foreign do you remember when Samsung spent an entire three minutes straight in the keynote just talking about the matte black color I get it [Music] hey what's up MKBHD here and this is a Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra and it's an incredibly good phone I gotta say now the thing is not only does it do a lot on paper because we already know about the big numbers the huge specs the ultra story that's all still here but it does a lot of stuff that doesn't show up on the spec sheet a lot of subtle tweaks and changes that turn this from a really good phone to a great one so of course I gotta start with the Finish because well I've been saying matte black everything for a solid couple of years now to the point where it's it's on a shirt my car probably my most precious possession is wrapped in matte black and its name is Phantom so I guess you could say this Phantom black Galaxy S21 Ultra the matte finish kinda speaks to me and like I said it's not going to be on the spec sheet but this is a really nice finish it's a really very clean flat smooth black finish on glass and then with a slightly different texture on the metal housing around the cameras and then it turns into your typical glossy black around the edges but just the whole look of this phone to me is very intentional I'm on record saying I actually really like it and that was my first impressions video and I'm sticking by that just the way the camera module curves into the body of the phone the way it looks like like an overlay of another S21 Ultra on top of the first one really the worst thing about it is that it's still uneven so it still rocks on a table but everything else about this design I think is as good as it gets I was kind of worried it would look great out the box actually and then just collect a ton of fingerprints and look awful but this map black has been shockingly good at rejecting fingerprints so that's sweet something you might have noticed also is Samsung has a carbon fiber weave in the camera module for like every other color of this phone except for Phantom black for some reason but luckily for less than two bucks Channel sponsored D Brands got you covered with a carbon fiber camera skin so you can still get that look easy so okay now that I'm done raving about the design the Galaxy S21 Ultra as a sequel to the s20 ultra it's actually largely the same phone it's got a lot of the same big numbers the ultra stuff is still here but there's a lot of small intangibles a lot of small adjustments that they've made that I really like probably more than you think and then like I don't know how to say this without sounding kind of full of it but I feel like this phone was designed by or maybe at least worked on by people who have watched MKBHD videos does that make sense like there's there's a lot of things in here and of course there's a lot of people out there who have the same tastes and will like a lot of these changes in any phone but yeah this this exact phone feels more like an MKBHD Edition phone than any phone I've ever reviewed so you got to start up front with that display this has been a strength of Samsung and their phones for years so you can expect good stuff and you see that with the improvements on paper right this is a huge OLED that will finally do 1440p resolution and 120 hertz at the same time it gets even brighter up to 1500 nits tops so it's viewable in pretty much any conditions and the new ltpo panel Tech makes it actively vary its refresh rate between 10 Hertz and 120 hertz to save battery but from my experience has stayed very responsive I've never noticed a dip in frame rate in everyday use so it's managing it really well which is a success but even with all that stuff that's on the spec sheet there's also all the stuff that's not on paper like the fact that they keep flattening the display even more than last year this one doesn't spill over the edges kind of at all anymore obviously like that it's also a little bit smaller and the body of this phone it's still a big phone don't get me wrong but it's not like stupid big like here it is compared to iPhone 12 Pro Max another pretty big phone but it's actually a smaller footprint here and next to the OnePlus 8 Pro it's still huge but doesn't seem so overbearingly massive right it's actually smaller than the Galaxy s20 Ultra going from a 6. 9 inch to a 6. 8 inch display and also the fingerprint sensor is new I guess that would be on paper too but they've switched to a newer generation Qualcomm under display fingerprint reader and that reader is noticeably bigger it's 1.
77 times the size of last year I didn't notice it being any faster even though it claimed to be but just the larger sensor area by itself makes the experience of using the fingerprint sensor all the time much less frustrating I have less failed attempts it feels less finicky and maybe someday the whole bottom of the phone will be a fingerprint sensor but until then in this world of wearing masks the improved fingerprint reader is welcome so also on paper Snapdragon Triple Eight inside 12 or 16 gigs of RAM depending on which spec you get fast ufs 3. 1 storage not expandable which is technically a downgrade from last year but it's something I haven't personally used in a long time then High refresh rate display and a 5 000 milliamp hour battery so this phone is clearly a flagship performer on paper but off paper there are a lot of improvements to one UI three on this phone that do probably make a more meaningful difference to the user experience versus just the bleeding edge specs now I've said before I'm not the biggest fan of Samsung's software and their UI honestly I I've preferred close to stock maybe oxygen OS is my favorite non-stock option but you can't sleep on Samsung software the whole reason they do what they do is to offer as many features as possible and they are still at it there are tons of features packed into these phones that have a lot of potential for customization and just letting you tailor it to behave the way you want you never have to dive in and use any or all of the features because there's a lot but they'll be waiting for you if you have the time to mess with them I think the stuff you'll first notice with S21 Ultra is the new volume control here those sliders just a little cleaner looking and one ui3 the new notification grouping on top of Android just an overall cleaner aesthetic and organization to things like that the stock apps and the improved dark mode that I highly recommend looks great on this OLED display and can actually net you a little bit of extra battery life but also the Google discover page to the side of the home screen and Samsung's launcher what who told them to do that I did not see that coming but hey if I worked at Samsung and I kept asking for a Google Play edition for all these years I guess we know that's probably never going to happen again but this is a little taste to that it's as close as it's going to get I do kind of wish the search box showed up over here too like it does in the Google app but hey this is solid and I guess if they let me map Bixby to Google Assistant all over the phone that would have been the cherry on top but anyway speaking of battery we again have an ultra number it's 5 000 milliamp hours and that looks great on paper right in practice I've had a very good battery experience now the thing to note which is an ongoing conversation is the Qualcomm Snapdragon chip experience versus in other regions there's an exynos version so this year with this phone it would be Snapdragon Triple Eight versus the exynos 2100.
