Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra Review: The Best Mainstream Phone Right Now

Samsung's latest high-end phone, the Galaxy S24 Ultra, is all about "artificial intelligence," specifically the generative one that was popular last year. In fact, during the keynote, Samsung executives didn't even talk about the phone's hardware until 20 minutes into the presentation.

But while the AI ​​works and makes my experience with the S24 Ultra so enjoyable, I think Samsung has made some important hardware changes that make the phone more premium and mature than other phones, including its own. . As a result, the Galaxy S24 Ultra is the best Samsung phone I've tested in years.

I still think that the best Chinese phones have great cameras for photos (these devices have newer and larger image sensors), but the package offered by Samsung is much more advanced and complete. The S24 Ultra is also widely available around the world, while the Chinese phones are available in limited quantities. This means that if you want the best Android phone, the S24 Ultra is the one for you.

What are the new capabilities of artificial intelligence?

Let's start with the main features of this phone: The S24 Ultra is only the second phone (after the Google Pixel 8 series) to have generative AI features on the device. This means that the phone is capable of generating original text and pixels using the device. an exercise. The algorithms and neural processing are built into the phone, without the need for an internet connection (most of the time, anyway).

To this end, the S24 Ultra can perform tasks such as simultaneous translation and interpretation for two years. For example: I speak Chinese on the phone, so those words can be converted into Japanese or German in seconds without needing an Internet connection. It works by default by displaying translated text on your device for in-person interaction.

But what's even more impressive is that S24 phones can perform this translation in real time during phone calls. During a conversation, you press a button to activate a feature that allows the AI ​​voice assistant to take over the conversation between you and the other person and translate what each of you is saying into a different language. It takes 5 to 7 seconds to process and display the new words, so the other caller needs to be patient.

Another benefit of AI is that the phone can quickly summarize entire blocks of text, whether it's an online article or a long Word document. Just click the button built into your web browser or Samsung Notes app and the AI ​​will create a copy of your document's notes. I tried it and it worked very well.

There's also AI-powered generative image editing, which allows you to remove elements within images or resize them, and the AI ​​will create entirely new pixels to replace the insufficient space. This means you get a real photo with details generated entirely by artificial intelligence. As with the Pixel 8 series, this feature is really fun to use for a budding photographer like me. The results can be good or bad, but when they arrive they are amazing. In the collage below, I used generative AI to bring my father closer to me in the photo. The AI ​​magically created the original pixels to fill the missing background in my father's original location. The AI ​​created the entire brown shelf at the right level.

Of course, there are real ethical concerns about the rise of AI-generated content – ​​perhaps in a few years we won't be able to tell the difference between a real image and a fake one – and I'm also still worried about what this technology might do . But the technology isn't going anywhere, and at least Samsung (along with Google) gives us an idea of ​​what will be part of our lives in the future.

There are a few other AI features, like moving part of the screen to instantly start a Google image search, that I've found very useful in my daily life. Overall, the S24 Ultra's software seems smarter than other phones.

The material is also beautiful

At first glance, the Samsung S24 Ultra looks a lot like the last two Ultra phones, but the Korean tech giant has made some small changes that go far beyond the simple sum of its parts to create an even better looking device.

The new phone has a titanium frame instead of aluminum and is slightly flatter than before, giving the phone more grip. The phone can also stand on its own as all its sides are flat. The screen is a little brighter and has a new anti-glare matte coating that I've never seen on a phone before. On paper these are small changes, but overall they make the S24 Ultra better to hold and look at than the S23 Ultra.

The Galaxy S24 Ultra has four cameras on the back (the fifth circle has a sensor that doesn't take photos). You get a 200MP main camera, a 12MP wide-angle lens, a 10MP lens with 3x zoom, and a 50MP periscope camera with 5x zoom. This new 5x zoom camera is brand new (the other three cameras are not new) and does a good job taking 5x zoom photos with great detail and a decent natural edge. Here are three photos taken in the same location: the main camera (1x), 5X using the new Periscope zoom, and 10X using the built-in crop.

In the following series, I took a 10x zoom photo and a 30x zoom photo. We can see that the 30x image starts to show significant artificial sharpening, but it's still a good image. 10 times clean and impressive.

The rest of the cameras are good, but nothing that blows me away considering I can get phones with better cameras from China. These other cameras aren't new either: they've been ported over from the S23 Ultra and, in some cases, the S22 Ultra.

Overall, the S24 Ultra's camera experience is very good, with great focal length variation and solid video stabilization and image processing. But when it comes to camera hardware performance, something like the Find X7 Ultra's larger sensors will produce more detailed images to play with in the editing room.

Otherwise, the large 5,000 mAh battery offers excellent battery life, perhaps thanks to the greater efficiency of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. The haptics are precise and the included S Pen adds value to the phone. I don't always use a pen, but when I need to, such as when I need to sign an electronic document or make minor changes in a photo editing app, I really appreciate the pen's fine tip.

Overall, I really enjoyed using the S24 Ultra, even more than previous Samsung phones. Like I said, I'm very picky about my cameras because I'm a beginner (or novice) street photographer, so I take about 100 photos a day. I still think the Xiaomi 13 Ultra, with its larger sensors and Leica processing, produces images that look more organic and wolfish, while the Vivo X100 Pro's lens remains my favorite smartphone lens.

But none of these phones can match the S24 Ultra overall: they have less battery life, fewer years of software support, no new Google-backed AI features, and, in the case of the Vivo X100 Pro, very poor performance. Availability. However, the S24 Ultra is more expensive than both phones. Pricing starts at $1,300 in the US and HK$9,898 in Hong Kong. But both Samsung stores have trade-in and pre-order offers that are worth paying attention to.

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