Samsung S24 Ultra Review - Goodbye iPhone?
The galaxy s24 ultra has had a controversial launch. Oh my god ai that's amazing wait. Did they just make the cameras worse, 7 years of software support? Are you kidding this chipset? Is a thermal nightmare I've been seeing it I've been reading it, while I have also been testing it? This is my definitive review of samsung's flagship phone of the year, the s24 ultra, and also whether or not I'm going to be permanently replacing my iphone for
design
So, let's start with the outside, even though samsung swapped out their phone's frame from aluminium to titanium, and even though they've now got this brand new four times stronger than the competition glass, this phone is still not difficult to damage. I've got a whole load of small scuffs over the sides and they expose the fact that this matte texture you see here is only a very thin layer wherever it's scratched, it becomes glossy making it immediately obvious and the screen is still wearing and tearing just like. Every other phone now maybe this glass is stronger and maybe, if the exact same things that had happened to this had also happened to other phones, they might be worse off, but the point is I have been very careful with this phone I've not dropped it I have not tried to damage it. So basically, it's not some sort of miracle glass.
Screen
That's going to solve your durability. Problems like samsung might want you to believe I Tell you I Would, though, if the company still pre-installed your screen protector like they used to now. That said, this design overall I, actually like it even more as time's gone on every time, I picked the thing up. I do think wow. This is such a pretty phone.
The texture feels great those even screen borders, very aesthetically, pleasing and I'm. Even coming around to the flat screen since the way that samsung's curved the body of the phone, it doesn't have the problems that normally come with flat screens but actually lowkey the biggest upgrade to the screen, which samsung has done an awesome job of implementing. But an awful job at communicating is this reduction to screen glare. The S24 ultra almost completely kills incoming reflections, which is something we've seen. Some phone screens do a little better than others over the years, but this is the biggest standout that I can remember and as soon as you experience it once it becomes instantly clear that this is the obvious next logical step. Up for all screens, cuz I mean companies have spent so many years. Trying to make trying screens more color accurate, trying to make them brighter trying to make them more contrasty, and now you can't just get that experience, but you can actually retain that experience, irrespective of whether you're sitting next to a window or whether there's bright sunlight casting over you, it makes this my favorite screen on a phone full stop,
Software
so the outside of the phone is a+, but it's living with the software that I assumed would be the difficult part for me. You know when I permanently made the jump from samsung 2, iphone, 3 and a half years ago. The reason I did it was all these little things. Little things that build up into what felt like a bigger thing that it didn't seem like, would ever be fixed because they're little things like voice notes, they used to sound so muffled that it was like I was trying to have a conversation with someone, while wearing three face masks on top of each other animations, which sounds like a really silly thing.
But I was getting tired of phones that kept bragging about how bleeding edge their processors were, but that still didn't feel fluid and instagram stories I kept thinking to myself. What is the point having the best set of cameras, if the moment I try to share the content from them? It just gets compressed beyond belief. It's this kind of stuff and I honestly came into the s24 ultra. Expecting none of it to have changed. I was wrong for one voice notes. They sound crystal clear now. Drisha has begrudgingly confirmed to me that, even though she likes the idea of me using an iphone that this does sadly sound just as good as the 15 pro max, the fluidity of the phone has gone at multiple levels in a lot of ways.
Feel smooth
This actually feels smoother to use than my iphone 15 pro max, like you, can really really tell with this new one ui software that samsung has gone all in on the little things like the scrolling acceleration to make things feel truly like they are gliding, underneath your fingertips and the way the apps open and close. Now it is consistent continuously smooth animations, and it's not just that. It feels quick. It looks nice too. I was never a massive fan of samsung's theming, but in just a couple of generations, they've gone a long way to completely flipping that narrative. This is the first samsung phone that I would say is right out of the box gorgeous. You know the quick panel, the way it's organized, the rounded corners, the precise, even spacing, between every section like yes,
finally, the lock screen and the fact that you can now add widgets, you can change up the style. You can scale your clock to the exact size. You want and not have to conform to some arbitrary predefined options. The fact that it gives you enough flexibility that you can very much make it yours,
while also building in enough structure, that it's easy, it's not overwhelming, and whatever you do, it's going to look good and also the new dark mode running through the phone- it's not actually black anymore, it's a sort of dark gray, which is one of those things that for me instantly made the whole phone look a lot better, but I couldn't immediately place my finger on y I'm sure there will be people who don't like it, but to me there's something really pleasant about not feeling like you're in ultra high contrast mode all the time it feels less straining. Now there are problems with this software I'm getting to them, but my prevailing feeling is that there's a lot to like, for example, when you're on a video call. You just swipe down and you've got video effects and microphone effects.
It actually works in a very similar way to the iphone, but it has a lot of options like you just tap here, it instantly blows the background very cinematic. You can have a colored background. You can pick an image for your background and you can also even adjust the smoothness of your face and because it works on a core software level, it can persist across whatever app that you're calling on the haptics are awesome, like typing, has never felt better on any phone, and while some past samsungs used to have this tiny bit of lag every now and again, while typing it seems, have been ironed out. You've got the whole goodlock suite of customization tools, which is kind of the opposite of what I was saying for the lock screen.
This is where you go deep like, since this is samsung's. First, titanium phone I decided to use good luck to kit mine with a titanium style, animated volume rocker it's just fun, oh and then the icing on the cake is 7 years of os updates.
It's like 50% of the processing and the stabilization that makes the cameras good disappears. You can kind of get around it by recording in your native cera app and switching to 1080p, instead of 4k to avoid being hit with instagram compression, but that definitely feels clunky samsung's face scanner. I mean they've tried like they give you an option to add an alternate appearance. If say, sometimes you wear glasses. Sometimes you don't or you can set your screen too brighten when scanning at night, so that this front camera can actually see you. But night is like the one time that you don't want to be blasted by light and in most middle lighting conditions, it's fine, but it's just slow. It's actually quite surprising to me that such a big company with such successful products still has such a gaping hole. Cuz, there's no doubt that face scanning is definitely the more automatic alternative to fingerprint scanning it's the future, but until samsung adds in some sort of infrared 3d scanning tech, like the iphone you're, not really going to want to use this for much and there's a few more things. The audio quality is not quite as good as the iphone. It's a tiny bit less loud and a tiny bit less. Full not having mag safe, is actually a massive downgrade since being able to charge wirelessly while still being able to have your phone propped up so that you can see.
The screen is very useful to me. Samsung software, while very pretty, is definitely a little more aggressive than it used to be in an annoying way. Now, more than ever, it really pushes you towards samsung services like samsung, pass to store your passwords so. Eventually, you just get fed up of it. So you click okay, but then it's like, oh, you need to download the latest version of pass, so you download it and then it's like.
Oh, you need to set up pass and I'm like go away. I'm just trying to play a game of bloons. The company knows that the best way to lock users in is long-term samsung is to get them using as many samsung services as possible, and you definitely feel it getting shoved down your throat a bit and then the last gripe, which is a little alarming signal. I seem to spend all my time with this phone on either two to three bars while I'm outside and then literally 0, to one when I'm inserted, and we did actually have a storm last week and my wi I went so I was hotspotting from this. I was barely getting anything speed wise now. That is serious if there's actually a persistent issue, but signal is one of those very subjective things. Everyone has a slightly different signal. Experience mine's been bad, but it's totally worth checking out some other reviews too, to see if it is a trend or if I just got particularly unlucky.
Camera
The high level takeaway for software should still be the fact that samsung has improved a lot to the point where this might just be now. My favorite android skin we'll get to the galaxy ai stuff in a minute. Cuz I have thoughts, but I want to touch on cameras because it's been a bit of a hotly debated topic,, the s24 ultras cameras are a pretty big improvement to the s23 ultras, but just not in the way that we've come to expect we're pretty used to each year. Phones getting a bit more detailed.
Getting a bit better in low light, zooming a bit further samsung's, not really done much of that at all, and that's a little sad I feel like the purpose of an ultra phone should be to break new ground, to be a spectacle and to showcase the most cutting edge tech that the company has to offer, whereas this time around I'm not pulling it out excitedly on the street to just see what it can do and I don't get that brand new toy to play with feeling, because its output is quite similar. To last time, but two things, one that doesn't mean it's a bad camera, it's building on what was already a very strong foundation and two what they have done this time. As part of this massive software overhaul is made the camera nicer to use. It looks better. It's organized better, the animations are smoother and it captures faster, oh and the screen is so bright that you will never ever have a problem, seeing what you're shooting again do I wish they'd also improve the output with a brand new 400 megapixel main sensor, yeah, of course, but was this a much needed improvement nonetheless, and has the company made enough improvements in other parts of the phone for me to forgive them? Also, yes and the editing the editor on this phone is one of the things that constantly reminds me that we're working with powerful technology you can do something as obtuse as taking a photo of another photo.
Galaxy AI
and that is actually a pretty good segue into galaxy ai in general, what I've been really trying to work out over the last few weeks is: are these ai features actually groundbreaking, or are they just gimmicks? I'll start with the good news, all of this instant translation stuff. That actually has me buzzing. I've never mentioned this before, but part of my extended family is italian and I mean like proper italian. So it's often not the easiest to communicate but check this out. This is what I do now when I enter the chat. It already knows that I'm wanting to to talk in italian, so it's got the italian translator, pre-loaded I type. My message into that translator wait a couple of seconds and then the translated text appears in my whatsapp chat window, ready to hit, send and the fact that it is just set it and forget it. The fact that it knows in which chats you want the translation and in which chats you don't the fact that it works across all your different messaging apps like sms whatsapp instagram, is absolutely amazing. It means you're going to talk more with people you otherwise might not, it means you're going to be able to express yourselves better and also people like being talked to in their own language.
battery
When gaming, for over an hour at a time, you will be able to tell the difference between this and a dedicated gaming phone, but me personally, I've only actually been able to see those thermal issues when using benchmarks. None of my normal use, my gaming use or my emulator use- has caused any noticeable dip at all and the phone does that, while lasting for ages, this is the best battery life ever in a samsung flagship, the battery isn't bigger they've just found ways to get more out of it, I want to slightly caveat that by saying I. Definitely with this phone notice, a higher difference than normal between its high drain states and its low drain, states like when I'm playing a big game even for 30 minutes and I, come out. I will have dropped 5 to 8%. I would guess, because this chip has such a high performance ceiling that it can go to, but then equally when I'm browsing on YouTube and instagram, the phone feels like it's going to last forever, and so what that means means is the average for me is 8 to 9 hours of screen on time per charge, I'm reaching evenings with at least 25% left in the tank, but sometimes even 50, which is quite a lot more than I, can say for my iphone. So with all of this in mind, at least until something big happens on the apple end, the iphone is now being relegated to a secondary phone, and this is the one that I'm going to be keeping my sim in mostly because I think samsung's fixed a lot of their longer running issues, this time around the software looks great, it feels great.
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