Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra review: phone, AI-powered Swiss army knife

The titanium superphone offers impressive speed, battery life, and unmatched camera zoom but comes with an ultra-high price tag

Samsung’s newest smartphone boasts a multitude of cutting-edge AI features aimed at enhancing text, images, video, and search—yielding both successes and failures.

The Galaxy S24 Ultra is outfitted with a blend of Samsung and Google’s latest AI technologies layered atop one of the most capable phones available, featuring specs that outperform its rivals.

However, all these capabilities come with a hefty price tag of £1,249 (€1,469/$1,299.99/A$2,199), which is on par with its predecessor’s price in the UK but higher in the US and other regions.

The overall design shows incremental changes from its predecessors, featuring a fully flat screen instead of a curved one and new titanium sides, akin to the iPhone 15 Pro Max. This gives it a more grippable texture and, theoretically, enhances its strength and durability. The screen is equipped with Corning’s latest Gorilla Armor glass, which offers improved scratch resistance and significantly reduces glare. Combined with the super-bright display, this makes outdoor usage as effortless as indoors, even on the sunniest days.

The S24 Ultra is powered by Qualcomm’s latest top-of-the-line chip, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, delivering a 20% increase in speed, 26% faster graphics, and improved power efficiency compared to previous generations. It is a remarkably fast phone that excels in handling games, demanding apps, and multitasking. However, the extended battery life is more noticeable in everyday use.

The phone offers up to 60 hours of general use, including activities like taking photos, browsing, messaging, and using 5G for a couple of hours, with the rest on Wi-Fi, making it one of the longest-lasting phones I’ve tested. Engaging in high-end gaming or more intensive tasks can affect battery life—playing Diablo Immortal for an hour, for instance, consumed 18% of the battery. However, under normal usage, I only needed to charge it every third day.

Specifications

Main screen: 6.8-inch QHD+ Dynamic AMOLED 2X (500ppi) with 120Hz refresh rate
Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3
RAM: 12GB
Storage: 256GB, 512GB, or 1TB
Operating system: One UI 6.1 based on Android 14
Camera: 200MP + 12MP (0.6x) + 10MP (3x) + 50MP (5x); 12MP front-facing
Connectivity: 5G, USB-C, Wi-Fi 7, NFC, Bluetooth 5.2, UWB, and GNSS
Water resistance: IP68 (1.5m for 30 mins)
Dimensions: 162.3 x 79 x 8.6mm
Weight: 232g

Sustainability

Samsung does not specify the expected lifespan of the battery, but it is expected to last for more than 500 full charge cycles with at least 80% of its original capacity.

The phone is generally repairable, with screen repairs costing approximately £270, and the battery being replaceable by authorised service centres. Samsung also provides a self-repair programme.

The phone contains recycled aluminium, steel, cobalt, glass, plastic, and rare earth elements. Samsung offers trade-in and recycling schemes for old devices. The company publishes annual sustainability reports but does not provide impact assessments for individual products.

S Pen, seven years of support, and pervasive AI

The S24 Ultra features Samsung’s popular S Pen stylus, which conveniently fits into the bottom of the device. It’s great for quick notes, doodles, or document editing. The One UI 6.1 software, based on Android 14, offers a wide range of customization options and tools throughout the system, and it performs well. A new feature for 2024 is the commitment to provide software and security updates for seven years from the release date, bringing Samsung in line with Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Pixel 8, with only Fairphone offering longer support.

The most attention-grabbing features rely on generative AI, with mixed results. While some are impressive, many feel like they’re just keeping pace with the competition. For example, the phone shares the same AI wallpaper generator as the Pixel 8 Pro. The keyboard incorporates several AI tools, like language translation, advanced grammar and spelling checks, and the ability to rephrase messages in different styles, such as professional, polite, or casual. While this can make your writing sound somewhat generic, it could be beneficial for those who find it challenging to compose suitable emails for their superiors.

The Samsung Notes app can summarize documents, but it’s limited to those under 8,000 characters (about 1,500 words), which feels like a limitation. Meanwhile, the Samsung Internet browser can summarize even lengthy articles, producing results that seem impressive at first glance.

The voice recorder app can transcribe speech to text, but it doesn’t do it in real time like Google’s version. The phone app offers real-time voice translation, allowing you to attempt conversations across languages. While it works reasonably well for formal tasks like making reservations, it struggles predictably with casual language and slang.

I wouldn’t rely entirely on these features without thoroughly reviewing the results, but they can be useful in a pinch.

The Generative Edit feature in Samsung’s photo gallery app is comparable to Google’s Magic Editor on Pixel phones. It allows you to resize, reframe, erase, or move objects and make other edits using AI on a server to regenerate the image each time. This feature is great for quick adjustments that would normally require using Photoshop, but it can also produce messy results. Images edited with AI are watermarked with a symbol in the bottom left corner to indicate that they are not entirely authentic.

Another unique feature is the ability to convert any video to slow motion, using AI to generate additional frames, resulting in impressive results as long as you don’t scrutinize it too closely for artifacts.

Lastly, Circle to Search is a new feature on the S24 and Google’s Pixel 8 series. You can activate it by holding the home button or gesture bar, then circling what you’re looking for on your screen with your finger or stylus. Google will then provide information about an actor, search for a piece of clothing, or highlight text. It’s fast, efficient, and quickly becomes second nature. While Google Lens has been able to do something similar, it has never been as intuitive and rapid as this.

Camera

The phone features four cameras on the back and a high-quality 12-megapixel selfie camera at the top of the screen. Four of the cameras are the same as those on the S23 Ultra, including the main 200MP camera, the 12MP ultrawide, and the 10MP 3x telephoto, all of which produce equally impressive results.

A new addition to the S24 Ultra is a 50MP 5x telephoto camera, replacing the 10MP 10x telephoto from its predecessor. This new camera also offers in-sensor zoom for 10x magnification. The 5x magnification adds another powerful tool to the S24 Ultra’s capabilities, and in side-by-side comparisons, it’s very challenging to distinguish the difference at 10x zoom compared to shots from its predecessor.

Price

The Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra is priced starting at £1,249 (€1,469/$1,299.99/A$2,199) for the 256GB storage option.

In comparison, the Galaxy S24 is priced at £799, the S24+ at £999, the Z Fold 5 at £1,749, the Google Pixel 8 Pro at £999, and the iPhone 15 Pro Max at £1,199.

Verdict

The Galaxy S24 Ultra is like a Swiss army knife among phones—a sleek, premium device made of titanium and glass that excels at nearly everything.

From its robust software and stylus to its powerful chip, long-lasting battery, stunning screen, and versatile camera that outperforms competitors in zoom capabilities, the S24 can handle almost anything. It can even transform into a full Android desktop computer when connected to a monitor and keyboard. With seven years of software support, you can count on using this phone for a long time.

While the AI features have their ups and downs, with some being quite useful, none of them alone are a compelling reason to choose this phone over a Pixel or other options, especially considering that Google’s Circle to Search feature will soon be available on other Android devices. It’s worth noting that while all these features are currently free to use until at least the end of 2025, there may be additional fees for some after that.