AI-powered Samsung flagship backed with strong hardware!!
With every Galaxy S series launch event, huge anticipation is created worldwide regarding which newer technology will be incorporated within the Galaxy S series launched yearly. This year it is no different. Samsung has launched its Galaxy S24 series with the introduction of AI which has been the biggest buzzword in the smartphone industry and will be the preceding factor over everything in a smartphone.
Samsung is now aiming to make AI mainstream for all of its upcoming smartphones, so here with the Galaxy S24 Ultra we will look at those AI features. Last year we had the Galaxy S23 Ultra (Review) which was a solid flagship from Samsung and its specifications were just the best in class. Still, this time around with the newer Galaxy S24 Ultra, there are a few improvements in some aspects along with the added AI features.
The Galaxy S24 Ultra has a premium build and design, a flagship Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset, a 5000mAh battery, a slightly improved camera setup, a 50MP periscope telephoto camera with 5x optical zoom, etc. Another big highlight is that now Samsung is promising 7 years of software updates which is just insane. So considering all these factors how good is the Galaxy S24 Ultra?
Let's find out in the full review.
Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra Design:
The Galaxy S24 Ultra brings a solid build and design with it just like its predecessor i.e. Galaxy S23 Ultra but brings a few improvements. The smartphone has a glass sandwich design with the front glass now Corning Gorilla Glass Armor which is more durable compared to last year's Gorilla Glass Victus 2 and is also drop and scratch-resistant.
Coming to the back, the design remains similar to that of its predecessor where there are five cameras along with an LED flashlight since there is no camera module. The camera module is surrounded by metallic rings that look premium. The back has a frosted finish that looks premium and does not catch fingerprints. Just like the front, the back of the smartphone also gets Corning Gorilla Glass Armor for protection.
Just like its predecessor, this smartphone also has an IP68 rating which makes it dust and water-resistant which means it can survive below 1.5 meters under fresh water for 30 minutes. Now coming to the sides, the Galaxy S24 Ultra is slightly slimmer at 6.3mm compared to the 6.8mm thickness of the Galaxy S23 Ultra. The weight is around 234 grams which remains unchanged.
Towards the sides, the big difference is that now with the Galaxy S24 Ultra, you get a side frame made of titanium which feels premium compared to the Armor aluminium frame on its predecessor. On the right side, there is the power button along with the volume buttons whereas the left side remains completely cleaner. On the top, there is a secondary noise-cancelling microphone only along with a secondary speaker.
At the bottom, the layout remains similar with a USB Type-C port supporting USB 3.1 speeds, a dual SIM card slot, a primary loudspeaker grille, a primary microphone, and a silo to keep the S-Pen. The S-Pen design remains similar but the clicker is reshaped and sticks out slightly while kept inside the silo. There is no 3.5mm headphone jack and also no microSD card slot for storage expansion.
The Galaxy S24 Ultra is present in different colours - Titanium Black, Gray, Violet, Blue, Green, and Orange. On the front, there is a single punch hole located at the top at the centre and the display is now a flatter one instead of the slightly curved as present in its predecessor. Overall, the build and design feel premium and look stunning.
Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra Display:
The Galaxy S24 Ultra sports a similar display as its predecessor i.e. Galaxy S23 Ultra which means it houses a 6.8-inches Quad HD+ (1440x3120 pixels) 2X Dynamic AMOLED display with a screen-to-body ratio of 19.5:9. Since it is an AMOLED display, you get deep blues and blacks along with great viewing angles. The AMOLED display has a 120Hz refresh rate and continues to bring the LTPO technology.
The refresh rate mechanism remains similar to that of its predecessor where there are two options: Standard and Adaptive. Standard mode lets the refresh rate remain constant at 60Hz; if you want the best battery life, this will be the best option for the display. On the other hand, the Adaptive mode refreshes the display between 1Hz and 120Hz depending on the content.
Suppose you are watching a 30fps video, the display refreshes at 30Hz whereas if you playing games or scrolling through webpages, the display scales to 120Hz and in static conditions while the smartphone is at idle it scales to 1Hz which is really good. Combined with the 120Hz refresh rate, you get a 240Hz touch sampling rate for faster touch responses.
In terms of display brightness, the display of the Galaxy S24 Ultra can reach a peak brightness of 2600nits which is really good and in normal high brightness mode, the display can reach around 1500nits of brightness. Under direct sunlight, you get good visibility, but sometimes there is some issue with the auto-brightness, which takes some time to work in different conditions.
The display has two different settings to choose from - Vivid and Natural where Vivid option provides you punchier colours on the display with deep blues and blacks and also lets you change the colour temperature from a warmer to a cooler tone. The Natural tone, on the other hand, provides realistic colours on the display which look lighter and closer to natural.
Like its predecessor, the Galaxy S24 Ultra also gets an ultrasonic fingerprint scanner that works very fast and is more reliable compared to the in-display fingerprint scanners out there. There is no support for Dolby Vision but you do get support for HDR10 and HDR10+ on YouTube and also on OTT platforms as Widevine L1 is present.
Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra Performance:
The Galaxy S24 Ultra is powered by this year's most powerful and flagship chipset i.e. the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 which is based on an efficient 4nm process. Like the Galaxy S23 Ultra, the same is the case with the Galaxy S24 Ultra here also as Samsung has clocked the prime Cortex-X4 core at 3.4 GHz instead of 3.3GHz on other Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 powered smartphones.
The rest of the configuration remains similar compared to other Snapdragon 8 Gen 3-powered smartphones. There is the powerful Adreno 750 GPU which does the duty and this chipset handles all the tasks easily whatever is thrown at it. When it comes to gaming, the smartphone can easily handle all the heavy games like BGMI, Call Of Duty Mobile, etc. without any frame drops at the highest graphics settings.
In BGMI, the smartphone ran smoothly at HDR graphics with Extreme frame rates which is the highest graphics settings and after a longer gameplay, the back of the smartphone does feel slightly warmer but still, it was negligible here there were no frame drops noticed which was really good. Similar results were achieved when the graphics were set to Smooth and frame rates to 90fps.
In the CPU throttling test, the smartphone could achieve around 80-85 per cent of sustained performance without much throttling which is really good. Even the benchmark scores came out really good. In terms of network connectivity, you get good support for carrier aggregation and also you have all bands of 5G. The Galaxy S24 Ultra is available in three different variants - 256GB/512GB/1TB storage having UFS 4.0 speeds all of them having 16GB LPDDR5 RAM configuration.
Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra Software:
The Galaxy S24 Ultra runs on the latest OneUI 6.1.1 which is based on Android 14 out of the box. The software version here remains similar to OneUI 6.1 but now there are a plethora of AI features which you can use daily. The look and feel are slightly newer with the newer-looking quick toggles, accessing the quick settings by swiping from the top right corner, AOD shows the lock screen widgets and wallpaper, etc.
Some of the AI features are Circle To Search, a newer Writing Assitant which works for almost all languages, Photomoji where you can crop your own image and send it as an emoji, Live Translate, Samsung's own Interpreter, Generative Edit inside the gallery application, Generative Wallpapers, Instant Slow-Mo, and there is a lot of AI stuff inside other applications like Samsung Notes, Samsung Internet, etc.
The Circle To Search is one of the very useful AI tools which is enabled by simply tapping and holding the Home button and this lets you select anything on the display by scribbling, tapping, or circling on an object and get to know the search results for that object which is very handy. You can use the combination of text search as well as image search and ask additional questions for more results.
So it applies to any application or website. Like for example there is an image of a food item so you can simply just circle that food item and get additional information by using both image and text. The newer Writing Assistant can be enabled under Settings --> Advanced Intelligence --> Chat Translation which should be turned on. It works in multiple languages out there.
There is also spelling and grammar check in the sentences and chat translation lets you translate that piece of text that you are writing. The writing style tool also phrases the method of writing in both formal as well as and informal ways. Photomoji as the name suggests lets the AI automatically detect the object from the background and create an emoji out of it which is shareable anywhere.
There is now the Live Translate in the phone application where the incoming voice of any person speaking in any language gets transcribed and translated to the particular text and also it is read louder and works vice-versa as well. You can also mute your/other's translation and hear only the translation. This feature is available for most of the languages like Chinese, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, etc.
This feature works along with the new Interpreter which lets your display divide into two halves where the top half has the push-to-talk option and the second half shows the translation along with the voice. Now the AI features are also incorporated inside the Samsung Notes application which is a note-taking application as it now can translate texts, correct spelling and grammar mistakes, and even summarize the notes.
Samsung Internet also works well with translation for all webpages in different languages like Hindi, Japanese, Spanish, etc. Even the Voice Recorder can do translation and can sync with the Samsung Notes for those transcribed recordings. Another significant AI feature is the Generative Edit inside the gallery application that lets you do object detection where you just need a single tap inside the image.
By doing a single tap, you can select the object in the image and move it around, scale, tilt or delete it from the background which is quite a handy feature. It also removes the shadows and reflections from the images. For example, if the object inside the image is tilted, then you can adjust the angle of the frame and it will show the missing part generated to look properly in the image.
The images using the Generative AI get a watermark on the image to show the AI's nature. Then there is the Generative Wallpapers where Samsung lets you choose the contents by specifying things like colour, image contents, and different moods letting you generate a wallpaper which also gets a watermark. One remarkable feature is the Instant Slow-Mo which works really well here.
Suppose you have taken a 30fps video and you can tap and hold anywhere in the video by slowing the motion where the AI increases the frame rates thus letting you see the normal video as a slow-motion video. You can even adjust the speed of it and save that video. But all these things only work for the Gallery application and these videos work for more than 720p resolution videos only.
Another most important of all is the S-Pen which provides a variety of functionalities like Quick Memo, Screen-Off Memo, Air View, Smart Select, etc. which do come in handy in most of the daily activities. Samsung DeX and Samsung Pay are some of the Samsung applications that do come in handy as DeX lets you use your smartphone as a control for desktop/or transfer content from smartphone to computer.
Other than these AI features, all other things work smoothly whether transitions or animations throughout the UI. There are a few bloatware present which can be uninstalled easily. In terms of software updates, Samsung made a huge statement by providing the Galaxy S24 series with another seven years of Android updates and security patches which makes it the best even surpassing Google out there in the market.
Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra Cameras:
The Galaxy S24 Ultra sports an almost a similar camera setup as that of its predecessor i.e. Galaxy S23 Ultra except that now instead of the 10MP periscopic telephoto camera with 10x optical zoom present on the Galaxy S23 Ultra, you are getting a 50MP periscopic telephoto camera with 5x optical zoom with the Galaxy S24 Ultra.
This may look a bit of a downgrade from 10x to 5x optical zoom, but on its own, this camera is a good upgrade. The other cameras remain similar which include a 200MP f/1.7 ISOCELL HP2 sensor for the main camera with support for OIS, 12MP f/2.2 Sony IMX563 sensor for the ultrawide camera, 10MP f/2.4 telephoto camera with support for 3x optical zoom and has OIS. There is a 12MP f/2.2 front camera for selfies.
The primary camera does take images with sharper details and great dynamic range. The colours look saturated but compared to last year's Galaxy S23 Ultra, they do look a bit less saturated and more natural. The white balance is handled very well and there is almost no noise present in the background. But there is some amount of oversharpening at times which can be fixed with a future software update.
All these image results have been captured using the normal mode where the images are saved at 50MP. There is also the 200MP mode which you can use and the images come out with sharper details and have good dynamic range but colours do look slightly artificial and there is some noise present in the background. However, it does apply a crop to reduce the noise but at times it is useful for getting finer details.
At night, using the Photo Mode, the images from the primary camera come out with excellent details that look sharper and have a wider dynamic range. The colours look saturated and there is no oversharpening present in the background. The noise is less in the background and also the exposure is well handled which is more balanced compared to the ones on the Galaxy S23 Ultra.
You can also use the dedicated Night Mode for slightly better results but there is not much of a difference compared to the regular Photo Mode except that here you do get slightly finer details, noise is almost reduced and the contrast in the images does get increased compared to the ones shot using the regular Photo Mode.
The images from the 12MP ultrawide camera capture sharper details and have great dynamic range. The colours look saturated with no oversharpening in the background. The noise remains lower and also the white balance is well maintained. This is the only Samsung smartphone having autofocus in ts ultrawide camera which makes it easier to click macro images with sharper details and good dynamic range.
However, there is very little distortion around the edges which is negligible. At night, this ultrawide camera performs well as you get sharper details and great dynamic range. The colour looks saturated without any kind of oversharpening and the exposure is well maintained. All these results are using the Photo Mode whereas with the Night Mode turned on, the details look slightly crisper and noise is less in the background.
During the day, the 10MP telephoto camera does an excellent job in terms of details that look sharper and have a great dynamic range with almost no noise in the background. The colours look oversaturated but if you go beyond 3x zoom, the results still remain good. The newer 50MP telephoto camera also does a great job in terms of details which looks sharper and has great dynamic range.
The 5x optical zoom works really well and the colours look saturated without any oversharpening in the background. The noise is very minimal and the white balance is well maintained. All images come out with good details up to 10x zoom but beyond 10x zoom, the details look slightly softer and there is some noise present in the background but that is negligible.
At night, the 10MP telephoto camera does a great job in terms of details that look sharper and have a wider dynamic range. The exposure in low-light areas is handled very well and there is no loss of detail in the shadows. The noise is very low in the background but colours tend to look slightly muted. Using the Night Mode does make the details look sharper but as a result, introduces some oversharpening at times.
The newer 50MP telephoto camera with 5x optical zoom also produces images with sharper details and good dynamic range. The colours look natural without any kind of oversharpening in the background. Also, the exposure is well handled in low-lighting areas and these results have been taken using the Photo Mode but with Night Mode turned on, you get barely any noise in the background and details look slightly sharper.
The 50MP telephoto camera takes some very good macro shots with sharper details, good dynamic range, and saturated colours. The presence of autofocus does ensure that you go very close to the subject unlike the fixed-focus macro cameras out there. In terms of portraits, both the telephoto camera takes some very good portraits with sharper details and have great dynamic range.
The edge detection is perfect and the level of background blur is well-maintained. Even you can use the main camera for portraits which do result in sharper details but the noise is slightly on the higher side compared to the ones taken from both the telephoto cameras. The portraits from the telephoto camera do provide a slightly better level of background blur compared to the main camera but still, the difference is negligible.
The front camera remains similar to that of its predecessor where the 12MP camera does a good job in terms of details that look sharper and have a wider dynamic range. The noise is also less in the background but the field of view is not so wider. The skin tones look natural without any kind of oversharpening and the white balance is handled very well.
In terms of videos, both the primary as well as the 50MP telephoto cameras of the Galaxy S24 Ultra can record 8K videos at 30fps only but all cameras can record 4K videos at 60fps. The video footage from the primary camera at 8K came out with sharper details and good dynamic range but there was some noise present in the background. The colours look saturated though.
At 4K at 60fps, the videos came out with excellent details, a wider dynamic range, and almost no noise in the background. Similar were the results during the night also. Just like the primary camera, both telephoto cameras performed really well in terms of videos with sharper details, excellent dynamic range, and saturated colours. The noise was very less in the background.
The videos from the ultrawide camera came out with sharper details and had good dynamic range but there was some distortion present along with some noise in the background. The colours were saturated and similar were the results during the night also. The videos from the selfie camera came out with sharper details and good dynamic range with less noise but it could have been done with a slightly larger field of view.
Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra Battery Life:
The Galaxy S24 Ultra sports a similar-sized 5000mAh battery just like its predecessor Combined with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset and the newer OneUI 6.1.1, the battery life is a slight improvement over the Galaxy S23 Ultra. With normal usage that includes streaming social media, scrolling through webpages, playing games casually for 1-2 hours, etc. the smartphone easily lasts for two days and a half with some battery left.
With heavy usage that includes playing heavy games like BGMI, and Call Of Duty Mobile for 3-4 hours, taking videos for a longer period using the camera, running benchmarks multiple times, rendering videos, etc. the smartphone easily lasts for a day and a half with some charge left which is great. The standard screen-on time came around 5-6 hours with heavy usage and 7-7.5 hours with normal usage.
In terms of charging, the Galaxy S24 Ultra like all other Galaxy S series smartphones does not come with a charger inside the box. It usually supports 45W fast charging but you need to buy that Samsung proprietary charger separately which takes the smartphone from 0 to 100 per cent in around an hour and five minutes which is good but not the fastest around.
Other than that, there is also support for 15W fast wireless charging which works well but still is very slow by today's standards if you compare it with smartphones like the OnePlus 12 (Review) which does support 50W fast wireless charging and also comes with a 80W fast charger inside the box. There is also support for reverse wireless charging which comes in handy if you place any wireless charging supported device on the back of the smartphone.
Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra Audio Quality:
The Galaxy S24 Ultra sports a dual stereo speaker setup that has an excellent level of bass and treble and the sound at the highest loudness levels sounds really good. There is no 3.5mm headphone jack present which is a slight disappointment. The presence of Dolby Atmos enhances the sound output further while you are watching videos or listening to music.
Verdict:
Overall, the Galaxy S24 Ultra is a solid product from Samsung as it packs the best of everything just like its predecessor like a solid build and design, an excellent AMOLED display along with stereo speakers for multi-media consumption, a powerful Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset for daily activities of which most importantly gaming, a solid battery life and a great set of cameras for both videos and images.
However, the biggest outstanding thing is the introduction of AI features into the smartphone which makes it a lot easier to use and definitely lifts the ambience for Samsung thus showing the hype of technology and surely many upcoming Samsung smartphones will be following this path. Then there is the software update policy which is the best in the smartphone industry as of now thus offering another 7 years of OS updates.
But in a few areas, things could have been better. The videos from the ultrawide camera could have been better, especially during low-light needs to be improved, then there is no charger supplied within the box and charging speeds could have been better thus matching other competitors out there. Well if you compare its predecessor i.e. the Galaxy S23 Ultra, there is not much of a big upgrade.
The Galaxy S24 Ultra brings some minor improvements like a slightly powerful chipset, a newer telephoto camera, better software update policy, and the introduction of AI features which will surely trickle down to many Samsung smartphones in future. The presence of the newer telephoto camera will not make much of a difference as telephoto cameras on both smartphones are equally good in most aspects.
So if you are someone who already has a Galaxy S23 Ultra, you may not need to upgrade to the Galaxy S24 Ultra unless you want that longer software update policy and the newer telephoto camera as still today the Galaxy S23 Ultra holds a strong proposition in the market and prices have reduced also thus making a valuable option to consider.
But if you are someone who wants a solid flagship smartphone with no corners cut, then this is the best premium flagship out there in the market as it improves in every aspect with each of its iterations thus continuing to be the king of all flagships in the market.
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