Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra Review: Still the big boss of Android? AI, AI, Sir!

It has been this way for a few years. At the beginning of the year, Samsung will release its flagship Galaxy S series of phones. And the competition will get busy competing with the Galaxy S and S Plus models. Not too many brands even think of getting into the ring with the S Ultra model of the range. It has simply been THE Android phone for a while now – the one with the huge display, the staggering cameras, the over-the-top specs, and, of course, the bearer of the S Pen legacy of the legendary Galaxy Note series.

This year, Samsung played down the spec side of its Galaxy S series at its annual launch, focusing instead on what it termed the Galaxy AI features of the range. While there’s no denying that AI does play a major part in the Galaxy S24 Ultra story, it in no way changes the fact that this remains hands down the most powerful and most versatile Android phone that money can buy. A lot of money can buy. You do get a lot for that lot of money, though.

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra design and appearance: Handsome heavyweight (titanium notwithstanding) with no curves in front

That word that perhaps best describes the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra is “imposing.” At a time when most other devices are trying to cut grams from weight and look slimmer, this is like a heavyweight boxer that wears its size and weight like a crown on its head – with assurance and pride. At 162.3 mm in height, 79 mm in width, and 8.6 mm in thickness, the Galaxy S24 Ultra is a big phone and one of the widest in the market. You will need to use both hands more often than not while using it, but that has so often been the case with the Ultra that its two-handedness seems more appropriate than inconvenient.

The first thing a lot of folks will notice about the Galaxy S24 Ultra is the flat display. After years of featuring curved displays on its most expensive and powerful flagship phone, Samsung has finally taken the display road most traveled and switched to a flat display on the Galaxy S24 Ultra. The official reason we were given was that the S Pen stylus worked better on a flat display. Personally speaking, we prefer flat displays for the ease of slapping on display protectors, for lesser distortion around those curved sides, and, of course, for being more resistant to drops in general. It is a magnificent, bright 6.8-inch display and comes with a Corning Gorilla Armor, which is supposed to be highly scratch-resistant.

The back of the phone is flat, too, and has Corning Gorilla Armor protection. Samsung has once again gone with camera lenses in a waterdrop-like formation instead of clustering them into a separate camera unit with a different color and texture. The cameras jut out a fair bit and even slightly imbalance the phone, but they do give the S24 Ultra a very distinct look of its own as compared to competing brands, although it can be mistaken for its own predecessor.

The most talked about part of the phone’s design is the presence of a titanium frame, which might be seen as a page borrowed from the iPhone Pro design manual. It is believed to add a layer of toughness to the phone, but unlike in the iPhone, it does not reduce the weight of the S24 Ultra by too much – the S24 Ultra, at 232 grams, is just two grams lighter than the S23 Ultra. The metal also gives the phone’s shades their names – titanium gray, titanium violet, and titanium violet. We got the titanium gray version.

While the shade looks almost coffee-colored at times in certain kinds of light, there is no doubt that the phone cuts an imposing figure with clean finishes and an understated and elegant design language. It is a pretty tough customer as well, with an IP68 rating ensuring it can survive in water for up to half an hour. In a rather odd quirk of design, the corners of the phone are a little pointy and can jut a little into your palm, so we recommend holding it mainly by the sides and keeping it clear of the palms of your hands.

The Galaxy S24 Ultra is an unabashedly big, handsome phone – the kind that makes a reassuring ‘thunk’ when placed on a table. Do not expect people to ask you which phone it is when they see it. That size, those cameras, and the stylus tucked into the base will tell them this is an Ultra. Yes, this is a big phone, but “Big” is a term that the S24 Ultra wears as a badge of honor.

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra 5G Spec Sheet: Big hardware cake with spectacular AI icing

Although Samsung preferred to talk of the AI prowess of the phone at its launch, that big frame comes with some very impressive hardware. The 6.8-inch display is quad HD+ Dynamic LTPO AMOLED 2x with 120 Hz refresh rate, which can change refresh rates as per the content being shown on it. The Galaxy S24 Ultra is also the only phone in the Galaxy S24 series to come with the flagship Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip (the S24 and S24 Plus have Exynos chips), which is considered to be the most powerful chip on the Android side of the processor planet. This is backed by a massive 12 GB of RAM that stays consistent across all three storage models – 256 GB, 512 GB, and 1 TB.

Those cameras on the back are all heavyweights – a 200-megapixel main sensor with OIS, a 50-megapixel telephoto with 5x optical zoom and OIS, another 12-megapixel telephoto with 3x optical zoom and OIS, and a 12-megapixel ultrawide. Selfies are handled by a 12-megapixel camera. There are stereo speakers onboard for sound, and running all this is the task of a large 5000 mAh battery. It also remains the only flagship in the world to come with a bundled stylus, the legendary S Pen. In fact, the only relatively modest numbers associated with the Galaxy S24 Ultra come in the charging and charger department – it charges at 45W with a wired charger and 15W over a wireless one, and it has zero chargers in the box.

Added to this hardware goodness is Samsung’s insistence on AI greatness. The brand has repeatedly stressed the AI features on the S24 series, and the Galaxy S24 Ultra comes laden with them. Among the ones that are most impressive is Circle to Search, which lets you circle any term on the phone to search for it; the default call app comes with not just live transcription but also live translation as well as a translated transcription.

A Chat Assist option suggests the right tone for your messages, your notes can be organized and ordered, and browsing assist can summarise articles and highlight their main points. And, of course, there are a large number of photography-oriented AI tools, from AI Zoom and AI Nightography to AI photo edits that remove objects, noise, and even reflections. All this runs on Samsung’s Galaxy OneUI on top of Android 14, with a Pixel 8-like assurance of seven years of updates! Be it hardware or software, this is easily the most loaded smartphone there is.

Just remember that you will need to create a Samsung account to use the AI features!

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra Cameras: Good before, brilliant after an update

The Galaxy Ultra generally comes with the best cameras in the Android world, which is this wide of the Pixel range. The S24 Ultra got off to a slightly rocky start in this regard. The phone’s telephoto sensor was seen as a bit of a downgrade by some as it went from 10x optical zoom to 5x. Samsung claimed that the boost in megapixels on the camera from 10 megapixels to 50 megapixels would result in more detail and also improve digital zoom quality (which incidentally goes all the way up to 100x). We were also assured that the main sensor was superior to the one on the Galaxy S23 Ultra despite having the same megapixel count.

Those claims seemed a little off the mark in our initial days with the phone. The Galaxy S24 Ultra did take very good shots and videos, but they did not seem to be a major improvement over its predecessor, and some even seemed a little worse, with oversharpening of subjects (edges and textures looking too sharp) and inconsistent colors. Zoom performance also seemed to have suffered beyond 5x. A recent software update, however, has totally changed the scenario.

After the update, the image quality from the main sensor moved a clear level above that of the S23 Ultra and right into the zone of the iPhone 15 Pro Max and the Pixel 8 Pro, although with a very different touch. The Galaxy S24 Ultra, by default, delivers brightly colored snaps rich in detail, and the detail now does not seem artificially sharpened as it sometimes does on the Pixel 8 Pro. Samsung’s claim on better digital zoom is also borne out, as we found ourselves getting into the 25x-30x zoom regularly for the first time on a phone, making it terrific for snapping birds and animals from a distance without disturbing them. The 100x, honestly, is best left for moon shots – use it in daylight, and the results will be as noisy as a loudspeaker at a political rally!

A VERY impressive part of the telephoto is the fact that it is very fast – we actually took images of an eagle flying in the sky and got impressively clear results. And this is without invoking AI editing, which lets you do an astonishing amount with your photographs and videos, although in many cases, the editing seems a little obvious. We found the option to erase shadows and reflections to be especially useful, making this a great snapper for bright light conditions, although a point to be kept in mind is that very fine shadows cannot be detected at times.

The color signature of the S24 Ultra’s cameras initially seemed a little dull, but after the update, it has reverted to the bright and poppy colors that we are used to from Samsung flagships. Low light performance is very good indeed from the main sensor, with Samsung having ditched its slightly yellowish faux brightness of a few years ago in favor of a more realistic approach – colors are good even at night, and the darkness is given its space and not brightened up noisily. We would advise against zooming in beyond 3x in low light conditions where noise starts to creep in. Portrait images are very good too, although we think that the main sensor and 50-megapixel telephoto deliver excellent bokeh even without portrait mode, provided one gets the right distance between subject and background,

The video quality is brilliant and easily the best we have seen on the Android side, although it is still a little short of the fantastic consistency that iPhones possess. Do we miss the 10x optical zoom that the S23 Ultra had? Well, to be honest, yes, we do, but the extended high-quality digital zoom makes it worth it – we got better 10x zoom on the S23 Ultra, but the S24 Ultra lets us go to 25x zoom digitally and still deliver social media-worthy snaps, which the S23 Ultra could not! Both the ultrawide and selfie cameras get a little dwarfed by just how good the main camera and telephotos are, but they are very solid performers.

The large display of the S24 Ultra is terrific for editing videos and images and pull out the S Pen, and suddenly, it is very easy to make fine, seemingly tiny edits that are impossible to do on smaller displays. As an overall package, we think the S24 Ultra goes right alongside the iPhone 15 Pro Max as a portable content creator’s studio – you can not only shoot high-quality content on it but even carry out detailed edits on it!

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra performance: What can’t it do? Nothing! (No, not the Carl Pei one!)

With all that hardware packed into it, it is hardly surprising that the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra sails through every task you throw at it. Games like Genshin Impact and Call of Duty not only fly on it even at the highest graphics settings but also look wonderful, thanks to that bright, wide display and sound great, courtesy of those excellent stereo speakers. This is a fantastic device on which to view content and play games. The presence of the S Pen makes it a great device – perhaps the only flagship-level device – that you can scribble and sketch on, and well, if you want a larger screen to work on, you can simply connect your S24 Ultra to it using Samsung’s DeX and get a PC like experience, although in some cases, you will notice that the phone has a higher resolution than the display you connect it to. Like its predecessors, the Galaxy S24 Utra is one of those rare do-it-all devices that is literally capable of handling everything from a gaming tournament to a series binge-watch session to shooting a 4K video to creating a multimedia presentation. And we do not know if the feeling is purely psychological, but we did feel that the flat display gave us far more space to work on as well as view content.

This brings us to the AI element on the device. There is simply no doubt that the Galaxy AI features add a whole new dimension to the Galaxy S24 Ultra and could well redefine flagship smartphone expectations. We got so addicted to ‘circle to search’ (where you just draw a circle over any time, anywhere on the phone to make Google search for it) that we found ourselves even trying it out of habit on not just other phones but even our notebooks! Call transcription and translation, however, are a little tricky at times as we find ourselves double-checking whether the transcription is accurate, something which becomes a big issue when a lot of local terms and brand names are used.

While we did not use AI that often to organize our Notes, we actually switched from Chrome to Samsung’s Internet browser for using the web page translate and summarise features, which often worked brilliantly and made the S24 Ultra a researcher’s dream. The only issue we have is the fact that the AI features sometimes seem to be sluggish or crash, but these are very early days. The phone can heat up a little when used for extended gaming and photography sessions, but it never reaches alarming dimensions, in spite of that titanium frame. The Gorilla Armour front and back are pretty resilient but are not entirely scratch-proof, so we think a display protector is still very much needed!

In terms of battery life, the S24 Ultra will last you a day or heavy use if you keep its resolution maxed out at 3120 x 2440 after the recent update. Get the resolution to 2340 x 1080 px (the default one), and the phone will last a day and a half. There is no charger in the box, but the phone supports 45W charging, and a 45W charger got it from zero to full in about an hour and ten minutes, which is not super fast but reasonable. It also supports 15W wireless charging, which is useful but takes close to two hours to charge the phone fully. We suggest getting a 45W charger, as it can get the phone beyond 60 percent in about half an hour, which is more than adequate for seeing off a large portion of the day with some care. The in-display fingerprint sensor on the phone works very smoothly, and the call quality is excellent, although the phone’s size can make it a trifle difficult to hold comfortably for large periods of time.

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra pricing: Ultra premium, as always

The Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra is available at the following prices for different RAM and storage variants:

• 12 GB / 256 GB: Rs 1,29,999 (USD 1149.99)
• 12 GB/ 512 GB: Rs 1, 39,999 (USD 1235)
• 12 GB/ 1 TB: Rs 1,59,999

This is marginally higher than the Galaxy S23 Ultra, which was launched at Rs 1,24,999 last year. It is also very much premium pricing, making it the most expensive ‘normal’ (non-folding) Android phone out there, putting it in the zone of the iPhone 15 Pro, which was launched at Rs 1,34,900. The Google Pixel 8 Pro, which is priced at Rs 1,06,999, is the closest droid in the vicinity.

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra Review Verdict: Should you buy it? (Is there no one else? Anyone?)

It might come with a very hefty price tag, but then there is no Android smartphone – perhaps no smartphone – that can do as much as the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra does. There are other phones that can deliver the same processor to you at a lower price. The Pixel 8 Pro can even boast of matching the S24 Ultra’s cameras and has some smarts of its own. Still, the combination of a big display, big cameras, S-Pen, and seamless connectivity with external displays is pretty difficult, if not impossible, to match.

The Galaxy S24 Ultra can work as a small tablet, a scribble pad, a full-on digital camera, a transcriber, a video editor, a transcriber and translator, and even as a PC when connected to a display. And it wears all of these hats with equal ease. Yes, it is big and has a big price tag to match, but then this is the Big Boss of Android. You can see it standing like Achilles in Troy and screaming, “Is there no one else?” after beating pretty much the crap of every Android in Troy. The answer, as in the film, is silence. For there is simply no phone that does so much so well. Just remember to update it the moment you get it.

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