Introduction
The Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra was announced a couple of weeks ago together with S21 and S21+, and the phone is now available for pre-order, retailing at RM5,299 for the 256GB model and RM5,899 for the 512GB model. Guess what? This time around, I got the phone early and it’s time for the unboxing and first impressions!
Unboxing
I wish I could say the box design is similar to last year’s Galaxy S20 Ultra, which I reviewed here. Even though it still comes in a black box, the box is a lot thinner than usual, we’ll get into that later.
Opening up the box, you’ll see the phone sitting on the top, and there’s a pull tap for you to lift up the phone. Once you lifted up the phone, you’ll see another box, and that’s it for the unboxing experience.
Yup, the box only comes with the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra itself, SIM ejector tool, USB-C to USB-C cable, and some paperwork. That’s it! Looking back to last year’s S20 Ultra, you even get a TPU case, AKG tuned USB-C earphones, and most importantly, the charging brick.
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Personally, I’m actually okay with not including the charging brick since I have a GaN charger that supports USB PD quick charging, which the S21 Ultra also supports. Let me know what do you think about it? If you think it’s not okay, certain sellers like Urban Republic and Senheng actually offer a free Samsung Wireless Charger Trio (with charging brick) when you pre-order the Galaxy S21 series.
First Impressions
The Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra is a huge phone, it sports a 6.8-inch edge QHD+ Dynamic AMOLED 2X Infinity-O display on the front (0.1-inch smaller than the S20 Ultra). The front looks quite similar to the S20 Ultra, you get a 40MP hole-punch selfie camera at the center top of the screen, guess we’ll have to wait longer for the in-display front camera.
It still has curves on both sides of the screen, not that drastic which means accidental touch will not be an issue. This time around, Samsung allows you to switch to the QHD+ resolution with a 120Hz adaptive refresh rate together, instead of choosing to have a high refresh rate and Full HD+ resolution or vice versa. Its adaptive refresh rate will adjust between 10Hz to 120Hz depending on what you are doing.
My review unit is the Phantom Black variant, a.k.a Matte Black. The phone uses Corning Gorilla Glass Victus for both front and back, just like the Note20 Ultra. The back glass has a matte finishing and it looks like the phone has an aluminum back body, especially combining with the Phantom Black variant.
The main highlight of the S21 series is the new Contour Cut Camera housing, which blends the camera bump into the frame design, making the phone looks unique. It has a 12MP ultra-wide camera + 108MP wide camera with OIS + 10MP 3x telephoto camera + 10MP 10x telephoto camera (100x Space Zoom) + Laser AF sensor. There are two telephoto lenses, giving you better quality in the different zoom range.
The Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra also uses Qualcomm’s new ultrasonic in-display fingerprint sensor, which is 77% larger and 50% faster than the previous generation. I’ve used it for a few days and it is noticeably faster and more accurate than the one on the S20 Ultra.
The phone runs on Samsung’s One UI 3.1 on top of Android 11. It brings tons of new features and improvements over the last version, we’ll find out more in the full review. However, it also comes with lots of pre-installed apps, some are actually duplicate apps. Fortunately, you can uninstall some, not all, I don’t think you can uninstall the Samsung Messages app.
Available in Phantom Black and Phantom Silver, the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra is now available for pre-order at the following prices:
- 12GB RAM + 256GB storage: RM5,299
- 16GB RAM + 512GB storage: RM5,899
Sadly, the S21 series doesn’t come with expandable storage anymore, but I guess 256GB onboard storage is more than enough for you. Stay tuned for the full review as I will be testing out its new 5nm Exynos 2100 processor and how the 5,000mAh battery performs.
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