This is the device that Samsung has been aiming for.
The Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra is a phone that goes beyond the smartphone category and embraces what it means to be Ultra. It surpasses the Ultra from the previous year in every aspect and has more features than any other phone. Although the Galaxy S24 Ultra costs a little bit more, it offers faster performance, longer battery life, and even better cameras. The only thing that can make this phone run slower than its new AI functions is Samsung’s outdated and awful software, which hides all the interesting features under a maze of options and menus. The Ultra is well worth the money when you use it, and some of its capabilities are really amazing, but there is still more space than ever for advancement at the top.
The Galaxy S24 Ultra would be on my wish list if I were to make a list of everything I wanted in the greatest phone. From my list, Samsung is obviously working hard, and the S24 Ultra will appeal to both tech buffs and die-hard fans. In numerous aspects, some of which I was surprised by, the Galaxy S24 Ultra validates that its exorbitant cost is worth it.
Longest battery life is what I desire. With heavy use, the Galaxy S24 Ultra outlasts all prior Galaxy phones and even the finest iPhone models, lasting over a day.
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The best cameras are what I desire. Regardless of what the spec sheet claims, the Galaxy S24 Ultra takes better pictures than its predecessor. I have never used a camera phone that is as versatile as this one. I take better pictures of everything with the Galaxy S24 Ultra, but my artsy friends seem to favor the iPhone 15 Pro.
What more could I possibly need? The Galaxy S24 Ultra is among the greatest gaming phones ever, and I play games. It performs better than the greatest Android gaming phones and even outperforms the lightning-fast iPhone 15 Pro Max.
Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra
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Pros
- Better performance and battery life than ever before
- Great cameras improve the photo quality over last year
- Titanium frame and durable Gorilla Armor glass
Cons
- Big and heavy – titanium didn’t help with that
- Many new and great features are hidden beneath terrible menus
- AI features are often useless and cause performance delays
Even the Pro iPhone can’t match the professional features of the S24 Ultra, which is what I use for business. With the help of Samsung DeX software, the phone functions like a laptop and comes with windows and an application dock.
Samsung is unrelenting, but it’s evident now more than ever that simplicity is still lacking.
In many aspects, the Galaxy S24 Ultra is the greatest phone money can buy. It also represents the pinnacle of Samsung’s worst tendencies. The program is disorganized. It’s a confusing maze of hidden features, settings, and pointless choices. It has to be updated or abandoned because it is a disorganized mess that was created five years ago.
Samsung retreats two steps for each new feature it introduces to entice customers, burying them under further settings menus and tiers of customization. As long as you’re ready to delve three levels inside the Settings app, you won’t be disappointed if you were hoping for additional artificial intelligence features on the Galaxy S24 Ultra.
Though I’m optimistic about the usefulness of AI, we’re now stuck with a lot of proofs of concept, which is slowing down an otherwise blazingly fast phone. The Galaxy S24 Ultra is still among the top AI phones, though.
The Galaxy S24 Ultra’s bottom line is still positioned quite high in the sky. The weekend-long battery life, the reliable cameras, and the incredibly helpful S Pen make this phone the best you can buy, even with its annoying OS and pointless AI capabilities.
When I need to get work done, I use this phone instead of my laptop or tablet because it’s more powerful and convenient.
I hope that the Galaxy S24 Ultra is much easier to use. Perhaps in the future, artificial intelligence will be able to help Samsung with its usability issues. Before then, I believe Samsung needs to face up to its mistakes. Not only is the iPhone 15 Pro running iOS 17 more user-friendly and entertaining, but it’s also more social and engaging thanks to features like Name Drop and Check In that make iPhone owners happy to share with their friends.
The hardware is excellent and seems to be improving all the time. In the future, I might have to start searching elsewhere because the software issues have gotten so awful.
Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra
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Galaxy S24 Ultra: Price and value
costs more than the Galaxy S23 Ultra from last year.
OS updates for seven years could increase value.
Offers for launches and trade-ins aren’t as fantastic as they were last year.
Launch pricing for the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra is higher than that of the Ultra from the previous year, and the price gap will be more painful. Nothing particularly significant or novel has been added to the Galaxy S24 Ultra compared to the already feature-rich Galaxy S23 Ultra. It has improved slightly in several aspects.
Samsung has promised to provide significant Android and security updates for seven years, so the full worth might be revealed later. It was unheard of until last year, but with Apple trailing behind with only five years of service, we now have seven years of support for the greatest Android phones.
Samsung can make bold promises, but we won’t know if they will come through until the seventh year. Apple has already fulfilled this long-term commitment on twelve occasions with a variety of iPhone models. Samsung and Google, never once.
Already, there are grounds for skepticism. A disclaimer stating that the present set of AI features could not be available for free forever can be found buried in Samsung’s most recent terms of service. To be honest, we don’t know what that implies and it’s too soon to make any assumptions. However, it’s peculiar in that it appears as though Samsung is creating legitimate backdoors to deceive people. That’s not what Apple does. We’ll have to wait and see if Samsung stands up.
I traded in my Galaxy S21 Ultra for a Galaxy S23 Ultra last year, and I regret to inform you that the launch-day trade-in offers and discounts aren’t as alluring as they were.
You should budget hundreds more than your trade value if you are upgrading from the model from the previous year. Even so, I believe it’s worthwhile to take the risk—at least once. With each upgrade, older phones will increasingly be shut out of the latest AI functions. As a result, when Samsung announces terrible news and removes the guillotine feature from the Galaxy S22 Ultra or anything even newer, values could crash.
We’ve seen several sales on Amazon for the Galaxy S24 Ultra in the months after I first published this review, which has effectively down the price by about $150 / £200. Even with the release of the upcoming Galaxy Z foldable phone lineup later this year, this remains one of the priciest phones available, and we don’t see Samsung lowering the price much further.
Is this phone really worth that much money? You are reading the wrong review if that is the question you are asking. It’s probably worth it to get the Galaxy S24 Plus, which you desire. The Ultra is this. This phone is the ultimate one; it can perform tasks that no other phone can. Ultra cannot be purchased with a standard price tag. It is not appropriate.
Galaxy S24 Ultra review: Specs and benchmarks
Something amazing occurred during our Future Labs benchmark tests of the Galaxy S24 Ultra. It outperformed the iPhone 15 Pro, which had the best performance. We conducted benchmark tests, and the Galaxy S24 Ultra performed better in nearly all of them. The Galaxy S24 Ultra outperformed the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max in numerous tests, including multi-core, graphics rendering, battery rundown, and many more.
The Apple iPhone 14 Pro Max was able to surpass the Galaxy S23 Ultra from the previous year, and an Android smartphone hasn’t won hands-down in cross-platform benchmark testing in a long time.
Galaxy S24 Ultra review: Design
An enormous smartphone slab
It’s still not lighter with titanium.
refined and elegant but unaltered
While there are variations between the Galaxy S24 Ultra and the Galaxy S23 Ultra, they are not as significant as one another. Although the speaker grills and microphones have been repositioned, the new phone nevertheless largely shares the same design. That’s unfortunate since, despite exuding a certain sophistication, the Samsung Ultra phone lacks visual appeal.
It pays to examine things more closely. The phone has an unsettling depth to it because of the layers upon layers of metallic coating on the rear glass, especially in the creepy natural gray titanium finish. My favorite finish is violet because it looks amazing against polished metal.
Samsung gives color, materials, and finishes a great deal of thought. The subtle tint of the frame in each color goes well with the new Gorilla Glass Armor back. While other color selections veer toward warmer frame tones, titanium black is completely black.
Apple devotees frequently cite the phone’s symmetry as the best feature in terms of design. To be honest, Samsung is more intelligent than symmetrical. The Power and Volume buttons should, in my opinion, be on the same side. This implies that I don’t inadvertently take a ton of screenshots with my phone every time I pick it up.
Similar to Apple, Samsung chose titanium for the frame this year, although the difference isn’t as noticeable as it is on my iPhone 15 Pro Max. Compared to last year, the Pro Max was able to lose a significant amount of weight—roughly half an ounce. The Ultra Galaxy? At most, it is one gram lighter.
You should definitely grab an Ultra and pop the pen if you haven’t used one before. Do you know how to click the S Pen? That has no justification. The S Pen has a really gratifying clicky top, but it could just come out like a spring-loaded pen. Yes, Samsung hasn’t ignored the clicky top of the S Pen—it’s also a motion-sensing stylus with a Bluetooth camera remote button.
Naturally, the S Pen isn’t just a toy; it’s among the most shockingly functional accessories ever made. Unlike the large, awkward, rubber-tipped iPhone stylus you can purchase, it is as accurate as a professional drawing instrument.
Additionally, it includes built-in Bluetooth, so you can use the side button to control other phone features—particularly the camera—with a remote. Yes, the Galaxy S24 Ultra comes with a remote shutter release, which I actually purchased as an add-on for my Nikon DSLR.
This year’s Galaxy S24 Ultra is flat, bringing an end to a trend of screen curvature that started with the Galaxy Note Edge’s double-black-diamond slope. This subtle resolution resolved itself into a distinctive Samsung appearance that lessened the impact of the bezel around the edges. The Galaxy S23 Ultra has softly rounded edges on both the front and back, which improves the phone’s grip. The Galaxy S24 Ultra feels noticeably larger, even if it isn’t unpleasant. It is also more pointed.
Score for design: 4 out of 5.
Galaxy S24 Ultra : FAQs
Q. What are the key features of the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra?
The Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra will supposedly be armed with a 6.8-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X screen, 200MP main camera, Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 or Exynos 2400 chip, depending on the region, a 5,000 mAh battery with fast charging support, S Pen which now seems to be a less probable option, and 5G connectivity. There’s also rumors about up to 16 GB of RAM and the storage option ranging from 256 GB to 1 TB.
Q. How will the camera on the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra pan out?
The S24 Ultra should provide a quad-camera setup, led by a 200MP primary sensor, a 12MP ultra-wide camera, and two telephoto lenses to further enhance zooming, with both 3x and 10x optical zoom. You’ll probably expect that the camera will also shoot video in 8K, night photo features should be enhanced, and many more bells and whistles.
Q. Does the Galaxy S24 Ultra feature 5G and Wi-Fi 7?
Yes, the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra will come with dual 5G for faster data on-the-cell and Wi-Fi 7 for the next wireless networking generation, which will offer faster internet speeds and better reliability.
Q. What is the Galaxy S24 Ultra battery capacity and charging speed?
The 5,000mAh battery is said to be used in the Galaxy S24 Ultra, with high-speed charging up to 45W. Wireless charging would be supported along with reverse wireless charging to drive other devices, such as wireless earbuds, in return.
Q. Is Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra waterproof?
The Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra should be provided with an IP68 rating, dust and water resistant. It would resist up to 1.5 meters of freshwater, submerged for up to 30 minutes, making it a strong and quite effective product even in wet conditions.
Q. Would the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra carry an S Pen?
Yes, like its predecessor, the Galaxy S24 Ultra is going to support S Pen. One can use it to take notes and sketch as well as interact with the gadget more precisely. The S Pen is placed in a body of the phone so that its access should not be problematic.
Q. How is the display quality of the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra?
The S24 Ultra will sport a 6.8-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X display with QHD+ resolution and a 120Hz refresh rate. This is going to provide for clean, rich colors, and very sharp visuals that would be ideal for gaming and streaming but also everyday use.
Q. What colors will the Galaxy S24 Ultra be available in?
Although the Samsung company hasn’t officially confirmed colors, the Galaxy S24 Ultra will be available in classic shades like Phantom Black, Phantom Silver, and more exclusive colors that might be Green or Burgundy.
Q. For how much does the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra cost?
The rate for the Galaxy S24 Ultra will start at around $1,199 for the basic variant, depending on the region and configurations. The rates will differ according to the storage and RAM options.
Q. When will Samsung release the Galaxy S24 Ultra?
This is one of those where it is likely to be out in early 2024, perhaps in January or February, since that is normal with every Samsung release of the Galaxy S series.
Q. How does the Galaxy S24 Ultra compare to the earlier S23 Ultra variant with respect to its battery life?
The S24 Ultra is expected to be more power-efficient than the predecessors; plus, of course, some software will optimize this advantage. When used with the 5,000mAh battery, it is likely to offer much better battery life, especially with heavy usage.
Q. Is the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra a good gaming device?
It is intended for intensive games due to its Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 (or Exynos 2400 in others) along with up to 16GB of RAM, and a 120Hz refresh rate display.