Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra first look: stunning 100x zoom camera, 120Hz Quad HD screen and industry-best screen brightness
- An extra prism inside the S21 Ultra’s Periscope zoom lens results in 100x zoom shots that blew this writer away
- Existing S-Pens from older Note phones will work on the S21 Ultra, or users can buy a larger S-Pen made specifically for it
Following a somewhat below-par showing last year, Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S series – the most mainstream Android phone series in the world, according to global sales figures – returns with a new eye-catching design, new Qualcomm 5nm chip, a much improved zoom camera, and a trick borrowed from its sibling, the Note series.
We spent some time with the new S21 series – mostly the top dog S21 Ultra – ahead of Samsung’s official launch. Here are the early impressions.
Design and hardware
Having an original and unique camera module design is becoming increasingly difficult – what with there being a new Android release every other week – but Samsung has managed to achieve that with the S21 series, featuring a “contour cut camera design” that sees half the module blending seamlessly to the phone’s aluminium railings.
It’s an elegant look that makes the bulky camera bump of last year’s S20 Ultra look clunky and unrefined. The rest of the back piece is crafted out of the latest Gorilla Glass, and the phones come in eye-catching colours.
That camera module on the S21 Ultra houses a quad camera system plus a laser autofocus, while the lower-tier S21 and S21 Plus models stick with a triple camera array.
