Samsung Galaxy S21 Launch Live Updates: Galaxy S21 Ultra with 108MP Quad Cameras Launched Alongside S21, S21 Plus

Aaaaand, that's that. There are all your announcements for Galaxy Unpacked 2021. Drop in to our site for all details about the new phones. That's it for tonight, see ya!

Samsung announces an expanded partnership with Google, from "communications to connectivity".

Samsung has also synced a digital encrypted key that you can soon use to lock cars and your home, provided lockmakers launch them in time.

Samsung says if your EV is low on charge on your way home, it will intelligently direct you to the nearest charging station. In reality, may the universe help you if you run out of battery in your car on your way home after a tiring day.

Now, Google Nest smart home gadgets are compatible with SmartThings. These are the final few announcements, while we really wait for local prices and sale dates.

And finally, the announcement you expected – THEY HAVE REMOVED THE CHARGER FROM THE BOX. But on the good side, they'll sell their adapters if you want one at a lower price. Expect this to be a thing through 2021, which you'll read about in December this year.

So, five devices launched today:

1. Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro ($299)
2. Samsung Galaxy SmartTag+ ($29.99+)
3. Samsung Galaxy S21 ($799+)
4. Samsung Galaxy S21+ ($999+)
5. Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra ($1,199+)

That should be it for today, I guess.

And here you are, the full lowdown on what the Galaxy S21 Ultra features.

The launch date is January 29, and the price is $1,199 (Rs 88,000 approx.). India deets coming up soon.

Finally, the Galaxy S21 Ultra gets the S-Pen support. If that's not enough for you, Samsung has a new stylus too – the Samsung S-Pen 'Pro'.

And now, about the display. This adaptive display can switch from 10Hz to 120Hz depending on what you're seeing. It has a 6.8-inch QHD+ Dynamic AMOLED 2x screen with 1500nits peak brightness. That's as much as we expected from a Galaxy S flagship.

So... just so you know, the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G's black colour variant is black. Really, really black. So black that you didn't even know any other black was actually black. So... yeah, it's black. I mean Phantom Black. *insert eye roll*

And now we are being lectured about the colour black. Yep, that's right. After talking about actually interesting optical physics, Samsung is talking about the colour black almost in Samuel L. Jackson's voice. Wonder how black is this black? Here's a photo:

In terms of video, ALL cameras on the S21 Ultra can shoot 4K at 60fps (including the front one). You can also shoot 8K at 30fps. Samsung also claimed that they are so good at shooting videos on phone that they are creating a new thing altogether – mobile film-making. That's.. not true, is it? Mobile filmmaking has been there for a long time!

The 12MP ultra-wide unit now gets autofocus, which can use sensor cropping for advanced macro photography. That was the natural course of innovation here. Good of Samsung to get it out there.

As the leaks stated before, the Galaxy S21 Ultra's 10x zoom lens is a double-folded lens that has two-step periscope zoom mechanism. It also retains software-processed 100x "space zoom". That, of course, uses AI and electronic stabilisation.

The Galaxy S21 Ultra will also come with 12-bit HDR photography, which itself will combine two 10-bit RAW images into a combined, compressed 12-bit HDR result for retaining maximum dynamic range. That's interesting, and on paper, certainly impressive.

The new 108MP sensor will apparently feature remosaicing, which is a new camera technology found in more and more cameras worth their salt. The sensor of course uses "nona-binning", or combining nine pixels into one. There's also, of course, a multi-frame processing-based AI night mode for computational photography.

And here's the full configuration of the Galaxy S21 Ultra cameras, including a laser autofocus unit. There's a 108MP main unit, a 12MP ultra-wide unit, and two 10MP telephoto units.

Before we get into this one, here's all the details about the Galaxy S21 and S21+.

And now, the Big Daddy's showtime is here: the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G.

Prices and availability, ladies and gents. The Galaxy S21 costs $799 (Rs 58,500 approx.), and Galaxy S21+ costs $999 (Rs 73,000 approx.). Both devices available January 29 in USA. India deets to follow.

You get an AI-based 'object eraser' to remove unwanted people from photo backgrounds. This is baked into the default photo editor

Of course, it also gets a game booster mode, and seamless switching between tablets, phones and laptops. It'll be interesting to see what this does to foldable phones.

Now, for software – here's One UI 3. Right off the bat, it has a more modular and rounded design language. And of course, more modular widgets to add to customisability. There's also notification grouping here, and a general overhaul of dynamic adaptability of the software.

Now for partnerships, beginning with Xbox Game Pass to stream Xbox games on the Galaxy S series flagships. Samsung is also partnering with Unity to bring 'adaptive performance' to the phones, which will apparently offer better performance and cooler temperatures.

Now, the Galaxy S21's processor – it is the Exynos 2100, which is based on the 5nm process. It has a 20 percent faster CPU, a 30 percent faster GPU and 2x faster AI co-processor. It also gets a security focused physical tamper-proof memory chip called Knox Vault.

It also gets a "director's view", which enables all the cameras on the phone to offer live video feed and letting you switch actively.

Single Take comes to the Galaxy S21 series. In our experience, its results have been rather mixed so far. Maybe it'll improve now?

The Galaxy S21 series gets 8K video, which also gets an 8K Video Snap feature to take 33MP stills while recording the videos.