Update: Check out our Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra hands-on for first impressions.
The Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra has arrived: a titanium-clad titan that also brings camera, performance and display upgrades alongside a whole bunch of new features powered by Samsung’s recently unveiled Galaxy AI system.
There’s no doubt that the Galaxy S24 Ultra is still the most productive Galaxy S24 series, even if the less expensive devices in the line get their own upgrades. However, some of the specs of the S24 Ultra are still very similar to those presented through the Galaxy S23 Ultra, perhaps due to its subsequent use, a bigger functionality gap will appear between the new device and last year’s.
Have a read of our Galaxy S24 Ultra hands-on review if you’d like our early opinion of how this phone feels and works. But here, we’ll take you through all the key spec and facts about the Galaxy S24 Ultra so you can learn exactly what the new Ultra Samsung phone’s all about.
Pre-orders for the Galaxy S24 Ultra are open from January 17 worldwide, with the retail launch taking place on January 31. And to get one, you need to pay $1,299/£1,249 for the popular 256GB edition of the phone.
That U.S pricing means the S24 Ultra costs a little more than the Galaxy S23 Ultra did at launch last year. But perhaps after reading about the upgrades, you’ll feel Samsung was justified in raising the cost.
At first glance, you might confuse the Galaxy S24 Ultra with the Galaxy S23 Ultra, however, there are spaces where the new phone has made changes. For example, its side rails are now made of titanium, resulting in a lighter, more powerful design with a sumptuous finish. Also, while the S Pen is still there, it now has a redesigned flat top.
You may also find that the screen is now less curved than before and offers thinner bezels to give you a more usable screen real estate than before. Specifically, it’s a 6. 8-inch OLED panel with QHD resolution and 1-120Hz refresh rate like the Galaxy S23 Ultra, but with an improved brightness score of 2600 nits.
The Galaxy S24 Ultra offers an IP68 water and dust resistance rating, like Samsung’s Galaxy S phones for several years. But the new Gorilla Armor tempered glass, ultimately exclusive to the S24 Ultra, is helping to take its ruggedness to new heights. It will be 4 times more scratch-resistant than the previous tempered glass and will have a reflectivity of up to 75% to make the screen less difficult to read in bright conditions.
When it comes to color features, there are four popular features to choose from: Titanium Gray, Titanium Black, Titanium Purple, and Titanium Yellow. There’s also Titanium Orange, Titanium Green, and Titanium Blue, but they’re exclusive to Samsung.
The Galaxy S24 Ultra’s camera apparatus includes a 200 MP main camera, a 12 MP ultra-wide-angle camera, a 10 MP 3x telephoto lens, and a 12 MP selfie camera, as well as a new 50 MP telephoto lens. 50 MP. All of those sensors, plus the 50MP telephoto lens, appear to be the same as those discovered in the Galaxy S23 Ultra.
Although the Galaxy S23 Ultra has a 10x zoom lens, Samsung promises that the new 5x lens will still offer a lossless 10x zoom thanks to its superior resolution.
Other photographic updates have been made beyond the undeniable sensor change. Samsung touts innovations for low-light “Nightography” capture, Super HDR for camera, gallery and Instagram apps, and several new AI features, such as automatic photo remastering or glare removal.
Perhaps the biggest AI upgrade for photos taken with the Galaxy S24 Ultra is its generative editing capability, which allows you to move subjects around in a photo or enlarge the edges of your symbol to correct a photo that’s skewed or too tight to the subject. These have watermarks so that no one can check that the changes made through the AI are genuine.
For videos, the Galaxy S24 Ultra’s iconic AI-powered feature is Instant Slow Motion, which creates intermediate frames to slow down and fade your existing video clips, by long-pressing on that video in your gallery.
Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy chipset will be found in all versions of the Galaxy S24 Ultra sold across the globe. The new chip should make for more efficient and more powerful performance, plus improved ray tracing for gaming. As this is a “For Galaxy” version of the chip, we may even see greater performance than other Snapdragon-powered flagship Android phones, going by the test results we saw with the Galaxy S23 Ultra’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy chip.
Samsung has increased the RAM of the Galaxy S24 Ultra to 12GB of RAM by default, but has kept the base storage the same at 256GB. If you’re willing to pay more, you can also get 512GB or 1TB of storage on the phone.
We get a 5000mAh battery in the Galaxy S24 Ultra, like the most recent generations of Samsung Ultra phones. We still hope that with the power of the new chip, Samsung will be able to take advantage of the Galaxy S23’s already significant battery life. Ultra with this new installment.
Similarly, the Galaxy S23 Ultra’s 45W stressed charging and 15W wireless charging features can be traced back to the Galaxy S24 Ultra. While Samsung promises a 65% rate in part of an hour with a compatible tester, it’s still a little slower than we’d like.
The Galaxy S24 series starts with Android 14 installed, with Samsung’s One UI 6. 1 skin at the top. Even more is the fact that Samsung has promised seven years of comprehensive updates for the Galaxy S24 series. It’s Google’s equivalent for up to a few years presented through a phone maker, making the S24 a wise choice for long-term buyers.
Galaxy AI and the features it powers sit in the middle of Samsung’s Galaxy S24 series, and the variety of conditions they can find themselves in is impressive. We’ve looked at photography-related features before, but there’s still a lot more to discover. .
For one, there’s real-time text and in-call translation for 13 languages (with more due to come post-launch), which should make communicating with people abroad much easier, even if it’s over the phone. Translation can also be used when creating AI summaries of text, such as in the Notes app or when using the Browser Assist to quickly scan through online articles in Samsung Internet.
Hidden on the Galaxy S24’s keyboard is the Chat Assist feature. In addition to checking the spelling of your paintings, they can also control the tone of your paintings and recommend other tactics for writing your message to make it more or less formal.
The Voice Recorder app is capable of creating summaries like many other apps in the S24 series, but it can now also identify up to 20 speakers, making long transcripts much easier to read and understand.
Meanwhile, your mind and your mind captured in the Samsung Notes app can be reformatted into anything that makes the most sense to someone else reading your mind, or maybe even yourself. And if you’ve been taking handwritten notes with the S Pen, Notes your writing can too.
One last vital feature is Circle to Search. At any time, you can press and hold the home button, draw anything on the screen with your finger or the S Pen, and then get the Google search results. You can then make follow-up queries if needed if you need to be more informed on a certain topic, or ask the AI to use the new information.
Samsung’s updates for the Galaxy S24 Ultra are usually located below the phone’s surface, but they’re enough to justify the new phone’s lifestyle. The new telephoto lens appeals to the subset of photography-focused phone buyers, while the new chip took a step forward RAM will delight mobile users and gamers alike. And the new, flatter design with its titanium sides and brighter display make everyone feel like they’re handling a quality product.
However, it’s unclear whether Samsung’s big bet on AI will pay off. Indeed, this is a tall order in the face of Google’s dominance in the smartphone space, and the number of apps available for Galaxy AI is impressive. But it is. It’s not yet clear whether this will appeal to the average smartphone buyer, or if it’s just a matter of focusing and marketing to a small niche. Only time spent on those phones will reveal the answer to this question.
If you want the TG take on the latest and greatest Samsung Galaxy, make sure you don’t miss our Galaxy S24 Ultra hands-on, and our eventual review. Plus there’s also our Galaxy S24 hands-on if you want to see what the cheaper phones in the S24 family offer.
Richard was founded in London and covers news, reviews, and how-tos related to phones, tablets, games, and anything else other people want recommendations on. Following her MA in Magazine Journalism at the University of Sheffield, she has also written for WIRED U. K. When you’re not at work, you’re probably thinking about how to make the best cup of specialty coffee.
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