The new Samsung S21 Plus is a pretty solid phone. It’s got a lot of features and a great design. However, there are a few things that could be improved.
For one, the battery life isn’t great. And the camera isn’t as good as some of the other phones on the market. If you want a better camera from the S21 series, I’ll suggest you go for the Samsung S21 ultra model.
Is The Samsung S21 Plus Worth Buying?
The Samsung S21 Plus is an excellent phone with many features, but it is not without its drawbacks. One of the most significant drawbacks is the battery life. The S21 Plus has a smaller battery than the S21 Ultra.
Also, there is not much difference in the design when compared to the S21.
Here are some key specifications of the Samsung S21 Plus that you need to know before you decide to buy one.
Battery Life
The Samsung S21 Plus battery is reasonably good for many reasons. One reason is that it has a very high capacity of 4,800mAh. This means the battery is expected to last for a very long time before needing to be recharged.
Another great thing about this battery is that it charges very quickly. In just a few minutes, it can charge from 0% to 50%.
However, the Samsung S21 Plus battery is not as good as some of the other high-end smartphone batteries on the market.
Yes, the fast charging is great, but the battery drains relatively quickly compared to the S21 Ultra. So, if you are looking for a phone with an exceptional battery, the S21 Plus might not be the best option.
Design
The Samsung Galaxy S21 Plus is very similar to the previous model but in terms of design, it has a curved glass with an aluminium frame and a camera wrapped around the edge of the phone that melds into the aluminium frame that gives it an elegant look.
The back is a curved panel made of gorilla glass Victus that gives a matte finish compared to that of the Samsung Galaxy 21 model made of plastic which makes it pretty sturdy.
Display
The galaxy 21 has a 6.7-inch display screen compared to the more compact 6.2-inch frame of the galaxy 20 and it uses a flat dynamic AMOLED display that has a 1080p resolution and supports an adaptive 120hz refresh rate. This makes content on the screen appear sharp and look great with rich colours
Performance
The Samsung Galaxy S21 plus uses the Exynos 2100 or snapdragon 888 chipset that powers its features and they are both cutting edge processors that are built on a 5-nanometer process. So it is superfluid and everything runs smoothly including games plus you get support for 5g network connectivity too.
The user interface is Samsung’s one UI 3.1 based on Android 11 and there have been some changes made like the volume control sliders that are now vertical instead of horizontal or the gallery that is much easier to navigate thanks to a film strip of thumbnails down at the bottom.
The user interface also integrates features from the new version of Android; for instance, the notification history can be accessed in settings, and you can customise which apps appear at the top of the share sheet so you can share things quickly and send things to your favourite app.
The small hole is for the selfie cam that can initially have a lower resolution but once the 120hz refresh rate is enabled, the resolution goes up to 1080p, which is cool because the high refresh rate makes moving elements on-screen look super smooth and since it’s adaptive it will go down to save power if you stop touching the display or play lower frame rate.
The large screen size makes a bit of a difference, too; the display is quite bright and can be boosted to 883 nits in auto mode in the bright sun and a maximum of about 459 nits with the manual slider.
The battery capacity has a 4800 milliamp-hour battery as opposed to 4000 on the s21 and 5000 on the ultra battery life, so the galaxy 21 plus model is noticeably better than the others.
However, it does not come with a charger like other Samsung flagship devices, but the charging supports 25-watt charging as well as 10-watt wireless charging and reverse wireless charging and with a 25-watt Samsung adapter, you can charge the s21 plus from zero to 55 per cent in half an hour.
Features
You get an improved ultrasonic fingerprint reader, amongst other new features; the audio has a stereo speaker setup with one bottom-firing speaker and the earpiece acting as the second one. The audio is slightly louder than the s21s, although the sound quality is pretty much similar with the same pleasant vocals and bass.
Although there is no headphone jack and you would need to use a USB-C dongle or connect wirelessly.
The triple camera setup is the same as the regular s21s with a 12-megapixel main camera and a 12-megapixel ultra-wide-angle camera with a fixed focus, and a 64-megapixel telephoto camera that provides three times the quality. So the pictures look great with a wide dynamic range and nice colours, plenty of detail and well-controlled noise.
For nighttime shooting the main camera performs well with nice exposure and dynamic range, the noise reduction is quite relaxed which means you get some graininess but more resolved detail and turning on night mode gives you a much brighter exposure and the noise is eliminated along with some of those finer details shadows that are lifted and the lights lose some of their warmth.
Conclusion
The Samsung galaxy s21 plus offers all of the same great flagship features that you would find on the regular s21 with just slight differences.
You get a larger body and display with gorilla glass Victus on the back and better battery life. The difference in price is definitely noticeable because you will be paying about 25 per cent more for the Samsung Galaxy 21 Plus model.
But at the end of the day, the Samsung galaxy 21 plus does not offer any over the top features, and it does not make a lot of sense to purchase if the value is what you are after.
If you want to save money, I’ll suggest you go for the Samsung S21 over the S21 Plus because there is no significant difference in features between the two devices.
However, if you don’t mind spending the extra money, then you might want to go for the S21 Plus. Ultimately, it all comes down to personal preference.
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