think the tech media has underexposed this fact – there was no benefit. And iPhones didn't get any thinner from removing the headphone port, which was supposed to be motivated by space savings. The media didn't seem to notice that the thickness didn't change...
iphonebestgamephone - Friday, March 5, 2021 - link
Ok thenRude Russy - Tuesday, March 9, 2021 - link
Wow you are a miserable shit and you don't know what you are talking about. As for the headphones all you have to do is get a usb-c adaptor and you can plug your headphones in.tuxRoller - Wednesday, February 24, 2021 - link
Has the huawei always used such strong edge detection/enhancing?Some of the shots bring to mind me an aggressive comic inker.
s.yu - Thursday, February 25, 2021 - link
Huawei is back and forth on this issue, generally the Mates are better and the P's are worse, IIRC P20 was the worst I've ever seen, but in the scope of this review my attention was on the Samsungs' tele samples.asfletch - Wednesday, February 24, 2021 - link
Just wanted to chime in to thank you for the hard work you put into these reviews Andrei. The comments section seems to be increasingly grievance-driven and glib these days, but as a long time reader I appreciate that you’re still able to provide more technical detail than most other reviewers despite not having a huge budget (eg to purchase and spend forever testing every variant).To those moaning about video testing, Youtube is a better forum for that kind of thing anyway. You won’t find in depth screen or platform analyses on there though.
Giro - Wednesday, February 24, 2021 - link
Hello Andrei, thanks A LOT for this comprehensive review.It seems you consider Huawei like the reference for low light AND use of a better set-up for intermediate levels of zoom.
Regardless of the OS, where Huawei falls behind Samsung now ?