Galaxy S21 Ultra screen and camera could leave you with conflicted

If Samsung is launching the Galaxy S21 series in January, then it may not have had enough time to iterate over the phone's new features. That definitely seems to be the general tone of leaks so far, though that doesn't mean there won't be any meaningful changes. Some of those changes might be better received than others, like this pair of tips about the Galaxy S21 Ultra that just landed.

Screens with fast refresh rates have become the rage in the mobile market to the point that even Apple was expected to bring such a feature to the Apple 12. But even those that boast of 120Hz speeds have one important limitation. More often than not, they restrict that refresh rate to a phone's Full HD or 1080p resolution, even if the display is capable of a higher pixel density.

According to Ice universe, Samsung may have found a way to get around that limitation and support a 120Hz refresh rate at 2K resolution on the Galaxy S21 Ultra. The limitation isn't actually a technical one and some manufacturers even let users bypass that at their own expense. Presumably, this means that Samsung has figured out how to keep the feature from burning through the battery too quickly instead.

The same tipster, however, also brings a bit of bad news regarding the same model's camera. It will simply be a slightly improved version of its 108MP sensor to be known as the ISOCELL Bright HM3. The key detail here is that the Galaxy S21 Ultra will still come with a laser AF system, similar to the Galaxy Note 20.

This suggests that the new ISOCELL Vizion 33D time-of-flight (ToF) sensor it announced recently won't be making an appearance after all. It was promoted to address the limitations of and remove the need for laser AF. Given that the Galaxy S20 Ultra's 3D ToF was blamed for its autofocus problems, Samsung might have chosen to err on the side of caution for its successor.