Galaxy S21 - 1 MONTH Later Review (Extended) By Kevin The Tech Ninja

All right guys before I begin this video, I am doing two reviews. This is the extended version and I have a shorter version too. If you prefer, the shorter version hit the link down below and check that out, but if you're ready for the extended version let's go. This is the galaxy s 21 a phone that had to make compromises in this increasingly competitive market of mid-tier phones. Premium phones are becoming more premium with a premium price tag to match, and if you want something more premium, Samsung has the s21 ultra when I have that review done, I'll link it down below in the description for you to check that out. But today's video is all about the galaxy s21 it comes in at 7.99, which is 200 cheaper than last year's s20. I think it's only fair to grade on a curve based on price, as this phone doesn't have all the same premium, materials and specs that you'll find on a phone this year for one thousand dollars.

First, let's talk about these compromises and get that out of the way the phone is made from plastic, and it's not plastic that we've seen in the past. This plastic is smooth to the touch fingerprint resistant, and it's durable. I don't hate plastic phones at all. It just has to be done right in this phone is done right, and I really like how this phone looks, and I dig how it feels there also isn't a headphone jack as expected and no SD card slot. The SD card slot is a big one for a lot of people.

However, I've moved beyond that. I stream music and my pictures are backed up to google photos which I love and, yes, those things do cost money, but to me, it's better than lugging around a SD card between devices. At the end of the day now many people have not moved on, and it will be an issue for a lot of people and I totally get it, but what other phone are you going to buy with a SD card slot now? Lastly, one trend that I can't get behind is the removal of the ac adapter that plugs into the wall apple. Did it first in Samsung, followed, and I'm sure other companies will do it too? Yes, you can use your previous charger, but I think if you're paying this much money, you should get an adapter with the phone. I said that about the iPhone I said about Samsung and I will say it about whomever: does it next? So, yes, compromises are real people hate it, but I don't want this to take away from the fact of how great this phone actually is.

If you expect a totally new experience with the s21 over the s20, you may be looking in the wrong spot as this phone is a refinement, this phone has gotten better in nearly every aspect of using the phone. I think this is mainly due to software, not so much on the hardware side. Let's talk about how the phone feels in the hand day-to-day at this size, it's not one-handed friendly all the way, but it's very easy to use, and it's comfortable. If you do want a larger experience, you can go with the s21 plus, which is essentially the same phone internally as the s20, with a few small differences. I think Samsung as always makes a beautiful phone, and they even find a way to make this camera module.

On the back look pretty attractive. The on-screen fingerprint reader has gotten better, it's actually larger and easier to hit, but I still like face to unlock, I will say it is nice to have both options, because, when you're out and about you're, obviously wearing a mask so having the option to just use, your fingerprint is really nice. I wasn't a fan of how the phone looked last year. I thought the camera module was too much, but this year I think it looks good. You know the two-tone color design is a great change and the colors that are available for this phone are unique and fun.

Of course, if none of those colors tickle your fancy, my sponsor d brand can give you a unique look for less than 15 bucks. These vinyl skins do not only provide a different texture, but they can also give you a unique look that you won't find anywhere else hit my links below to d brand, your device, so this phone does have the latest specs that you can expect from a galaxy device internally. It has a snapdragon 888 processors, which is the newest one available, eight gigabytes of ram and 128 or 256 gigabytes of base storage. The screen has adaptive refresh at 120 hertz, full HD plus. I know some people would see this as a compromise, as last year's phone was 120hz, and it was quad HD, but not at the same time.

This year there is no quad HD option. I think, if you're looking at specs on paper, you can see it as a downgrade, but if you're using the phone full HD 120 hertz was better all around, so they're. Just sticking with that setting now speaking of the screen, it's not much more to say than it looks. Good Samsung is right up there with the best screens available. It's super bright, vibrant and OLED.

So the black levels are superb. You can also fine tune the screen to match it, to how you like it's also an eye shield, comfort mode which helps with removing blue light. You can even customize that to make it perfect for your liking, you can even set up schedules for it to kick on automatically to a lot of cool stuff. Here I know with Samsung phones. There are a litany of settings and configurations, and sometimes it's a bit much, but as a person who loves to tinker and customize things, it's great to have this much control and flexibility, but it can be overwhelming to many people.

So that's something to be mindful of now, since this phone is running the latest processor from snapdragon, I don't need to talk about performance too much, since it's always the same thing. It's superfast, responsive and the high refresh screen makes performance feel even faster than before. The big thing is: how would this phone age over time for the heck of it? I whipped out my s10 just to see if it's still a pretty fast phone and I loaded up some new software, and you know what it still runs. Just as fine, so I think the s21 will be in the same boat after a couple of years. Now, speaking of software, I do like one UI from Samsung.

It provides a lot of those customizations I mentioned before and overall I think it makes the phone feel more complete, whereas stock android can sometimes feel bare or sometimes feels like it's missing a couple of things look. There are too many features to mention when it comes to one UI, but I do like theme support. You can easily change how the phone looks with just a quick download. It's not perfect, as sometimes you may have icons that don't match up, and most of these themes are like a dollar fifty or two dollars, but still you can make your phone look different by just tapping a button, and it's better than nothing, there's also game launcher which puts all your games in one spot on your phone inside. You have a game performance optimizer.

This lets you tweak settings that only applies during game, so stuff like that is really cool, and that is available because of the one UI, but with one UI. There are a couple of things that I need to mention. I feel like Samsung is using android OS as its vehicle to put software on your devices, which I get, but it does leave for some confusion like the galaxy store versus the Google play, store two different calendars, apps gallery versus google photos and a few other examples. It causes confusion for many people who can't tell the difference. Take it from me as my family's tech support.

This happens a lot. You can easily fix this by picking which app you like and removing or hiding the other one, but at the same time it's just confusing for a lot of people. The camera is always a big one, and I'm going to spend a lot of time here. You know the point-and-shoot cameras are dead. Now cell phone cameras have taken over the most viral videos that we've seen are all captured on cell phones.

So people want a good camera to capture that memory. The s21 and the s21 ultra have different camera setups, so I will talk about the ultra in a completely different video, so up front. We have a 10 megapixel camera and that's capable of doing video from 30 frames per second to 60 frames per second one of my biggest criticisms of Samsung's front-facing camera is when you take a selfie, it brightens the skin. So now, when you open up the camera app, it tells you do you want bright, or do you want normal looking selfies? Do you want something realistic or do you want it brighten, your skin, a little? You know how I am. I really want it to look natural.

I don't want the brighter skin, but now it actually gives you a choice to turn that off. Furthermore, I think the natural looking selfies are better, but of course you now have that option. Furthermore, I think portrait mode is really solid. Is it perfect? No, you know it may struggle a bit. If someone has a lot of hair like on my son.

Sometimes it cuts my ears off, but overall, unless you're, pixel, peeping and zooming in, I think it looks perfect. It separates the background from the foreground and the picture are very sharp and detailed. I do think in low light. Selfies could be a bit better still. They still have a little yellowish tint to it and unless you're very steady, the image can be a bit blurry as it takes a little longer to take the photo overall.

I am happy with the front-facing camera just hopefully, next year gets a little better. The rear cameras there's a lot going on here, but I'll tell you that it's exactly as the same as the galaxy s20. So if you love that camera you'll love this one, there is a triple camera setup on the back, with ultra-wide wide and telephoto. Let's start with ultrawide. The ultra-wide camera is just fun.

It's a great way to get a larger perspective of an area, but it's best used for landscapes or tall buildings. I wouldn't suggest using it, for you know a group of people, since it can make them look a little weird and stretched out towards the edges as it kind of bows a little. Also, the ultra-wide lens does not have autofocus. Also, indoors is not the best without great lighting. You know, using the perfect scenario: ultra-wide can be a useful tool and something that's super fun to use.

The wide angle lens, which is the default camera to me, is the best lens on the camera outdoors. I love the image that it produced with HDR enabled you know this. Camera is just my favorite as an outdoor camera. There is something going on with Samsung software that can really just pull the image in and just makes it look stunning when you take pictures of things outside the sky is punchy and the colors are great everything about it produces a great image. It may not be the most realistic image around, but at the end of the day, you're posting these photos to social media, or you're, looking at them later, and you're, not really caring about the accuracy.

You just want to know. If it's a good-looking picture or not, and it's a good-looking picture portrait mode on the rear camera is pretty solid as well, and you'll see the same qualities that you did from the front-facing camera. As far as the software you'll get nice portrait shots, even if you have more than one person in the scene, it does require you to be at a certain distance which isn't a big deal, but at the same time it does require a little of maneuvering or having the person move, or you move back and forth. It's not a big deal, but just don't think you're going to be using it taking a picture of a kid who moves around a lot, as I can't get a portrait shot of my son because he's always moving, and you may end up with photos. Looking like this, this camera also has a 3x, hybrid zoom, which I think is perfect.

Taking pictures from 3x away, it doesn't lose any light or any image quality. I have nothing bad to say about it. The 10x zoom things are not as sharp, but it's still usable. Then we have the space zoom, which is 30x on this camera. It's using software trips and optics, and all these things to zoom really far.

You know it was used as a party trick last year, as the practicality wasn't there, but this year to me, I think it looks better, and its usable subjects are far away like a building or trying to read a sign, that's where it works, but not so much for people there's also a lot of software changes that we can find in this year's camera, and one is director mode. This will allow you to use multiple cameras simultaneously and switch them during a live recording. I do think this would be pretty cool at sporting events or somewhere, where you want to have different cameras. At the same time, you want it to look smooth, you don't want to be zooming in and out and stuff like that, I'm not sure how much you'll be used, but I think it's a nifty feature. If someone knows how to use it.

The first time you go into the camera, and you go to take a picture. It suggests that you use 64 megapixel mode when you do that, you lose the ability to use different lenses, and actually the photo doesn't look as good as using the standard mode, because it's not using HDR. Take a look at this picture inside my garage. The washed out image is the one from 64 megapixels and the good-looking one is just regular. HDR mode forecast, 60 frames per second is available for video, and so is 8k at 24 frames per second.

Both camera modes are impressive to see on a cell phone, the 4k mode in general looks good and adding 60 frames per second gives you more flexibility in post to slow things down or if you just want 60 frames per second for video for something much smoother it's there. My favorite thing about video mode is that it has tracking autofocus, so it tracks the subject even after it moves or the camera moves. It makes it very useful when recording kids animals anything that moves or doing some nice camera shots. It has 8k video, yes, 8k is available on this camera, but I don't have a 8k TV or an AK monitor to test how it really looks, but it's there. Furthermore, it works, takes up a lot of space.

A few more things before I let you go. This is a longer video. I know battery life and reverse charging battery life is still solid at around seven to eight hours of screen on time, depending on usage. Since I'm at home, and I've been on Wi-Fi this whole time. I couldn't test battery life for an extended amount of time on 5g, but it tests right up there with other phones and surpassing many phones that I've covered recently.

It does support 25 watt charging, which is pretty fast still, but this needs to change as we're starting to see faster and faster charging phones and, oh of course, phone doesn't come with the charging. Brick too right it'd be interesting to see how Samsung navigates this charging speed without having an extra power. Brick, let's see reverse charging. If you want to use that, I think it works best with the galaxy butts pro you set them on the back of the phone for around five minutes, and you get an hour of battery life on the Galaxy Buds. Pro that's pretty cool, and I guess before I go, there is one more thing that sort of bothers me that there are ads sprinkled within the operating system like a big one, is when you go into weather, there's a big ad at the top of the screen.

I don't like being served ads on my device that I purchased. I kind of like ads belongs on things that are free, not phones that I buy. Of course, you can go into settings turn that stuff off, but at the same time it's just not a great look for me. There's a lot of things that I said about this phone and for good reason. This is a super solid phone with some great features for 7.99. This is a solid value, and you can actually get it for even cheaper.

If you trade, a phone in now, many people would get hung up on things that it does not do, but for the things that it does it's great. This phone is a great compromise. Yes, you give up things, but you save two hundred dollars on improvements and everything across the board: Kevin the tech ninja. If you enjoyed this video, give it a thumbs up hit subscribe out. You guys later.

Source : Kevin The Tech Ninja