Samsung Galaxy S21 Series Pre-orders begin on 22nd January

Samsung’s first Unpacked of 2021 went down with Samsung introducing a whole new line up of devices including the Galaxy S21 Series, a new set of Galaxy Buds Pro, and SmartTags. The whole lineup is expected to be available in Kenya. However, currently Samsung has only shared prices for the phones in the Galaxy S21 Lineup. Here are the prices:

• Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra (512GB) – KES. 170,000 for 512GB model and KES. 154,000 for 256GB model
• Samsung Galaxy S21 Plus – KES. 125,000
• Samsung Galaxy S21 Base – KES. 106,000 for 256GB model and KES. 100,000 for the 128GB model.

Preorders are expected, according to Samsung Kenya, to go live on January 22nd. Every successful pre-orders will be receiving bundled together with whichever phone they are looking to get, free Galaxy Buds Pro, and a free SmartTag. That’s a really good deal because the Galaxy Buds Pro on their own cost $199 (approx. KES. 22,000) while a SmartTag is $29 (approx. KES. 3,300). Having that bundled in to your pre-order is an unbeatable offer.

Let’s take a quick look at the new devices starting with the stuff you get for free when you pre-order.

Galaxy Buds Pro:

The Galaxy Buds Pro go back to the looks from the original Galaxy Buds, and Galaxy Buds Plus. However, they now come with Active Noise Cancellation (ANC) and immersive audio, when watching Dolby Atmos content, that’s somewhat similar to the Spatial Audio feature on Apple’s AirPods Pro. They can also act as a microphone for recording audio when shooting videos with your new Galaxy S21 phones. With ANC turned on Samsung promises 5hrs of playback, with 13hrs including the case. Without ANC, Samsung says, one will get 8hrs of playback and up to 20hrs from the case.

Galaxy SmartTags:

If you have something special say a dog, keys, a pet, a suitcase, or literally anything, you definitely don’t want to lose it and have no way of tracing it, and finding it. Samsung is introducing – ahead of the rumoured Apple AirTags – its own Tags built to take advantage of its Galaxy devices around the world. The company announced both the Galaxy SmartTag, and the SmartTag+, but only the former got a launch date with the latter expected to come at some point in the year.

Galaxy S21 Ultra:

This is the highest end device in the S21 Series. It features a 6.8-inch QHD+ display with a curved display, a quad-lens setup for the back cameras, a crazy 40MP front camera, and support for Samsung’s S-Pen. For some reason, Samsung has this year seen it wise to bring S-Pen support to the Galaxy S-series lineup. However, you need to get the S-Pen (and preferably its storage case) separately.

This year, only the S21 Ultra features the high-res 1440p display. The rest in the lineup max out at 1080p resolution. The display is really good, and supports variable refresh rates ranging from as low as 10Hz and as high as 120Hz depending on the scenarios.

The full specs are listed down below.

Galaxy S21 and Galaxy S21+

With the prices set for the S21, and S21 Plus, Samsung is definitely trying to undercut the iPhone 12 and 12 Pro which are similarly priced. The two devices are mostly the same apart from display sizes, at 6.2-inches, and 6.7-inches respectively, the battery sizes at 4000mAh and 4500mAh respectively, and the back finishes with the S21 having a plastic finish while the S21 Plus featuring a glass finish.

Both come with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 888 processor in the US, and the Exynos 2100 for the rest of the world. There’s 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. Unfortunately this year, there’s no microSD card slot on any of the devices.

What Samsung has removed from their devices this year:

1. No expandable storage
2. No charger in the box
3. No earphones in the box
4. And still no headphone jack.

Galaxy S21 Ultra Specifications and Price in Kenya: