Reviews of the Galaxy S21 Ultra and the base Galaxy S21 dropped yesterday, with reviewers spilling their thoughts on the S21 series.
Our team had the S21 Ultra and the base S21 on-hand for reviews, with the S21 Plus coming once the review team catch a breath.
The good news if you already bought one: the S21 Ultra is the real deal, and the base S21 is easily sufficient for most people.
S20 Ultra shade:
And, Pixel problems:
Galaxy S21 reviews from around the web did plenty of camera comparisons, against the likes of the iPhone 12 Pro Max, the S20, and so on.
And the Pixel line, including the latest Pixel 5.
⚡ Speed Test G: Galaxy S21 Ultra Snapdragon 888 vs Exynos 2100. Finally, the Qualcomm Snapdragon vs new Samsung Exynos showdown, and good news on the CPU front for Samsung, but the less said about the GPU fight the better (Android Authority).
🆕 Honor announced its first post-Huawei phone: the V40, an affordable flagship that ditches Kirin chipsets for Mediatek (Android Authority).
🎢 Uh-oh: The fate of LG’s rollable phone is apparently now ‘undecided’ (Android Authority).
🍎 Apple VR headset details: plans for a high-end, pricey and niche device ahead of its future AR glasses, and coming sometime in 2022? Reportedly codenamed N301, and not billed as a major seller, but a first entry (Bloomberg).
🔎 Google and Facebook are fighting with Australia’s government over a proposed code that would force them to pay publishers for linked news content in Google News or on Facebook’s NewsFeed. In a statement by Google’s local managing director today (blog.google), Google Australia threatened that it could close off its search engine to Australians, which has created massive news. The idea of my home country losing access to Google Search is pretty out there, and while there’s plenty of grandstanding around “finally making Big Tech pay up,” it all comes down to advertising, which Google and Facebook won with better products and better ability to target desired consumers. “[W]e don’t respond to threats,” was the Australian Prime Minister’s response to the threats (ABC). No one really thinks this will happen with all the chest-beating likely for nothing, because meanwhile in France: Google agrees to pay French publishers for news(CNBC).
🎈 Alphabet is shutting down Project Loon, its hot air balloon moonshot to beam speedy internet into remote parts of the world (TechCrunch). Some indications are it ran out of money; the general consensus is that once SpaceX put satellites for internet into space on reusable rockets, Project Loon was effectively second-best. Innovations out of the Loon project are in use in other ideas to get more remotely situated people online.
📈 Intel’s PC business is up 33 percent thanks to cheap notebooks, but Intel is firmly in the woods with a new CEO hoping to turn it around (Engadget).
💎 Elon Musk announces $100 million prize for new carbon capture tech, details next week. X Prize offered $20M for similar in 2018, awarding five winners (Engadget).
🤖 NASA has discovered dozens of fresh craters on Mars, using a new AI-based method that offers new ways to study planets in our solar system (Wired).
🎤 ELI5: “Why are voices so unique and distinguishable? Even a single word can let you recognize someone.” (r/explainlikeimfive).
The usual fun Reddit question topic is the Fun Friday this week, and this is a curler: “What is the equivalent of “Apple removed the 3.5mm jack” of your favorite products?” (r/askreddit).
Bonus: He made a viral Bernie meme site. Now he has to keep it going: “If I had known this was going to be the traffic, I would have made every single decision completely differently.” (Wired).
All the best,
Tristan Rayner, Senior Editor.