Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra long-term review

 The S21 Ultra is Samsung's second shot at an S-series Ultra flagship, and here's something interesting we figured out about the company. More often than not, it seems to have a stronger second act than its first. Think back to the first Galaxy S. It was an okay phone. The S2, though? Great phone, huge hit. The first Galaxy Fold? It had its issues. The Fold2? Much better, much easier to recommend (if you have the money).

We're not saying we've spotted a trend or theme that's been elusive to everyone else, but we would be remiss not to mention the above because it so neatly ties into the S21 Ultra and its relationship to the S20 Ultra. Call the first paragraph foreshadowing, if you will, but we can just hit you with the spoiler itself - the S21 Ultra is a much better product than its predecessor was. It's more polished, more refined, and it doesn't suck at any of the smartphone fundamentals - quite the contrary, in fact.

So maybe it's not fair to generalize and say you should always wait for the second-generation product when it's a Samsung, but - wait, we just remembered yet another example, the original Galaxy Buds vs. the Galaxy Buds+. Same general idea. Well, maybe it's not fair, but it could be a good rule of thumb to keep in mind.

All that aside, the S21 Ultra is now old enough that we can bring you our thoughts about what it was like to live with it for an extended period of time, way longer than we usually get for our normal reviews. On paper, this one's a monster - and, as you'll see in the next section, it's also a monster in your hand.

But specs only tell a very small part of the story, and this long-term review's reason for existing is to bring you the rest of that story, with more subjective opinions and less cold objective numbers. It's not about whether it outperforms its closest rival by 1% in a synthetic benchmark, it's about whether this phone was a joy to use or not, day in, day out, as our one and only smartphone. Does it have what it takes to be easy to recommend or is it more hype than substance? Join us over the next few pages as we try to find out.

Design, handling, build quality

The S21 Ultra is Ultra not just in name and features, but also in size and (especially) weight. Its design is less in-your-face than its predecessor's, but it's still not ashamed of what it is - namely a huge slab of glass and metal, with a gargantuan camera island. One so big, in fact, that it's reaching all the way into the frame now.

Compared to the S20 Ultra, the design has been refined a lot, and while in this reviewer's opinion the S and Note flagship series are still clearly designed by two different teams (and our subjective assessment seems to always favor the Note team in this regard), this time around it does seem like the people designing the S21 Ultra were at least aware of the most recent work done by the competing team. The arrangement of the cameras in their island does somewhat remind us of the Note20 Ultra, but that's about it.

Our matte black review unit is quite possibly the best looking (and best feeling to the touch) all-black phone ever made, but it's still an all-black phone and that's rather dull. Of course, if you're team #matteblackeverything then you'll cry "Blasphemy!" at these words, but we like to live in a more colorful world. Samsung's S20 Ultra and S21 Ultra don't, though, and we still can't fathom why. The entire color palette of these handsets is heavily yawn-inducing. Before you say "office people like boring colors for their phones" - okay, but aren't the Notes supposed to be even more catered to that public? So why do the Notes get "Mystic Bronze" and green, and the S series Ultra doesn't get anything nearly as exciting?

That aside, the finish on the back is great to touch, with a silk-like texture and almost zero visible fingerprints even after a while of use and a lack of microfiber cloth action. Usually the more matte a phone's back is, the more slippery it gets, but not in this case. We aren't sure what magic Samsung has access to, but this phone is actually a very slight tad less slippery than the norm. That's a huge plus in our book, but in truth even if it would've been more slippery, it's just so big and heavy that it still would be kind of impossible for it to sneakily escape from your hand in normal use.

The way in which the camera island blends with the frame in the top left area of the back is definitely still an interesting design flourish to look at, and hasn't been 'replicated' by any competitors yet, which means it makes for a very unique look. There isn't much else left to say about this handset's design, because there isn't much else to it. In all other aspects it looks just like any other flagship phone.

The tiny bezels on the front do positively stand out, though, and the dark gray antenna lines don't, and we like both of these things very much. Even without the camera island, this is a thick phone, and it comes with a significant feeling of heft. A lot of people like that, we would've preferred it to be lighter if not also thinner, but the big issue with handling is that it's top heavy, and rather significantly so.

It's strange that it's been quite a while since we've had a phone this top heavy for a long-term review, we'd gotten used to more balanced weights. But with the S21 Ultra, you either need to grab it from further up than you might be used to (or comfortable doing), or you should get ready for a lot of balancing action hand gymnastics all the time. Maybe the cameras are to blame, maybe something else, but regardless, this is something that very slightly impairs usability in our book and we felt we had to mention it. In the grand scheme of things, is it nitpicking? Well, kind of. It actually mostly depends on how much you use your phone, aka hold it in your hand in portrait mode. The more of that, the worse this gets.

The build quality is unsurprisingly top notch, as it should be at this price. As for general handling, we're not going to lie - this isn't an easy phone to handle, because of its size and weight. This reviewer could use it with one hand without issue, but only just. The problem is that the experience is a bit jarring thanks to the combo of size (especially thickness), weight, and heaviness. It's not a huge downside, but unless you really like heavy phones, it's definitely not an upside either.

One thing we'd like to mention regarding design is the very unfortunate positioning of the microphone pinhole at the bottom, which can very easily mislead people into thinking it's where the SIM tray ejection tool needs to be inserted. Do that and the mic is bust. This is confusing design, and thus it's bad design. Not that Samsung is the only company guilty of this, or that this phone is unique in this regard, but it's always bad when we see something like this, so be extra extra careful. One split second of inattention can end up costing you dearly.

Finally, let's address the invisible elephant in the room, and that's the airiness of the box. You get no charger, and you also get no case, and we're not sure which of those omissions feels more ridiculous. People usually fret about the lack of a charger mostly, and sure, that's a good point, but Samsung's chargers aren't class-leading in speed anyway, so maybe it's okay?

Whereas a nice quality case would probably cost the company $5 to manufacture and would add a lot of perceived value to the unboxing experience. Then again, why do that when you can sell people cases on the side, right? Right, Samsung? Right, Apple?

Speakers

Okay, time for some better news. Much better, in fact.. The S21 Ultra has the best speakers ever put in a smartphone that was long-term reviewed. They're tied for loudness, in our subjective assessment, with the Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro from last year, but beat it in quality ever so slightly. You'll have zero issues consuming media on these speakers, even in reasonably loud environments. At full volume, a lot of times we were shocked that a phone can deliver such a big-feeling sound. Now obviously if you like bass, you'll need to invest in a Bluetooth speaker or three, but that doesn't take away from Samsung's achievement here.

Speakerphone calls are probably the best we've experienced as well, including what's been reported to us in terms of mic quality - and you don't need to speak right into the bottom mic to be very clearly heard and understood. Speakerphone quality is one of those things that cheaper phones mainly gloss over, and even some 'flagship killer' type devices have been known to skimp on. Not the S21 Ultra, it does this very well indeed.

Vibration motor

The vibration motor inside the S21 Ultra is very good, among the best we've tested, and among the most flexible in its range of vibrations - both in terms of perceived weight as well as 'localization' in the phone's chassis. However - whenever we talk about vibration motors, and especially very good ones like this one, we remember how nicely MIUI uses gentle nudge-like vibrations throughout its menus and interactions. One UI just doesn't do that to anywhere near the same extent, so most of the time the great vibration motor is just sitting there, unused, and that's a big waste when it comes to the user experience if you ask us.

 
Vibration settings

That said, Samsung does give you some toggles for when to use vibrations, you can see these in the screenshot above. You can also customize the vibration intensity separately for calls, notifications, and touch interaction, and all of these are neat choices to have, but we wish the Korean company would go a bit further like its aforementioned Chinese competitor.

Something that was also true for the Note20's vibration motor is that if you set the phone to vibrate when it rings and use the default pattern the vibration will very much manage to wake you up - if the device is on a wooden nightstand or the likes. It's got a lot of oomph, if we might put it that way.

Display quality

This year, Samsung finally managed to catch up to the competition and lets you enable both 120 Hz refresh rate and the screen's QHD+ top resolution. That's a huge win for pixel peepers everywhere. Speaking of refresh rate, since this is an LTPO panel, it can dynamically be set to as low as 1 Hz in a bid for more efficiency (read: battery savings). How this has worked out in real life we'll leave for the battery section, but for now let's just say LTPO feels like it was clearly overhyped.

The S21 Ultra's screen is barely - and we mean barely - smaller than its predecessor's. The thing is, though, unless you have both side by side - and a measuring tape around - we're willing to wager you won't be able to tell the difference. We've used both phones and at no point did we feel like the 0.1" less real estate on the S21 Ultra impacted the user experience in any way. This is still a great phone for those who love big screens on their handsets, so don't let that tiny spec tidbit confuse you - it's not an issue in any way, at all.

Quality-wise, this is one of the best screens on the market right now, if not the best. Colors can get amazingly accurate with the right settings, brightness shoots through the roof on sunny days, and at night you can read without your retinas getting seared (although we would've liked the panel to be able to get even dimmer, but not by much). For long-term reviews we try to stick with the defaults as much as we can, so we went with the Vivid screen mode, but then took the white balance slider all the way to the warmest setting to counteract those bluish whites we dislike.

Unlike almost every other part of One UI, the Screen mode setting menu has been simplified in the past few years and we appreciate that it's not a jumble of confusing options anymore. And yet - weirdly enough there's no setting for automatic adjustment of colors based on the ambient light, but there is an "Adaptive" setting for the Eye comfort shield (Samsung's name for the blue light filter), which apparently adjusts the colors based on time of day.

   
   
Display settings

We chose to forgo this, and thankfully you can use Eye comfort shield in the traditional way too, with a confusingly named "Custom" setting which then allows you to pick the color temperature of the effect as well as whether you want it always on or to follow a set schedule.

The auto-brightness curve, continuing a welcome trend we've seen in flagships in 2020 and 2021, is near perfect for our taste. We very rarely had to manually adjust the slider, and even if you may find you need to - the setting is then remembered for the next time the phone encounters the same amount of ambient light. Outdoors this is probably the most legible screen we've ever seen. No matter the conditions, no matter how bright the sun or how directly it falls onto the display, you'll still be able to see what's on it.

Needless to say, we've used the S21 Ultra with the refresh rate ("Motion smoothness" in Samsung parlance) set to Adaptive the entire time, since the 120 Hz maximum refresh rate has a huge impact on how smooth the device feels to use. We also stuck with the maximum 1440x3200 resolution, because why pay for such a high resolution and then not use it?

Screen curves

Maybe it's just our eyes, but it seems like every year Samsung curves its flagships' screens a bit less, and we can't help but have the same feeling now. Perhaps this impression is not technically accurate, but it feels like the S21 Ultra's display is just barely curved on the sides, and haters of screen curves will definitely like that, while this reviewer doesn't. Samsung started the whole curved screen trend and has been slowly moving away from it almost ever since, which doesn't really make a lot of sense.

Anyway, the S21 Ultra's display is curved so little that there's barely any glare on the curves, but if you were thinking this would also make accidental touches a thing of the past...no. Sorry to disappoint, but Samsung is still very bad at this - the worst, in fact. A lot of its competitors use more curved screens and have zero accidental touch issues, whereas the S21 Ultra does get a lot of them. Like dozens of times a day, we'd run into an accidental touch while holding the phone.

However, there's a huge caveat here, one which we think is worth mentioning. The moment you slap a case on the phone, any case really, this problem goes away completely. And since we assume most people paying this much for a handset would want to protect it anyway, it might very well be that out there in the real world most people who own an S21 Ultra have a case on it and thus have no accidental touch issues whatsoever.

That doesn't make the whole fiasco less embarrassing for a company this big, though. Samsung Display makes most of the curved AMOLEDs out there, and Samsung Electronics is pretty much the only company that still hasn't figured out how to ignore accidental touches in its software. That's funny and sad at the same time. But, like we said above, this may not actually impact your day-to-day use of the phone unless you go naked with it, as they say.

Always-on-Display

Samsung's AOD implementation has traditionally been one of the most customizable out there, and this hasn't changed for the S21 Ultra. First, it can actually be always-on, unlike in some random cases out there where you get a weird hybrid that only stays on for a bit and then requires you to move or touch the phone to come back.

Second, there are a lot of designs to pick from, you can have text on it, the whole nine yards basically. Where MIUI goes further is in the Super Wallpaper feature which integrates the AOD with the lock screen and the home screen in a way that's still unique in the mobile world, and we wish competitors would get 'inspired' by that sooner rather than later. But, in a world in which MIUI's Super Wallpapers don't exist, Samsung's AOD implementation is top notch - and, unsurprisingly, schedulable too.

Performance, smoothness

We have a distinct feeling of deja vu saying this, but this latest flagship Samsung smartphone is the fastest and smoothest Samsung smartphone ever. That was true for the Note20 Ultra when it came out, before that it was true for the S20 Ultra, and today it's true for the S21 Ultra.

In case you've read our long-term reviews of those devices, you probably also know what's coming next, because this too is a case of deja vu. Despite being the fastest and smoothest Samsung ever, the Galaxy S21 Ultra is not the smoothest phone around.

At the moment, that's the Xiaomi Mi 11 (as detailed in its long-term review). And in truth, the S21 Ultra isn't very close to that one when it comes to the subjective perception of smoothness, it's much closer to last year's Snapdragon 865 devices, such as the Oppo Find X2 Pro for example. It doesn't match that one either, but it's very very close.

You need to live with a bunch of random stutters throughout the UI, which seems like a sort of unintentional staple feature of One UI, even after years of improvement. Yes, this is the fastest, most responsive, and smoothest that One UI has ever been, but that's still not enough to truly match some of the other skins out there - ColorOS, OxygenOS, even MIUI 12.5 on the Mi 11, and whatever Huawei is calling its Android fork these days.

Speed-wise, this is a 2021 flagship, so it smokes everything else under the sun, as it should. If we're talking sheer speed, it's probably tied for 'fastest phone ever long-term reviewed' with the Mi 11, despite the fact that our unit is using the Exynos 2100 and not the Snapdragon 888. In day to day use, you don't really feel any difference between these two in speed, but you will notice the smoothness delta if you have another device to compare to.

Then again, you probably don't have access to a bunch of competing phones as we do, and if you're coming to the S21 Ultra from a past Samsung, you will be impressed by both its performance and smoothness compared to any of its predecessors.

Battery life

With a 5,000 mAh cell inside, we were expecting to be amazed at the S21 Ultra's longevity, and... we haven't been. Don't get us wrong, battery life has been very good, but it seems like 2021's top chipsets do like to chug on those milliamp hours more than their 2020 predecessors (we say this as we've seen similar behavior from the Mi 11 which has the Snapdragon 888 inside).

After the last update which took the security patch level to June 2021, with our use case, we've always hit 5 hours of screen-on-time in a day, and we even managed 6 a few times. But that's it, and that's not really impressive from a 5,000 mAh battery. Or not impressive enough. Before the last update, things were slightly better, not that we understand why that would be. At least this gives us hope that a future update might slightly improve things again.

     
Battery life samples

Overall, we'd say for us this was definitely a one-day phone. We never had to top-up midday, the battery always lasted us until we went to bed, but we had to charge every night, otherwise we wouldn't have made it through even a few hours of the next day. Of course your mileage may vary based on how your specific use case differs from ours.

We have the phone off the charger from anywhere between 12-16 hours, during which time it's mostly connected to Wi-Fi, with an hour or two on 5G, Bluetooth is always on with an hour or two of music playback and an hour or two of phone calls, and location is always on with half an hour or so of navigation through Waze or Google Maps. If you find yourself out and about more than we have, then your screen-on-time will be lower, especially if you rely only on mobile data and don't have great signal.

Samsung's fast charge is becoming laughably slow in 2021, when a lot of competing brands offer zero to 100% times of 30 to 45 minutes. With a compatible 25W Samsung charger, you'll need an hour and around ten minutes to get to full, and that's almost two times slower than the competition. It's time for the Korean company to really up its charging game.

Of course, if you only top-up during the night like we did, this is a moot point, but if your lifestyle is more active and thus you do need to sometimes quickly charge during the day, the S21 Ultra is much less impressive than a lot of similarly priced devices that are out there. Thankfully support for wireless charging is in, but this too is very slow. It works well for charging up during the night, but won't do anything useful in a ten-minute pinch.

Biometrics

Oh, how far they've come! The first generation ultrasonic fingerprint sensors were theoretically supposed to be better than optical ones, but in real life most of the time had issues that made them less accurate and slower. The S21 Ultra has a second-generation ultrasonic sensor in its display, and this is hands-down the fastest and most accurate under-screen fingerprint scanner we've ever used. It really is night and day, the difference compared to past Samsungs, and it also smokes the optical competition at the moment.

It just works all the time, and after a bit of wading through menus to disable unnecessary animations, it's also incredibly fast. We'll say it again - it takes the cake. Not only is this the best under-display sensor we've ever used, but we're very close to calling it the best sensor period - including capacitive ones. We'll steer clear of that though because our opinion is influenced by the issues we've had with the new breed of side-mounted capacitive sensors (possibly connected to their pill shape), and such a statement wouldn't be reflective of our experiences with back-mounted or front-mounted ones from what now seems the distant past.

     
Biometrics settings

Face unlocking is present, but much less secure because it only uses the front camera. Its speed is decent unless you amp up the security in Settings in which case it gets painfully slow, so much so that while we have left it turned on for the duration of our time spent with the S21 Ultra, we've almost never been patient enough to wait long enough for it to do its thing, and have gone with the fingerprint sensor instead every time - with great results, as detailed above.

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