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There’s no denying that the Galaxy S21 series has taken a lot of inspiration from current Note handsets – both in form and function. Unlike last year, there’s a bigger gap between the three Galaxy S21 models, and it shows. The questionable choices Samsung made this time around make the S21 phones feel even worse than the outgoing S20 in some cases – and that can’t be emphasized enough for the two cheaper options. Among these downgrades, there are a few that are just too blatant to ignore.
No charger
Frankly, we saw it coming a mile away when Apple took the plunge and ditched the standard charger with its newer iPhones. For the new Galaxy S21 series, all Samsung gives you is a USB-C cable, giving you the option of reusing an adapter you already own or buying a new one. While this will be an additional purchase, at least with Samsung, we’re not also dealing with the headache of a proprietary charging port.
As for the charging technology itself, the S21 Ultra ditched its support for 45W faster charging and is content with the same modest 25W speed as the S21 and S21 +. With last year’s S20 Ultra, you could possibly choose a 45W adapter separately, but honestly even the included 25W brick turned out to be quite capable at the time.
1080p screens
The ideal resolution for a phone’s screen has long been a polarizing topic, and it’s getting more and more intense here with Samsung’s decision to replace QHD panels with FHD panels on the S21 and S21 +. The company’s flagships (including the S21 Ultra) default to 1080p anyway, and none of them (except the latest Ultra) can handle high refresh rates at their maximum QHD resolutions, which argues in favor of the lower FHD resolution.
Displays have long been a flagship feature on Samsung phones, so this lower resolution on its latest flagships could start a disturbing new trend – one where we’ll see the lines between budget flagships and real flagship products are becoming increasingly blurry.
Lower RAM capacity
Samsung probably realized that its call to make 12GB the base RAM size for its entire Galaxy S20 line was a bit of a stretch, and has since backed down to cap it at 8GB this time around. Once again, the S21 Ultra gets privileged treatment and is able to keep its more spacious 12GB and 16GB options, with this change only applying to the two cheaper models.
Although a big drop on paper, the lower RAM capacity should probably still be adequate, given that the international S20 models default to 8GB with no noticeable bottleneck – our in-depth review of the S21 and S21 + should give you a fuller picture.
Plastic back
Okay, plastic backs are another polarizing topic even for us here at Android Police, maybe even more so than 1080p displays. While we really liked the implementation on the standard Note20, we still felt like Samsung was just pinching pennies on its supposedly premium $ 1,000 phone. Taking a page from its own book, Samsung replaced a plastic on the non-Plus S21, while the other two models still use glass. At least the frame is still carved out of metal, so the durability hasn’t taken a hit.
Whether or not you prefer a plastic back (Samsung uses a very high-quality one, for what it’s worth) can be very subjective, but what the Switch says for sure is that the Galaxy S21 is now. one step closer to the S20 FE.
No storage expansion or MST
Along with all these big changes, Samsung has also sneakily ruled out the microSD card slot from the entire S21 line. Galaxy phones were until now among the latest flagships that still allow you to insert a card to add even a terabyte of extra storage – but not anymore. With all these new phones, you’re limited to their built-in storage: for the S21 and S21 +, that means 128GB and 256GB options, while the Ultra lets you choose between 256GB and 512GB.
Samsung also ditched MST, which helped define Samsung Pay by supporting existing payment terminals that lacked explicit NFC support by emulating the magnetic stripe on a physical credit card. With the growing ubiquity of payment infrastructure equipped with NFC, this threatens to make MST obsolete. However, this change does not apply to all markets, and some international S21 models still retain MST functionality.
By the way, we learned that the S21 base does not support UWB for future applications such as Digital Key, unlike the other two phones. While it’s probably not that bad, the cheaper Galaxy S model feels like a second-class citizen in Samsung’s 2021 top-tier lineup.
Many of you must be willing to point out that these so-called downgrades don’t really matter when you consider the lower entry price and all the other new features we’re getting this year – I’ll give you hear loud and clear. While it is true that these regressions do have a role to play in bringing this price down, some of them come across as the way Samsung imposes its will on buyers, as Apple is also criticized. With those choices, Samsung either removes the options you already had or pushes you to upgrade to the Ultra.
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