Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra Review: An AI-Infused Titan

Samsung says it has received 250,000 pre-orders for the Galaxy S24 series. It is indeed a galactic number. But what's more interesting is Samsung's focus on AI. It has launched Galaxy AI – its name for a bunch of AI features that are running on the new Galaxy S24 series. In fact, Samsung's executives and India leadership, in a behind-the-scenes meeting at the Galaxy Unpacked launch event in San Jose, revealed that the company will stop calling the Galaxy S models smartphones and instead call them AI Phones.

Samsung hasn't just borrowed a page out of Google's playbook for the Pixel, it has even used Google’s building blocks to create these features. And what's fantastic is that it has improved everything people have loved about the Galaxy S series – in particular the impressive S23 Ultra – while improving things that have been traditionally weaknesses, such as software.

This means the Galaxy S24 Ultra is close to being the perfect phone, especially at its starting price of Rs. 1,29,999. It is an AI-infused Titan that will challenge not only what Apple has to offer right now but also what it may be cooking up for later in the year.

Subtlety Has Its Benefits

From afar, you would be hard-pressed to find any design changes compared to the Galaxy S23 Ultra, but the closer you get, the more apparent the differences become. Gone is the much-maligned curved-edge screen: the one on the Galaxy S24 is fully flat. The bezels for the first time are fully symmetrical. The edges are curved like before but still seamlessly blend into the flat panel. And yes, the frame of this phone is made out of titanium, just like the iPhone 15 Pro models.

One might have assumed greater weight reduction, as Apple managed, but Samsung's effort has had almost no effect in that regard. At 233 grams, the Galaxy S24 Ultra is now the heftiest flagship of 2024. Those who are used to the S23 Ultra might not mind this.

I prefer what Samsung has done with the titanium back. Unlike Apple's bland choice of colours, Samsung's colours have more character. I love the violet dual-tone finish option, and even the Titanium Grey on the unit I am testing is nicer than the equivalent iPhone 15 Pro Max.

Yes, it is squared off, yes it feels blocky – but I like that geometric perfection which makes this phone unique. Remember, this also includes room for the useful S-Pen, beefier internals, and a massive vapour chamber that helps performance. All of this is packaged in an IP68 water and dust-resistant frame. You really do get that luxury wristwatch kind of intensity with the S24 Ultra. 

Best Mobile Display Again

While not a surprise, the S24 Ultra simply has the best mobile display. Its 6.8-inch 120Hz dynamic AMOLED panel is 2X brighter in direct sunlight. Samsung claims a peak brightness level of 2,600 nits and it feels more effective than the Vivo X100 Pro. The screen gets Corning's latest cover glass, Gorilla Glass Armor, which is not only said to be the strongest cover glass ever put on a smartphone but also has an anti-reflection layer which drastically reduces glare, which is a subtle but incredibly useful feature of the S24 Ultra. 

Samsung's new implementation of a 1~120Hz refresh rate has made this an incredibly responsive smartphone. The display’s touch response has also been made more responsive, and Samsung says it works better when wet. This makes the S-Pen even more effective.

Watching content is just a superlative experience on the S24 Ultra. Watching videos on Netflix or YouTube, or reading in the browser is pleasant. This phone’s speakers are also loud and clear with support for Dolby Atmos which makes compatible content even more immersive. Samsung has pulled out all the stops here, including nailing the haptics of this phone which makes typing a great experience. 

Smoothest Android Phone Ever

Yes, you read that right. I have not typed these words since Samsung launched the Galaxy Nexus, which was co-developed with Google. For years, I have knocked points off Galaxy S smartphones because of TouchWiz and then OneUI, but boy, OneUI 6.1 which is based on Android 14 is a different kettle of fish. 

It has taken almost 14 years for Samsung to smoothen its interface but it has done it. This is a refined and super-smooth smartphone user experience, and it makes the S24 Ultra feel faster in daily navigation than even the OnePlus 12 and the Pixel 8 Pro. Samsung has done some impressive work to speed up the animations.

I found myself gliding between apps. The lovely user experience provided by OneUI which I believe is now the best on Android, is just slightly sullied by Samsung’s excessive in-house app preload.

At one point I had over 35 apps open at the same time on the Galaxy S24 Ultra and it didn’t show any signs of slowing down. I enjoyed playing Call of Duty Mobile for more than two hours at its max settings and there were no signs of the phone heating up, while graphical fidelity remained sublime. 

I even hooked up the S24 Ultra to a screen with a wireless keyboard and mouse using DeX, which is a Samsung-exclusive feature that transforms the phone into a desktop. Parts of this review were written in Samsung’s own Notes app using DeX. Using it has been cumbersome in the past, but this time around it was vastly smoother. I would say, it has finally become usable.

Of course, this shouldn’t be surprising because the S24 Ultra is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy, which is pretty much the most powerful mobile SoC available right now for the Android platform. It is matched with 12GB of DDR5X RAM and 256GB of UFS 4.0 storage. It also gets a monstrous vapour chamber to keep the SoC cool. 

Benchmarks show that this phone is right up there with the OnePlus 12 and the Vivo X100 Pro, which is based on the MediaTek Dimensity 9300 SoC. Honestly, it feels every bit as fluid as an iPhone, and now there is even more reassurance that this phone is going to last a long time because Samsung is matching Google’s commitment of seven years of software and security updates.

Now you most likely won’t be using the same phone till 2031, but you will at least be able to use this phone in 2027/2028 which would still be a big deal for a Samsung phone.

Smartest and Safest Android Phone

With the latest iteration of Knox, Samsung’s own security architecture, this phone is safer than ever – at least that’s what Samsung says. I haven’t really put these claims to the test because these features are meant to be stress-tested in a corporate environment. That being said, the ultrasonic fingerprint scanner and facial unlock features work reliably and are fast.

As for the smarts – there is a ton of Galaxy AI stuff which runs on Google’s Gemini nano model. Circle to Search has become a crowd favourite, and it will not be an exclusive to the S24 – it will come to the Pixel 8 series and other flagships soon – but it is so convenient. You only have to long-press the home button and then draw a circle around anything on screen using your finger or the S-Pen and you’ll be able to search for it visually; you don’t even need to take a photo or screenshot. This will work inside the camera viewfinder as well.

Features like Interpreter and Live Translator will translate one-on-one conversations or phone calls in real-time across 13 languages, and Hindi is supported. In actual use, I found it to sometimes miss the context of a conversation, but largely it works very decently as a first-generation technology.

The Messages app also has a chat translator which works reliably, but this is integrated into the Samsung keyboard, and we have already seen such functionality in SwiftKey by Microsoft, Gboard, and Grammarly. This also means you can change the tone of what you have written and correct basic spelling and grammatical errors.

Samsung’s generative photo editing tools are also very usable and work better than even the Pixel 8 Pro’s Magic Editor. Generative fill is a bit hit-or-miss and is very dependent on an active Internet connection. The good news is that Samsung adds a watermark to images twisted by the AI. The watermark can always be cropped out. 

The Notes app can summarise and format your text – which I totally used while ideating for this review. In fact, this feature extends to the Web browser. The Voice Recorder app also offers live transcription and translation, and it works very nicely.

One thing I have to clarify is that this phone does depend on a connection to the Internet for many of these features – only things like the Notes and Keyboard’s abilities are performed on-device.

Excellent Cameras, But Not The Best

From the get-go, it has been clear that Samsung has not focused as much on cameras this year as it did with the S23 Ultra. Yes, the S24 Ultra has a refined 200-megapixel sensor, a new 5X 50-megapixel camera for zoom, another 10-megapixel 3X telephoto camera, and a 12-megapixel ultra-wide camera.

Yes, the software and processing are better. There are some new AI features, so you can do things like remove glare and shadows – very handy for shots taken through a window or with excessive shadows – but they don’t work reliably all the time.

Generally, the S24 Ultra has a very good camera system. It takes excellent photos in the daytime, which are bright, rich in detail, and lush with colour. Shot for shot, it tended to beat the iPhone 15 Pro Max in the daytime, but lost out in low light. It is a very close contest between the iPhone 15 Pro Max – your preference will likely boil down to a matter of taste.

Samsung holds its own against the iPhone 15 Pro Max thanks to its 3X and 5X zoom lenses. The company even claims that the S24 Ultra can capture “optical quality” 10X zoom shots. The more I zoomed in, the more the S24 Ultra would come ahead of the iPhone – but then both these phones lose out to the Vivo X100 Pro in terms of pure image quality across low-light, zoom, portrait, and ultra-wide shots.

However, the S24 Ultra preserves Samsung’s reputation for delivering the best video camera on Android, coming close to the iPhone. It also records very usable audio. 

The selfie camera can shoot video at 4K 60 frames per second, and has autofocus which is very important for vlogging. 

Battery Life Is Not An Issue

Samsung hasn’t increased the size of the S23 Ultra’s battery, and the S24 Ultra has the same 5,000mAh capacity. However, the company has surely managed to squeeze more juice out of it. I used this phone extensively, and managed to get more than a day's worth of usage per charge. Often, I was left with more than 30 percent battery life at the end of the day, which is quite impressive considering this phone’s massive and bright display, and its AI capabilities. Samsung has really done a good job.

This is similar battery life to what the iPhone 15 Pro Max delivers, which is commendable. Charging, of course, is not the fastest for an Android flagship. The S24 Ultra can charge at up to 45W, so it is faster than the Pixel 8 and iPhone 15 series, but slower than the OnePlus 12 and Vivo X100 Pro. It can charge wirelessly at 15W.

Call quality on this phone was excellent – I tested it using a Jio SIM in Delhi NCR and San Jose, California, and I faced no drop offs. Cellular connectivity was in line with what I was getting from other phones. 

Verdict

Samsung’s AI-infused Titan is a true standard-bearer for the "Galaxy S" line. It could be the best smartphone in the world, top to bottom, at the time of writing – though it must be said it could be surpassed by other devices because we are on the precipice of this generative AI revolution.

Apart from its AI wizardry, what makes the S24 Ultra brilliant is the responsiveness of the user experience, which Samsung hadn’t nailed in over a decade. In addition, it has top-end hardware and the most complete camera feature set, which will get most jobs done for most people. In fact, this could be one of the best gaming phones of the year, and also the best non-foldable phone for productivity fiends.

The Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra excels at everything in a similar vein to the iPhone 15 Pro Max. It is the smartphone for everyone who wants a flagship and is willing to shell out at least Rs. 1,29,999.