While it is no secret that phone manufactures steal ideas from one another, this is almost comical. Apple makes their iPhone 15 Pro titanium, Samsung follows suit by making the S24 Ultra titanium as well. The regular S24 is also starting to look more like an iPhone because of its flat sides. When Google made the bold claim that they will support the Pixel 8 for 7 years back in October, Samsung made the same claim for the S24 series. Still, you should never trust a company for what they claim. Just like Google killed many of its services, Samsung has done the same.
The headlining feature of the S24 Series is Galaxy AI, which is really just Google Gemini, and there are some really cool features. When on a phone call with someone who speaks a different language, the phone will translate your voice in real time. While it is nowhere near perfect right now, it sets the stage for better translation tools in the future. The same can be said with text translation.
The S24 line is also implementing Google’s Magic Editor, which uses AI to move the subject around the frame or delete unwanted objects in the background. Unlike Google’s Magic Editor, Samsung’s implementation is less restrictive on what it can edit. After using this feature, a watermark will be added to the bottom left corner of the image to show that it was AI manipulated, which is the responsible thing to do. But, this watermark can be removed with Samsung’s pre-existing object remover.
Some minor but still interesting AI features are note summarization and instant slow-mo. In Samsung notes, you can now view a summary of your notes and add headers. Instant Slow-mo will slow down any video, even those not taken on the phone, to half its original speed when pressing on it. It does this by using AI to insert frames in between the pre-existing frames in real time. There will be some artifacting, but it is not very noticeable.
Even though it’s called Galaxy AI, it is really using Google’s Gemini Pro and Nano AI models. Gemini Pro is more advanced than Gemini Nano, but it requires an internet connection to work. Generative edit, AI wallpapers, and all summarization tools will require an internet connection, a Samsung account, and it will only be free until the end of 2025. Luckily, translation and instant slow-mo will be done on-device with Gemini Nano. There is an option to only use on-device AI processing, but that just disables the online tools.
Another useful feature is Circle to Search. While this will not be exclusive to the S24 series, Circle to Search uses Google lens to look up anything on your screen. To activate it, you have to hold down the home button or the gesture bar and circle what you want to search. Because this is at the OS level, it enables you to search anything without leaving the app.
All of the phones in the S24 series get the new 2600 nit peak brightness screen. That is bright enough to rival the sun. Samsung also added an anti-reflective coating to minimize glare. The Ultra now has a flat screen instead of a curved one, and the bezels are significantly smaller and symmetrical.
Going back to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, it is significantly better than the previous gen. According to Tom’s Guide’s S24 benchmark, the S24 Ultra has a faster CPU and GPU compared to the iPhone 15 Pro. In Geekbench’s multi core test, the S24 gets 7,249 points, while the iPhone gets 7,194. In 3DMark’s Wild Life Unlimited, the S24 gets a score of 20,627 while the iPhone gets 15,747. But, mobile games are not intense enough to use the full power of these chips anyway.
For once, cameras were not the main selling point of a phone, AI took that spot for the S24 series. Strangely, the S24 Ultra now only has a 5x telephoto compared to the 10x periscope lens from last year. Because the 5x optical zoom has a 50 MP sensor, Samsung still promises “optical-quality performance from 2x to 10x magnification” with digital zoom.
The S24 Ultra is $100 more than last year, starting at $1300. The S24 and S24+ prices are the same as last year: $800 for the S24 and $1,000 for the S24+.
