Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra Review: It’s All About the Meaningful Upgrades

The Galaxy S24 Ultra may not be Samsung’s most expensive phone yet, but it is arguably the company’s best phone to date. Multiple factors at play make it so. From its super bright display to the device’s powerful made-for-Galaxy Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip, its 200-megapixel camera lens, and lest we forget, the on-device-based AI features that find a place on the device.

Suffice to say, a lot is going on with the Galaxy S24 Ultra. But do all these features and the hardware combine to make a phone that’s the best in the business and an outright worthy contender for your hard-earned money? Well, it’s a question we’ll try and answer in our review of the phone. So read on to know the answer to this important question and then some more.

But first things first, at the time of writing I’ve had less than a week with the Galaxy S24 Ultra. While it’s enough time to judge a phone and what it has to offer, it is probably not enough to give a verdict that stands the test of time.

So with that in mind, I plan on coming back to this review periodically over the next few weeks with updated findings and feelings (if any). As such, I’d also urge our readers to circle back to this page over the next few weeks to keep up with any updates made to this review.

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra Review: Design

Let’s start with the design of the device. Compared to the S23 Ultra, there are a few noticeable changes here. While the overall form factor and look of the phone remain similar, the S24 Ultra feels slightly different when you get your hands on it.

One of the reasons for this is the fact that Samsung has used titanium for the frame of the device, which not only makes the S24 Ultra sturdier than its predecessor but also slightly lighter. In my opinion, this new frame also has a more understated but classy look than the shiny one on the S23 Ultra.

Apart from this, the only other big change in design is the fact that the S24 Ultra does not come with a curved display. Although I’ve always enjoyed the idea of curved screens on phones, I really can’t deny that the flat-screen panel of the S24 Ultra does indeed make a lot more sense for the phone.

Because of its gigantic form factor, the use of a flat-screen panel makes it easier to grip the phone, thus reducing anxiety and in the long run also decreasing the chance of accidentally dropping the phone and causing damage to the panel.

The other big advantage of using a flat-screen panel on the device is that it makes the phone slimmer. This, I believe, is in itself a good enough reason to trade the curved panel for a flat one — especially for a phone like the S24 Ultra.

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra Review: Display

The display brings with it some major upgrades over the one found on its predecessor. Keeping with its legacy of slapping really impressive displays on its flagship phones, the Galaxy S24 Ultra also brings with itself a panel that’s truly par excellence.

While it’s still 6.8 inches in size, and the latest generation LTPO OLED panel in make, it is now significantly brighter than the panel which found a place on the S23 Ultra. Yes, rated to produce a peak brightness of 2600 nits, this new panel is capable of reproducing rich and detailed visuals even under harsh lighting.

This Samsung Quad HD+ Dynamic AMOLED 2X display is also capable of punchy yet accurate colors. Both images and videos look vibrant and hold enough details both in shadows and bright highlights. All of this, however, was when we set the phone’s display to the Natural preset.

Plus, Samsung’s mastering of the display is on point ensuring HDR and HDR10+ content looks good on the phone. However, the lack of Dolby Vision certification remains a non-issue that one can kick up a fuss about if they want.

This 1440p display also supports fast refresh rates and is capable of switching between 1-120Hz dynamically to enhance the battery life of the phone. Although it’s not the fastest in the business, it certainly is more than good enough.

Overall, the panel on the Galaxy S24 Ultra is big, bold, and fantastic. And, it’s nothing short of fantastic, leaving pretty much nothing to complain about.

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra Review: Performance and Galaxy AI

Underneath the hood, the S24 Ultra from Samsung comes flaunting the all-new Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 Mobile Platform for Galaxy. Thankfully, this is the chip that’s powering S24 Ultra across markets around the globe.

On paper at least, this partnership between Qualcomm and Samsung brings the promise that the S24 Ultra is faster in terms of core computing than other Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset phones we’ve seen in the recent past.

This chipset is paired with 12GB of RAM and depending on your variant of choice, as much as 1TB of storage. These working in tandem with the chipset generally gave us smooth and lag-free performance no matter what we threw at the phone.

From applications of daily use to resource-intensive ones that you’re less likely to fire up daily, the Galaxy S24 Ultra did not disappoint. Performance in benchmarks was also pretty good, with Geekbench, AnTuTu, and 3DMark all showing good results.

We’re also happy to report that the performance was generally stable during resource-intensive tasks. This is something that we also observed when putting the phone’s chipset through its paces in the CPU Throttling Test.

More than the chipset behaving well, this also appears to be a case of Samsung handling the thermals well using a big vapor cooling chamber on the device. This honestly isn’t a surprise as the company claims to have fitted a 1.9 times bigger cooling system inside the shell compared to the one on the S23 Ultra.

This fast chipset and efficient cooling is not only great for gaming and general performance but also helps in improved AI-based computing tasks. The new Snapdragon chip also comes with a much bigger NPU allowing for more complex AI processing right on the device.

Samsung’s Galaxy AI features baked right into the device include real-time Live Translate for calls and text. We also get Chat Assist to help fine-tune the user’s conversation skills and even Note Assist and Transcript Assist features that let you summarize entire conversations and audio recordings into easily digestible points.

There’s also a very handy Generative Edit feature that helps you to move objects and people within a frame. It’s quite neat a feature actually if you consider that all of it is being done right on the phone wasting very little time in the process.

But my favorite AI feature is the Circle to Search. For this, the user needs to hold down the home button and then circle or tap anything they see on the screen to learn more about it. It’s a feature I found to be very handy as it helps me identify things and even information about people I came across in Instagram reels.

Although Samsung’s marketing claims talk more about this being an on-device function, most of these Galaxy AI features also connect to the internet for better results. So it’s not as on-device functionality as Samsung would like you to believe.

Regardless, these AI-based features are something I’m looking forward to exploring in-depth in the coming weeks, and as such I expect myself to populate this section further with findings about these features in the days and weeks to come.

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra Review: Battery

Battery life is an area where this phone truly excels, and honestly, it’s not very surprising considering Samsung’s track record of providing good battery life with its flagship S series Ultra phones.

The S24 Ultra easily went through a day’s use and then a lot more when used moderately. Samsung appears to have done a good job in terms of battery management which working in tandem with the efficient Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy chipset gives the phone the kind of battery life you’d truly expect from a 5000mAh Ultra flagship from the company.

Sadly though, charging speeds remain capped at 45 watts ensuring that a complete cycle from 1-100 percent would keep you hooked to the wall charger for around an hour. While this may not be bad, it’s not par for the course anymore in 2024 when most phones have moved to much faster charging standards.

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra Review: Cameras

In the limited time I’ve spent with the phone, the Galaxy S24 Ultra’s cameras haven’t impressed me as much as I had hoped they would. This is simply because they aren’t much of an upgrade over the ones found on the Galaxy S23 Ultra last year. And as a smartphone reviewer, the lack of major upgrades is something that doesn’t make me too thrilled.

The primary 200-megapixel sensor crucially remains the same as last year, with the 10-megapixel telephoto lens with 3x optical zoom and 12-megapixel ultrawide lens also being ported straight from the S23 Ultra.

Samsung hasn’t even made any changes to the selfie camera of the device, and taken the one from the S23 Ultra and pasted it onto the S24 Ultra. Then what’s changed in terms of hardware, you ask? Well, just the secondary telephoto lens which has now been upgraded from a 10-megapixel to a much more pixel-dense 50-megapixel lens.

In our testing, the telephoto performance of the S24 Ultra did feel improved, especially while clicking portrait shots using the lens. However, we did also face issues with the autofocus at times and generally found the bump in the quality of telephoto shots nothing to get very excited about.

As for the performance of the other three lenses, and especially the primary for day-time and low-light shots, the results again did not wow. Images clicked using the phone are pretty much on par with what you’d get from the S23 Ultra.

While there’s plenty of detail in the images thanks to the high-resolution lenses on-board and colors also look accurate because of Samsung’s mature computational photography algorithms, sharpness — especially in low light shots — does not feel on point.

In my opinion, it appears to be a case of teething issues in the software department because Samsung in its product briefing for the S24 Ultra did promise improved performance in terms of overall camera stability and low-light shots. As we have seen in the past, it usually takes the company an update or two to meet such claims.

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra Review: Verdict

On the face of it, the Galaxy S24 Ultra looks to be a proper winner from Samsung. It has all the makings of a solid flagship. While it does leave a little to be desired when it comes to camera performance, the fact that it does exceedingly well in the design, general performance, and battery departments is something that helps in recommending this device.

On top of it, the meaningful AI features it adds to the mix further make the Galaxy S24 Ultra from Samsung even easier to recommend. The only thing to consider here is the price tag. Once you make peace with it, the Galaxy S24 Ultra doesn’t feel like a bad deal at all.