Reviews, Reviews, Smartphones, Tech Essentials

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra – It’s More Than AI [Review]

October 2024

The Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra is a powerhouse smartphone with a gorgeous display and amazing battery life!

The Samsung Galaxy S series is arguably Samsung’s most popular device. Whether it’s the stunning display, the insane camera zoom, or the endless multi-tasking capabilities, the Galaxy S series always tries to live up to its flagship title. After a few months with the phone and using it as a daily driver, here are my thoughts on the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra in my long term review.

Design and Build of the Galaxy S24 Ultra

The Galaxy S Ultra series is known for its tough build, and the S24 Ultra does not disappoint with its premium design. If you saw the Galaxy S23 Ultra or even the Galaxy S22 Ultra, you will recognize the S24 Ultra. It’s a bit more refined though. The bezels are slimmer, and the edges are smooth. And even though it has a beautiful 6.8-inch QHD AMOLED display, it feels light (at 8.22 ounces). What makes that screen so beautiful is that it’s finally flat. It’s accommodates the S-Pen (Samsung’s stylus) nicely. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the curved display, but as the phones got taller and taller, the curved displays were getting a bit difficult to handle. The display also has an anti-reflective coating which I didn’t know I needed. The display is still colorful and vibrant. I use it in vivid mode over the natural mode. Even if sometimes a bit saturated, Samsung displays are a crowd-pleaser. Just gorgeous!

Day-to-Day Experience with the Galaxy S24 Ultra

A powerhouse phone like the Galaxy S24 Ultra can handle anything you throw at it. It’s a powerhouse in your pocket. Of course, it has the chip of the year, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, 12GB RAM, and a 5,000 mAh battery. So it’s ready to take on a busy day. You can do the usual, like using Split Screen view, where you open two apps simultaneously. Or if you want to switch between apps and keep them full screen, you can always access them from the Smart sidebar. You can disable the smart Smart Sidebar too, if you feel that it makes the screen cluttered.

For all you note-takers and doodlers out there, the S24 Ultra comes with the beloved S Pen. Whether you’re jotting down ideas, marking up documents, or creating digital art, the S Pen adds a whole new dimension to your mobile experience. The best use of the S-Pen is for the “Circle to Search” feature. Yes, you can use your finger, but it’s just more fun with the S-Pen, and Circle to Search, has to be one of the most useful AI features available. Besides that, there’s really nothing new here, but we know how much I love the Note line, and I use the S-Pen as a camera shutter every now and then and for note-taking sometimes, so it’s still useful to me every now and then.

Galaxy S24 Ultra Cameras

If you saw my review of the Galaxy S23 Ultra, the camera on the S24 Ultra is not too much of a jump from that. You now have 5X optical zoom. The pictures are slightly better than last year’s model, as it captures great detail, but not enough to warrant an upgrade since the camera on the Galaxy S23 Ultra is good already. You have the amazing zoom capabilities of the 200 MP wide camera, 50 MP Telephoto camera, 10 Megapixel telephoto camera, and 12 Megapixel ultrawide camera. The crazy 30x, 50x, and 100x zoom is always fun to play with and always a showstopper.

Galaxy AI Features

At the Unpacked event, Samsung focused heavily on the AI features available on the Galaxy S24 series. Taking full advantage of the S24 Ultra screen to make your pictures perfect, you can use AI software to erase objects and add others. Sometimes it works perfectly well, others its just funny. Samsung focused on AI software features, but I didn’t use them as much. I did test out the translations. It did get it ninety percent of the time. I think for simple translations, it can definitely do the job. I enjoy the camera AI features on the phone. I did erase a few people and things here and there. Telling it what to create is a fun party trick.

Some other useful Galaxy AI features:

Translate Phone Calls in Real Time: Tap call assist to translate a phone call.
Translate while chatting: you can translate our chat in some chat and texting apps.
Translate Conversations: You can translate conversations and spoken language with AI. Using “Conversation Mode,” you can talk back and forth, and “Listening Mode” for continuous translation (for seminars and lectures)
Summarize and Translate Your Voice Recordings: Convert recordings of meetings, lectures, voice memos, and more into text and then summarize for quick review.

Quick Share is underrated. You can share pics really quickly. We demoed it and when you do play around with the AI features, your friends are going to want you to share the pictures, and Quick Share just works. You can share with multiple people at once. Great tool.

Regarding carrier service, I used the Galaxy S24 Ultra on T-Mobile. I used the phone on T-Mobile service for several months in many states, including Queens, New York City, Atlanta, Georgia, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, California. For the most part, the service was good. I use T-Mobile mostly because of the perks like free in-flight wifi and affordable international plans when traveling. So far, so good.

Battery Life and Charging on the Galaxy S24 Ultra

The 5000 mAh battery on the S24 Ultra does a great job. The S24 Ultra charges at 45W. It’s pretty impressive. Of course, battery life varies with everyone, but the S24 Ultra knocks it out of the park. Even after months of using the phone, it has only gotten better! Sometimes I go through a full day of full use and make it with 15% or sometimes 20% battery life at the end of the day. Amazing! This may not be something everyone thinks about, as we mostly have access to chargers and portable battery packs, but it was just so incredible not to highlight. If you know me, you know that once I hit that 45% mark, I hit the charger fast, but I decided to see it through, and I was soooo impressed. Amazing job, Samsung and Snapdragon!

Verdict

The Galaxy S23 Ultra was great. There wasn’t a lot to fix there, so the S24 Ultra was the tightening of the screws and bolts. It’s hard to justify the price at that point. This phone is for someone who needs all of the productivity features with an incredibly solid build. I will say that Samsung does have amazing trade-in deals if you want to upgrade. I’ll say that what’s not talked about enough on the S24 Ultra is the anti-reflective, flat display, and amazing battery life. These simple things are what carry day-to-day phone usage and what make a phone worth it.