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Phones · Samsung Galaxy S

Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra

8owners with an opinion
57%of verdicts positive
4/3positive/negative since 2024
4 yrslongest happy owner
1happy after 3+ years

Praised for performance and battery; criticized for software and durability.

What owners wrote

NeutralOwned 5 years
Huh! I had no idea about those services. I just checked my S21 Ultra and yep, they were there. It took like 20 seconds to force stop and disable them, though I'm sure they'll be re-enabled during the next update. Honestly, I'm not sure I care enough to worry about it. If I've never noticed in the past 5 years, then they weren't adding much "bloat". When I think of that sort of useless software, I imagine all the OEM crap that Windows laptops come with that usually cause instability and hog resources.
Likes itOwned 4 yearsStill going
My S21 Ultra is the best phone I've ever had. I bought it a couple of months from when it was newly released and it just will not die. I've traveled with it, played all the games, thousands of photos, used it for nearly a year while I was doing gig driving (so plugged in and screen on for hours at a time), dropped countless times, and the screen has no cracks and the battery still lasts more than a day with regular use. For the past few years every new Samsung smartphone has piqued my interest, and the second my S21 dies I will buy whatever Samsung flagship happens to be the latest, but it just will not die.
Doesn’t like it
I wish we recycle old hardware. My S21 Ultra phone is an e-waste because of broken screen. But it has 12GB of LPDDR5 and 256GB of decent flash memory. I don't have knowledge and tool to recyle/reuse those priceless parts. I wonder, how many TB(or PB) of RAM/SSD being thrown to garbage dump every month.
Likes it
Same. I have now turned my s21 ultra into a full on gaming console with the following emulators installed on it: drastic, melonds, m64plusfz, citra, snes9x, super8plus, redream, superpsx, ppsspp, duckstation, aethersx2, ppss22, cemu, dolphin, eden, sudachi, citron. And even winlator. It plays everything below switch flawlessly. Even on switch it'll run literally everything I have thrown at it from BoTW to ToTK to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, albeit with poor performance. But lighter switch games like Super Smash Bros Ultimate or even the newer Super Mario Bros Wonder run flawlessly. Hollow Knight runs flawlessly. I have an OLED steam deck, but I LOVE the portability of this phone. I play with it using the bsp d8 pro controller as well as the xbox series s controller using a magsafe case and a magsafe clamp that attaches to the controller. Phone works great for 3ds emulation as well. Also the battery charges so quickly after a gaming session. It really is a wonderful gaming device.
Likes it
I bought a used Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra phone and it's astonishing how future proof it was to begin with. Even now, the phone barely stutters, the battery life holds, the camera is surprisingly good and I was recently able to play GTA San Andreas (Netflix version) on it with surprising smoothness. I haven't tried but I believe the phone won't have any trouble emulating lot of consoles from 2010-2020 era as well. A really good purchase I must say.
Likes it
I'm waiting for 10X optical. There are times where I borrow my wifes s21 Ultra to get a shot i just can't on iphone. Everything else isn't really needed. I haven't even upgraded to iOS17 on my 13. I also have a 14 Pro Max as my gamer but hate the island so i'm sticking to my 13 Pro as daily driver at least 1-2 more years.
Doesn’t like itHasn’t owned it
Samsung shoot itself in the foot as a phone manufacturer in the last 2 years. Battery life, forced apps, ads, and a pretty bad implementation of the Android OS while trying to sell the phone at the same price as the iPhone. The S24 ultra still has an ancient 3x cam that has been left unchanged since the S21 ultra. It's hard to compete when Apple has the Macbook + iPhone synergy/ecosystem advantage.