The S21 Series.
After a long year’s wait, the moment is finally here. Samsung unveiled the latest iterations of their flagship Galaxy S series of phones: the S21, S21 Plus, and the S21 Ultra. After a series of events in which Samsung introduced their latest wireless earphones — the Galaxy Buds Pro — and their latest chipset — the Exynos 2100 — these phones were introduced on the 14th of January and are packed with excellent features. Available from the 29th of January in India, one can pre-order these devices for exclusive benefits, such as getting the Galaxy Buds Pro for free.
After the somewhat controversial release of the S20 lineup — because of the inexcusably high price for the S20 model, the Exynos vs. Snapdragon configuration, and not so well reception of the camera setup — one can finally say that Samsung is back on the right track. For the S21 and S21 Plus, one can say that they are simply good phones with newer chips and design at a lower price. But the S21 Ultra is the show stealer. Starting with what one gets for their buck, we come to the unboxing experience. The unboxing experience in itself has nothing new except a major disappointment for many. Copying Apple’s trend, one does not get a charger or the previously supplied AKG earphones. Although to compensate for the same, Samsung is discounting the accessories, if one requires. One major change apart from the completely revamped design is the addition of S-Pen compatibility — which, till now, was exclusive to the Note series. But above all, Samsung has nailed the cameras. With the S20, Samsung’s main purpose was to pump the numbers to make it look good on a spec sheet, and this did not mean actually having better pictures. But over here in the S21 generation, we actually visualise the improvement. A major selling point of the S20 Ultra was the 100 times space zoom, which was achieved by a 4 times optical zoom lens, and 25 times digital zooming. With this, one can imagine that the picture quality was not up to the mark and a fully enlarged image might not be always practical. The S21 retains the 100 times zooming capability, this time with a 10 times optical zoom lens. This enables one to capture crisper images, which might be useful in a broader scope of scenarios. For the other cameras on the phone, they are good too as we get a better dynamic range, and a 12 megapixel macro camera, compared to the 5 megapixel ones offered by the competition. It seems that the main selling point of phones now is the camera. While this is true, we must not forget about the improvements in other aspects. With the new chips (Exynos 2100 or the Snapdragon 888), we get better optimisation for the camera quality, up to 20% more battery life, faster 5G, and even get Wi-Fi 6E. Moreover, we get a variety of colours: Phantom Black and Phantom Silver for the Ultra, an additional Phantom Violet for the Plus, and Phantom Violet, Phantom Grey, Phantom White and Phantom Pink for the basic S21. Finally, we come to what every buyer views before buying any phone: the specifications, which can be viewed at the following link: https://tinyurl.com/y6j5s9v2.
