The housing of the Samsung Galaxy M21 is quite plain: Sure, the M21 is well-built for a lower mid-range smartphone, but the design with its smooth, reflective back is not all that exciting.
One can say that with the M21 Samsung focused on the internals: For example, geolocation works very well, the proprietary OneUI launcher makes using the smartphone with smaller hands easier, because it often places intractable elements in the lower half of the screen. The camera system produces passable images with its high-resolution main sensor and its ultra wide-angle lens.
Because the M21 comes with Samsung’s proprietary SoC, which is neither powerful nor energy-efficient, competing smartphones offer a higher level of performance. The Samsung smartphone is able to eke good, but not outstanding, battery runtimes out of its huge 6000-mAh battery. Nevertheless, those who need a long-lasting smartphone cannot go wrong with the M21.
There is an NFC chip for contactless payments and the Wi-Fi module is quite fast. Users should find out what LTE bands are used in each country before traveling there, because the M21 does not support a lot of LTE frequency bands. The microphone has trouble picking up quiet voices, the speaker is not very good and the performance fluctuates under sustained load.
Read our extensive review of the Samsung Galaxy M21 to find out whether it is good enough for gaming and many other things related to it.