Samsung Galaxy S24 and S24+ Review: Excellence with Exynos

The Samsung Galaxy S24 feels like a phone from a different era.

Even though they were all launched together as part of the same flagship generation, there’s a huge gulf between the Galaxy S24 and S24+ siblings, and the much more powerful Galaxy S24 Ultra. Samsung decided to revert to its homegrown Exynos series of processors, which, in the last couple of years, have been greatly maligned. The S24, in particular, feels like a phone from a different era. It is diminutive by modern standards, elegant, and almost iPhone-like, allowing for one-handed usage — a far cry from the massive, titanium-laden S24 Ultra. Its battery and screen are smaller, and its cameras are less capable. Yet, it has become my favourite smartphone of the year. How did that happen?

Samsung Galaxy S24 (Jade Green)

Design and Display

Samsung Galaxy S24+ (Cobalt Violet)

The S24 and S24+ are both chiselled out of “armour aluminium”, which has been Samsung’s go-to material for its flagships for the last three years. This may feel like a disappointment in light of the titanium frame on the S24 Ultra, but both these phones still feel every bit as luxurious. They are impressively compact, especially the S24.

But here’s the thing: it isn’t all that tiny by modern standards because, at 6.2 inches, its screen is now bigger than that of the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15. Samsung has achieved this by minimising the bezels to extremes, and pushing them right to the edges of the phone, while also making them perfectly symmetrical, like on iPhones.

These phones are also rated IP68 for water and dust resistance. The screens are made of the rather sturdy Gorilla Glass Victus 2, a step down from Gorilla Glass Armour on the S24 Ultra, but compared to everyone else, it is top-drawer stuff.

The display, which is 1080p on the S24, is one of the nicest ones I have seen on a smartphone. Samsung has used its own Dynamic AMOLED 120Hz panel, which is bright and vivid and supports up to 2600 nits of global brightness, making it superb for watching content on the go and for reading text in sunlight. And when coupled with the subtle haptics of the S24 line, typing text on this diminutive display is a pleasure.

Even on the larger S24+, the experience is similar. The resolution of the screen is higher at 2K, which is a suitable scale up for a screen that’s half an inch larger. It feels lovely, and honestly, blows some of the other flagship phones like the Vivo X100 Pro away, in terms of fidelity and the punchiness of colours. Of course, the S24+ is a much larger phone and you trade off the ergonomic brilliance of the S24. The S24 Ultra isn’t that much larger than the S24+ but I found it to be easier to handle because of its bevelled sides. Nonetheless, this is also a mint phone with a beautiful screen; it’s just that not many people will want to pay more for what it offers compared to its smaller sibling.

Software and Performance

The software on the new S24 models is elegant. In fact, it feels as though the software pops out of these phones’ screens because everything is so fluid with OneUI 6.1. Of course, the screens themselves are delicious. Fluidity is the name of the game in OneUI 6.1, and during the course of this review, both devices received a software update which refined things further. Samsung’s UI is, of course, based on Android 14, and it has made the Herculean promise of rolling out software updates to these devices for up to seven years. 

The Galaxy S24 and S24+ are some of the most fluid Android smartphones I’ve ever tested, and are in the same league as the Nothing Phone (2), Pixel 8 series, and the new OnePlus 12, apart from their own elder sibling, the S24 Ultra. This is important to note because software fluidity has often been an issue with Samsung phones. Samsung has also reined in its custom apps and duplication of Google software. There is still bloatware, but it’s less of a hassle on these new phones.

In the case of the S24 and S24+, performance is surprisingly impressive, as Samsung has reverted to using its own Exynos chips with these models rather than the haloed Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy. The Exynos 2400 is a revelation. In synthetic benchmarks, it can hold its own against the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, which we have tested in the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra and the OnePlus 12. It is also able to keep up with the MediaTek Dimensity 9300, as seen in Vivo’s latest flagships, as well as Apple’s A17 Pro in the new iPhone 15 Pro models.

The most impressive thing is that while running heavy apps or games on the Exynos 2400, not only was performance on point, but I barely noticed any heating, which seems to have helped the battery life of these phones. Samsung’s Exynos team has answered its critics and outdone itself, as for the last three generations, Exynos processors have been considered less capable than each generation’s equivalent Snapdragon. Time around, Samsung has bridged the gulf in one go.

And that’s also considering how thermals are limited on the Galaxy S24 because it is a small phone. It also only has 8GB of RAM, whereas the S24+ has 12GB. Yet, the performance was always there – be it while editing videos in Premiere Rush or playing Call of Duty Mobile.

And this SoC also enables this phone to do all the GenAI stuff that we have covered in the S24 Ultra review. The long and the short of it is that these features are nice to have – handy in many cases, particularly Live Translate, Interpreter, Translation in chat, and the ability to remove shadows and glare from photos – but they are not perfect and still need connectivity to the cloud. Of course, things will get better, but the competition will also catch up, so Samsung has to keep at it diligently to maintain its lead in this space. It also needs to figure out ways to differentiate its technology from Google’s, as at the core of it, these features are enabled by the Gemini AI models.

Cameras

The cameras on these phones are okay, by 2024 flagship standards. Well, they’re actually pretty good, but compared to the ones on the S24 Ultra, they don’t produce jaw-dropping results.  The main 50-megapixel sensor on these phones can take excellent shots in daytime, and if you can hold your hand still, these phones will take excellent shots even in the dark – but zooming is not going to be very productive if the light is not very bright. The 3X telephoto camera on these phones feels ancient. The ultra-wide camera is serviceable when given good lighting, and even in slightly dim conditions, but it over-indexes to use the night mode.

Focusing is not the best on these phones in low light, which can be an issue, but portrait photography is top-notch, just shy of what the Pixel 8 and Vivo X100 series can achieve. The S24 and S24+ take superb videos – this has been a traditional strength of Samsung’s, and these phones can even shoot 8K video. What most people will be interested in is the 4K and 1080p video, which is excellent, though in low light, the footage becomes very grainy.

The selfie camera on these phones is excellent. It can even shoot at 4K for video, which could be handy for many creators.

Battery Life

Battery life is an area in which these phones excel. Despite a relatively small battery on the S24, I found that it  could easily glide through a hectic day with around 10% left in the tank. Battery life is even better on the S24+ thanks to its larger battery. This phone can last through a day with around 20-25% left, in my experience. These phones aren’t the fastest at charging though; in the case of the S24, it does get juiced up in an hour or so. The S24+ takes longer because Samsung doesn’t offer crazy fast charging like its competitors. However, you do get wireless charging with wireless power share.

Both phones were tested in Delhi NCR on a Jio SIM, and call and network quality were up to snuff.

Verdict

At the end of the day, the Samsung Galaxy S24 and S24+ are fabulous phones. They hit all the right notes and nail the basics that a premium smartphone should. The S24, at the time of writing this review, is probably the best (relatively) compact smartphone in the world, while the S24+ is a great option for folks who want a top-tier Samsung but are unwilling to cough up the money for the Ultra. The S24+, though, does have stiff competition, as the Vivo X100 Pro can blow it away in terms of camera quality, and if you’re just looking for a great large-screen smartphone that gets all the basics right, the OnePlus 12 is unbeatable at its price.

(Product Images: Galaxy S24 by Jitendra | Galaxy S24+ by Apoorv)