DxOMark has finally released their camera review of Samsung’s latest, most high-end flagship. The Galaxy S21 Ultra went through the motions, but surprisingly, the review seems to think last year’s model actually holds up a little better. What gives?
Galaxy S21 Ultra Camera review
The Galaxy S21 Ultra managed to snag a respectable 121 score from DxOMark. This isn’t bad, but it does trail many Huawei phones, Apple’s current crop of flagship iPhone 12 models, and even last year’s Galaxy S20 Ultra.
The review itself is still good; there are key improvements with this year’s iteration, and Samsung is doing a much better job with camera software than Google right now. In fact, the actual camera portion of the review seemed to match the Galaxy S20 Ultra with both coming in at a 128 review score. Where Samsung lost points was in the sections that dealt with video and zoom capabilities, which might be expected considering the Galaxy S21 Ultra did technically use camera hardware that was better equipped for long zooming shots. The problem is it doesn’t seem to have been a solid tradeoff.
So, naturally, everyone has a lot of questions about this kind of review. Should you really be hanging on to your older phone for better photos, or is this a case of DxOMark just getting it wrong? There’s also a strong argument to be made about the current state of phone launches, where they’re just okay around release but subsequent patches and updates drastically improve performance, including camera quality. This review might look entirely different if it happened in two months.
Either way, fun to look at. Both phones are great, can’t complain with whichever one is in your pocket right now.
source: DxOMark
