SAMSUNG Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G - Smartphone 128GB, 12GB RAM, Dual Sim, Silver

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Or if you want a newer model there's now the Samsung Galaxy S22 line - but those phones will cost you more. The design is where Samsung has made the most obviously noticeable changes over the S20 (which we crowned 2020’s best smartphone), overhauling the materials used, the colors, and the overall look of the device. Reverse wireless charging is also supported, so you can use your phone’s power to top up devices such as Qi-compatible wireless headphones, but we found that to be slow, and it’s a feature you’d likely only want to use in emergencies. It’s also worth noting that all of Samsung’s S21 phones are 5G-compatible, so you won’t be able to buy a 4G-only variant. Instead, Samsung had made its 5G-compatible smartphones more competitively priced, so you’ll be getting a future-proofed option even if you don’t intend to use next-gen connectivity in the near future. Samsung has opted for a lower-spec screen than the one on the S20, with a Full HD+ 6.2-inch display, but it offers a 120Hz refresh rate for super-smooth scrolling and graphics, plusfantastic colors, and strong brightness levels – and we didn’t notice the lower resolution in most of our testing.

Hope someone can help (that includes Samsung programmers/engineers) – I have two SIM cards in my phone, personal and work. If I’m talking to someone on SIM1 (personal) and someone calls me on SIM2 or I have a missed call, I receive a missed call notification (so far so good!!). When I go to return the ‘SIM2 missed call’, my phone dials out using SIM1 – frustrating. This can be changed in options where if an outgoing call is placed it asks which SIM you want to use for the call – pointless. My OnePlus 7 Pro would intelligently select the SIM – so a missed call on SIM2 would be dialled out via SIM2 automatically, a missed call on SIM1 would be dialled out via SIM1 and you also have the option of changing which SIM dials out should you choose to do so. The Samsung Galaxy S21 release date was Friday, January 29, 2021 for most of the world, including the US, UK and Australia. That means you can readily buy the smartphone now from a variety of retailers, carriers and networks in all three of those countries. There’s a 6.2-inch Full HD+ AMOLED display on this handset, which we’ll dive into more in the display section below. This phone is the smallest member of the Galaxy S21 family, and while it may not be as trim as the iPhone 13 mini, those with smaller hands shouldn’t have too much trouble using it. The Galaxy S21 phones were the first devices to use either Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 888 (US) or Samsung’s own Exynos 2100 (just about everywhere else). Those were the latest generation of top-end chipsets when the S21 range launched, though they've since been superseded. Glasstic is the company’s own name for the material, which as the name suggests is somewhere between plastic and glass. It doesn’t feel as premium as a glass rear, but the matte finish also means it doesn’t feel like cheap plastic either.

4. Select default SIM for text messaging

This is also the first Samsung phone to launch without a charger in the box. Following in Apple’s footsteps, Samsung says the charger’s removal is an effort to reduce the environmental impact of the phone, but it also says that it “removes any pressure that consumers may feel towards continually receiving unnecessary charger accessories with new phones”. The Samsung S21 was officially unveiled on January 14, 2021 which was the earliest in a year we've seen the company introduce its new smartphone technology.

This is bad news for consumers who are looking to make the switch from iPhone to Samsung, since the Galaxy S21 Ultra charges via USB-C and thus doesn’t support Apple’s Lightning cable. Perhaps a more consumer-friendly tactic would be to provide a choice as to whether or not the charger was included, instead of removing it entirely. Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra review: DisplaySamsung has fully embraced 5G for the S21 line too, as all variants of the Galaxy S21 are 5G-compatible. Even if you’re not in a 5G-ready area, it essentially means you’re futureproofed, ready for when 5G connectivity is more widely available. Samsung Galaxy S21: battery life It’s unlikely to be something you’ll notice unless you’re used to those curved edges, but it’s worth noting if you’re someone who particularly likes that design feature – and as is the case with other dropped features, Samsung has retained the curved-edge screen for the premium S21 Ultra. The company is instead just offering internal storage, and again this seems to be a cost-saving measure from Samsung, but it’s likely to disappoint anyone who wants the most affordable handset but needs a lot of storage. The other thing to note here is that the Galaxy S21 doesn’t come with a charger in the box. Samsung has followed in Apple’s footsteps by not bundling a charger with its new phones as it seeks to cut down on e-waste. The S21 runs Android 11 out of the box with Samsung’s One UI 3.0 skin, which is among our favorite software interfaces. The phone has since been updated to Android 12, and it will be getting Android 13 when that's available too.

To choose what SIMs and phone plans are used by default for data, voice and messages go to Settings> Connections> SIM card manager. It should come as no surprise that the quality of the images that the Galaxy S21 Ultra is capable of capturing are nothing short of exceptional. As with other high-megapixel-count flagships, the S21 Ultra doesn’t capture 108MP images by default – although this can be enabled in the settings – instead taking 12MP pictures in the auto mode. The downgrade to the display is perhaps the most controversial change Samsung has made for the Galaxy S21, with the company switching to a lower-res Full HD+ screen than the Quad HD display available on 2020’s Galaxy S20. In the S21 both chips are paired with 8GB of RAM – if you want more than that on an S21 series device, you’ll want to opt for the Galaxy S21 Ultra, which comes with either 12GB or 16GB. Recharging the S21 is easy, using the company’s 25W fast-charging tech via the phone’s USB-C port. It’s also compatible with Qi wireless charging, and we found that worked well during our testing.Overall, though, the S21 Ultra lags slightly behind the Snapdragon 888 (tested in the Xiaomi Mi 11) and is no match for the as-yet-unbeatable processing speeds of the iPhone 12 Pro Max. The software available on this phone works well, and you've got access to a whole host of extra Samsung services on top of the normal Android apps you expect from a modern smartphone. Samsung used the same material on the Galaxy Note 20, but the matte finish feels more suitable here and it’s much less shiny than the glass rear on the Galaxy S20, which means it’s less of a fingerprint magnet. The metal edges around the outside of the device add a touch of premium polish. All in all, the Samsung Galaxy S21 feels like a premium device, although it’s unlikely to feel as top-end as the Samsung Galaxy S20 if you own that handset, or the Galaxy S21 Ultra. Where the Galaxy S21 Ultra has seen the biggest improvement is in the graphics rendering department. With an average frame rate of 93fps in the GFXBench Manhattan on-screen test (at native WQHD resolution), the S21 Ultra’s GPU performance is almost double that of last year’s S20 Ultra. Drop the screen resolution down to FHD+ and the frame rate jumps to 118fps.

If you already own a Samsung Galaxy S20, or if you can find that handset for a significant discount, you won’t want to opt for the Galaxy S21 – while the newer phone gains in some areas it loses in others, and overall there’s not much between the two phones – certainly not enough to justify paying a couple of hundred dollars or pounds more. We’ve only had the chance to test the Exynos 2100 version of the S21, and it seems like a major improvement over previous generations of Samsung’s chipset. In the past, the Exynos variant tended to lag behind the Qualcomm-powered phones in some areas but here the gap seems to have narrowed. We generally found that the phone would comfortably last a full day, but on one occasion, when we were making more use of the phone’s GPS signal and other power-hungry features we found the device ran out of steam by around 10pm.Let’s move to the numbers-heavy portion of this review, then. In the Geekbench 5 CPU test, the Galaxy S21 Ultra’s Exynos 2100 matched the single-core performance of its predecessor, the Exynos 990, found inside the S20 Ultra. Where it differs, however, is in multi-core performance. The S21 Ultra is roughly 24% faster here, which is a huge boost. Along with that 8GB of RAM you’ve got the choice of either 128GB or 256GB of storage. The big news here is that Samsung has dropped microSD support from the S21, so you can’t expand on the built-in storage. The Galaxy S21 Ultra has the biggest screen of the three new S21 phones, stretching out across 6.8in. It’s one of Samsung’s “Dynamic AMOLED 2x” panels and it now supports 120Hz at the native WQHD+ resolution (1,440 x 3,200) of the panel.