Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra review: Phone of our AI future almost here
It’s the phone that ticks almost every box on the longest shopping list of features for fun, photography, travel, productivity, gaming, and just doing life. And the Princess of Wales probably wishes she used one of them.
Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S24 Ultra is the phone that ticks almost every box on the longest shopping list of features for fun, photography, travel, productivity, gaming, and just doing life.
I’ve been writing about phones more than a decade and this is definitely the phone that has finally stepped it up big time – and blown others of the water with its Artificial Intelligence features.
It has combined the best of previous android phones, together with features from Google’s Pixel and Apple’s iPhone to set the standard for 2024 – one that is unlikely to be eclipsed.
There is a long list of smart AI covering how to take edit photos, improve text messages, translate calls on the fly, summarise articles and website pages and even watch a video in slow motion without shooting a slow motion video.
For travellers or those with friends or family overseas, text and call translation is super handy, though like all AI it is not always accurate, particularly with more complex conversations.
But for tasks like booking a reservation in a restaurant where they speak another language or translating information from a website, it’s a handy built in feature. And no doubt the technology will rapidly improve as more use it with Samsung promising seven years of upgrades as part of the deal.
You can also use chat assist to write more professional text messages or even social media posts (again with some good results and others cringy), while the AI will even transcribe audio recordings or give you quick summaries of web pages you are looking at.
The biggest standout AI feature though is circle to search where you can do a long press on your home button and circle anything on your screen to find it quickly on the internet. It might be a jumper or dress a celebrity is wearing or an exotic location or landmark you are keen to find out more about.
The process is super quick and easy to use and probably the thing you will do most.
AI is a big feature of the photography side of the phone – usually the most important factor for people in deciding which phone they should go for.
Samsung has set the standard with zoom for years with a 10 times optical zoom one of the big selling points in the S23 Ultra.
One of the best demonstrations we saw of Samsung’s incredible zoom in the new model was a video taken during a Taylor Swift show which took the fan from the middle of the stadium to almost the front row.
Before that when I saw they were dropping the optical zoom to 5 times – the same as that offered by the top of the range iPhone Pro 15 Max, I was a little surprised, and disappointed.
But the big difference is the Samsung camera is now a 50MP camera (up from 10MP in the S23), meaning even at 5 times optical zoom you are going to have a lot more to play with so you can crop it in to get an even clearer image at 10 times zoom.
When shooting higher resolution photos the lag on the S23 Ultra was definitely noticeable, but that’s been markedly improved with the S24Ultra.
The Galaxy S24 Ultra’s larger pixel size, now 1.4 μm, is 60% bigger than the previous model. Samsung says blur is further reduced with wider optical image stabiliser (OIS) angles and enhanced hand-shake compensation.
When recording videos, both front and rear cameras are equipped with noise reduction, and it analyses gyro information to distinguish between the filmer’s movement and the subject’s.
One of the coolest features is Instant Slow-Mo, which turns a recorded video into a slow-motion video. You just long-press on a compatible video in the gallery, and the phone - using the power of AI generates new frames and apply a slow-motion effect. It makes for far more interesting videos.
During our testing, we took photos and video of surfers at a distance, my dog, close ups of flowers, portraits, low light shots and were really impressed with the results.
One of the best sequences of my pooch I got was using Single Take – a feature that has been around for a while but again uses AI to capture up to 14 kinds of photos and videos (10 photos and 4 videos) from 3 to 10 seconds of capture.
Once you have your photos, there’s a whole lot more you can do with them, including circling and removing unwanted objections or reflections in the window and then having the phone generate backgrounds to fill in the gaps.
For the most part, it does a pretty good job and it’s particularly handy if you need to straighten a photograph but don’t want to lose all the good stuff on the edges.
IF ONLY KATE HAD USED THIS AI FEATURE
If you make AI changes to a photograph it will leave a little watermark to show that you image has been altered, something our Kate, the Princess of Wales, probably wished she used to save all unending fallout from her Mother’s Day post.
When it comes to social media, the S24 Ultra has HDR social media sharing to ensure your pictures, doctored or not, will look great on Instagram and other platforms.
The phone itself is super stylish with a flatter, bigger and more vivid screen 6.8 inch display which is an incredible 2600 nit brightness, while reflections have been reduced by up to 75%.
For gamers, there’s a bigger vapor chamber which improves cooling of the phone, while the ray tracing has improved already stunning visuals and game performance.
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The titanium frame looks similar to the that of the iPhone while there glass has been made even tougher and more scratch resistant.
With a price tag of $2399, the Samsung Galaxy S24Ultra is one of the most expensive on the market but it definitely packs a lot of hardware and software into one device making it much more than just a phone.
If you are looking for more value and most of the features, the S24 starts at $1599 while the 24+ model starts at $1699 and offers the most bang for buck.
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