the samsung galaxy s21 might look like just a refreshed s20 but i think this is the most
interesting phone of the routine galaxy s updates this year it's less expensive than the ultra
and the plus but it still gets the upgraded in-display fingerprint sensor from qualcomm
some new display tech and the new snapdragon 8 processor with its integrated 5g modem
also from qualcomm one difference between the s21 and its siblings is a major upside
the back cover is made from plastic not glass plastic might not feel premium like glass but
it's fantastic for durability and repairability not only will it beat out glass in a drop test it
brings some nice flexibility too removing some of the difficulty of opening up the phone a heat pad
gives us controlled heat application to soften the adhesive holding the phone together this way we
don't accidentally melt the plastic back with our fiery heat gun the adhesive holding down the back
panel is a little tough but thanks to the flexible plastic inserting an opening pick is much easier
and since there's no glass to crack the opening process overall is pretty painless under the cover
well it's a samsung which means you're mostly looking at black plastic shields and some wireless
charging hardware and as always a slew of phillips screws stand between us and the next layer
after that it's connector city first the battery followed by the two board interconnect cables
and the newly disconnectable display cable it's a small change but that's nice to have instead
of the old integrated cable that would flop around and get in the way after those we can turn to the
motherboard and the rear cameras first the board the cameras come off with two connectors then
some off-screen d shielding yields the good stuff the new snapdragon 888 is hiding here
under eight gigabytes of samsung memory next to that is 128 gigabytes of samsung storage
and a murata wi-fi and bluetooth module the s21 camera setup is similar to the s20s on paper
both have 12 megapixel ultra wide and standard wide cameras and a 64 megapixel telephoto
the s21's camera upgrades come from the new image signal processor in the snapdragon 8 which
works behind the scenes to enhance these cameras performance back in the phone the daughter board
is held down by a few screws and is home to the usb-c port and the sim tray it's nice to have both
of these parts on a separate board that will be less expensive to replace should one of them break
as you might expect the battery well is a tar pit a nice isopropyl alcohol bath takes the edge off
the adhesive and then our heavy duty suction cup takes care of the rest underneath the battery you
can already see that new second gen fingerprint sensor more on that in a sec though the battery is
a 15.52 watt hour cell from samsung just slightly more potent than the s20s 15.44 watt hour battery
before heading to the display we fish out two 5g millimeter wave antennas hiding in the aluminum
frame the heat pad comes out again to help remove the display removing galaxy phone displays is
never easy but the s21 has a couple advantages the fully detachable display cable makes this process
slightly less fussy and the flat screen means you're less likely to shadow the glass as you
fight through the adhesive as always though the fragile oled isn't protected behind that glass
so even if you're extremely careful you'll likely end up with a busted panel amidst all the copper
behind the display is that new fingerprint sensor this is qualcomm's second gen 3d sonic sensor
it should be about 50 faster than the first gen sensor in the s20 devices with a higher success
rate thanks to its larger surface area and ability to capture more data so how repairable is the
samsung galaxy s21 it scores a 4 out of 10 on our repair ability scale its plastic rear cover makes
opening the phone a bit less painful and like most galaxy phones all the fasteners are identical
phillips screws many of its components are modular and can be replaced individually but the two most
common repairs screen and battery are still unnecessarily sticky and complicated and indeed
it looks like a screen replacement is exactly what we're going to need here since thoroughly
disassembling this phone has killed the display if only we knew of a company that sells new ones
hmm
you