Samsung S20 Ultra vs S21 Ultra

[ThatM1key]

I've been wanting to make this thread for a long time and yes there'll be audio elements to this. A jump from a S20 Ultra to a S21 Ultra is a big but bad. Both phones were factory unlocked. I'll go over the main important

Speaker:
I think the S20 has a better speaker overall. S20 has a traditional 1 direction setup while the S21 ultra uses its chassis as a speaker. Both are tuned by AKG. S21 technically does sound better then the S20 but its placement is too important. In a corner of a room, it does very well but laying on your bed just muffles it too much even if you have no room fan going. So with the S21 you'll often use the volume to the max without even knowing because its just quieter then the S20. The S20 volume gets louder because of its traditional design and you'll never to worry about damaging the speaker.

LDAC:
Ironically both support LDAC because of how new they are but its annoying to use. Both phones default (Regardless if you connected before) to 96khz-32bit at Adaptative Bit Rate, which bad for lossless content. True lossless transmission is 44.1khz-16bit at 990/909kbps mode (Sound Quality Mode) and your able to change it with Developer options. Although for best performance, you have to be directly in line otherwise the audio gets choppy even if you having nothing else opened.

Outside USB DACs:
I haven't tried true DACs with these phones but I did try a knock-off Samsung dongle and both seemed to output just fine.

Display:
Both have the same amount of pixels (Small PPI difference). S20 is 0.1 inch bigger. S20 can only do 120hz at 1080p mode while the S21 can do 120hz at its full resolution. Of course, the S21 has newer Gorilla Glass and its 100 nits brighter. I personally think both devices look equal in terms of colors and black levels.

eSim & Carriers:
Both feature eSim but the short truth is that the S20 has the best eSim. The S21 has the worst eSim out of any phone. The S21's eSim can only do T-Mobile without contacting support (Even though its factory unlocked). There is a great chance that if you even you contact support, for lets say Verizon, they'll probably say its not possible (Like what I experienced with other carriers). The S20 can accept any eSim carrier I throw at it. eSim is important for dual welding 2 phone services and also getting free trials as many carriers don't offer physical sim free trials. The S20 can only supports basic 5G at best (The most I got was almost 100 megabits down, T-Mobile). The S21 supports 5G mmWave, which with T-Mobile, I got almost 700 megabits down.

Storage:
In the old days, you were able to pay less to get a phone (Like the S20) with minimum storage and get a high capacity Micro SD Card later (Up to 1TB with the S20). The S21 has its Micro SD Card slot removed for the newer antennas. It makes sense for a first-gen 5G mmWave product but the latest S24 Ultra still doesn't have one. On top of this, S22 Ultra and later 128GB models get 4GB less of ram (from the initial 12GB).

Ads:
Yes Seriously. The S20 has no ads while my S21 does have notification ads (For phones that over $1000 USD initially!). Most of the time there Samsung related but sometimes there game ads from there app store. You can try to disable them. Example:

https://www.reddit.com/r/GalaxyFold/comments/1bsof6a/are_you_kidding_me_oneui_61_and_now_im_getting

HDMI Monitor Output:
The S24 Ultras and below only support DP Alt Mode of 1.2. Which means 4K-30hz with USB 3.0 ports or 4K-60hz with no USB ports. If you want 60hz, you only get 1080p! (No 1440p-60hz, lame). I discovered this the hard way.

Conclusion:
If you care about SD Cards, eSims and great sound, get the S20 Ultra. If you want a 120hz full resolution screen and access to the fastest newest 5G bands, get the S21 Ultra.

 

[Ze Frog]

Same here.
Those adds, I'm sorry but no matter if the S21 was vastly superior it would be a no for me. Same as why I don't use certain browsers anymore because of the home page being adds and clickbait news articles. Sadly this is likely the future and it'll be forced everywhere, a lot of websites I don't frequent either because you have to agree to them sharing your data with hundreds of partners. What I'm waiting for is a phone that runs Linux or similar where you don't have Google or Apple having all of my data, there's going to be a rather large market for that kind of thing the way tech is going and more and more people get wise to such things.

 

[Oso Polar]

Well, at this point of time both S20 and S21 are obsolete. And these phones don't have ads - unless you yourself want to get them and opt in into getting "news and special offers" (which BTW is shown on the linked Reddit thread).

 

[Mordor]

You can root and install a custom rom. tchin tchin!

 

[Oso Polar]

You can root and install a custom rom.

AFAIK it is not possible to root US models. Not completely sure about such old ones but on newer US S2X series it is not possible to unlock bootloader (and so, root). In any case IMHO this is not a good idea on a Samsung phone as Knox will be tripped forever, it'll never be possible to return phone to the original state (e.g. in order to sell it or get a service under warranty).

 

[ThatM1key]

As a for-now basic member, I cannot update this thread.

So with the Samsung S21 Ultra, you cannot have 2 eSims enabled at the same time. I assume the S20 Ultra would have this problem too. Although both phones allow you to use 1 Physical Sim and 1 eSim at the same time.

I still miss my S20 Ultra, one of the best rounded phones I've experienced. I was initially looking at 2 phones. My first was the "Motorola Edge Plus 2023". The Motorola battles with the S21 Ultra. Less pixels but high refresher rate, Less brightness nits but Dolby Vision support, 8GB of ram but UFS 4.0, and majorly Displayport 1.4 Output (Not even found on the S24 Ultra). Although the biggest missed mark was the Motorola was the lack for 5G bands n261 and n260 (Which is Verzion's Ultraband network). My second choice was the "Google Pixel 7 Pro", instead of trading big blows with the S21 Ultra, it just matches it (Expect for any external output). The biggest win for the Google phone is that you can have 2 eSims active.

Although yes, the S24 Ultra supports 2 active eSims, its still too pricey and the jump isn't big. For a phone that costs over $1K USD, it should have 16GB of RAM.