Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra review: zoom in, enhance! – Ultra-Sim

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra Intro

Well, what are we getting? New processor — sure. Then, some design facelifts — definitely, with a titanium frame to keep up with the times! A bit of a camera module shuffle has the zoom cameras changed up a bit, but we still end up with 4 cameras on the back, like before.

What’s new about Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra

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Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra Specs

Riding the edge of tech

Samsung also completely removed the curvature of the screen. The soft Edge design has been getting less and less prominent over the years, as it appears consumers simply prefer a flat display. And Samsung has been obliging, slowly but surely pushing the curve closer and closer to the edge of the screen, until it finally disappears. Each year, it has been getting good feedback from the community — it seems that smartphone users are generally over the “futuristic” look of curved glass screens. On the Galaxy S24 Ultra, the curve is so slight, it’s barely there — and it’s a part of the phone’s bezel, so it does not cut into the display, not one bit.

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Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra Display

Familiar size, flatter feel (Image credit – PhoneArena)

As before, we have a 6.8-inch, Dynamic AMOLED 2x screen — Samsung’s best screen tech that has been awesome for years now. There’s more brightness headroom, with a peak brightness of 2,600 nits — that only matters when watching HDR content and under very bright conditions. But hey, it’s there.

It’s still QHD+ resolution for super crisp images, and it’s still an LTPO panel with variation between 1 Hz and 120 Hz — Samsung has been doing that with the Ultra models for a while now.

Colors look beautiful, and you again have a choice between an amped up mode, and a more natural “Basic” mode. Plus the adaptive eye protection, which filters out blue light depending on time of day and ambient lighting. Samsung screens are easy on the eye and great to look at.

We, again, have an ultrasonic fingerprint scanner under the glass. It’s fast and accurate, and ultrasonic tech is typically better than the optic sensor that most other manufacturers use — it’s supposedly more secure, but what we do know for a fact is that it can read your print better if you hand is moist, or there’s some smudging on your finger or on the glass.

Peek a boo, I can zoom on you

Galaxy S24 Ultra camera samples

Main camera — day

Off the main camera, we get great results. It seems the typical Samsung-isms of having too much grean in the grass, and neon blue skies have been toned down quite a lot. The colors are vibrant and saturated, but we wouldn’t say unrealistic. The photos come out with good exposure and dynamics balance. You can spot some sharpening around tree branches, but it’s not too excessive, we find. At least not in the current smartphone camera climate where everyone seems to sharpen details for that wow effect.

Main camera – low-light

Night shots are also quite good, with light sources kept intact and a lot of details preserved within the shadows. Now, depending on how much lighting you get, the noise reduction and detail sharpening can get a bit damaging (sample 4), but otherwise, we would trust this phone to take nice memorabilia when we are out on a Friday night.

Zoom quality

With the zoom cameras, it’s a bit different. The more and more we zoom in, the more the software compensates by amping exposure and colors. You can spot the shift between 3x (telephoto camera 1) and 5x (telephoto camera 2). Then, at the 10x and 30x shots of the first row above, we can see the return of the aforementioned “Samsung-isms” as the red building becomes more and more aggressive. Though, we imagine achieving those zooms with just a 5x telephoto camera is hard enough. Credit given where credit is due, at 10x, we don’t miss the old Galaxy S23 Ultra 10x telephoto lens. It seems Samsung has kept its promise — it’s using a 5x lens with a 50 MP sensor and the zoom looks just as good as before.

Ultra-wide camera

The ultra-wide camera is tuned to match the main camera quite well. Of course, the lens is a challenge to work with, and the images are slightly lower quality — details are a bit jagged around the edges of the photo, and there are a bit more HDR auras visible where dark objects meet the bright sky. But, in general, it’ll serve you well for some epic shots or landscape photos.

Selfies

Great performance from the selfie camera — a lot of detail and facial features have been preserved. The threads in the hat, the beard look impressively sharp. Skintone is correct and dynamics look great.

The Galaxy S24 Ultra has the brand-new Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 Mobile Platform for Galaxy. Again, it’s like a normal Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, slightly overclocked for Samsung flagships.

For what it is, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 is an extremely powerful processor — no doubt one that enables the AI trickery that the S24 can do with pictures and live translations. It scores high in the benchmarks, naturally. And, more importantly, the phone feels pretty quick in daily use. Now, when editing photos with the generative AI editor — it does take its sweet time. But that’s still new tech, so it’s to be expected. It just shows us how long it’s been since we’ve had a major new development on smartphones, that we are used to everything being quick and polished.

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra OS / Android version

Dance S Pen, dance (Image credit – PhoneArena)

Like split-screen scenes, which you can save and recall at any time, floating your apps in resizable windows, taking long screenshots or noting on your screenshots with the S Pen.

Ah yes, the S Pen suite comes with even more features, like controlling the phone with air gestures from the stylus, using it as a mouse cursor when hovering, and — of course — writing and drawing.

We have to say, some of these work remarkably well — like the summarize tool for articles. We tested it with a few editorials here at PhoneArena, and the AI was incredibly good at breaking down the article in a few to-the-point bulletpoints, which were very accurate to the author’s original intention.

The picture editor is OK. Don’t get us wrong, the possibility to draw and recreate background when you crop something out is mind-boggling. However, it doesn’t typically hit the mark very well. Depends on the background, of course, but you can definitely tell something’s been going on if there is some texture that needs to be restored. Often, the photos will work for small screens and social media. But, if you squint, you can tell.

We are curious to see if these AI features will expand throughout the year, and if they will trickle down to older Galaxy phones. 

Sleek and slim, 5,000 mAh is the price we pay (Image credit – PhoneArena)

OK, what does that say about real-life use? Well, the Galaxy S24 Ultra isn’t quite a “2-day phone”, especially if you spend a lot of time enjoying those new AI features. But it can very comfortably last you a day and then some. If you are a more casual user, it can take it up to the second evening before requiring a charge, sure.

It also won’t be pushing any charge speed limits, with wired charging at 45 W, and wireless — 15 W. No Qi2 support, too, which we were kind of hoping for.

Typical Qi charging speeds — 15 W, pretty much any modern pad supports this. There are still some old ones with 7.5 W floating about, so — again — your results might differ.

Samsung’s stereo speakers have been quite good thus far. Maybe a bit middy, and a bit harsher-sounding at max volume. The Z Fold phones have been sounding great, which showed that the Ultra flagships still have a bit of work to do there. But, spatial constraints probably play a role. The Galaxy S24 Ultra sounds fine… for the YouTube video or Instagram Reels doomscrolling, sure. It’s definitely well above average, but it doesn’t break that “smartphone speaker” barrier, where you’d feel comfortable sharing music over it.

As far as haptics go, the S24 Ultra we feels pretty much like the S23 series — clicky, strong, responsive.

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra Competitors

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