Even if it’s 2022 and the new Galaxy S22 isn’t out for another month, we do have a new S21. We believe this is a phone that is quite safe to use. It’s quiet, doesn’t make many mistakes, and is perhaps even a little dull. However, this is something that a lot of people will enjoy. This is the second Fan Edition that we’ve seen, so we’re getting a sense of how Samsung does things. In essence, it’s similar to how Apple has handled the SE.
Many other phone manufacturers do the same thing, but it’s a lot of one-year-old parts reassembled in a cheaper phone. The price is the most frequently repeated portion of that calculation. This phone isn’t as much of a spectacular triumph as it was over a year ago because there’s a lot more competition at this medium flagship tier pricing point now.
WHAT IS IT MADE OF?
It’s the high-end stuff on the inside. It’s not an over-the-top bleeding edge, but it’s right at the top of the line. Snapdragon 888 processor, six or eight gigabytes of RAM, a 4500 mAh battery, and triple cameras. A 6.4-inch 1080p, 120 hertz AMOLED display is offered up front.
It has a thin, uniform bezel, as well as a fingerprint reader at the bottom of the display. It also has a selfie camera cutout for the 32-megapixel selfie camera at the top-middle.
APPEARANCE
This is a victory for Samsung, the display manufacturer. They’re just so excellent at screens right now. This phone is right up there with the best and brightest phones in its class. It features a touch sample rate of 240 hertz and is extremely sensitive. The architecture is simply extremely secure. It appears to be identical to the ordinary S21, but with a new matte dark gray finish with the camera module pushed straight up to the corner and curving over the phone’s side.
It’s got water resistant IP68 and supports 15-watt wireless charging with reverse wireless charging. So there’s a plastic back, and they didn’t quite commit to matte black, so it’s this dark gray that unfortunately gets a lot more fingerprints, and there’s also these metal rails all the way around, which are more sturdy and less likely to fracture when you drop it.
SIMILARITIES WITH THE S21
The normal S21 was likewise made of plastic with metal rails, but the Fan Edition takes it a step further, with the camera cutout no longer being a part of the rail. It’s also incredibly light, while having a larger battery than the S21.
Also, the fingerprint reader beneath the display is in the same location as on the standard S21, however it’s an optical fingerprint reader rather than the ultrasonic ones seen on the rest of the S21 line.
At the bottom, there’s a single speaker that’s part of a stereo system with the earpiece speaker. Overall, the haptics are a step down from other flagships, such as the S21s, Pixels, and even the OnePlus 9 Pros of the world, being less tight and precise.
The phone has three cameras on the back: a 12-megapixel primary camera, a 12-megapixel ultrawide camera, and an 8-megapixel 3x telephoto camera, all of which are excellent. The main camera has an optical image stabilization system (OIS) that produces sharp photos with a short depth of field.
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