Let me start by saying I am a LOYAL Samsung & Android user, have no plans to change that. HOWEVER!! This is the first time that I have been dissatisfied with a product because they usually knock it out of the park. Pros are the same, especially if you upgrade from your old and busted. Great pics, decent storage space, speed & refresh rate (iffy) and price. I'm sure there's more but haven't had enough time to explore. The cons after 1 week: For me, battery life is the most important. With the S21 FE, you cannot run a couple of apps without a major battery drain. Your phone must be charging if you plan to run a major app like a navigation app or similar. The phone gets hot. I have a case on it so now I can't feel it, but naked, the phone heats up pretty quickly when ... MoreLet me start by saying I am a LOYAL Samsung & Android user, have no plans to change that. HOWEVER!! This is the first time that I have been dissatisfied with a product because they usually knock it out of the park. Pros are the same, especially if you upgrade from your old and busted. Great pics, decent storage space, speed & refresh rate (iffy) and price. I'm sure there's more but haven't had enough time to explore. The cons after 1 week: For me, battery life is the most important. With the S21 FE, you cannot run a couple of apps without a major battery drain. Your phone must be charging if you plan to run a major app like a navigation app or similar. The phone gets hot. I have a case on it so now I can't feel it, but naked, the phone heats up pretty quickly when in use or charging. Charging is a bit slow. I use a standard C charger, a fast charger and a car charger and it takes quite a bit longer to charge. A lot of signal dropping and network disconnections. Bing button is now attached to the power button so it is easily activated. And the volume buttons are now on the right side of the phone above the power button, so when you down volume, you can hit that lock screen...

The S21 5G has been great for the 5 months that I've used it. General stability and performance of the phone are its highlights - thanks to a year of regular software updates and a chipset that keeps up with the times (SD 888). The display on this phone looks stunning, and it boasts a fluid 120 Hz refresh rate that makes everything smooth and snappy. It gets bright enough such that it can be used outdoors for texting, paying and media control. The color profile of the display also switches under direct sunlight to enhance readability - it becomes more saturated. Haptics are tight and responsive, nothing to complain about there either. Battery life (!!) is one of the most important aspects of a mobile device. I am happy to say that the S21 5G has enough juice to last ... MoreThe S21 5G has been great for the 5 months that I've used it. General stability and performance of the phone are its highlights - thanks to a year of regular software updates and a chipset that keeps up with the times (SD 888). The display on this phone looks stunning, and it boasts a fluid 120 Hz refresh rate that makes everything smooth and snappy. It gets bright enough such that it can be used outdoors for texting, paying and media control. The color profile of the display also switches under direct sunlight to enhance readability - it becomes more saturated. Haptics are tight and responsive, nothing to complain about there either. Battery life (!!) is one of the most important aspects of a mobile device. I am happy to say that the S21 5G has enough juice to last a day of medium to slightly heavy usage. Standby battery drain is also pretty consistent, never noticed an issue there. With the correct equipment, the phone will 'Super fast charge' at up to 25W, which will charge the battery from 0-100 in about an hour (or 0-50 in about 25 mins). It's nothing to write home about, but gets the job done. There is also support for wireless charging and reverse wireless charging, although both of these are slower and less efficient charging technologies that I would not recommend using (especially the latter, as it drains and heats up the phone battery). Cameras on the phone are generally impressive for photography. Under ideal conditions, the 12 MP main sensor is capable of some pretty sharp images thanks to post processing that sharpens images. The telephoto camera does a decent job upto around 8X, after which the image is pretty blurry. It can go up to 30X, but that is more of a gimmick than a feature. The only time I found 30X to be useful is while taking moon shots, the phone does those pretty well. Keep in mind it is not a real optical zoom but a crop in on a 64 MP sensor, so the algorithm is pretty impressive. Ultrawide shots are also detailed (12 MP) and look stunning with minimal distortion around borders. The selfie camera is alright, and only works great under good lighting. I don't shoot many videos, but the phone is capable of producing smooth 60 FPS videos with seamless transitions between the three cameras and good auto focus. HDR10+ videos look great, however there is oversaturation in those clips and they cannot be shared across platforms easily (not recommended). Finally, I'd like to talk about software. As mentioned earlier, the phone is generally very performant and stable. Besides, OneUI offers countless features that are pretty intelligent. For example, the gallery app is magical as photos can be remastered to correct some blur, noise, overexposure, etc. Furthermore, S21 features object eraser that can remove objects, shadows and reflections from an image! Personally, I think the reflection eraser is the most helpful, to remove glare and reflections from an image captured through a window (I often take images through car windows). OneUI 5 is generally heavily customizable, if that's something you treasure! However, I haven't really bought into the Material You design yet, I feel changing icon colors makes them harder to find and differentiate. Fortunately or unfortunately, OneUI has not gone through any major design overhauls, and OneUI 5 still looks very similar to older OneUI versions. It is a solid Android skin, and is genuinely helpful at times when navigating this big phone one-handed (menus are closer to the bottom of the screen, and buttons are generally larger and easier to click). With all that said, however, I am starting to feel quite bored after using OneUI for the last 3 years, maybe because Samsung doesn't change as much and add as many new and practical features as compared to the competition (like Google Pixel). The only new feature I've been genuinely impressed by has been the object eraser and remastering in the gallery app (since I bought the S21 5 months ago). And, unfortunately Samsung uses generic Qualcomm chipsets, which are very performant, but cannot be designed around new software features unlike in the case of Google and Apple. This will be more important in upcoming years, but as of now Samsung's S series is still a safe bet in terms of general stability, performance and connectivity. That reminds me, connectivity has been very good on this smartphone, with support for Wifi 6, 5G UW/mmWave and 5G sub-6 ("nationwide"). I believe the version of Bluetooth supported is 5.1, but regardless it has been pretty rock solid. Finally, as I conclude, I would like to comment on the overall design of the phone. I like the size, although I am a sucker for more compact phones and believe the S21 could have shaved yet another inch off as seen in the S22. I love the glastic back, and I believe it helps with that 5G mmWave action. The back design with the layout of the triple camera screams my name, and the camera frame is flush with the side aluminum frame of the phone. The curved design of the glass and glastic sandwich makes the phone feel comfortable with no sharp edges, however that also makes for a rather slippery phone (recommend using a phone case!). I prefer the boxier S22 which is also more compact and provides a more confident grip. Overall, the S21 has been a solid daily driver, although I yearn for some more fun and useful software additions as seen in the likes of the Google Pixel.

I upgraded to this phone from a Sony Experior Platinum... I think I make a mistake ... I primarily bought this phone for use while driving & that it has a remote charging feature. I use an Android head unit in my car n had no problems with Experia Z connecting to the head unit while driving the new phone a Samsung Galaxy S22+ I end up fighting for the first hour of any drive trying to get the phone to pair with the head unit both with Bluetooth for music n WiFi for Google maps. Also, I find it very difficult to get both connections working simultaneously as the Bluetooth turns off the WiFi.. so if I change from the current Google map route n the app needs to redirect me, the app can't recalculate when using the Bluetooth connection as a lot of the places I drive do ... MoreI upgraded to this phone from a Sony Experior Platinum... I think I make a mistake ... I primarily bought this phone for use while driving & that it has a remote charging feature. I use an Android head unit in my car n had no problems with Experia Z connecting to the head unit while driving the new phone a Samsung Galaxy S22+ I end up fighting for the first hour of any drive trying to get the phone to pair with the head unit both with Bluetooth for music n WiFi for Google maps. Also, I find it very difficult to get both connections working simultaneously as the Bluetooth turns off the WiFi.. so if I change from the current Google map route n the app needs to redirect me, the app can't recalculate when using the Bluetooth connection as a lot of the places I drive do not have very good phone net work coverage... so I have to turn the Bluetooth off & reconnect the head unit to WiFi using the phone as a hot spot to get redirection on the Google maps, then reconnect to Bluetooth again to listen to music which makes the WiFi drop out again on the head unit... very frustrating when I am on a time schedule n pulling over on the side of the road is very time consuming or dangerous while continuing to drive! I also find that even though the settings are on in some of the Google apps the phone will still not connect as it should as in automatically location permissions n I have to go into the app switch the permissions off then on again in the phone app to allow then to be acceptable through the head unit in my car. All this is very frustrating n dangerous whitest driving believe me! I have also been unable to get the Android Auto app to work between the phone & the head unit even though I have down loaded both the latest versions of the app on my phone & the head unit in my car. Also the sync apps would not work either so weather there is some sort of difference in the Android software in both systems I am not sure however both the head unit n the phone are less there 6 months old.