The long-awaited verdict to having both? Meh – it’s the best of both worlds, sure, but you won’t see much of a difference between 1080p and Quad HD on a display of this size, and Quad HD will drain your battery faster. Welcome amid an economic slowdown, the overhauled look and boost in performance haven't led to a price increase over last year’s S20 Ultra – Samsung has actually made this phone significantly cheaper. Granted, we felt like the first Ultra phone was overpriced, and the S21 Ultra is still mighty expensive – it’s more than the iPhone 12 Pro Max – but Samsung gives you a bit more for the extra cost: a larger, brighter and more capable curved screen, 10x optical camera zoom (vs 2.5x on the iPhone), and stylus support, something Apple has yet to offer on any iPhone.

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Besides the unique contour-cut camera that lets you take epic stills and capture 8K videos, the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra features a fast chip, all-day battery and a unique glass body. These are just some of the features that make the phone stand out from the rest. Not that there’s much need to tweak the camera settings, though. Open up the camera app and you’ll be treated to wonderful, detail-rich images that are filled with vibrant colours and rich, intricate details. I was particularly impressed with the portrait mode, which you can see here side-by-side with the iPhone 12 Pro: Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra (Exynos) scored 93 points in the artifacts test. It performed flatly in the volume and spatial tests, although it did show some distortion on shouting voices. It also has a slightly unnatural tonal balance. S21 Ultra: Processor and speeds 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.

Super-Smooth and Colour-Rich Display

Keep in mind that there’s no microSD card slot for expandable storage, so if you’re keen on taking lots of 4K 60fps or 8K 24fps video, you may want to look into the pricier 256GB or 512GB storage sizes – and the latter of those sizes also bumps up the RAM to 16GB. With the Android 12 update, One UI has been updated with some nifty new features, including a new home screen widget that allows you to easily access your favourite apps.

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During a virtual press conference on Tuesday, Samsung announced its new Exynos processor for its Galaxy S21 series. The new SoC is a big step up from the company's previous-generation S series processors. It has improved CPU and GPU performance, as well as features an integrated 5G modem. 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.

All that and this also features the S Pen making it the best of all Samsung's phone offerings in one handset. That said, while that's the list price, many stores are now selling the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra for less. You can expect the price to continue dropping over time. The Galaxy S21 series is faster for two reasons: it marks the debut of brand-new chipsets, and the software has been streamlined just a bit, with the ever-evolving OneUI 3.0 interface tied into Android 11. 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: Display The Galaxy S21 Ultra has the same Exynos 2100 chipset (it’s the Snapdragon 888 in the US) as the rest of the lineup. Unlike the other phones, however, you also get the option to upgrade from 12GB of RAM to a whopping 16GB, along with a choice of either 128GB, 256GB or 512GB of non-expandable storage. In my experience, 16GB of RAM is pretty much overkill for any smartphone – my MacBook Pro “only” has 8GB of RAM.