SAMSUNG Galaxy S21+ Plus 5G Factory Unlocked Android Cell Phone 128GB US Version Smartphone Pro-Grade Camera 8K Video 12MP High Res, Phantom Black

Give and take. Pros:Industry-leading processing power and firmware.Long firmware support life.Excellent battery life.Super nice display.Charges fast.Great speakers.Great glass used for the display and back.Should be more resistant to damage, in comparison to other Samsung phones (re: s20 FE) which use the brittle Gorilla Glass 3. And even if you break it, Samsung is the Honda of phones. Parts are always cheap, readily available, and as such repairs are cheaper and easier to access.Looks good while doing all of the above.Cons:The fingerprint reader is abysmal. I’m coming from a Razer Phone 2 which read and recognized my fingerprints near instantaneously, and very reliably. Sometimes this thing just refuses to recognize my prints, or takes a good second or so to do anything about it.This camera is years behind what it was hyped up to be. On my RP2 I was running a Gcam mod and generally getting better results, ESPECIALLY in night mode. I was kind of gutted when I discovered how inferior this camera array is. Lots of noise on the wide angle, tons of focus hunting regardless of which lens you’re using, just generally primitive by today’s standards. Is it a hardware issue or a software issue? No idea, but it’s unacceptable either way. Do NOT buy this phone for the cameras. Many cameras from a few years ago are better, especially with Gcam.The display, while beautiful, has pretty terrible viewing angles. Yet another problem I thought we left back in 2015.RAM is silly low, even by flagship standards from 2-3 years ago.Meh:Samsung is still lagging behind stock android in many ways. There are a lot of redundant and pointless apps/”features” that are clearly just Samsung trying to trick you into giving THEM your data, rather than Google; and doing it poorly. Customization is somehow better and worse than ROMs which are closer to stock. Sammy put a few decent features in here for customizing, but not really anything you couldn’t have gotten from a 3rd party. The launcher is terrible and restricting, but easy to replace. I personally use Microsoft Launcher with a bunch of 3rd party widgets, icon packs, etc.Conclusion:At the end of the day, this is a matter of price. When this phone was released for around $1k, it was insanely overpriced and not at all worth it. However, I snagged it on Prime Day for $699. At that price, I feel like it BARELY scapes past acceptable. $100 more than that and I would have returned it and waited to see what comes out later this year from other mfgs. The s21 line is bizarre to me. It blends top of the line features and tech with relatively archaic features and tech. I would not call this a flagship series, except in that Samsung does not have a higher-tiered line. This could have been much more polished, and it’s sad they cut corners and had some critical oversights. But again, if you can get this for almost half of what it cost at launch retail, it’s worth it. Don’t expect bleeding edge performance across the board, and you should be satisfied.

A Downgrade From the S20 Apparently. I’ve never had a flagship Samsung phone, so I don’t know what the standards are, but apparently this doesn’t meet them. I think it’s pretty cool though. It’s a big upgrade from my A51 that had a bad low light camera and was getting pretty slow though I only had it for a year. This phone was $600 more than the A51 and I don’t think it’s worth it, but I don’t think any phones worth almost or more than $1,000. The front camera is very bad sometimes because it sharpens pictures too much. But when it’s good, it’s like the back camera of the A51. The battery lasts 9-10 hours. The only things in the box are the sim card pin, those useless papers, a charger cord,, and the phone itself, which is ridiculous. You’ll have to buy all the accessories. You’ll need a USB-C charging block for the cord. It also doesn’t have a headphone jack if you didn’t know, so you’ll need Bluetooth earbuds or an adapter. I think it’s a good phone, but not worth all the money. You could likely get something from the A series or S20 series that’s the same, close to, or better than this for a lower price.

Excellent as 4G phone but connection to AT&T’s 5G network may not be reliable. Features are good but not significantly better than my 8Plus that I replaced with it in order to access 5G. But at first I thought it does not connect to AT&T’s 5G (and initially I fated only 1 star) and the AT&T technician at my store first replaced the SIM card to be sure that is not the issue, did general trouble-shooting and the phone is good, and then told me he frequently encounters phones purchased as ‘unlocked’ rather than locked by AT&T that will not connect to 5G. Amazon Customer Support was entirely clueless and unhelpful, telling e to contact Samsung. I did so and the Customer Service Rep was clueless so I asked for a Supervisor to return my call. She did so the next day and at first wanted me to send my phone to Samsung (10 day tunaround) because she said the unlocked phone should connect toeither AT&T or T-Mobile, but after some discussion she offered that I could also take it to my local Samsung authorized repair place (UBreakIFix) to reflash with latest software. I went there and on entering imy phone showed connection to 5G!! The signal in the AT&T store (Florida City, FL) apparently was not strong enough. So I recommend this phone – the only issue that I have with it is that how to take video is non-intuitive and obscure, so I have yet to succeed with anything longer than a few seconds.

Great. Got my girlfriend this one and it has been a great phone for over 2 years now

I sent it back because it was locked. A loved one owns one and absolutely loved it