The Galaxy M21 is a chunky phone, but surprisingly not as hefty or heavy as you might imagine, given what’s inside it. The 6,000mAh battery is obviously this smartphone’s main selling feature, so much so that people are joking about it being a power bank with some phone coming along for the ride.

It’s easy to see who it’s aimed at: those who hate to be bothered with charging all the time and who don’t want to be caught out with the battery running out at an inconvenient moment.

Naturally, the big battery will take longer than usual to charge so be prepared for about two hours of charging — or just get into the overnight charging habit. If you make thousands of calls, you’ll be pleased to know this device isn’t so big and broad as to be difficult to grip. It’s thicker than most, for sure, but even so doesn’t have bad ergonomics. It’s not too slippery and you can do without a case quite well.

The M21 is not special looking really. Our unit is a midnight blue and while the specific shade isn’t one we see often these days, it’s not remarkable. At the same time it’s not bad looking. On the back you see a square camera compartment, the Samsung logo towards the bottom, and a physical fingerprint sensor in the middle — it’s placed well and is easily reachable and works fast. Many users do in fact still prefer this category of sensors but unfortunately they’re becoming rare.

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This phone does have a very slightly dated look. It has a small but prominent notch which I suppose one will get used to seeing after a while. It’s this that makes it look a little behind the times. The 6.4-inch 1080x2340 px, 403ppi Super AMOLED screen is quite bright and nice enough. I took a violent dislike to the wallpapers on the device, so headed straight to the themes collection to get new ones.

The unit we received was working with 4GB RAM and 64GB ROM, which is not much in these days, of course, but I guess is okay for the price. Another variant has a 6GB RAM and 128GB storage. There’s a microSD card option. The phone works with an Exynos 7 Octa 9611 and runs Android 10 and OneUI. The phone is smooth enough, though no speed monster, not that you can expect it to be. The M21 does what you need it to, but just not blazingly fast or anything. There’s a ton of annoying notifications and prompts and, if you don’t watch it, a lot of unwanted apps. You can offload most of them, but some time needs to be spent subduing notifications.

The main 48MP camera does pretty well for itself in good light. You get detail, dynamic range, and good colour representation. The selfie camera is a 20MP and is pretty good if you tone down all beautification features. The other two rear companion cameras are an 8MP ultra wide and a 5MP depth sensor. These are just sort of there. Low light photos are not great. For the casual everyday photo and selfie enthusiast who doesn’t have a nice fat budget to spend on phones, it’s fine, except that it also competes with its own M series phones and with some of Realme’s such as the Realme 6 just recently launched.

Price: ₹13,199 and ₹15,499

Pros: Good ergonomics despite huge battery, bright screen, retains 3.5mm headphone jack, good physical fingerprint sensor, good camera in proper light, reasonable value for money

Cons: Lots of spammy notifications, unwanted apps will load if you miss a step, unremarkable design, non premium look and feel

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