The leaks are coming thick and fast, with Samsung expected to launch the Galaxy S21 in about a month. A new leak comes along as soon as we think we know everything about these phones, providing us with even more information. But while we’ve seen a lot of renders, it’s been much harder to come across imagery of real hardware. With the release of a hands-on first experience video featuring the Galaxy S21+, now that’s changing in a major way, and we’re all losing our minds.
Although the bottom corners of the phone are hidden behind some tape, this is still our best look yet at the front of the S21+. Samsung has somehow managed to shrink the bezels even further than the S20, and it looks as though they are almost completely symmetrical.
The ending on the back panel is something else to remember. Samsung has been making phones with ultra-glossy backs that gather fingerprints like there’s no tomorrow for years now. The Note20 Ultra changed things, but it was unclear whether the S21 would suit. The system with a matte finish seemed to display previous renders, but it was difficult to tell with any certainty. Thanks to this video, we can now be confident that for this color at least, the S21 leaves the glossy finish behind.
The filmmaker talks briefly about the images taken by the phone, reporting that colors such as blue and green do not look very normal. As Samsung is notorious for over-saturating images, that’s no surprise, but anyone hoping to change that here will be disappointed.
Although no numbers are given, the reviewer says he is more than happy with battery life, stating that the phone easily lasts a full day even with heavy video calling. This is likely helped by the S21+ getting a 4,800mAh battery, 300mAh larger than its predecessor.
Finally, a Geekbench test was passed on the handset, and this is where we were able to confirm that this is the S21+. Although the video refers to this phone as an S21, model number SM-G996U refers directly to the S21+, and the Snapdragon 888 is possibly a T-Mobile model.
The S21+ scored 1115 for single-core performance and 3326 for multi-core. The S20+ only scored 830 and 3087, respectively, for comparison. That’s a good upgrade, especially when you think that this is probably unfinished software that needs to be optimized before release. Let’s hope that the Exynos 2100 will equal its counterpart from Qualcomm.