The release of a new flagship phone always leads to a lot of debate, particularly among the biggest companies in the space, Apple and Samsung. The latter of those companies has released their latest line of phones, The Samsung Galaxy S24 series, with a couple of key hardware changes as well as some major software changes that drew a lot of eyes when they were announced. I got my hands on the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, and there is a lot to discuss.
I talked a bit about the specs of the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra relative to its predecessor in my article discussing Samsung’s Galaxy AI, most of which being generational updates to things like the chipset and GPU with a lot of things staying the same, including the size and overall look, but I wanted to highlight a couple of the differences.
The first difference is Samsung’s shift from aluminum to titanium for the construction of the body. The titanium Galaxy S24 Ultra is more capable of dissipating the internal heat from the phone, so while the surface of the phone can feel a little hotter (which I only noticed after shooting a lot of videos), it’s because it is helping keep the internals stay cool.
The Samsung Galaxy S24 also upgraded to a new glass for their screen, the Corning Gorilla Glass Armor, which Samsung claims to be their most scratch-resistant ever. But the glass does something more than that, which I found quite exciting. The glass is up to 75% less reflective than any glass they have previously used, which, combined with the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra’s vastly improved screen brightness (now at 2600 nits), makes this phone so easy to see even in harsh daylight. I’ve used this in all conditions (even with the brightness not all the way up) and have never had a challenge seeing my screen outdoors.
“The titanium Galaxy S24 Ultra is more capable of dissipating the internal heat from the phone.”
The last major change to the Galaxy S24 Ultra from the S23 is the change to the periscope telephoto lens, which was a 10MP lens with 10x optical zoom and is now a 50MP lens with 5x optical zoom. On paper, a lot of people reacted to this change as a downgrade, which I understand, but the massive increase in resolution for this lens opens up a lot more possibilities than the old lens offered. You can shoot from the same distance and edit either in the phone’s editing app or on your computer, with even more room to adjust and still get a more detailed photo.
What’s going on inside the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, however, is where the biggest news is. There have been a number of improvements to the overall user experience as well as a new complement of features that make the phone feel brand new.
First of all, the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra’s UI is the cleanest in the Galaxy line’s history, with beautifully organized menus, smooth animations in and out of your apps and rapid response to your commands. The uniformity of the menus with the rounded corners and the intuitive layout has been very popular amongst people upon their first reactions to this device. The animations when transitioning between apps and menus are incredibly smooth and, while some people may not even perceive it, interpret it as an even more responsive device than it already is.
Your tactile experience is also greatly improved on the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra. You’ll notice that the haptics are greatly improved on the phone, giving you the most immediate feedback possible. Swiping through content or scrolling down an article has never been more smooth either. The screen reacts like you have your thumb on a physical item in front of you, and the speed and distance that you move your thumb affect how far and how fast everything moves, and your more subtle motions will be met with an equal response, so the slightest movement of your thumb won’t switch you to another screen when you didn’t want it to.
“Battery life has greatly improved on the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra despite the exact same battery size.”
Battery life has greatly improved on the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra despite the exact same battery size. Samsung has managed to optimize the phone significantly. On a day of my usual heavy use, consisting of taking videos and photos, a lot of gaming and the sadly usual amount of doom scrolling TikTok, only once did I go to bed with less than 40% of battery life remaining, having never plugged it in during the day.
That one time when it went below was a day when I was doing a lot of screen capture for a YouTube Video that I was working on, plus a bunch of additional videos, and going to bed two hours later than normal. Even then, there was 21% of battery life left on the phone.
The camera app and functionality has also improved. The UI looks more or less the same but has an intuitive layout that makes it easy to find any feature or setting that you may be looking for. Actually taking pictures has also gotten easier because that lag between when you hit the shutter and when the photo is taken is all but gone. Pictures snap a lot faster on the Galaxy S24 Ultra than its predecessor (or any of its predecessors, for that matter), making it easier to capture that special moment.
“The Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra’s UI is the cleanest in the Galaxy line’s history.”
Aside from the change to a single lens, the images feel similar in terms of the camera’s overall quality. There are still modes that allow you to take great portraits, panoramas and food shots, but some small improvements are worth noting. The processing the phone does to photos, especially in low light, seems better than the S23 Ultra, and low-light video is also less grainy than its predecessor. It’s not perfect by any means, and some will argue that the iPhone still has the dominant camera for these circumstances (which I find hard to argue with), but the improvement over its predecessor is definitely noticeable.
Using the 100x zoom is fun, but the quality isn’t going to knock your socks off. The quality isn’t where you want it to be when it’s touted as a major feature of the camera. The 200MP lens takes fantastically detailed photos. The zoom is limited to 10x, but you get a lot of detail out of it. I took another picture of my cat and not only could I see the separation of her hair when I zoomed in a lot, but I could see details of the reflection in her eyes, and I could see my light and computer monitor clearly.
Samsung is touting the Galaxy S24 Ultra’s performance as a big improvement for gamers. I do a lot of gaming, but not a lot with games that tend to be particular resource hogs. So I downloaded Genshin Impact and Real Racing 3 (the latter of which is listed as quite the resource-heavy game), and the performance was spectacular. There was no lag, the graphics were top-notch, and the animation was smooth. Real Racing 3 was also very responsive to the gyroscopic steering in a way that I haven’t experienced with even a lot of Nintendo Switch games.
The most widely publicized feature of the phone, though, is the introduction of Samsung’s Galaxy AI. The multifaceted Galaxy AI covers functions all over the phone, from helping improve your writing to text or audio translation and a number of camera functions. I am not using a lot of these on a day-to-day basis as I’ve had no specific need for some of them, but I have played with them all, and a few have become a part of my everyday experience. The functions you have access to are:
- Improved Voice recording, with transcription that separates the speakers.
- Magic Compose, allowing you to change your text based on various writing styles.
- Summarizing the article you are reading to pick out the important points.
- Summarizing your own notes in the notes app.
- Interpreter to convert your text into any language.
- Live Translate, letting you speak to someone on the phone in their language.
- AI Photo editing, allowing you to move, resize or remove objects and even rotate the photo with the blank areas getting filled in.
- Instant Slow Mo, letting you take a normal-speed video and makes it slow motion by inserting AI generated frames.
- Circle to Search, letting you take any photo (or whatever your lens sees) and circle any part of the photo, prompting a search for whatever you circled.
The features I have been using the most are Circle to Search, Instant Slo-Mo and the summarizing functions for my notes and articles. Circle to Search has been a game changer for me, letting me look up anything I can see or have taken a picture of in mere seconds. I’ve looked up flowers, identified dog breeds and located items that I was shopping for at speeds that would have had earlier generations cry witchcraft.
The summarizing function has also been massive for me because, when I take notes, it is often a stream of consciousness that can be a lot to go through in the future. Summarize those notes and organize them in a way that makes them much easier for you to reference. As far as articles go, so many of them can take a long time to get to the point or just straight-up bury the point in a mountain of prose. The ability to get Galaxy AI to pull out the pertinent information and present it to me in a more meaningful way has been great.
It is worth pointing out that the Galaxy AI features will likely be available on the S23 series as soon as they upgrade to the version that the 24 series is currently on and that the features are only available for free until the end of 2025, after which, it will likely come with a monthly charge if you choose to use it. The reason for another drawback of Galaxy AI is that the work is being done with the use of Samsung’s servers, meaning that it is not available natively on the phone.
The Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra is available now and ranges from $1299.99 USD for the 256GB version to $1659.99 USD for the 1TB version, but keep an eye out for deals during this early part of the release. Samsung’s website offers a pretty hefty trade-in value for certain phones.
But the question is whether the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra is worth the upgrade if you already have the S23. I can tell you that the Galaxy S24 Ultra (as an owner of a S23 Ultra) is a far bigger improvement than even the specs would suggest. Samsung is also offering 7 years of updates, making it a phone that can last you a long time, whereas the S23 series is nearing the end of its support, finishing on the Android OS and OneUI versions that the S24 is launching on, so you can future-proof yourself for some time.
If, however, you are just looking for some of the new features and are plenty happy with your device, wait until the update and see how it performs for you. If everything else I have talked about has piqued your interest, the trade in would be well worth it.
