- A new leak reveals the Galaxy S21 design, product name, and specs details more than a month ahead of the expected announcement date.
- The Galaxy S21 will come in three distinct versions, including the Galaxy S21 Ultra, Galaxy S21 Plus, and Galaxy S21.
- The Galaxy 21 Ultra will be the only phone to feature a high-end camera system, glass back, and S Pen stylus support.
Samsung is widely expected to unveil the Galaxy S21 series in mid-January, about a month earlier than customary. The Galaxy S21 Ultra, Galaxy S21 Plus, and Galaxy S21 would go on sale by the end of next month as a result. Samsung isn’t just trying to take advantage of Huawei’s inability to compete in Western markets and to launch a proper response to the iPhone 12 as soon as possible. It’s also looking to make up for lost sales. The Galaxy S20 and Note 20 series’s high price tags did not work in Samsung’s favor, especially during the novel coronavirus pandemic.
It’s also customary for everything about brand new Galaxy flagships to leak before the actual announcement, and the S21 is no different. A brand new report confirms the product names of the three new handsets, the designs, and specs.
Dutch-language blog LetsGoDigital says it received reliable information from a source close to Samsung. The person provided the site images of the Galaxy S21, which confirm recent Galaxy S21 design leaks. The report also notes that the next-gen Galaxy S series will be called S21, not S30. The number corresponds to the year, so the S21 successor will be called Galaxy S22.
LetsGoDigital says the Galaxy S21 design in the images it saw almost correspond to the leaked renders from a different leaker, including the new camera design. But the blog created its own high-resolution renders to protect the identity of the source. All phones will have a strange camera module design on the back. The main camera features three or four lenses and will be placed into a metallic “island” part of the phone’s metal chassis.
The three phones will share many specs and features, but the Galaxy S21 Ultra will be the best version of the three. The S21 Plus and S21 will both features curved screens and plastic rear panels, while the Ultra comes with curved edges, glass on the back, and an extra telephoto camera for better zoom. All phones will have Infinity-O displays, meaning the hole-punch camera will not be replaced by a bolder under-screen version.
In terms of hardware, the new Snapdragon 888 and Exynos 2100 platforms will power the phones. A leak a few days ago revealed that the Snapdragon 888 wouldn’t be faster than the iPhone 12 or iPhone 11, according to new benchmark tests. The bigger phones will have more generous memory, going from 12GB to 16GB of RAM, while the regular Galaxy S21 will feature only 8GB of RAM. Storage will start at 128GB and could go up to 512GB, depending on the model.
The Galaxy S21 Ultra will be the only handset of the three to support the S Pen stylus, which will have to be purchased separately.
The three phones will feature 6.8-inch, 6.7-inch, and 6.2-inch displays with a 120Hz adaptive refresh rate. They’ll have 5,000 mAh (45W charging), 4,800 mAh (25W), and 4,000 mAh (25W) batteries
The Galaxy S21 Ultra’s main camera includes a new 108-megapixel wide-angle camera, 12-megapixel ultra-wide, and two 10-megapixel telephoto cameras, which will support 10x optical zoom and 3x optical zoom, respectively. The S21 will not have a DepthVision camera, but it will pack a new ISOCell Vizion 3D ToF sensor from Samsung.
The Galaxy S21 Plus camera has two 12-megapixel wide-angle and ultra-wide-angle lenses and a 64-megapixel telephoto lens that supports 3x hybrid zoom. That’s the same configuration from last year’s model.
The Galaxy S21 will also replicate the Galaxy S20’s camera system: 12-megapixel wide-angle camera, a 12-megapixel ultra-wide-angle camera, and a 64-megapixel telephoto camera with 3x hybrid zoom.
The report also notes that the phones will likely support Xbox cloud gaming, as well as Samsung’s gimmicky Neon artificial human.
In terms of pricing, LetsGoDigital speculates that the phones will still be expensive. But the prices might drop by €50 in Europe, as Samsung is looking to compete better during the pandemic.
Colors will include Phantom Black and Phantom Silver (S21 Ultra), Phantom Black and Phantom Silver and Phantom Violet (S21 Plus), and Phantom Gray, Phantom White, Phantom Violet, and Phantom Pink (S21).