Review: The Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra is a big welcome to mobile AI

Samsung says the Galaxy S24 Ultra is its best smartphone made better. I was the judge of that. Marking my first foray into the Samsung universe of smartphones, my two-week use of the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra opened my eyes to the power of AI and the brand’s smartphone capabilities. I wasn’t just using any other phone, I was using its flagship smartphone in the brand new S24 series. 

Equipped with Galaxy AI, design upgrades, and a brilliant display, the Galaxy S24 Ultra had a lot of hype to live up to. Though I’ve shared my first impressions of the Galaxy S24 Ultra, I’ve come to more concrete conclusions about the smartphone based on the two weeks I spent pushing the phone to its limits and testing its potential. Without further ado, here are my honest thoughts on the Galaxy S24 Ultra.

 

DESIGN

The Galaxy S24 Ultra is the first Galaxy smartphone with a fully flat screen and titanium finish. While I was extremely careful with this new phone (so new that cases aren’t even available on the market yet) and it felt great in my hand, it did get a bit too slippery without a case and fell out of my pocket quite often. However, with the titanium frame and Corning Gorilla Armor, it has held up well so far. 

Pros: Sleek design, a range of colours to choose from to fit every aesthetic, and sturdy titanium frame

Cons: Can get slippery to hold

 

DISPLAY

I’ll just cut right to the chase: colour me impressed. Display-wise, the Galaxy S24 Ultra knocks it out of the park with its bright and vivid colours, true blacks, and smooth feel. The screen measures 6.8 inches with a 3120 x 1440 resolution QHD+ dynamic AMOLED 2X display. Out in the sun, the display also performed relatively well when compared to other smartphones I’ve used. While it didn’t get rid of the glare completely—a seemingly impossible task in the Malaysian sun—I was still able to watch videos and reply to text messages comfortably. 

Pros: Bright, sharp, and vivid images; reduced glare when used in the sun; and true blacks

Cons: No cons here, I am a fan of the display!

 

PIONEERING MOBILE AI

It’s undoubtedly impressive that Samsung has managed to incorporate powerful AI features into a smartphone that fits in the palm of your hand. The Galaxy S24 Ultra—and its other counterparts in the series—come kitted out with a collection of AI tools that make communication, learning, and even photo-taking smarter. Upon introduction at the Samsung Galaxy Unpacked event, I was most drawn to its ProVisual Engine capabilities, including Generative Edit, which helped sharpen images, reduce shadows, and move or remove objects with the help of artificial intelligence. While some of these features were available on the Galaxy S23 Ultra, the AI-backed processing helped create sharper images and enhanced tones, and generated more seamless patterns when it came to removing objects and filling in the background. 

Its Circle to Search with Google function was particularly helpful when trying to look up the definition of a word or finding out the addresses of restaurants my friends sent me, and other basic Google search functions. For more specific queries, the multi-search function allowed me to dig deeper and get tailored results. Big plus points also go to the fact that I never have to leave the app I’m on even for a quick Google search.

On the linguistics and text front, Transcript Assist, Chat Assist, Note Assist, and Live Translate all aim to make your communications seamless across all languages. Transcript Assist was particularly helpful when taking notes during a speech on a recent press trip. The transcriptions appear pretty quickly after you’re done recording. Not to mention, the phone can also generate quick summaries of the conversation and provide keywords too! 

Chat Assist is definitely a novel tool in the mobile world, helping to correct the tone and structuring of your messages to fit the context of your conversations. Even though I probably wouldn’t use it too often on the daily, it can be quite neat to see how you can word different messages in specific tones. As for Note Assist, the feature was relatively easy to use and did its job when summarising or converting handwritten notes into text documents. It also provided a few pre-made templates to get organised easily. Lastly, the Live Translate—a tool that acts as an interpreter for your calls—is perfect for quick and easy cross-language conversations. I’m sure it will prove helpful for simple exchanges while I’m on vacation.

Pros: Easy to navigate, a great starting point for mobile AI, covers a wide range of uses on the phone, powerful photo editing capabilities, encourages creativity, makes note-taking a breeze, gives you starting points for summaries and translations, and expands communication boundaries

Cons: Nothing much to say here!

 

CAMERA AND PHOTOS

Let’s be real. In this day and age, the camera is one of the biggest selling points on a phone and the Galaxy S24 Ultra definitely has bragging rights in this department. Despite taking the optical zoom from 10x to 5x and shifting the 10x to an optical quality zoom, the overall performance of the camera shouldn’t go under your radar. The more practical zoom lengths—3x and 5x—perform extremely well, capturing details and maintaining colour. 

Being used to iPhone photos, I did go through a teething period when it came to getting acclimated to Samsung’s vivid saturation and sharpness. However, that wasn’t a tough hurdle to get over—the incredible images of some animals and birds I took on a recent press trip helped. The AI also helped sharpen images, improve contrasts, refine details, and reduce noise to a certain extent, especially when it came to taking photos at night. The Nightography functions on the phone—though not entirely a full upgrade from the previous model—had me oohing and ahhing at its sharp and detailed images in low light settings. 

The phone’s videography capabilities are also infused with AI and can transform any clip on your phone into a slow-motion video. With this function, the phone attempts to draw out every frame in the video and lets AI do its thing by filling the gaps in between. 

Pros: Incredible sharpness, practical zoom lengths, ability to upload Ultra HDR images to social media 

Cons: No more 10x optical zoom

 

BUILT FOR DAILY USE

The battery life and processing speed are commendable on the phone. I could go a whole day of relatively heavy use without having to plug my phone in for a battery boost and multitasking was a breeze. I had about 30 to 40 per cent battery life left in my phone after each day of use during my press trip, which is quite impressive considering I was constantly using the camera and Generative Edit functions. 

The 12GB of RAM and Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 Mobile Platform for Galaxy made multitasking a close to seamless experience. Widgets are also available for both your home and lock screens and boast incredible customisability. In addition, the Always-On Display makes getting information and notifications an instantaneous experience for those who require or prefer it. 

Pros: Smooth sailing and powerful performance, long-lasting battery life, easy to navigate through apps, AI features and apps enrich almost every corner of daily life, and high customisability on the lock and home screen

Cons: Minor heating issues

 

THE FINAL VERDICT

All in all, the Samsung S24 Ultra made for a great (and smart) companion to have in my pocket. Its strengths especially shined through during my travels, thanks to its camera capturing memories with incredible clarity and long-lasting battery life. I’m hopeful that its AI-driven features will get further finetuning in the future, especially with Chat Assist and Live Translate—both functions that could change the landscape of international communication. From now on, Samsung will find a fan in me any day. 

Pre-order the Galaxy S24 Ultra here or click here for the Galaxy S24+ and Galaxy S24. 

 

 

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