Review: Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra is the most AI-forward flagship phone you can buy

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra comes at a time when debates around AI are at their peak. AI is nearly everywhere now; in apps, websites, services, and now in phones. People are excited about AI and the Galaxy S24 Ultra is what seems like the best way to experience it — at least for those willing to spend around Rs 1.35 lakh on a phone. Other than AI, the Galaxy S24 Ultra is the ultimate flagship phone. Its display can turn heads, while the design is something to gaze at. The cameras can deliver some of the best photos you would take, while the experience will give you the reassurance that you invested in something good. Considering this is a premium phone, it is not meant for everyone. But to those it is, the Galaxy S24 Ultra has a lot going on. Also Read: Amazon Great Freedom Festival Sale Ends Tonight: Check Top Deals That You Shouldn't Miss - iPhone 16, Galaxy S24 Ultra, More

If you are coming from a Galaxy S23 Ultra, you are not missing out on much with the launch of the S24 Ultra. The generative AI features are coming to last year’s flagship phones if that is what you are eyeing. iPhone users will have to get through the iOS vs Android debate first before getting to the part where they have to evaluate if AI is something they can risk switching to Android for. That is especially true when Apple is expected to roll out its generative AI features with iOS 18 this year. Nonetheless, if you have your eyes set on the Galaxy S24 Ultra, you must be well-informed about it. I used the phone and can give the key information. Also Read: 8 Best Samsung Smartphone Deals To Consider During Amazon Great Indian Festival Sale

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra specifications

Display: 6.8-inch Dynamic LTPO AMOLED 2X display with a resolution of 1440 x 3120 pixels, up to 120Hz screen refresh rate, 2,600 nits of peak brightness, and Corning Gorilla Glass Armour protection

Processor: An octa-core Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset

Operating System: One UI 6.1 based on Android 14

Storage: Up to 12GB of RAM, 1TB of storage space

Rear camera: 200MP primary rear camera + 12MP ultrawide camera + 50MP periscope telephoto camera with OIS and 3X optical zoom and 6x in-sensor zoom + 10MP telephoto camera

Front camera: 12MP wide camera

Battery: 5000mAh with 45W fast wired and 15W wireless charging technology

Connectivity: Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, 5G, NFC, USB-C

Ingress Protection: IP68

Colours: Titanium Black, Titanium Gray, Titanium Violet, Titanium Green, and Titanium Blue

Price: Rs 1,34,999

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra design

The Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra is one of the best flagship phones of 2024. It has all the latest technologies and retains the old ones from the predecessor Galaxy S23 Ultra. What it also retains from last year’s phone is the design, which has changed only minutely if you take a closer look. It will be not easy for you to tell the Galaxy S24 Ultra and Galaxy S23 Ultra apart. But there are changes, which Samsung said will make the phone more useful to the kind of users it targets. Does Samsung mean people who like taking the S Pen out every time they have even the remotest opportunity to do that? Yes, and also the business-class users who want to do pretty much everything on a phone.

Out and out, it is a large phone. Although I liked watching the reruns of Superman & Lois on Amazon Prime Video, I could not hold the phone for long considering its heft. This is a huge phone that is sometimes unmanageable when you are mindlessly slipping it into your jeans pocket and its corners can really prod into the palm. You will have to get used to its weight to like it. After that, there is no going back. The titanium frame exudes plushness, suave enough to grab the attention of passers-by. This slab-like S24 Ultra can easily be one of the best-crafted phones to date.

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra display

The display is large, which means you will like working on documents, presentations, and worksheets on it, besides loving watching movies. Gamers will appreciate the wide area the display can offer to enhance the gameplay, and creators will have ample room to tinker with their videos. But this display has a lot going on.

First, it is one of the brightest displays on a smartphone. Not even once did I have to squint my eyes to read the screen in direct sunlight. In fact, I would urge every brand that makes flagship phones to start focusing on how displays can be better. Samsung has just nailed it here. Second, the display does not reflect light, minimising glare to an extent where looking at the display is simply pleasant. The anti-glare coating does a fantastic job of cutting down reflections so the display can show what’s on it better. Samsung says the Corning Gorilla Glass Armour can save the display from getting scratched, but I did not dare to try dropping the phone to test that claim.

Samsung has improved the Always-On Display functionality of this AMOLED screen to just dim the wallpaper. It is a leaf out of Apple’s playbook but it works great. However, it also takes a toll on the phone’s battery life. You can try choosing the Auto mode for AOD, just like I did, to allow the phone to save the battery when it can.

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra performance

The Galaxy S24 Ultra uses the best Qualcomm processor out there, and it delivers great performance. Needless to say, it can handle multitasking like a breeze, and gaming on this phone is a wonderful experience, if you put the phone’s heft aside. It does not get uncomfortably toasty, but it did get a bit warm during my half-hour-long Call of Duty Mobile session. What I am trying to say is that although this phone can handle the best of the best mobile games, the phone’s weight makes it slightly less deserving as a gaming phone. But Samsung is not exactly pitching this phone to gamers. It is meant for creators and professionals, who would love the flat screen and the dollops of power so that this phone always delivers what they need from it. Because of the kind of powerhouse this phone is, Samsung was wise to go for a larger battery, that lasts a day easily with typical usage. The charging speed could have been better, though.

Samsung Galaxy AI

Perhaps the biggest attraction of the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra is Galaxy AI, which is the company’s version of applied generative artificial intelligence for phones. Google was the first one to introduce AI-powered features, and Samsung is following the breadcrumbs to make its flagship phones outshine those of its rivals. These AI features are fun to interact with, but they do not work as a whole. They are more like individual tools that I used when I had to quickly summarise an article, a PDF, or a Note.

The most useful AI feature for me is Generative Edits, available in the new Gallery app. I could remove distractions from a perfect photo, make my friends disappear to make myself stand out, and even reposition things in a photo according to how I wanted. All of this is cool and quick, considering Samsung does all the processing on the cloud (that means an internet connection is required.) Chat Assist was helpful to me when I wanted to craft a beautiful message in Shakespearean, but other than that I could not really find its use. Similarly, Call Assist was fun to play with initially, but the robotic voice for callers and inaccuracies in interpreting Indian English and translating Bengali to Hindi proved it is not ready for a market like ours yet. Transcript Assist and AI Summaries are nearly similar and are a great way to quickly get a rundown of a lengthy interview. Especially for a journalist like me who has to record interactions and later transcribe them, this tool was a lifesaver. However, its accuracy begins to fall apart with different pronunciation.

Another feature that possibly is the marquee is Circle to Search. This feature should have been a part of the Android experience already, but now that it is here, it has become my favourite. Just a long press on the home button and an overlay appears on whatever you want to search Google for. It is essentially Google Lens available everywhere on the phone. I have searched for things using Circle to Search that I would normally not have because of the lack of ease in using Google Lens. Not only does Google look up the thing I circled but also offers answers to additional requests I had. Having an S Pen handy helps especially when circling something, and doing that is a satisfying experience. Circle to Search is mostly on point, but sometimes it gives the second-best answer for a tricky query. However, the overall experience is great.

While these are the major AI features you get, the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra has some smaller but nifty ones, too. For instance, you can generate a wallpaper using AI or summarise a webpage for easy reading.

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra cameras

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra have great cameras. They are easily comparable with those on the iPhone 15 Pro Max and the Google Pixel 8 Pro, but a lot of its parlour tricks come from the AI integration. If you are coming from an S23 Ultra, you will not find a lot of changes. Samsung has swapped the 10x lens on last year’s model with a 5x lens on the S24 Ultra. Going by the value, this seems like a downgrade, but it isn’t really. The 10x mode is still there but its in-sensor zoom instead, and it clicks good photos that I have mostly liked. But to nitpick, there is some chromatic aberration in shots of say a billboard or some distant building with a banner hanging on top of it.

The main camera packs in more details, especially when using the 200MP mode, but even the shots clicked using the regular 12MP mode capture ample details. I was more impressed by the improved Ultra HDR, which comes as a part of Android 14’s dynamic range image format. Everything clicked using HDR looks super vivid and bright on the excellent display that is. Colour accuracy is good, but zooming in to a subject washes away saturation — which is otherwise consistently there on Samsung cameras. I liked the Vivo X100 Pro better in terms of handling colour accuracy on zoomed shots.

Samsung claims the S24 Ultra — and its younger siblings — are the first phones to let you upload Ultra HDR photos to Instagram, I can confirm it is true. Instagram’s tendency to tone down colours in photos did not affect my uploads from the S24 Ultra. And yes, how can I forget the AI Moon? It is still there, so you can flaunt to your friends that your phone can click astounding moon shots. The ultrawide shots are not as detailed but the artist in me made the best of this camera to click some beautiful shots. Night photography on the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra is mostly good, but some shots look like they have forced brightness in them. I am not saying they look bad, but they do not look real either.

If you are going to shoot a lot of videos, the Galaxy S24 Ultra is one of the best phones for that. Although there is support for 8K video recording, you will find 4K mostly useful. Videos are not shaky and retain good HDR in them. While I talked about AI previously, there is one feature that stands out when talking about the cameras. It is the slow-motion video-generating capability, which essentially works with any video. Using frame interpolation and AI, the phone can insert additional frames into a video to make it slo-mo. Most videos generated using this feature are good, but things get a bit difficult when the scene is too complex for AI to understand. But it’s a good start and will probably help you be more creative, maybe?

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra review verdict

The Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra is a powerful phone with a lot to offer, but it comes with a hefty price tag, both literally and figuratively. It is Rs 10,000 more expensive than last year’s Galaxy S23 Ultra at launch. But the S24 Ultra does not justify the higher price and is at the border for being value-for-money. Even if you think the AI is worth the extra money, let me tell you that Galaxy AI is available across the Galaxy S24 devices. That means even if you buy the Galaxy S24, which starts at Rs 79,999, you have unrestricted access to all the AI Samsung has to offer. Heck, even if you have last year’s Galaxy S23 series, Galaxy Z Flip 5, and Galaxy Z Fold 5, AI features will soon be available.

However, if you are looking beyond AI, the Galaxy S24 Ultra ticks the right boxes. Its anti-reflective display is one of the best out there, while the titanium edges make it a thing of beauty. The cameras are exceptionally good and the performance is blazing fast. The Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra should also be able to go on for years with seven years of Android OS upgrades. The phone’s weight, some inconsistent AI features, and high cost might be dealbreakers for some users. However, if you’re a power user who prioritises productivity, a great camera, and the latest tech, the S24 Ultra is definitely worth considering, especially if you can get used to its size and embrace its unique AI features.