Samsung S21 ULTRA: 2 Years Later... | Tech Rewind

the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra, this was my 2021 phone of the year when it was released, it absolutely blew me away, but how does it hold up today? That's what we're going to cover in this episode of

tech

nology,

rewind

the series where you take a look at gadgets from the past to see if they're still worth your hard-earned money. I'm your host Mark Spurle. Let's put those 10 categories on the board. You know the drill. The S21 Ultra earns 70 points or more. it will get my seal of approval and if it doesn't work well you should probably move on and look for something else, let's get this show on the road, it's time for the

tech

rewind

category Numero Uno is design and man alive, does this phone still look good?

The first time I had this phone it was like a matte black color and don't get me wrong it looked amazing but I want the version I have now in this Phantom silver color it really pops and the moment the light hits it. in the right way, it has this orange touch, this phone has a lot of cameras on the back which could trigger someone's trypophobia, but I still really like the overall look, it's quite unique and the front is even better, minimal bezels minus that slightly. larger chin at the bottom and just a small hole in the middle for the absolutely fantastic front camera, but more on that

later

.

I've never been a big fan of curved edges on phones, but this one is even tastefully subtle. and as you'll see

later

in the display category, this front of the phone does absolutely nothing to disappoint. Category 2 is durability and that's where we tear this phone off the ground to make sure it can lick it and still work, but before we do that, we should give it a little bath to test its water resistance. Samsung says it has an IP68 certification, meaning it should be able to sit in a 1.5 meter deep pool of water for half an hour.

We're not going to go that deep but we'll leave it for 30 minutes to see if the phone can survive half an hour later, the S21 Ultra is perfectly fine and after a quick dry it's time for the drop test, big success, no scratches. no cracks, the time to move to the third category is all about that screen and as I mentioned earlier, this screen is fantastic, we have a 6.8-inch 1440p Dynamic AMOLED 2x screen that runs at 120 hertz, that's a Lots of verbiage for some of you who are a little less technologically inclined, so what you need to know is that this is a great screen with very rich colors and deep contrast that feels very fast when you switch between your apps and flip through the menus. up to a maximum brightness of 1500 nits with HDR content and is definitely bright enough for outdoor use in sunlight.

I have watched many television shows on this screen and have always enjoyed doing so. I have also paired it. with a Gamepad to play a lot of games both mobile and emulated and it is the perfect size for that it is like a slightly smaller steam platform. My only small complaint I have with this screen is actually the time-resistant and fingerprint-resistant coating. The coating is worn a bit and my naturally greasy hands tend to smudge this thin Gorilla Glass surface quite quickly over the course of the day. How about the speaker? Are you okay listening to your favorite YouTubers out loud or should you invest in a pair of Bluetooth ones?

Headphones Like most phones these days, the S21 Ultra has a pair of stereo speakers, but time hasn't been kind to them, even with a thorough cleaning. My S21 Ultra speakers are decent, but they don't sound amazing, they're a bit small, and oddly they only seem to be loud enough at around 70 to 80 percent of the volume range. Listen, they're fine if you want to listen to the odd TV show or podcast or something, but I would consider purchasing a pair of affordable Bluetooth headphones, maybe even from the sponsor of this video soundcore these are the newest affordable over-ear headphones from Space 1 soundcore with adaptive noise cancellation.

The cups have this floating shaft design to fit your head for maximum comfort and the pads themselves are very soft. There are 40 millimeter drivers here for clear, LDAC-compatible Hi-Res Audio for the highest quality wireless sound. The Space One is equipped with an improved noise cancellation system that provides powerful noise cancellation, especially in the mid- to high-range frequencies, and is actually stronger at voice reduction than JBL or Sony. headphones at the same price, you can change exactly how much noise cancellation or transparency you want with the five levels of each in the app. I put the headphones on while playing some coffee noises on my living room surround sound setup and it really worked wonders. work by canceling out those mid to high frequencies from people talking, these headphones also have incredible battery life, up to 40 hours of playback with noise cancellation on or 55 hours with noise cancellation off.

The Soundcore Space come in three different colors and you can get them today by clicking the link in the video description under category number five and this is where things start to get juicy. It's performance time. The S21 Ultra comes with either a Snapdragon 888 or an exynos 2100. Try to get the 888 if you can. I've heard some mixed reviews about the Exynos version. My model has 12 GB of RAM and still works like the day it was released. It is very fast, very agile with that 120 hertz screen and I have had practically no errors. Regarding performance, that's a good thing about a mature product in the tech space, most of the bugs were fixed a long time ago, they ran a geekbench 6 score of 1505 single-core and 3683 multi-core, and although the synthetic benchmarks are not.

It's always the best measure of how well a phone can perform, but it's still a pretty decent score. All my regular games ran perfectly with no noticeable framerate changes and I was even able to increase the resolution of my emulated games in Dolphin without any issues. Super Mario Strikers never looked so good the sixth category I'm running out of fingers the sixth category is software support and the S21 Ultra will lose some points here but nothing important Samsung announced that the S21 Ultra would be one of the phones that would receive four

years

of major software releases, meaning you should receive up to Android 15 plus some additional security updates after that, at the time of this recording, you're still running Android 13, meaning you have two major Android updates left before stay behind next time.

Above is everyone's favorite camera category, the S21 Ultra comes with a ridiculous number of cameras on the front, there is a 40 megapixel front camera and then on the back there are four more cameras and a laser autofocus sensor , the zoom capabilities of this camera are still some of the best I've seen on a phone - the optical zoom alone is far enough to take close-ups of things that are hundreds of feet away, but it can go even further with the aptly named Samsung space. You can zoom out at up to 100x starting to look more like a watercolor painting than a photo, but even at 30X the images are perfectly usable and that's just the zoom lens.

There are four other cameras on this phone, making it one of the most versatile cameras. systems on a phone that exists today, the only complaint I have with the camera system today is that it really likes to over saturate the green colors, although it does make my plants look healthier, so everything else about This camera system is fantastic, 108 megapixels. The shots have a lot of detail, the contrast is excellent, it doesn't look too processed, except for the green elements and the front camera. I am convinced that this is the best front camera on a phone ever made.

I am very impressed with the cameras even after two

years

. Number eight is something everyone wants to know and that is battery life. The S21 Ultra comes with a massive 5000 milliamp hour battery and when the phone first came out it had incredible battery life. After running our standardized battery test on this two-year-old S21 Ultra, it still had exactly 50 of its battery left, which is nothing short of excellent, it can easily get you through a full day of regular use and even part of another if necessary for overseas, we are now at the limit with the knife charging category, now this was a bit disappointing for me, while the S21 Ultra has fast charging, it is limited to a maximum of 25 watts in my charging test it passed from From dead to full in about an hour and 12 minutes, that's faster than I expected given the relatively slow top speed, so you should maintain that 25-watt charging speed for most of the charging curve.

It also has wireless charging, which gives it an extra point and reverse wireless connection. It's actually charging, so if you have a pair of bluetooth headphones that are dead and charge wirelessly, you can just place them on the back of the phone and they will charge directly to the S21 Ultra. The final and most important category is the one that is worth it. I bought this phone on eBay for 480 Canadian dollars or around 350 USD doubloons, which is about the current price of the S21 Ultra in decent condition, not what you get, that's a pretty good price.

I mean, think about everything I just told you in this video. amazing screen excellent performance phenomenal battery life one of the best camera systems ever in a phone and it will receive the next two major Android updates if that doesn't deserve at least a nine in the value category, I don't know what does So, After earning a whopping 85 points here at Tech Rewind, the S21 Ultra absolutely gets my seal of approval. If you have a phone in mind that you want to test out here on Tech Rewind, let me know in a comment below. I hope you liked the video.

Thanks for watching and as always have a great day