The Samsung galaxy s21 ultra and the note 20 ultra

 

The Samsung galaxy s21 ultra and the note 20 ultra both great big phones in every sense of those words the pricing in a lot of countries between these two are equivalent right now and so with a lot of rumours that we might not see another note anytime soon which is worth your money in 2021.  Let's take a quick look at both phones take a first up the physical size, these are both absolute behemoths with a 6.8-inch panel on the s21 and 6.9 on the note so neither one is really going to be ideal for one-handed use especially the slightly more boxy note ultra both displays are excellent though with smooth 120-hertz refresh rates and they include ltpo tech to dynamically slow down the display as far as 10 hertz to save power when you don't need that full 120 biggest upgrades with the s21 ultras panel is that you can now use the full 120 hz refresh rate and quad HD plus resolution at the same time with the note you'll need to step down to full HD plus if you want that maximum smoothness or alternatively switch down to 60hz for maximum resolution the end screen fingerprint has got a major upgrade in the s21 series 2. The note uses the last generation ultrasonic sensor that's just not great compared to most of the competition by comparison the new model has a larger sensor area and is just faster and more reliable across the board unsurprisingly those hardware upgrades can be seen on the inside too where basically, this is a generational upgrade from snapdragon 865 to 888 in USA and in most other countries you go from an Exynos 990 chip to an Exynos 2100 which is an even bigger jump because of the old Exynos chips power consumption issues so if you're in Europe for example going from a 2020 Samsung flagship to a 2021samsung flagship is gonna seem like a bigger upgrade battery capacity is another point of differentiation here the note 20 ultra uses a 4 500 million power cell whereas the s21 ultra cranks it all the way up to a significantly larger 5 000 milliamp hours that combined with a more efficient processor in the s21 should mean significantly better battery life from the newer phone of course the reason you have a smaller battery inside the note is because it also needs to make room for the s pen which docks into the side of the device the note has the most advanced s-pen we've seen so far with 4096 levels of pressure sensitivity Bluetooth connectivity and air gesture support while the s21 ultra does also support the s pen any s pen in fact from a previous galaxy note or galaxy tab device.  There are some compromises the s21 has the same level of pressure sensitivity, but no Bluetooth support right now and you'll need to wait for the s pen pro later in the year to get that functionality plus there's just the general awkwardness of having to either carry around the pen separately or use one of these official cases that make the phone even more bulky and unwieldy, so that's really your trade-off there in terms of the s pen better style of support in the note versus a bigger battery in the s21 next up is the camera setup and honestly. It's a very one-sided fight here  despite the fact the note still does have a very capable set of shooters the fact is the s21 ultra has photography as its major focus so not only do you get an upgrade second-generation 108-megapixel main sensor that's better in low light but also a duo of super-telephoto cameras about three times and ten times that's compared to a five times periscope zoom camera in the note again that's not to trash the note 20s camera at all but if photography is one of your major reasons for buying a flagship phone you'll probably want to choose the s21one small caveat though when it comes to storing those photos unlike the note the s21 has no micro sd card support so you'll want to make sure you get as much storage as you can when you're buying the phone that's especially important when the base model of s21 comes with just 128 gigabytes versus 256 in the base model of the nodes in terms of software you won't find a ton of differences here this is Samsung’s one ui after all based on android 11 the note like a lot of the recent Samsung phones got the update to one UI 3 in recent months broadly putting it inline with what you'll find on the s21 for now the s21 enjoys exclusive new features like the director view and the camera app views at once while you're shooting aside from that one thing to bear in mind is software lifespan support it's quite likely the galaxy s21 having launched a bit later  may well have another major platform upgrade in its future compared to the node so that's the note 20 ultra and s21 ultra for my money, i'd probably choose the s21 out of this pair because of the camera and battery but if a full s pen experience is important to you then the note is still a great buy.