Samsung Galaxy S21 Phantom Violet Full Review - Samsung Cut Back On Features By Shannon Morse

Hey s'mores I'm Shannon Morris, welcome to Morse code. I do tech reviews and tutorials. So if you are looking for in-depth tech and gadget content, you've come to the right place today. I am checking out the brand new Samsung Galaxy s21, which just released on January 14th, and it shipped a couple of weeks after that. I have already done a couple of videos about it. Furthermore, I did an unboxing where I go into detail on the design and how you can score one for super cheap, and I also did a deep dive into the camera which I wanted to mention.

So you know where to find everything you would ever want to know about the lenses on this phone. Now before I get started, I did want to thank this episode's sponsor the innovation program. Innovators are some breakthrough names in technological innovation born out of the innovation program founded in Japan. They have a mindset to continually undertake challenges without fear of failure, creating answers to today's problems. These innovators are graduates of the innovation, program's disruptive challenge, which is an annual program that was started in 2014.

That takes all the weird and wonderful ideas that folks come up with, and they help make those ideas into a reality. The program is now global, open to anyone anywhere in the world, regardless of where you live, so keep an eye out for the next application period coming this summer, especially if you have an idea that you want to see come to life this month, I'm going to be featuring a new innovator and innovation in a series of videos, so you can see some cool and interesting ideas that have become a reality out of this program. New innovators and innovations are featured every single week on the innovators YouTube channel as well, where you can learn more. The reason I am so interested in This is because these are such a neat mix of science and technology. Some topics include AI robotics, green energy, ICT gadgets, and there are even interviews and more coverage over on their website and their YouTube channel.

Innovators are exploring the world of the future, and you can to do you want to learn more, want to be an innovator, subscribe to their YouTube channel and check out their website over at innovators. com e n. That's, I n, o? U v a t, o r s, dot, com, e n, to see videos, profiles and interviews about some current graduates and learn more about the program itself. Thank you so much to the innovation program for their support of my channel now. One of my favorite innovations every single year are smartphones, see what I did there.

So this one comes in phantom violet, that's the color. I have gray white or pink priced at 799.99 for the 128 gig model or 849.99 for the 256 gig model in the box. You get the phone, a data, cable, the sim eject tool and a quick start guide. There is no power, adapter included. The phone is made with a plastic back.

Can you hear it? That's plastic though I really don't mind it. This helps, keep it pretty lightweight, it's 169 grams, and it also helps deter from fingerprints, but the lenses are held in this lovely aluminum casing, which wraps around all the edges. To give it a very cool, standout design and the front is made with gorilla glass victim, I would say it's relatively small and thin. The dimensions are 151.7 by 71.2 by 7.9 millimeters. You will notice on the side you get that Bixby side button, which I opt to switch to power off, along with the volume button on the side as well, and there are two speakers, one is on the bottom next to the USB-C port and one is hidden at the top of the display.

The phone is also ip68 water and dust resistant, and some folks found that if you turn on the flashlight the edges light up, I don't think that's a feature. I think it's just because the bright LED is bleeding out of the edges based on manufacturing on the violet colorway. The Samsung logo does not glow when you use a flashlight, so it's not a feature. It's just how it was made. Light bleeds out through cracks and the reason I don't think it is a feature is that the light emitted from the edges whenever it does bleed out it kind of varies depending on which area you are looking at.

So in some places it's dimmer than others. The display is 6.2 inches its flat, and it's full HD, plus at 2400 by 1080. So a little down from last year's with 421 pixels per inch. It is a step-down from the s20 of last year. As far as resolution goes- and I do like, though, that they included the high 120 hertz refresh rate, since that keeps everything looking fancy and smooth.

It is a dynamic AMOLED, 2x, infinite, o type display, and it's also hdr10 plus certified. So all your HDR videos are going to look super fancy, I'm generally quite happy with the display. I think that it does a fine job of giving me pretty accurate, colors and very, very nice brightness, especially when I'm outside on default settings. It is slightly bluer tinted than my iPhone, but the s21 also is highly customizable. You have vivid versus natural colors, and you can change the white balance when I was testing this outside.

I had no issues viewing it since the screen can do a max of 1300 in its brightness. The aspect ratio is nothing new. It's 20 by 9 and the screen size ends up being about 86.06 percent of the body. You can still do some pretty cool stuff from Samsung, with the display, like always on display, so you can add a custom clock. You can add a calendar.

Furthermore, you can include widgets for weather and such I do recommend keeping hide content enabled for the always on display, so that no one can see your text notification details when your phone is locked as mentioned, I did do a deep dive into the cameras, but this is a good overview of some examples. The rear sensors include a main camera front and center, which is 12 megapixels, and here are all the details for that on top is the ultra-wide and then at the bottom of the trio is the telephoto lens. Now you will notice that 1.8 micron pixel size for the main camera is slightly larger and that pixel size is designed for more light, also with the telephoto lens that zoom capability happens because of sensor cropping. But there is no optical. Magnification on the front is the selfie lens, and those are the last specs that you see here.

The punch hole on this camera is smaller on the new model than the last model, so it is a little less obtrusive. Whenever you are looking at your screen when it comes to video recording, you can record several resolutions and frame rates, including full HD, 30 and 60, UHD, 30 and 60, and 8k 24 and super steady is only available for full HD, 30 and 60. Video can do digital zoom up to 12 times now. The default camera app has several features and filters like hyperlapse, which is basically time-lapse and slow mode. There is single, take directors, view panoramas, food and night modes, there's also pro modes for video and photo.

You also have your scene optimizer, which is still included, as is face retouching under the filters, but those can be completely turned off. So if you don't want face retouching, you don't have to have it and that's enabled under those filter settings as well. My deep dive goes into all the changes and all the updates for these settings in detail so check out that video, if you haven't already so generally, videos are slightly over saturated, but they aren't over exposed. Audio from the mics was generally good, but it did pick up a lot of background noise and here is an UHD 60fps video of the front-facing camera on both of these. At the same time, photos were mostly impressive.

I really like the detail. The color balance using these three lenses, the front-facing camera, was also quite impressive, giving me excellent exposure, even if the sun was setting behind me. So I was pretty happy with that. The portraits are some of the best ones that I have seen so far. These have gotten far better than last year's model.

They do a much better job of determining where my hair should be in focus and the aperture looks a little more natural overall. These are some of my favorite portraits that I have seen out of a smartphone in a very long time. The zoom starts getting muddy anywhere above 10 times now. Last year I called this a potato and I still stand by that opinion. Although the new zoom lock does help with keeping things in focus at 30x, so it's a little better.

It's a lot better. It's still potato night mode was decent, but not great. I think that I still prefer pixels night sight mode over the night mode on the s21, but I will be doing side by sides to confirm that thought in an upcoming video. As far as focusing goes no issues, it's faster at focusing than previous gens, and it did better at focusing on the correct subject and not jumping around, which was a pretty annoying problem that we saw on last year's phones. The speed of capture has also increased, which may be thanks to the faster processor.

Now, speaking of internals, I did want to mention the storage space you get 8 gigs of ram and 128 or 256 gigs of storage. That's it there's no SD card support whatsoever. That's a trade-off for the price point. My 3d mark test scores were solid.3Dmark has a new stress test, it's about 20 minutes long, and it's comparable to play a lot of mobile games, so I will be able to start recording new scores for all of my devices that I have this one hit, 5724 on the short test and 5715 on the longer test. In regard to gaming.

It was also quite solid. I played mostly adventure and puzzle games on mobile, unlike when I'm on my PC, and I really want to play fps and more heavy duty, PC gaming, but on mobile I usually just play Pok?mon Go because I'm I'm a week, so it did excellent with the AR views, and it did not leave me waiting for fights to load. So I was pretty happy with it. I can say similar positive things about the user interface and the experience it is quite fast, and it is quite predictable. Given that the operating system has not changed much from last generation, you can find most everything that you would expect, and it is highly customizable.

I do like that. Samsung has the search option within the settings and I do often find that's faster than going through the settings menu. This phone ships with android 11, and it still does include some bloatware like there's. Definitely some Samsung bloatware in it and you do have to be careful not to accept any of the optional data sharing in those apps. Since that will open you up to personalized ads on your phone, even though you're spending hundreds of dollars on this phone, they still want to advertise to you now.

One thing I really like is the inclusion of the Google app whenever you swipe over from the home screen replacing Samsung's own feed. You can also knock to turn off the screen or turn it back on which I thought was a pretty cool feature as well. They still include some fun features like the edge screen shortcuts. They are still there, along with smart view, to wirelessly share your screen to a TV. Furthermore, they have Samsung pay, also built in, should you choose to use it, but I usually switch over to google pay.

Accessibility is rarely mentioned in reviews, but it is important. Samsung does include high contrast, themes, there's a magnifier, there's hearing aid support and there are also android's new live transcribe and caption features as well. I also do like the security upgrades that you get with the s21 line.2D face, unlocking that's still there, along with Qualcomm's new ultrasonic fingerprint sensor, gen 2, which is not only a lot faster, and it isn't as bright, for example, whenever you use this at night, but it also captures a lot more data, and it increases accuracy. It's a bigger area, which also means that it brings upgraded security. Speaking of biometrics, they are stored in Samsung Knox.

This is the hardware in software security that is built in. It includes kernel protection, Knoxville and d-e-f-e-x, which stands for defeat exploit. This prevents unauthorized apps from changing the system. It's also there to deter rooting in case you like to root your phone, but I did read online that somebody was able to figure out how to root around it. So that's fun, as for connectivity, models vary depending on your location and your carrier, but both sub six and millimeter wave versions are available.

I have the unlocked version, there's also Bluetooth, 5.0, Wi-Fi 802.11 up to ax, which means Wi-Fi 6, NFC and sim support as well. Now mine supports single sim. Dual and ENIM are also available on certain carriers and certain locations. There is no ultra-wideband included on the s21, that is only in the plus and the ultra phones. Now, ultra-wideband can be used to give you better accuracy for location.

So if you're using the new Samsung smart tags, for example, those will give you better location when you're using them with a plus or an ultra compared to the s21. I thought call quality was crystal clear for both myself and the person I was calling. Who is always my husband because he's my tester. I also have no issues accessing 5g speeds downtown here in Denver on my Google phi sim card. The stereo speakers are made by AKG they're, an excellent audio company.

They do support Dolby Atmos, there's no headphone jack. Obviously speakers are on the top of the display and the bottom rail. They are well-balanced, excellent clarity. They do lack some bass, but that's kind of a thing when it comes to smartphones and audio. I am pretty impressed with the battery performance.

It's a 4 000 milliampere hour battery, and it supports fast wireless charging, 2.0 and fast charging via wired. You also get wireless power share as well, so for wired, it's 25 watts and wireless. You get 15 watts maximum. The battery life went from 100 charge to about 53 in seven hours, with that, full time being used to watch YouTube videos. I did not actually watch the YouTube videos, but I left it running all day.

All radios but Wi-Fi were turned off. It was full resolution, adaptive refresh rate and adaptive brightness. So my overall impressions. This is a solid, excellent phone, especially when you think about the price point. It is 200 cheaper, MSRP than its predecessor now.

Obviously, the s20 line has decreased in price since then, but if you're, just looking at the release date price, this one is 200 cheaper, but it also lost some functionality while gaining some other important features. The screen resolution decreased slightly. We don't have expandable storage, and you lose the adapter in the box, but there's also no MST or magnetic secure transmission, which is used for Samsung pay on traditional non-chip, point-of-sale and credit card terminals, and there's also no USB, which stands for ultra-wideband. It's also plastic on the back instead of glass. Now I don't think any of those are dealbreakers for myself, but they may be for you, especially the storage, but you do also get a faster processor in here.

It's a Qualcomm, snapdragon 888. You also get a faster fingerprint sensor, better AI for the camera technology, even though they are the same lenses and a flat display instead of a curved one, which some folks will definitely like now. My biggest reason for only getting the s21 and not also investing in a plus for review, is because they are basically mostly the same, except for the plus is a little bigger. It has a bigger battery screen resolution is higher and that one also supports ultra-wide band, unlike the regular s21. So should you buy it? I would say: yes, if you want to stay under one grand in your budget, and you want a smaller phone, it's especially a great deal if you have an older phone to trade in, or you get one with a carrier instead of unlocked, but this is a wonderful contender for MSRP range between 500 to a thousand dollars.

Let me know what you think of the s21. If you are new here, subscribe to become a part of my community- and I did want to thank all of my s'mores for subscribing and watching I'm Shannon Morse, and I will see you soon. Bye, you all.

Source : Shannon Morse