THE GALAXY A21s FULL REVIEW AND SPECIFICATIONS

Quick specs summary

Performance	Samsung Exynos 8 Octa
Storage	64 GB
Camera	48+8+2+2 MP
Battery	5000 mAh
Display	6.5″ (16.51 cm)
Ram	4 GB
Launch Date	June 17, 2020 (Official)

1. Introduction, Unboxing & first impression of  the Samsung Galaxy A21s

It is a troublesome job maintaining the Galaxy A series even for us, including for a daily user. there’s one simple rule though – the lower the model number, the cheaper the phone. and therefore the new Galaxy A21s isn’t an exception – it’s one very affordable smartphone with enough punch to form it a beautiful offer.

While many of the recent Galaxy A phones have Super AMOLED screens, the foremost affordable ones, well, cannot afford such sort of panels. That’s why the Galaxy A21s relies on a PLS TFT screen, and it’s 6.5″ one with basic 720p resolution. Samsung is powering the thing with its own Exynos 850 chip, which seems adequate on paper, but we are yet to ascertain how it’ll perform struggling .

The Galaxy A21s, additionally to its large screen, also can brag with a quad-camera on its back and a beefy 5,000mAh battery with fast charging support. The camera setup is what we usually see in mid-rangers, so we appreciate Samsung’s efforts to supply a touch little bit of everything – there’s a 48MP primary, an 8MP ultrawide shooter, a 2MP macro and a 2MP depth sensor.

This new Galaxy A21s seems like most up-to-date Galaxies and it runs the newest One UI 2.1. it’s a sequel to the Galaxy A21, which saw a particularly limited release, with a far better main camera and a bigger battery. The A21s was made available to tons more markets.

The Galaxy A21s is packed within a white book box. It contains a 15W charger and a USB-C cable. We are glad to ascertain Samsung bundling a quick charger with the phone; few companies do this for his or her budget offers. there’s no screen protector on the phone, neither is there a case inside the box.

Let’s take an in depth check out the Galaxy A21 specs sheet, shall we?

• Samsung Galaxy A21s specs:

General

Brand	Samsung
Model	Galaxy A21s
Release date	15th May 2020
Launched in India	Yes
Form factor	Touchscreen
Dimensions (mm)	163.60 x 75.30 x 8.90
Weight (g)	191.00
Battery capacity (mAh)	5000
Removable battery	No
Fast charging	Proprietary
Colours	White, Black, Blue

Display

Screen size (inches)	6.50
Touchscreen	Yes
Resolution	720×1600 pixels

Hardware

Processor	2GHz octa-core
Processor make	Samsung Exynos 850
RAM	4GB
Internal storage	64GB
Expandable storage	Yes
Expandable storage type	microSD
Expandable storage up to (GB)	512
Dedicated microSD slot	Yes

Camera

Rear camera	48-megapixel (f/2.0) + 8-megapixel (f/2.0) + 2-megapixel (f/2.4) + 2-megapixel (f/2.4)
Rear flash	Yes
Front camera	13-megapixel (f/2.2)

Software

Operating system	Android 10
Skin	One UI

Connectivity

Wi-Fi	Yes
Bluetooth	Yes, v 5.00
NFC	Yes
Headphones	3.5mm

Sensors

Fingerprint sensor

Yes

One thing is notably missing within the specs sheet – some sort of water protection. Yes, it may sound ridiculous for such a cheap phone to have one, but many other makers like Motorola, Realme, and Xiaomi are offering water-repellent coating or similar, which offers some peace of mind.

2. Design, build, handling

The Galaxy A21s is your average budget handset, but it doesn’t have to be cheap. Most of the front is covered by a mirror, while the frame and back are made of plastic. Samsung knows how to make a good-looking handset, though, and we’re not disappointed with how the A21s turned out to be.

3.   Design Build & Handling

The Galaxy A21s features a single bottom-firing unit, and it’s tuned well with good presentation of mid-tones and bass. everything sounds quiet.

One of the Galaxy A21s key features is that the 6.5″ PLS TFT screen with alittle punch-hole cutout round the top left. it’s rounded corners as all other recent displays do, and therefore the bezels are trendily thin.

The Galaxy A20 had an excellent AMOLED, except for the A20s, the maker decided to modify to LCDs, and this was later applied to the A21 duo also . Still, most of the A series comes with AMOLED screens, so you’re not without options if prefer that.

Back to the Galaxy A21s here, the screen looks okay for this class albeit the colours appear to be a touch washed-out. And you’ll expect some uneven backlighting round the cutout, but that’s to be expected for an LCD panel. Still, Samsung managed to stay this unevenness minimal as we’ve seen much worse from some costlier offers.

Inside the cutout may be a small 13MP selfie camera. The earpiece grille is above the screen, where the protective glass meets the plastic frame. there’s no notification LED light on the A21s, if you were wondering.

The frame is curved and made from solid plastic. it’s a grippy matte finish, which makes for enhanced grip, especially once you are shooting photos or watching movies on the go.

You’ll see all the basics across the frame-the triple-card slot on the left, the volume and control keys-on the right, while the bottom is the USB-C connector, the speaker, the 3.5 mm jack and the mouthpiece.

The back panel is still made of plastic, except now it has a few different coats of colour, and it is shiny. When the piece is not riddled in fingerprints and smudges, it looks very cool – there is a slight blue-purple-green gradient (depending on the reflecting light and the surroundings). But if you want to keep the nice look, you should know that the back needs a lot of washing.

The configuration of the quad-camera and the LED flash are on the back of the A21s, divided in a black rectangle. It’s just a little bit protruding, but it won’t make your phone flicker on your desk, at least not a lot.

So, this black rectangle accommodates the 48MP primary cam, the 8MP ultrawide shooter, the 2MP macro snapper, and therefore the 2MP depth sensor. A single-LED flash is here, too.

The fingerprint scanner is additionally on the rear of the Galaxy A21s. it’s always-on and impresses with speed and responsiveness. Registering fingerprints requires a couple of swipes, but you unlock it by simply tapping thereon – no swipes needed.

The Galaxy A21s is not any small phone, but it can’t be thereupon 6.5″ display. it’s rather thin, though, and really easy to figure with, especially with all the One UI improvements towards single-handed operations. Handling is okay, and therefore the grip is usually secure.

The phone lacks any kind of water resistance – there’s no repellent coating or rubber seals around the ports. Such treatment has been spreading lately among Samsung’s competitors, and that we hope to ascertain on the A series rather soon, too.

4.   Display, Camera and Audio Test

The Samsung Galaxy A21s employs an outsized 6.5-inch PLS TFT screen with 720p+ resolution and 20:9 ratio . it’s a punch-hole cutout round the top left corner to form way for the selfie camera and its corners are trendily rounded as was common .

The exact screen resolution is 1,600 x 720 pixels or about 270ppi. That’s not exactly sharp, but you’ll have a tough time finding pixelated content. For the budget class, 720p is that the acceptable resolution and it’s in line with most of the A21s competitors.

The maker of the protective glass on top of the LCD wasn’t specified by Samsung, though.

You will probably notice the uneven backlight round the punch hole at some point. it’s annoying only on bright backgrounds, but it had been to be expected because the LCD’s LED backlighting can’t be perfect.

The Samsung Galaxy A21s employs an outsized 6.5-inch PLS TFT screen with 720p+ resolution and 20:9 ratio . it’s a punch-hole cutout round the top left corner to form way for the selfie camera and its corners are trendily rounded as was common .

The exact screen resolution is 1,600 x 720 pixels or about 270ppi. That’s not exactly sharp, but you’ll have a tough time finding pixelated content. For the budget class, 720p is that the acceptable resolution and it’s in line with most of the A21s competitors.

The maker of the protective glass on top of the LCD wasn’t specified by Samsung, though.

You will probably notice the uneven backlight round the punch hole at some point. it’s annoying only on bright backgrounds, but it had been to be expected because the LCD’s LED backlighting can’t be perfect.

5.   Battery life and charging

The Samsung Galaxy A21s is powered by a huge 5,000 mAh Li-Po battery. It supports 15W quick charge and therefore the phone ships with such charger. Unfortunately, it’s not that ‘quick’ – it’ll replenish about 26% of its dead battery in 30 mins.

The Samsung Galaxy A21s posted an impressive endurance score of 119 hours in our battery life test. The phone shows impressive times across the board – talk time, video playback, and web browsing. The standby performance clothed rather good, too.Software and skin performance & benchmark

6. Software and Skin Performance & Benchmark

One UI 2.1 and Android 10

The Galaxy A21s runs Samsung’s latest software combo, consisting of Android 10 with OneUI 2.1. The Korean maker has managed to take care of a surprisingly consistent search for its custom skin for quite a while now, and existing Samsung users on older devices should feel right reception with the overall layout.

OneUI 2.1 has reached A level of maturity where simplicity, order, and good organization are a given. The Galaxy A21s greets you with straight-forward lockscreen and residential screens, with both Google and Yandex widgets able to rock.

If you’re into customization, OneUI is surprisingly malleable. The built-in themes capabilities are extensive and include an upscale online repository of both free and paid options. you’ll mix and match individual aspects of the planning , like icons. you’ll even have the lockscreen background change automatically.

The A21s lacks a few of features you’ll find on costlier and AMOLED-packing Galaxies – like the sting panels and lightning, also because the Always-on Display.

Navigation options, however, are all-inclusive. Out-of-the-box, the Galaxy A21s is about up with the old-school, familiar nav-bar. Gesture navigation is additionally available, and you get to select between the One UI 2 set of actions or return to the One UI 1 way of doing things. the previous is analogous to the present native Android 10 approach with a swipe-in from the edges for ‘Back’ and swipe-up from rock bottom for Home or task switcher. The old way is by swiping up from three separate areas on rock bottom that do what the on-screen buttons before them wont to do.

Dark mode may be a relatively new feature, a minimum of in its current, dynamic and customizable state. It skins UI elements in black and reminder dark gray and also invokes the dark modes of supported apps, which include the in-house ones also as most of the Google suite.

Biometrics on the Galaxy A21s include an optical fingerprint reader and basic camera-only face detection. The A21s may be a consistent performer when it involves fingerprint recognition and unlocks the phone during a flash.

It is worth noting you’ve got the power to speed-up face recognition at the expense of some security. The phone even allows you to override the need for open eyes for the unlock to figure .

As a results of a number of its extensive partnerships with third parties, like Microsoft, Samsung also throws during a few MS pre-loaded apps out of the box, to accompany its already above-average collection of in-house offerings. This could be considered bloat by Android purists, but if you don’t want to use them, Microsoft apps aren’t an excessive amount of in your face.

You’d be happy to find out that the Galaxy A21s also supports FM radio and therefore the FM app is pre-installed.

There also are features just like the Game Launcher and Game Booster just in case you would like to optimize your phone’s in-game behavior.

The Galaxy A21s have an auto-rotate screen,

Performance and benchmarks

The Galaxy A21s employs the Exynos 850 entry-level chipset by Samsung. It has an octa-core Cortex-A55 processor with all cores clocked at 2.0GHz.

The SoC offers a modest Mali-G52 MP1 GPU.

Finally, the Galaxy A21s is available in three different configurations – 3GB RAM + 32GB storage, 4GB RAM + 64GB storage, and even 6GB RAM + 64GB storage. There is a standalone microSD slot in case you need to expand your storage.

First, we ran GeekBench, and it’s no surprise that every other phone did better. The Galaxy A21s has no powerful cores (such as Cortex-A7x) whatsoever, and its Cortex-A55 CPU hit rock bottom of our CPU chart.

GeekBench 5.1 (multi-core)

Higher is better

GeekBench 5.1 (single-core)

Higher is better

• Huawei P40Lite 591
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 9S 570
• Realme 6i 388
• Xiaomi Redmi 9 362
• Sony Xperia 10 II 315
• Samsung Galaxy A41 309
• Samsung Galaxy A21s 184

The Galaxy A21s features a single-core Mali-G52 GPU, which is enough for an okay graphics performance under a 720p screen. Sure, it’s faraway from ideal, except for this budget class – it’s enough.

GFX 3.1 Manhattan (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Realme 6i 31
• Huawei P40 Lite 30
• Realme 6S 27
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 9S 26
• Samsung Galaxy A21s 19
• Samsung Galaxy A41 12
• Sony Xperia 10 II 10

GFX 3.1 Car scene (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Huawei P40 Lite 18
• Realme 6i 17
• Realme 6S16
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 9S 15
• Samsung Galaxy A21s 11
• Samsung Galaxy A41 6.9
• Sony Xperia 10 II 5.6

And then, once again, AnTuTu 8 places the Galaxy A21s at the bottom of our chart. Its CPU score was poor and coupled with mediocre graphics, storage, and UI performance-the final number turned out to be very low.

AnTuTu 8

Higher is better

• Huawei P40 Lite 325777
• Realme 6S 278982
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 9S 254000
• Realme 6i 202275
• Xiaomi Redmi 9 201829
• Sony Xperia 10 II 196545
• Samsung Galaxy A41 170044
• Samsung Galaxy A21s 107157

The Galaxy A21s biggest issue is that the weak processor. While an eight-core CPU is that the standard today, most if not all, competitors offer a minimum of two powerful cores like Cortex-A75. The underpowered CPU makes for uninspiring UI performance, and a few lag or stutter do happen once you begin populating those home screens and apps with content.

The single Mali-G52 GPU is enough for budget gaming under a 720p display. it’ll be faraway from smooth or stutter-free, but possible it’s . Lighter games may even do very well .

Performance-wise, the A21s isn’t up to par with the competition, crippled by its disappointing processor. Sure, it’s a budget phone, but we expected a touch more honestly, even during this class.

Wrap-up, pros, cons, Alternatives & Verdict

 

The Galaxy A21s seems like a decent offer-a wide 6.5 “screen, a very strong quad-camera, and a beefy battery that scored a very high durability rating. The phone costs around $200 for its 32 GB version, which is a budget-friendly price as far as Samsung goes.

Unfortunately, the entry-level sector is oversaturated with deals and needs to sell some spectacular buck packages. And the Galaxy A21s always seem insufficient relative to many of the cheap phones that are available on the shelves right now.

Alternatives

Realme is selling the 6i model in Europe for an equivalent price because the Galaxy A21s. it’s quite the match to the A21s – it’s an equivalent screen (though brighter), same quad-camera, and same battery, but trumps it with faster processor and graphics, and therefore the better part – you’d be getting it with 4GB RAM and 128GB storage.

Then there’s the Redmi 9, which costs €40 but the Galaxy and yet offers a way better and high-res display, a faster processor, plus it also can brag with a wire-free FM radio reception.

Or you can find the Redmi Note 9S for as low as €185. It improves on literally everything. The 9S features a water-repellent coating and one larger, brighter, and higher-res screen. Naturally, the 9S has faster hardware and more storage. this is often quite the upgrade for just €15. The Redmi Note 9S omits NFC support though, which maybe a deal-breaker for a few .

The Huawei P40 Lite is sort of cheap already, in fact, it cost just €190. If you’ll live without the Google stuff, then you’ll enjoy the foremost powerful phone during this bracket , with a superb camera and top-notch battery life.

Then there’s the Galaxy A41 by Samsung. It’s an AMOLED-packing phone with more powerful hardware, more storage, and better selfies. it’s a compact phone, yes, but you are doing get the high-quality screen and selfies for as little as €220.

Realme 6i • Xiaomi Redmi 9 • Xiaomi Redmi Note 9S • Huawei P40 lite • Samsung Galaxy A41

The biggest blow to the Galaxy A21s comes from Samsung itself, unfortunately. The 2019’s Galaxy A20 – the one to spawn the A20s, A21, and A21s, remains available, and you’ll pip out for €170 – same because the A21s. And this particular Samsung features an excellent AMOLED screen and a way more powerful processor and GPU. The tradeoff is that the macro and depth shooters, but it’s a tradeoff we’ll make during a heartbeat.

Samsung Galaxy A20

The verdict

Realme is selling the 6i model in Europe for an equivalent price because the Galaxy A21s. it’s quite the match to the A21s – it’s an equivalent screen (though brighter), same quad-camera, and same battery, but trumps it with faster processor and graphics, and therefore the better part – you’d be getting it with 4GB RAM and 128GB storage.

Then there’s the Redmi 9, which costs €40 but the Galaxy and yet offers a way better and high-res display, a faster processor, plus it also can brag with a wire-free FM radio reception.

Or you can find the Redmi Note 9S for as low as €185. It improves on literally everything. The 9S features a water-repellent coating and one larger, brighter, and higher-res screen. Naturally, the 9S has faster hardware and more storage. this is often quite the upgrade for just €15. The Redmi Note 9S omits NFC support though, which maybe a deal-breaker for a few .

The Huawei P40 Lite is sort of cheap already, in fact, it cost just €190. If you’ll live without the Google stuff, then you’ll enjoy the foremost powerful phone during this bracket , with a superb camera and top-notch battery life.

Then there’s the Galaxy A41 by Samsung. It’s an AMOLED-packing phone with more powerful hardware, more storage, and better selfies. it’s a compact phone, yes, but you are doing get the high-quality screen and selfies for as little as €220.

Realme 6i • Xiaomi Redmi 9 • Xiaomi Redmi Note 9S • Huawei P40 lite • Samsung Galaxy A41

The biggest blow to the Galaxy A21s comes from Samsung itself, unfortunately. The 2019’s Galaxy A20 – the one to spawn the A20s, A21, and A21s, remains available, and you’ll pip out for €170 – same because the A21s. And this particular Samsung features an excellent AMOLED screen and a way more powerful processor and GPU. The tradeoff is that the macro and depth shooters, but it’s a tradeoff we’ll make during a heartbeat.

Samsung Galaxy A20

Pros

• Large and wide display with small notch
• Excellent battery life
• Latest Android and One UI
• Versatile camera with great photos and videos for the class
• NFC, microSD, 3.5mm jack, FM radio

Cons

• Inadequate processor performance
• Washed-out screen colors
• The selfies could have been better
• Somewhat slow charging