Can a budget Samsung with a huge battery and quad camera still compete when the processor is this weak?
Design, Display, and Hardware Basics
The Galaxy A21s is Samsung’s budget A-series workhorse, built around a 6.5-inch PLS TFT LCD with a 20:9 aspect ratio and 1600 x 720 resolution (about 270ppi). It uses a punch-hole cutout in the top-left corner for the selfie camera and rounded display corners to match current design trends.
This is a plastic phone through and through: plastic body, plastic frame, and no water protection. You’re looking at 163.7 x 75.3 x 8.9 mm and 192g, so it’s not small, but that size does give you a lot of screen and a 5,000mAh battery.
Brightness is respectable for a budget LCD: 408 nits in manual mode and up to 491 nits in auto. Contrast sits around 1300:1, which is fine, but you do see uneven backlight around the punch hole on bright backgrounds.
Color accuracy is where this panel stumbles. There are no color or contrast profiles to tweak, and measurements show an average deltaE of 6.8 with a max deviation of 10.5. Whites and grays skew blue, and overall the image looks muted and washed-out. Minimum brightness drops to 4.8 nits, good enough for night reading, but nothing special.
Hardware-wise, the A21s is powered by Samsung’s own Exynos 850 (8nm), with an octa-core Cortex-A55 CPU clocked at 2.0GHz and a Mali-G52 MP1 GPU. RAM and storage options are 3GB/32GB, 4GB/64GB, and 6GB/64GB, with eMMC 5.1 storage and a dedicated microSD slot for expansion.
There’s a rear-mounted fingerprint scanner, NFC, FM radio with RDS and recording, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and the usual sensor set (accelerometer, gyro, proximity, compass). Charging and data go through USB-C, and Samsung includes a 15W charger in the box.
Software: One UI 2.1 on Android 10
On the software side, the Galaxy A21s runs Android 10 with One UI 2.1, so you’re getting Samsung’s then-latest skin rather than some stripped-down budget fork. Visually it’s consistent with other recent Galaxy devices, so anyone coming from an older Samsung should feel at home.
The lockscreen and homescreens are straightforward, with both Google and Yandex widgets preloaded. One UI’s theming engine is fully present: you can grab free or paid themes from Samsung’s online catalog and mix and match elements like icons and wallpapers. Lockscreen backgrounds can rotate automatically if you want some variety.
Some higher-end Samsung software perks are missing, mostly tied to the absence of AMOLED. You don’t get Edge panels, Edge lighting, or Always-On Display. Those omissions are expected at this price, but they do make the UI feel a bit more basic if you’re used to a Galaxy with all the extras.
Navigation options are flexible. Out of the box, you get the classic three-button nav-bar, but you can switch to gestures. Samsung offers both the newer Android 10-style gestures (swipe in from the sides for Back, swipe up from the bottom for Home and multitasking) and the older One UI 1 gesture layout with three swipe zones at the bottom.
Dark mode is present in its modern, system-level form. It applies dark themes to UI elements, triggers dark modes in supported apps (Samsung’s own suite plus most Google apps and even the GSMArena app), and supports auto-scheduling based on sunrise/sunset or custom times.
Biometrics include a rear fingerprint reader and basic, camera-only face unlock. The fingerprint scanner is consistently fast. Face unlock can be made quicker by relaxing security checks, including the ability to disable the open-eyes requirement. That’s convenient, but obviously less secure.
Samsung also preloads several Microsoft apps alongside its own, the result of its partnerships. Purists may call this bloat, but the apps aren’t overly intrusive and can be ignored if you don’t need them.
On the extras front, there’s FM radio with a preinstalled app, plus Samsung’s Game Launcher and Game Booster. These give you per-game tweaks and a central hub for your titles, which is useful on a device where performance management matters.
Performance: Exynos 850 Is the Weak Link
The Exynos 850 is the real bottleneck. It’s an octa-core Cortex-A55-only design—no performance cores like Cortex-A75 or A76—paired with a single-core Mali-G52 MP1 GPU. On paper it looks energy-efficient; in benchmarks it lands at the bottom of the pack.
In GeekBench 5.1 multi-core, the Galaxy A21s scores around 1100. Competitors like the Huawei P40 Lite and Redmi Note 9S hit 1862 and 1785 respectively. Even the Redmi 9, itself a budget device, manages 1325. Single-core is rougher: the A21s posts 184, far behind the P40 Lite’s 591 or the Redmi Note 9S’s 570.
GPU tests show the same trend. In GFXBench 3.1 Manhattan (onscreen), the A21s scores 19fps; the P40 Lite hits 30fps and the Redmi Note 9S 26fps. In the Car Scene test it reaches 11fps versus 18fps and 15fps for those same rivals.
AnTuTu 8 puts the A21s at 107,157 overall. That’s significantly lower than phones clustered in the 200k range, like the Redmi 9 (201,829) or Realme 6i (202,275), and miles behind the P40 Lite (325,777).
In real-world use, that translates into sluggish UI performance once you start loading up your home screens with widgets and apps. Basic navigation works, but lag and stutter show up as you multitask, scroll heavier feeds, or switch between apps quickly.
For gaming, the single-core Mali-G52 plus 720p screen are just enough. Lighter games are playable and can run decently; heavier 3D titles will be far from smooth and may need reduced graphics settings. It’s usable, but unimpressive, especially when cheaper or similarly priced phones offer far more headroom.
Camera System: Versatile and Respectable for the Price
Samsung equips the Galaxy A21s with a quad rear camera setup:
- 48MP main: Samsung ISOCELL GM2 (S5KGM2), 1/2.0″ sensor, 0.8µm pixels, f/2.0 lens, Quad Bayer, PDAF, default 12MP output.
- 8MP ultrawide: 1/4.0″ sensor, 1.12µm pixels, f/2.2 lens, fixed focus.
- 2MP macro: f/2.4 lens, fixed focus at 4cm.
- 2MP depth sensor: f/2.4.
The selfie camera is a 13MP f/2.2 unit with fixed focus. Samsung’s familiar “wide” toggle defaults to a narrower field of view, which yields an 8MP crop; switching to the wider setting gets you full 13MP selfies.
The camera app is One UI standard: a horizontally scrollable mode carousel, vertical swipes to switch front/rear cameras, and a settings icon in the top-left for controlling video resolution, grid lines, location tags, and other basics. You can rearrange or hide modes, but there’s no separate settings screen for photo vs. video since the options list is short.
One limitation: there’s no Night Mode of any kind.
Photo Quality
The main 48MP camera outputs 12MP shots by default using pixel binning. These photos aren’t the most detailed you’ll see, but they’re strong in other areas: sharpening is restrained, colors are accurate, contrast is excellent, and noise is kept very low. Auto HDR helps deliver commendable dynamic range when needed, though some users may prefer to toggle it off if they dislike the HDR “boosted” look.
There is a 48MP mode hidden in the aspect ratio options. Using it doesn’t meaningfully improve detail; shots look mediocre at full resolution, file sizes balloon, and capture takes longer. Downscaling those images back to 12MP gives little to no benefit, so there’s not much reason to use 48MP mode here.
The 8MP ultrawide camera delivers better-than-expected results for this segment. Detail is “good enough,” colors are on point, dynamic range is okay, and contrast is strong. It’s not particularly sharp edge-to-edge, but it’s still competitive and in some cases ahead of what more expensive devices have managed with low-end ultrawide hardware.
Portraits use the main sensor plus the 2MP depth camera. Results are solid for a budget phone: plenty of detail, strong contrast, and subject separation that’s “good enough” in most situations. The background blur looks fairly natural given the price bracket.
The 2MP macro camera is very situational. With its fixed focus at 4cm, you need to nail distance to get sharp shots, which isn’t trivial in everyday use. When you do, you can capture detailed close-ups of subjects like insects or banknotes, with accurate colors and decent contrast.
Selfies are a weak spot. The 13MP images (in full-width mode) are average at best, with limited detail, washed-out colors, and mediocre contrast. Portrait selfies rely on software-only separation and look just okay; edge detection isn’t great, and the blur is used heavily to hide that.
Low-light performance from the main camera is decent for this class. Shots taken around sunset look particularly good, with enough detail and saturated colors. As light drops further, noise increases and the noise reduction becomes aggressive, smearing finer details. The photos are still usable for social media, but you won’t be pixel-peeping.
Low-light ultrawide shots are considerably worse: detail is poor and images quickly become borderline unusable as light gets scarce, and again, there’s no Night Mode to rescue them.
Video Quality
Video tops out at 1080p 30fps on both the main and ultrawide cameras, with no electronic stabilization.
Clips are encoded in AVC at around 17 Mb/s with 256 kb/s 48 kHz stereo AAC audio inside an MP4 container.
Despite the resolution cap, 1080p footage from the main camera looks excellent for the price: plenty of detail, very good sharpness, accurate colors, natural dynamic range, and strong contrast. Ultrawide footage is similarly sharp with realistic color but slightly lower dynamic range.
Given how many budget phones struggle even with 1080p, the A21s’s video quality is a relative strength—assuming you can live without 4K and stabilization.
Battery, Charging, and Audio
Battery life is the Galaxy A21s’s strongest asset. The 5,000mAh cell, combined with the efficient Exynos 850 and 720p LCD, delivers an endurance rating of 119 hours in GSMArena’s testing. Talk time, web browsing, and video playback scores are all impressive, and standby drain is low.
The 15W charger included in the box doesn’t feel particularly fast by 2020+ standards. It takes about 30 minutes to push the battery from 0% to 26%. You’re trading raw performance for longevity here: this is a phone that lasts a long time per charge but doesn’t refill quickly.
Audio comes from a single bottom-firing speaker. Tuning is decent, with a good representation of mids and some bass presence, but overall loudness is rated “Average” in seven-track playback tests. In practice, games, music, and videos sound quieter than many competitors, so you may find yourself at or near max volume more often.
Samsung has dropped its formal audio output quality testing, but historically most phones at this level have been good enough for casual listening through the 3.5mm jack, which the A21s still offers.
How It Stacks Up Against Rivals
On spec sheets and charts, the Galaxy A21s is frequently outclassed by rivals at similar or even lower prices.
Against Realme’s 6i, which sells at the same approximate price in Europe, the A21s matches it on screen size, quad-camera concept, and battery capacity. The Realme 6i pushes ahead with a brighter display, faster processor and GPU, and a base config of 4GB RAM and 128GB storage—double the A21s’s entry-level storage.
The Redmi 9 undercuts the A21s by about €40 while offering a sharper, higher-resolution display and a more powerful processor. It also supports wire-free FM radio, which some users might find more practical than the A21s’s wired FM solution.
Step up slightly in price and the Redmi Note 9S appears around €185. For roughly €15 more than the A21s’s 32GB variant, you get a water-repellent coating, a larger and brighter higher-res display, faster hardware, and more storage. The main omission on the Note 9S is NFC, which could be a deal-breaker if you rely on contactless payments.
The Huawei P40 Lite, at around €190, delivers by far the most powerful hardware in this rough bracket, plus a strong camera and excellent battery life. The trade-off is lack of Google services, which is a hard stop for many buyers.
Even inside Samsung’s own lineup, the A21s faces friendly fire. The Galaxy A41 costs a bit more (~€220) but brings an AMOLED display, faster hardware, more storage, and better selfie performance in a more compact body.
The harshest comparison is with Samsung’s own 2019 Galaxy A20, still available around the same €170 as the A21s. The A20 offers a Super AMOLED screen and a significantly more capable processor and GPU. You lose the dedicated macro and depth cameras, but for many users that’s a trade they’d gladly make.
Verdict: A Good Phone Waiting on a Better Price
The Galaxy A21s is a mixed bag. On the plus side, you get:
- A large 6.5-inch display (even if it’s only 720p and washed-out).
- Excellent battery life from a 5,000mAh cell.
- Mature One UI 2.1 on Android 10 with full theming and navigation flexibility.
- A versatile quad-camera setup that takes very good daylight photos and solid 1080p video for this class.
- NFC, microSD, 3.5mm jack, and FM radio all included.
On the minus side, the Exynos 850 drags the entire experience down. CPU and GPU performance are clearly a tier below much of the competition, UI fluidity suffers once you load the phone up, and gaming is strictly “budget acceptable.” The display’s color inaccuracy and washed-out look, slow-ish charging, and mediocre selfies don’t help.
In isolation, the A21s is a perfectly serviceable budget phone with standout battery life and a capable main camera. In context, surrounded by more aggressive Realme and Xiaomi offerings—and even overshadowed by older Samsung hardware at the same price—it becomes a tough sell at its launch pricing.
The conclusion from the source review is pretty straightforward: the Galaxy A21s doesn’t need a hardware fix, it needs a discount. With a significant price drop, its compromises become easier to swallow and its strengths more appealing. Until then, even Samsung’s own Galaxy A20 looks like a smarter buy for the same money.
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