Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra Review: The smartest smartphone Samsung has ever made

Pros
– Arguably the best display in a smartphone
– Solid, top-notch performance
– Galaxy AI has some awesome features
– All-rounder camera setup
– Solid design, now perfected
– Titanium frame with flatter, grippier sides
– Long software update commitment
– Features of the S-Pen suite
– Tons of interesting AI features to explore

Cons
– 45W wired charging at this price point
– AI features like Chat Assist and Call Assist new fine-tuning

Price: Starts at Rs 1,29,999 for the 12GB+256GB variant
Rating: 4.75/5

The Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra was hands down one of the best, most rounded Android smartphones to get launched in 2023. Following it up with something that would be interesting and new enough to entice phone enthusiasts and tech nerds was always going to be a tall order. And yet, despite keeping the same design, and bringing a select few updates to the specifications, Samsung has managed to catch everyone’s attention with its latest flagship, the Galaxy S24 Ultra. It truly is, an earnest way to reimagine what a smartphone is exactly.

The Galaxy S24 Ultra is not only among the first devices to get the all-new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, it is also the first device to come with a bunch of generative AI features. Even though you get some seriously powerful hardware, and possibly the best display that has ever been used on a smartphone, along with a more practical camera set-up, this year, it’s all about Galaxy AI.

Not only does Samsung’s Galaxy AI set the tone for what flagship devices will entail this year, it also brings forth a new way to think about smartphones. It makes smartphones, smarter.

Still, is it enough to warrant people to upgrade their devices?

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra 5G review: The design
The Galaxy S24 Ultra bears a striking resemblance to the Galaxy S23 Ultra, but this time, it features a flat display. You get the same camera module, and identical antenna markings on the frame. However, a few notable differences set the S24 Ultra apart.

One significant change is Samsung replacing the aluminium frame with a titanium one. The titanium frame not only feels warmer to the touch but is more scratch-resistant and has a more visually appealing texture. We also get flatter sides now, which combined with the grippier titanium, makes the phone feel much more secure in the hand. The flattening of the screen’s edges also makes holding the phone easier and using the S Pen much more convenient.

Samsung claims to have minimized the bezels around the display by 42 per cent. This reduction is very evident in the bottom bezel, which is almost non-existent with the S24 Ultra. All of this, makes the actual screen look much larger. Both the front and back feature Corning’s Gorilla Armor glass. For colour options, we get Titanium Gray, Titanium Black and Titanium Violet. You also get two online exclusive options, Titanium Blue and Titanium Green.

Like the S23 Ultra, the S24 Ultra gets a tank-like solid build quality and feels premium to hold. Still, because of the device’s size, using it with one hand may be a bit of a task for most people. Having said that, those switching from larger devices won’t find it problematic.

The placement of the volume rockers and power buttons remains the same as last year, but now, they feel more solid. The slightly flatter edges of the S24 Ultra also contribute to a flatter overall profile.

At the bottom, we see a speaker grille housing one of the speakers, alongside the USB Type-C port, a SIM tray, along with the S-Pen.

The rear panel of the S24 Ultra features the same camera and flash setup that we saw in the S23 Ultra. We get a floating setup rather than a separate camera island. Because of how the lenses are positioned, the device doesn’t sit flat on a surface, and rocks about when tapped.

All in all, the S24 Ultra has basically the same design as last year’s S23 Ultra, albeit with a few minor tweaks here and there. It still looks as premium as a phone can. Plus, the new Titanium frame, with its flatter sides, makes the phone feel much more solid, premium and easy to grip in the hand.

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra 5G review: The display
While it may seem that not a lot has changed as far as the display is concerned, there are some minor tweaks here and there which make the S24 Ultra’s display the best display that we have seen in a smartphone. That’s a tall order considering that the S23 Ultra had one of the best displays in a smartphone in 2023.

The Galaxy S24 Ultra features Samsung’s Dynamic AMOLED display, measuring 6.8 inches. While the display still has an adaptive refresh rate that goes up to 120Hz, this time, it can go as low as 1Hz instead of last year’s 24Hz. Also new is the peak brightness, which is up from 1750 nits to 2600 nits. Naturally, then, the display still supports HDR10+. We also get a slight resolution bump at 1440X3120 pixels.

In terms of content consumption, the S24 Ultra provides a delightful experience, especially with HDR and Dolby Vision content. The Dynamic AMOLED display includes Samsung’s Vision Booster, covering 100 per cent of the mobile colour volume within the DCI-P3 colour range. Even in direct sunlight, there were no issues with visibility.

Samsung is using an LTPO AMOLED panel for improved power efficiency, particularly with the always-on mode. This allows the refresh rate to drop as low as 1Hz in certain situations.

There’s also a new antireflective, anti-scratch panel from Corning called Gorilla Armor. This means that the screen is more impervious to scratches and scuffs in general day-to-day use, even if you tend to be extremely rough with your devices.

The display really stands out for its impressive specifications. However, the technical details of the display don’t truly capture the essence of the screen. It is, by far, one of the finest displays on any smartphone currently available. The colours out of the panel are vibrant, rich, and saturated colours with inky blacks. All of this ensures that the images and texts that we see on the display are sharp and crisp.

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra 5G review: The camera
The Galaxy S24 Ultra, like its predecessor, the S23 Ultra, comes with a powerful camera setup. It includes a 200MP ISOCELL HP2 camera, a 12MP wide-angle camera, and a 10MP telephoto camera for 3x optical zoom. The notable change is the new 50MP periscope telephoto camera that offers 5x optical zoom, replacing the 10MP periscope telephoto sensor from the S23 Ultra. This upgrade will allow users to sharper images at a shorter zoom level, and is more practical in my opinion.

Samsung has also increased the size of the pixels in the S24 Ultra’s sensor, allowing it to capture more light. The S24 Ultra produces vibrant and detailed photos suitable for social media when using the main and wide-angle cameras. Even in low light, the camera performs decently, with excellent sharpness, exposure, and detail in various lighting conditions.

The Galaxy S24 Ultra’s overall image quality is superior to the S23 Ultra, particularly in rendering more natural skin tones and colours. While the S24 Ultra maintains Samsung’s characteristic oversaturation, it’s a choice that many users appreciate for creating eye-catching images, that can be posted to social media without much processing.

The camera fo the S24 Ultra also offers various video features, including UHD resolution recording with zoom capabilities, 8K video at 30fps, and UHD slow-motion video at 120fps.

The portrait mode of the S24 Ultra provides flexibility with four levels of magnification, allowing users to capture different perspectives without moving around.

At the front, the phone features a 12MP wide-angle camera with a 26mm focal length, equipped with Dual Pixel PDAF technology. This camera supports dual video calls, Auto-HDR, HDR10+ for enhanced dynamic range, and video recording capabilities including 4K at 30/60 fps, as well as full HD 1080p at 30 fps. The portrait mode in the selfie camera, while not always perfect in terms of cropping and focus, generally produces impressive results.

Inside the S24 Ultra is Samsung’s ProVisual Engine, Super HDR, and a range of Galaxy AI editing tools to enhance photos during and after shooting, but more on the AI features later.

Click here for some sample photos taken using the Galaxy S24 Ultra.

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra 5G review: The performance, software experience and UI
The Galaxy S24 Ultra stands out as one of the fastest Android smartphones in the market by a mile. While other devices use Snapdragon’s 8 Gen 3 SoC, the S24 Ultra boasts a custom 8 Gen 3 chipset which is overclocked and tuned specifically for this phone.

Our test unit featured 12GB of LPDDR5X RAM and 256GB of UFS 4.0 internal storage. Notably, even the base variant of the S24 Ultra comes with 12GB of RAM, which is a welcome change. In basic everyday tasks, the S24 Ultra handles anything and everything you throw at it without breaking a sweat.

We put our test unit through a gauntlet of demanding games, and extensive multitasking and not once did it show any signs of slowing down. In a bid to push the device to its limits, we browsed the internet extensively, capturing numerous 200MP photos and 8K videos, watching HDR videos at pretty high brightness and playing demanding games like BGMI and Asphalt 9 at the highest settings.

Throughout these challenges, the S24 Ultra remained cool and maintained consistent performance. In gaming, we were consistently getting a frame rate of 60 fps.

The phone excels in handling demanding games and even supports ray tracing at a hardware level, although very few games currently utilise this feature as of now. Even after playing games like Asphalt 9: Legends for over 30 minutes, the device hardly warms up, thanks to Samsung’s redesigned and significantly larger vapour chamber for effective cooling. Samsung claims that the vapour chamber is about 92 per cent larger this time around and it shows.

Running on OneUI 6.1 based on Android 14, the Galaxy S24 Ultra offers a plethora of features that will take ages to test and try out. Moreover, we chose to focus on the new AI features for this review rather than the features of OneUI 6.1.

Let’s put it this way — the device’s performance is consistently incredible, making it an excellent all-around choice for users who want a smartphone capable of handling a wide range of tasks without making any compromises.

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra 5G review: AI Features
This is where things get really interesting with the S24 Ultra. Samsung has released a ton of AI features with the S24 series in what they are calling Galaxy AI, which, for the most part, is powered by Google’s Gemini AI. Most of the AI features that we see in Galaxy AI will be a part of other flagship Android phones this year as and when they get released, but there’s no denying the fact that Samsung beat most other manufacturers to the punch.

While some people may find the AI features in Galaxy AI a bit gimmicky, I feel that we truly are at the cusp of something new, a new way to think about our smartphones.

For example, Google’s latest innovation, the Circle to Search feature, is a game-changer, integrating the best aspects of Google Lens with a simple gesture to seamlessly search for a particular element across any photos, video or anything else that is on your screen

We also have a bunch of AI features that work with text and sound in the form of Chat Assist, Call Assist and Live Translate. The Live Translate feature, for example, offers instant translation for both voice and text in 13 languages, facilitating seamless communication across linguistic barriers.

You also get to use the Call Assist feature in phone calls. However, during my testing, the results that we got were mixed at best. Moreover, you really need people to speak clearly on their phones, and have only one person speaking at a time, which is not how most people behave on a call.

The Samsung keyboard now has an AI feature that gives it a major boost. Whenever you’re typing in any app, the keyboard gets smarter with AI. You just need to tell it what you want to type in a short prompt, and it will write it out for you. You also get different suggestions for the tone of your text ranging from formal to casual to social media style, just like ChatGPT.

Furthermore, the voice recording app also has some AI features. You can now have the app transcribe your voice notes, and its algorithm is intelligent enough to differentiate between two speakers and demarcate the transcribed texts based on who says what. It works fairly well, but it isn’t perfect. I dictated a significant portion of the review into the voice notes app, and had it transcribe it. The transcription was about 70 per cent accurate, so I had to edit it considerably to make a comprehensive first draft. It certainly isn’t as game-changing as I had hoped it to be, but it is something that is surely good to have. I

Then, we have a bunch of other features in the Generative Edit tool, which is very similar to Google’s Magic Eraser, but with some more added functionality. The Generative Edit allows users to refine their images in any way, shape or form that they choose, by allowing them to remove objects or elements that could be distracting. It also users to straighten or recompose an image by using AI-powered image generation.

But the best feature of them all, at least for me, is the ability to create slow-motion videos using videos that you have shot normally. I use tons of different smartphones, with great cameras and never have I ever thought of shooting a particular moment as a slow-motion video, before shooting it — it is only after I have shot something that I wish that I had taken a slow-mo shot of it, instead of recording it at a regular 30 or 60 fps. The feature allows you to slow down any video or even make it twice as fast, and during our tests, it worked perfectly every single time.

As for privacy and data security concerns, the AI models within Galaxy AI operate both locally and in the cloud. For instance, the “Circle To Search” function operates solely over the cloud. On the flip side, transcription features, whether for phone calls or voice memos, function entirely locally. Similarly, Galaxy AI’s Generative Edit features, work locally.

Samsung will need to fine-tune some of the features, as they feel half-baked at the moment, like most other AI tools, be it ChatGPT, Midjourney, Microsoft’s Copilot, or even Google’s Gemini. The Chat Assist, and Transcribing features need to be refined a lot before they become widely adopted. Having said that, what Samsung has achieved here is really impressive. It will be really interesting to see how other smartphone manufacturers respond to this.

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra 5G review: The battery life
The Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra boasts a robust 5,000 mAh battery, and delivers an excellent battery life, straight out of the box. Moreover, once you start using the device regularly, and it gets to know your usage and charging habits, the battery life gets even better.

The Galaxy S24 Ultra shines when it comes to battery benchmarks. On the very first day of using the device, it lasted over 17 hours on the PC Mark battery test, which is remarkable considering the battery management system had no idea of usage habits.

During real-world use, the S24 Ultra easily lasted a day with around 6 hours of screen time. We typically ended the day with over 20 per cent battery remaining. I think this is largely because of how efficient the Snapdragon SoC is, and the fact that you get a 1-120Hz refresh rate, based on what you’re doing.

However, there are some issues. Samsung is still stuck with its 45W wired charging, at a time when other manufacturers are providing much faster solutions. It does support 15W wireless charging and offers 4.5W reverse wireless charging. In regular, wired charging you will get to about 65 per cent in half an hour, provided you have a charging brick that is compatible with the device.

Considering the rapid advancements in battery charging technology from other manufacturers, some users may find the S24 Ultra’s 45W charging capability underwhelming, especially with budget phones offering over 100W fast charging.

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra 5G review: The verdict
Priced at Rs 1,29,999, the Galaxy S24 Ultra may not come cheap for a flagship device, but it’s not the most expensive one either. However, it embodies everything you’d expect from a high-end, flagship smartphone.

This year’s hardware upgrades may not seem groundbreaking, but they’ve allowed Samsung to refine an already exceptional product. The improved 50MP telephoto camera, faster processor, and promise of seven years of software updates make it a compelling upgrade for Samsung users. Performance-wise, it handles everything effortlessly, whether it’s gaming or AI tasks like photo editing, without overheating or lag.

The AI features, although they need some polishing, introduce a fresh smartphone experience. While not essential for everyone who is considering upgrading to a flagship device, they certainly add value. Additionally, like always, the inclusion of the S Pen makes the Galaxy S24 Ultra one of the most versatile phones in the industry.

Even without the AI enhancements, the Galaxy S24 Ultra is a solid device with its top-notch display, premium build, and outstanding camera hardware. It’s undoubtedly a contender for the best premium phone of 2024. Samsung has set a high standard that will be difficult to surpass

For those who can afford it and want the latest and greatest that tech has to offer, a new way to experience a smartphone, the Galaxy S24 Ultra is a worthy investment. Samsung has once again raised the bar for premium Android phones and set a new benchmark.