
Samsung’s Galaxy S24 Ultra, the corporate’s newest flagship smartphone, checks almost each field for what you’d need in a high-end smartphone in 2024. It boasts the most recent Qualcomm processor for clean efficiency, has a giant, shiny show and a digicam setup that turns anybody right into a budding photographer. Oh, and the battery life — it goes for days. Actually.
During the last two weeks, I examined the S24 Extremely, utilizing it as my foremost cellphone day by day. Exterior just a few delicate adjustments to the design and a handful of software program options, I am not satisfied I may have advised the distinction between it and final 12 months’s S23 Ultra if I did not know any higher. Certainly, the S24 Extremely is a boring replace. However, perhaps that is not a foul factor? Let’s take a better look.

Samsung Galaxy S24 Extremely
Advisable
100x Area Zoom, a vibrant, curve-free AMOLED show, an S Pen with nice options, and much more wrapped up in a titanium bundle. The Galaxy S24 Extremely is Samsung’s assertion on what a standard slab smartphone needs to be in 2024.
- A very flat show that appears nice
- A battery that does not know what give up means
- A powerhouse in efficiency
- A tried and true design
- The digicam tends to overexpose photographs
Worth, specs, and availability
Samsung started taking preorders for the Galaxy S24 Ultra on Jan 17, with deliveries and in-store availability set for Jan. 31. Nevertheless, preorders began arriving earlier than the official launch date.
As typical, Samsung has a number of coloration choices accessible, a few of that are unique to orders positioned by way of Samsung. The Samsung unique colours embody titanium inexperienced, titanium blue, and titanium orange. Colours with wider availability embody titanium black, titanium violet, titanium yellow, and titanium grey.
The S24 Extremely begins at $1,299 for 256GB of storage, with the 512GB and 1TB fashions costing $1,419 or $1,659, respectively. All three fashions include 12GB of storage
Samsung Galaxy S24 Extremely
- Model
- Samsung
- SoC
- Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3
- Show
- 6.8in, Dynamic AMOLED 2X @ 3088 × 1440 (505ppi), 120Hz adaptive
- RAM
- 12GB
- Storage
- 256GB / 512GB / 1TB
- Battery
- 5,000mAh
- Ports
- USB-C
- Working System
- One UI 6.1 w/ Android 14
- Entrance digicam
- 12MP f/2.2
- Rear digicam
- 200MP f/1.7 foremost w/OIS, 12MP f/2.2 ultra-wide (120°), 50MP f/3.4 5X telephoto w/OIS, 10MP f/2.4 3x telephoto w/OIS
- Connectivity
- 5G, 4G, Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.3
- Dimensions
- 163 × 79 × 8.6mm
- Colours
- Titanium Black, Blue, Grey, Inexperienced, Orange, Violet, Yellow
- Weight
- 233g
- Cost pace
- 45W wired, 15W wi-fi
- IP Ranking
- IP68
- Worth
- From $1,300
- Micro SD card assist
- No
- Stylus
- S Pen
- Materials
- Titanium
- Launch date
- January 31, 2024
What I like concerning the Galaxy S24 Extremely
Flat shows are again
There are just a few design adjustments between final 12 months’s S23 Ultra and the 24 Ultra, a few of which you may be hard-pressed to even discover. One such instance is the truth that the S24 Extremely’s housing is now fabricated from titanium as an alternative of aluminum, making the cellphone barely lighter than its predecessor, however retaining the identical general aesthetic of being a flat-edged rectangular field.
Arguably the largest design change from final 12 months is the swap from a curved edge show to a wholly flat show. Samsung, together with different cellphone makers, have used curved edge shows to make bigger telephones really feel thinner and simpler to carry, however it has come at the price of errant touches and different usability points.
In October, Google made the same change to the Pixel 8 Pro, and it vastly improved the general expertise. The identical might be mentioned concerning the S24 Extremely — the flat show feels extra pure to faucet and swipe throughout. The S24 Extremely is not a lot thinner than the S23 Extremely, but I do not really feel prefer it’s any more durable to carry.
One other show enchancment I admire is the enhance in general brightness to 2,600 nits, which is helpful when viewing the display screen in direct daylight.
Nevertheless, my favourite design change is the brand new Gorilla Glass Armor that removes reflections from the display screen. Technically, it reduces the S24 Extremely’s show reflectivity by as much as 75% according to Corning. I am unable to vouch for the precise proportion, however I can say that overhead lights all however disappear from the display screen, and even utilizing the S24 Extremely exterior, underneath a shiny solar, I not often discover any reflections or points.
Samsung has lengthy been an trade chief in smartphone show high quality, and the S24 Extremely continues to bolster Samsung’s declare to the throne.
Easy efficiency
Contained in the Galaxy S24 Extremely is Qualcomm’s newest Snapdragon Gen 3 processor, 12GB of reminiscence and both 256GB, 512GB or 1TB of storage.
Qualcomm and Samsung tout varied efficiency will increase, all of which really feel correct and true after utilizing the S24 Extremely for a few weeks. For individuals who care about specifics, the Gen 3 chip is meant to convey a 30% efficiency enhance over the Gen 2, whereas being 20% extra environment friendly.
My S24 Extremely utilization has been a mixture of social media, inbox triage, Slack messages, streaming music, watching YouTube movies, often gaming, and taking a bunch of pictures and movies.
I am unable to vouch for the 30% improve in efficiency, however I can say that the S24 Extremely’s efficiency was clean and hiccup-free.
I did run Geekbench 6, a benchmarking app that checks single and multicore efficiency for a extra goal measure of the S24 Extremely’s efficiency chops in comparison with the S23 Extremely. In single-core efficiency, which is leveraged for extra routine and mundane duties like scrolling the online or sending a textual content, the S24 Extremely was roughly 8% sooner than the S23 Extremely. Multicore efficiency, used when doing extra resource-intensive duties like gaming, enhancing pictures, and even utilizing the S24 Ultra’s new AI features, had an general efficiency enhance of 20% over final 12 months’s Extremely.

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Battery life is bananas
During the last two weeks, I’ve persistently been in a position to get nearly two full days of use out of the S24 Extremely’s battery earlier than I needed to cost it. I may solely dream of doing that on my iPhone 15 Professional Max and Pixel 8 Professional.
Once more, my use consisted of duties that have been taxing on battery life — gaming, streaming video, watching Reels, and a whole lot of use open air in direct daylight with the show set to max brightness — together with extra mundane duties, like doom-scrolling Mastodon and Threads or replying to emails.

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For almost each cellphone I overview, I run the identical battery life benchmark that consists of setting the show brightness to 50%, turning off Bluetooth, enabling Do Not Disturb, and taking part in a 4K video on a loop. I monitor the cellphone utilizing a Wyze Cam in timelapse mode, capturing an image each 60 seconds. As soon as the cellphone turns off, I overview the timelapse video and calculate how lengthy the cellphone’s battery lasts.

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The Galaxy S24 Extremely powered by way of 20 hours and 47 minutes earlier than turning off, besting Google’s Pixel 8 Professional by almost 9 hours and half-hour.
Suffice to say, battery life will not be a priority with the Galaxy S24 Extremely.
What I do not like concerning the Galaxy S24 Extremely
The design lacks character
The design of Samsung’s Extremely collection of telephones has adopted the identical primary method over the past couple of years, with flat edges on the highest and backside of the cellphone, and curved edges on the vertical sides.
The design of the S22 Extremely and even the S23 Extremely felt like extra of a transition design as Samsung tried to determine the best way to incorporate the Observe’s beloved S Pen into its flagship S-series cellphone, however with the S24 Extremely utilizing the design, it feels as if Samsung is simply mailing it in at this level.
Possibly my unfavourable emotions in direction of the S24 Extremely’s design are indicative of an general downside with smartphone design feeling stale normally. All of them really feel boring and rancid, to some extent.
However the S24 Extremely lacks the identical kind of character you get from Google’s Pixel line or the identical degree of refinement discovered on Apple’s iPhone.
The S24 Extremely is an unapologetic rectangular slab of glass and steel. That is it. To Samsung’s credit score, putting off a curved edge show was the correct name, however that is the place my appreciation for the S24 Extremely’s design begins and stops.
Galaxy AI is helpful, however not essential
A serious a part of Samsung’s Galaxy S24 occasion was the rollout of Galaxy AI, a collection of options and capabilities making their debut on the S24, S24+ and S24 Extremely.
Samsung’s Galaxy AI options embody instruments to summarize notes you’ve got entered in Samsung Notes, provide the tl;dr model of a information story you are studying in Samsung’s Web browser, enhance transcriptions of conferences when utilizing the Voice Recorder app, or act as an interpreter for cellphone calls or in-person interactions. There are even just a few Galaxy AI options for serving to edit pictures and one other one which helps you craft a message by adjusting the tone of your writing.
Out of all these new AI options, the one one I discovered myself utilizing often was Circle to Search. Now we have a complete guide detailing how and when you should use the function, however the gist of it’s this: when utilizing your cellphone, and also you see an merchandise in your display screen, be it in an Instagram Reel, TikTok video or on a webpage, you long-press on the underside of your show to set off the function. Then you’ll be able to draw a circle across the merchandise and Google will present a collection of search outcomes, all with out you ever having to go away the display screen you are on.
I’ve used Circle to Search to seek out random issues like a ebook from a photograph of its backbone, or getting extra details about a particular sort of cheese I did not know the title of.
It is an interesting use of AI and Google search in an nearly addictive kind of approach. When you get used to utilizing it, you may end up utilizing it an increasing number of. I do know I did.
Many of those AI options, nonetheless, aren’t unique to the S24 Extremely, though your choices are restricted to Google’s Pixel 8 lineup or any of the Samsung Galaxy units, together with the S23 collection, Samsung has said will obtain an replace that features Galaxy AI’s capabilities.
The digicam is nice, however…
The S24 Extremely has a four-camera setup on the rear of the cellphone, just like the S23 Extremely, however with some tweaks and enhancements. Arguably probably the most notable change is the swap from a devoted 10MP 3x telephoto lens on the S23 Extremely to a 50MP 5x telephoto shooter on the S24 Extremely.
I haven’t got robust opinions about whether or not a devoted 3x digicam is healthier than a devoted 5x digicam, particularly as a result of Samsung can use software program to give you 0.6x, 1x, 3x, 5x, 10x, and 30x zoom ranges, however I’ll say that pictures taken at 5x and past seemed clear and sharp. The additional megapixels give Samsung extra flexibility for zoomed-in pictures.
However there appears to be a standard theme amongst all of the pictures I’ve captured with the S24 Extremely over the past two weeks — they’re all barely (or in some circumstances very) overexposed.
Samsung is infamous for cranking up the saturation on pictures captured on its smartphones, which generally meant that the publicity ranges have been additionally too excessive. However that latter a part of the equation was an exception, not the norm.
With the S24 Extremely, nearly each picture I captured with S24 Extremely had some degree of being overexposed.
Do not get me incorrect, the S24 Extremely’s digicam captures good pictures. Nice, even. I am being, admittedly, considerably nitpicky right here, particularly as a result of the publicity ranges are one thing you’ll be able to tweak with just some faucets within the Gallery app. However you should not need to.
Verdict

Samsung Galaxy S24 Extremely
Advisable
The Galaxy S24 Extremely is an exceptionally good, however boring cellphone. The return of a flat show is welcome, however the design is dated and lacks inspiration. Granted, most individuals put a case on their cellphone, hiding the design.
The digicam takes completely acceptable pictures, however it does are inclined to overexpose some areas, so simply be aware of that. And the brand new AI options are handy — helpful, even — however not a sufficiently big cause to improve to the S24 Extremely, particularly if in case you have an older Galaxy gadget that may get them through an replace.
Efficiency, show and battery life are the S24 Extremely’s killer options, and as is normally the case for Samsung’s flagship cellphone, different cellphone makers are going to have their work lower out for them in 2024 in the event that they wish to compete with Samsung. The S24 Extremely positive appears to be like prefer it’s the Android cellphone to beat this 12 months.
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