I use both the S21 and S24 Ultra. I can't honestly say the S21 Ultra takes "better" photos but it's different mainly due to the ISPs (Exynos vs Snapdragon). I always preferred the colder look from Exynos so I admit to a bit of bias, however this is purely preferential. In terms of photo quality, even with 100x zoom, I find the S24 does do a better job at cleaning up an image over the S21 Ultra, despite having a technically inferior zoom lens. General photo's both perform great with very similar user experiences. I'd say image quality definitely goes to the S24 Ultra and video recording there's no contest, the S24 wins hands down. Having said all that, the S21 Ultra is still an excellent camera phone and holds up very well even today. My only issue with the S24 Ultras camera was really in zoom transitions, but other than that, it's an excellent camera system.