With the launch of its S Series early in the year, Samsung sets the bar for flagship releases across the board. This year’s Galaxy S24 Series is no different. Rocking the latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC and an impeccable set of cameras, the Galaxy S24 series is yet again the one to beat. Its ‘Ultra’ variant holds the reputation for being the ‘everything smartphone’ – a term that isn’t thrown around a lot. This reputation does come with the burden of not only pushing the boundaries of performance every year but also grabbing the headlines with unique software advancements. But when you’ve been leading the charge for multiple years, things are bound to plateau at some point. On the surface, the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra looks and feels like its previous two variations. However, on close inspection, the uniqueness of the device becomes more apparent.
The Samsung Galaxy S24 Series marks the debut of Galaxy AI – Samsung’s suite of AI features that touches upon a range of functionalities. The form factor of the Ultra variant has been upgraded as well. The smartphone’s frame is now reinforced with Grade 2 Titanium (wonder where Samsung got that idea from). The periscope telephoto lens in the rear camera setup has also been upgraded to a 50MP sensor. We’ve been using the smartphone for the last two weeks, putting it through a series of tests. Here is our in-depth review of the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra.
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In This Article
Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra review: Design and Performance
Here’s what you get inside the Samsung S24 Ultra retail box:
- Smartphone
- Type-C to Type-C USB cable
- Quick Start Guide
For a smartphone that retails for Rs 1.30 lakh, the S24 Ultra’s unboxing experience leaves a lot more to be desired. At the very least, Samsung could have thrown in a power adapter. There are three colour variants on offer – Titanium Gray, Titanium Black, and Titanium Violet. The more exciting Titanium Blue, Titanium Green, and Titanium Orange colour schemes are exclusive to buyers who order from Samsung’s official website.
Samsung has made a couple of key changes to the Galaxy S24 Ultra’s form factor. The curved screen display has been replaced by a completely flat unit. This is a welcome change as it enhances the phone’s grip and eliminates any accidental touches on the display. The metal frame is infused with Grade 2 Titanium (much like the Pro models of the iPhone 15 Series) and is slightly curved along the sides. The matte-like texture of the frame elevates its in-hand feel and does not attract any fingerprints. The sharp corners of the frame lend to the unique personality of the smartphone. At a time when most smartphones are unrecognisable from the front, the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra easily sets itself apart.
Galaxy S24 Utlra’s rear panel follows the design language of its predecessor. The camera sensors are arranged in a vertical orientation. Corning Gorilla Armor protection for the glass back ensures that it is resistant to scuffs and scratches. We used the smartphone without any protective covering while keeping it in pockets with loose change and keys. After two weeks of use, there were no scratches to be found. The smartphone weighs 233g, which is divided evenly across its body.
The right edge of the frame houses the volume rocker and the side key. The S Pen, primary speaker, USB Type-C port, primary microphone, and SIM tray make their way to the bottom edge. The secondary microphone and speaker are positioned on the top edge of the frame. There is no IR blaster to be found, which is always a sore miss for people who don’t like to rely on physical remotes to control household appliances. The left edge of the frame has been left keyless. An IP68 rating ensures that you don’t have to worry about water damage to your S24 Ultra.
Let’s talk about the display specs. The Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra has a massive 6.8-inch Dynamic LTPO AMOLED 2X display with a maximum refresh rate of 120Hz and 2,600 nits of peak brightness. While the OnePlus 12 (our review here) may have it beat for peak brightness with an astonishing 4,500 nits, Samsung’s new anti-reflective coating on the Galaxy S24 Ultra makes all the difference while viewing the display under direct sunlight. The seems to absorb the reflections falling on it by a considerable degree.
Minimal bezels surround the stunning Dynamic AMOLED display. The bezels are uniform and easy to ignore. There are three screen resolution options to choose from – HD+ (1,560 x 720p), FHD+ (2,340 x 1,080p), and QHD+ (3,120 x 1,440p). It goes without saying that sharper visuals utilise more battery. Watching video content on the S24 Ultra is an absolute delight. The images produced on the screen are detailed with punchy colours. The deep, rich blacks offer the perfect contrast to the vibrant colours. The stereo speaker produces good audio output, incorporating the lower frequencies which are so often absent on other flagship smartphones.
The ultrasonic in-display fingerprint scanner leaves behind its optical peers with super quick detection and lightning speed. A gentle tap on an inactive lock screen is enough to unlock the smartphone. However, using facial recognition in pitch-dark conditions can sometimes throw an odd error.
Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra review: Performance and Cameras
Powering 2023’s Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra is the flagship Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC from Qualcomm. There are three storage variants on offer – 256GB (Rs 1.30 lakh), 512GB (Rs 1.40 lakh) and 1TB (Rs 1.60 lakh). All three storage variants are equipped with 12GB of RAM. On the Geekbench 6 app, the smartphone scored 2,165 points in the single-core test and 6,416 points in the multi-core test.
As expected, the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra crushes everyday tasks with ease. We threw the kitchen sink at it, loading a dozen apps at once, and the smartphone did not break a sweat. The 120Hz Dynamic AMOLED display responds to even the most subtle gestures, loading apps at lightning-fast speeds and seamlessly switching between them. Even demanding tasks like video editing and multi-window browsing are handled expertly.
Gaming performance on the S24 Ultra remains top-notch as well. We played games like Call of Duty Mobile, BGMI, and Asphalt 9 at maximum settings and did not experience any lags or frame drops. The vapour chamber inside the smartphone does a phenomenal job of keeping its internal temperature in check. Even after an hour of continuous gaming, the S24 Ultra did not get egregiously hot. This performance is comparable to the high-end gaming smartphones in the market.
One of the things that make the S24 Ultra an ‘everything’ phone is the S Pen. A remnant of the now-discontinued Note Series, this stylus may not find its use in everyday tasks, but it is a neat little accessory to have. Be it signing documents or taking pictures without a timer, the S Pen finds a lot of use on this smartphone. If you want to kill some time, the Pen Up app has a library of fun colouring pages which you can fill with the S Pen. Digital artists can use this app to create artwork on the go.
OS duties on the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra are handled by the Android 14-based One UI 6. Other than Netflix and Facebook, there is no bloatware on the device. Premium connectivity features like Samsung DeX, Multi Control, and Camera Sharing can be found on the S24 Ultra. Samsung DeX provides a clean desktop interface for your smartphone when you connect it to a PC. Features like Camera Sharing and Multi Control are a part of Samsung’s developing ecosystem and can only be used with Samsung tablets and notebooks.
What sets the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra (and the rest of the series) apart from its predecessors is the Galaxy AI suite of features. Before we dive into it, we must mention that Samsung has intelligently woven these features into the interface. While Galaxy AI influences a range of tasks, it doesn’t feel like it is shoehorned into the OS. If AI is not your thing, you can turn these features off from the device settings.
Samsung’s native photo editor gains a useful Generative AI tool that lets you move the objects on a picture and fills the voids with relevant details. You’d think this would be a hit or miss, but it works remarkably most of the time. If you look at the pictures below, you can notice that the Galaxy AI regenerated the artwork and furniture in the space left behind by the displaced subject. To put the cherry on top, it also fills in the key shadows while replicating the hanging lamp on the right side of the image and placing it at the correct vacant spot on the wall. The accuracy of the result is dependent on the size of the object and the area it leaves behind when it’s moved. You can use this tool on pictures that aren’t taken using the smartphone as well.
Galaxy AI can also come up with helpful editing suggestions for the pictures in your device’s gallery. If it notices shadows and reflections in the shot, the suggestion to remove them will pop up once you hit the ‘i’ icon on the image. For close-up shots, the AI applies the blur effect on the background. These suggestions keep changing depending on the nature of the shot. What’s constant is the ‘Remaster’ tool, which brightens up the images and makes them ‘social media ready’.
The summarization AI tool finds its way into the web browser, notes, and voice recorder apps. Tapping the sparkling Galaxy AI icon generates standard and detailed summaries for a webpage, note, or transcript of a voice recording. If you like to record lectures in school, you’ll like how the voice recorder app adds important keywords at the top of every transcription. Tapping a keyword brings up the content in the transcript associated with it.
Galaxy AI’s translation features may not find much use in everyday usage of the smartphone, but they are impressive nonetheless. With just one tap you can translate any WhatsApp conversation into your desired language. Got a call from a person who doesn’t speak your language? Galaxy AI will live-translate the call for you. If you’re travelling to a different country, the ‘Interpreter’ tool nestled in the Quick Settings Menu can translate your conversation with another person in real time.
Circle to Search and Generative wallpapers are not exclusive to the Galaxy S24 Series and will likely be seen on other major Android devices this year. The former is a rebrand of Google Lens’ ‘Search Screen’ tool. Search screen can be summoned anywhere on your smartphone using the ‘OK Google’ voice command, while the Circle to Search can be triggered by long-pressing the home button or the navigation handle. Using your finger or S Pen, drawing a circle around an object or scribbling on it produces relevant results for it within a few seconds. You can supplement the image search with a text query as well.
Generative wallpapers can be hit or miss, depending on where you stand on AI art. While it is genuinely cool to watch your smartphone come up with a bunch of wallpapers based on a prompt, the final results rarely ever live up to the wallpaper libraries of some of the leading customisation apps for Android.
Samsung has announced that Galaxy AI is only free to use until the end of 2025. The tech giant will likely introduce a subscription model for the entire package after that. Is it worth paying an extra amount of money over the Rs 1.30 lakh you splurged on the smartphone? That depends on whether the niche tasks that Galaxy AI caters to are your thing.
Moving on, the battery life of this smartphone is surprisingly versatile. It took the smartphone a couple of days to gauge our usage pattern, after which we got a steady day-and-a-half worth of battery life out of the device on moderate usage. Our daily usage during the review consisted of using the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra for tasks like web browsing, video calling, emailing, instant messaging, video recording, and even a bit of gaming. If you’re more conservative with your usage, you can push the 5,000 mAh battery to two days. The lack of fast charging is the only downside to the overall experience. At a time when other Android flagships have switched to 100W fast charging, the Samsung S24 Ultra is stuck with 45W wired charging. It takes a little over an hour to fully charge the smartphone.
Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra’s quad camera module gets an important upgrade in the form of a new 50MP sensor for the periscope telephoto camera. This camera now shoots images at 5x optical zoom instead of 10x. Images taken with 10x zoom are still claimed to be ‘optical quality’. The rest of the camera module remains unchanged, with a 200MP sensor for the primary shooter, a 12MP ultrawide lens, and a 10MP 3x telephoto lens.
The 200MP primary shooter delivers a rock-solid performance. The pictures taken in bright daylight are super detailed with punchy colours. Samsung’s photoprocessing does tend to boost the colour and contrast of the images, but not to the point where they seem artificial. The details captured by this camera are phenomenal. The camera does a brilliant job of capturing crisp and detailed shadows without messing with the illuminated parts of the shot. However, the shutter speed of the camera still remains an issue as it produces blurry results for moving objects.
In limited lighting, the 200MP sensor lets in a lot of light and produces great results with minimal noise and grain. The subjects in the images were lit up appropriately and rendered in fine detail. Turning on the Night Mode brightened up the subjects some more and smoothened the images. We mostly found ourselves using the Night Mode for the ultrawide lens as the primary sensor did well to manage the limited lighting to its advantage.
The ultrawide camera does a stellar job of maintaining the colour richness produced by the primary shooter. The drop-off in details is not noticeable, which is perhaps the biggest compliment we can give to the ultrawide shooter. It does a good job of correctly exposing the sky and replicating the accurate colours – something that not all ultrawide sensors can do. In daylight conditions, this sensor is extremely reliable for taking scenic shots.
Galaxy S24 Ultra’s telephoto and periscope telephoto lenses are the arguably best in class. The images retained their composition with 3x and 5x zoom. Some would argue that the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra (our review here) performs better at 10x zoom, but the S24 Ultra’s photo processing chops easily bridge that divide. We pushed the zoom to its 100x limit and were pleased when the resulting image got the lettering on a very distant board right.
Portrait shots taken with the Galaxy S24 Ultra can be zoomed up to 5x in the native camera app. The portrait shots were clean and focused, with ample blur in the background. Not much to complain about here. The 12MP selfie camera also takes good-quality pictures without applying unnecessary and over-the-top skin smoothening and brightening effects. The rear camera can record 8K videos at 30fps while the selfie camera can record 4K videos at 30/60fps.
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Verdict
The Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra upholds its reputation for being the ‘everything’ phone. And if everything is what you’re after then it’s going to cost you Rs 1.30 lakh. On the bright side, Samsung has promised 7 years of major OS upgrades for the S24 Series, which makes it quite a good investment. The Ultra variant of the series stays on top of the camera performance with its amazing 200MP primary sensor and powerful telephoto lenses. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC ensures the S24 Ultra can match any gaming phone on the market. If you’re looking for the ‘X Factor’, the Galaxy AI scratches that itch with its magical generative photo editing tool, seamless translation capabilities, and more.
Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra: Pros
- Amazing flat-screen display
- Great form factor
- Helpful Galaxy AI suite of features
- Superb camera performance
- S Pen
- Versatile battery life
- 7 years of major OS upgrades
Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra: Cons
- Pricey
- Galaxy AI is free to use only until the end of 2025
