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Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra hands-on: A fresh titanium frame combined with a big bet on AI
Samsung says the S24 family marks the beginning of the AI era on smartphones.
With the launch of the Galaxy S24 family, Samsung is boldly declaring an end to the smartphone camera wars as it moves into the AI era. And the $1,300 S24 Ultra is its torchbearer for this new age of mobile design.
While it may not look like a ton has changed on the S24 Ultra, thereās one major design update along with a handful of smaller tweaks. The move to a titanium frame (available in four colors: titanium yellow, violet, gray and black) apes what Apple did for the iPhone 15 Pro last fall. The big difference is that, because Samsungās previous flagship featured an aluminum chassis unlike the heavier stainless steel build on the iPhone 14 Pro, the S24 Ultraās weight (8.22 ounces) is largely unchanged from last yearās device (8.25 ounces). That means aside from some very slight changes to the texture, there arenāt a ton of outward signs hinting at the S24ās increased durability which includes the same IP68 rating for dust and water resistance.
More subtle upgrades include a new Corning Gorilla Armor panel in back (instead of Gorilla Glass Victus 2 like on the standard S24/S24+), even thinner bezels (42 percent slimmer than before) and a slightly boxier feel. The latter might not be something most people notice, but itās part of an ongoing trend for Samsung as itās moved towards phones with flatter screens. On the S24 Ultra, aside from some faint rounding at the perimeter of its display, itās almost completely rectangular. So for all the people who hate screens with curvy edges, congratulations, youāve won.
Inside, the S24 Ultra features a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip along with 12GB of RAM and up to 1TB of storage. Samsung says itās installed a larger vapor chamber thatās almost twice the size of whatās in the previous model to help keep the phoneās thermals in check. The Ultraās screen is also slightly brighter with a peak of 2,600 nits for its 120Hz 6.8-inch OLED screen. Thereās still a storage slot for the Ultraās S Pen with a springy magnetic attachment system and its core functionality hasnāt changed, so you can expect the same super responsive stylus input.
Itās important to note that the S24 Ultraās camera setup is largely unchanged. You still get a 200-MP main sensor and a 12-MP ultra-wide, but instead of a 10x lens, the S24ās telephoto camera is now based on a 50-MP sensor (up from 10-MP) with a 5x optical zoom. Samsung says this change was made based on customer feedback and usage patterns, which saw 5x being the most frequently used focal length. While its overall reach has seemingly decreased, the phone uses pixel-binning and AI to achieve what the company is calling a ā10x optical qualityā zoom while still delivering up to a total 100x Space Zoom. In our limited hands-on time, the Ultraās telephoto camera still looked sharp even with the shorter focal length, though as before image quality begins to deteriorate quickly past 20x.
Of course, the Ultraās zoom is just one small application of AI. The entire S24 family has a full suite of machine learning-based features. Similar to whatās available on the Pixel 8, Samsung is using AI to help you edit photos and create new slow-mo footage. You can use the S24 Ultraās stylus (or your finger on the other models) to draw a lasso around a subject before touching and holding to move it whenever you want. Then, all you have to do is hit the generate button, and the phone uses AI to fill in any missing elements. And this isnāt limited just to moving things around either, as you can delete objects, resize, recompose and more.
Samsungās photo app can also detect things like shadows and reflections and will ask if you would like to remove them from your shot. This might be my favorite application of AI, as this helps streamline editing while also making more complicated fixes incredibly easy. And while I only got to test this out using sample photos provided by Samsung, it worked astonishingly well. After finding a photo in the gallery app, all I had to do was hit the info button to see a list of suggested edits, which almost instantly transformed a mediocre image into something I would be proud to share on social media.
Samsungās slow-mo feature was also quite impressive. It works on practically any local clip, not just footage shot by an S24. When playing back a video, you can simply touch and hold. Then the phone looks at the framerate of the footage, multiplies it by four (e.g. from 30fps to 120fps) and uses AI to create additional frames ā all on the fly and on-device, so nothing is being sent to the cloud.
Itās not all photo tricks, though. The S24 uses its AI powers to help you communicate both on the phone, via the new live-translation feature, and in text, with improved proofreading, summarization and tone-correction abilities. During calls, activating translation is as simple as tapping a button. From there, it will recognize your speech and automatically convert it into whatever the other person is speaking (or you can save a tiny bit of time and select the language yourself). Granted, this does mean that conversations will take a touch longer since youāll need to pause to give the phone a chance to process and translate what you say. But if youāre in a pinch while traveling, I wouldnāt hesitate to try this out.
As for the S24ās summarizing capabilities, itās similar to what you get on the Pixel or in services like ChapGPT, Bard and others. You can direct the phone to a website or a file (including those in Samsung Notes) and the phone will condense things into a handful of major bullet points. But the potentially more useful tool is the tone-correcting feature, which in addition to basic stuff like highlighting typos, also gives you some options to rephrase things to make them seem more positive or encouraging.
Notably, because you get a handful of options and the choice to ignore or implement things as you see fit, it feels like less policing yourself and more like adjusting language to get your message across in a more effective manner. Honestly, this is something everyone could probably use from time to time, even if itās just to prevent sending out an angry text or email.
The one aspect of the S24ās AI powers that isnāt handled locally is a new circle-to-search tool. Developed in partnership with Google, the feature allows you to highlight both text and images before sending a query off to the cloud and returning results. In practice, it feels like combining traditional search and visual lookup aids like the Google Lens app into a single thing. Itās a nice upgrade in terms of general usability standpoint even if it doesnāt revolutionize the way the phone works.
Finally, following a similar move Google made last year with the Pixel 8, Samsung will now provide a full seven years of regular OS and security updates. This is something Iām hoping to see from every Android handset maker, so Iām glad Samsung is stepping up now.
The two gripes I have are that, for a device that starts at $1,300, I think the S24 Ultraās design is rather plain. Itās just 6.8-inches of phone with a bunch of sensors and camera lenses on the back. Not to mention I donāt think Samsungās special titanium-hued paint jobs stand out as much as the company hopes they do.
The other issue is the lack of Qi 2 support. The S24 falls in the second half of Samsungās two-year product cycle, which means we probably werenāt going to get any big facelifts or design changes until next year. But as the largest Android phone maker, itās pretty disappointing to see a new flagship not adopt what could be an incredibly important multi-platform wireless charging standard.
Honestly I was kind of taken aback by how good its AI features are. I actually had to stop myself multiple times from writing how one of the phoneās latest tools was a pleasant surprise. Unlike Google who has been beating the drum about machine learning for more than a decade, Samsungās mobile expertise always felt like it lay more in hardware than software. But with the S24, Samsung is showing that itās taking the transition to the AI era incredibly seriously.
The Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra will start at $1,300. Pre-orders go live today and on Samsung.com will include a free upgrade that doubles the phoneās storage, while official sales are slated for January 31.
Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra