A fair number of Galaxy S21 owners are complaining about poor battery life on Reddit and a few other forums, and the February 2021 security patch that began rolling out last week might be the culprit.
All the customer complaints come from people who own the Exynos variant, though it should be stressed that the issue most likely stems from software rather than Samsung's new hardware. And according to some users, the battery might be draining at an accelerated rate due to an issue with cellular connectivity. According to affected Galaxy S21 owners, battery life falls within normal parameters when flight mode is enabled.
There seem to be a lot of complaints pertaining to the Galaxy S21 and the Galaxy S21+, in particular, while the Galaxy S21 Ultra is barely mentioned. Sadly, we can't confirm exactly how this issue occurs and whether it affects the Galaxy S21 Ultra at all, as none of our Exynos-powered Galaxy S21 models have been hit by this problem.
As mentioned in our Galaxy S21+ review, battery life isn't out of this world but it's decent. The Galaxy S21 Ultra left a much more positive impression with battery life that's surprisingly good even with 120Hz enabled. The base Galaxy S21 model, however, has average battery life that fails to impress.
Samsung is aware of the problems and is working on a fix
Samsung is apparently aware of these unwanted symptoms affecting the Galaxy S21 series post-update, and according to Norwegian tech blog Tek.no, the company is working on a new firmware update that should address the problems.
The company hasn't revealed a timeframe but it's possible that the upcoming March 2021 security patch will fix these newfound battery life issues, assuming a hotfix won't be released sooner. For the time being, we advise Galaxy S21 owners to avoid the February 2021 security patch if possible until the problems clear up.
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