It offers more than any other phone and somehow manages to improve upon last year’s Ultra in every way. The Galaxy S24 Ultra has better battery life, faster performance, and even better cameras, though you’ll also pay a bit more for the improvements. The new AI features are the only thing that can slow this phone down, except for Samsung’s aging and terrible software, which buries every exciting thing under layers upon layers of settings and menus. When you see the Ultra in action, it’s worth the price, and some features are downright magical, but there’s more room than ever for improvement at the top.
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Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra Specifications
| Dimensions: | 162.3 x 79.0 x 8.6mm |
| Weight: | 232g |
| Screen: | 6.8-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X, 2,600-nit peak brightness |
| Resolution: | QHD+ |
| Refresh rate: | 1Hz-120Hz variable |
| CPU: | Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy |
| RAM: | 12GB |
| Storage: | 256GB / 512GB / 1TB |
| OS; Expected Upgrades: | Android 14 / One UI 6; 7 years of upgrades |
| Rear Cameras: | 200MP f/1.7 wide, 12MP f/2.2 ultra-wide, 50MP f/3.4 periscope (5x), 10MP f/2.4 telephoto (3x) |
| Front Camera: | 12MP f/2.2 |
| Battery: | 5,000mAh |
| Charging: | 45W wired, 15W wireless |
| Colors: | Titanium Violet, Titanium Gray, Titanium Black, Titanium Yellow, Titanium Blue, Titanium Green, and Titanium Orange |
Construction
Titanium is the talking point with the S24 Ultra. Apple did it first, and now Samsung follow. Whilst Apple’s Titanium is grade 5, it seems, as discovered by Zack at JerryRigEverything, that the S24 Ultra uses grade 2 Titanium on the outer rails of the phone. Whatever the grading differences are, it still feels premium, and whilst the inner moldings joining everything together are a mix of plastic and Aluminium, the whole phone feels like one boxy slab of hefty metal.
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By comparison, the S23 Ultra also feels premium, but the rounded Aluminium rails don’t quite have that texture or flatness in feel to them. In short, the S24 Ultra feels nicer in the hand and warms to body temperature quicker than the S23 Ultra did, thanks to the Titanium layers.
Speaking of comfort, I watched and read nearly all post-launch reviews of the handset, and a few of them mentioned discomfort in the palm as the corners dig into the skin. Personally, I have had no such issue, and honestly, the comfort is better than the S23 Ultra, which had equally straight corners but was more rounded than the S24 Ultra, resulting in a greater level of digging into the skin.
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Battery life
Here’s where things get interesting. In the past, with various phones, the later models could often see worse battery life due to the faster processing power, brighter screen, and so on. Samsung flagships have seen this issue, too, but generally, this has been with the Exynos versions instead, which we get over here in Europe versus the Snapdragon variants seen in Asian and American markets.
Exynos is still a thing, of course, but 2024’s Exynos 2400 is actually pretty good from everything that can be seen online. Performance and battery life appear to be close enough to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for the S24 and S24+, whilst the S24 Ultra is only available in Snapdragon flavor around the world.
Camera
This is the area I was looking forward to the most, and one of the main reasons why I upgraded from an S23 Ultra, which was limited to 4K 30fps video recording if you wanted to be able to switch between lenses whilst recording. Otherwise, 4k 60fps recording means pre-selecting a lens and then sticking to it whilst recording.
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The S24 removes that limitation, and we now have a very smooth transition between all lenses when recording at 4k 60fps. What’s especially great is that the quality of the footage, even in low light, is mostly excellent. Digital zoom when recording maxes out at 20x, just like on the S23 Ultra.
One UI 6.1
One UI 6.1 ships with some new features, many of which are focused on AI. Google’s Circle to Search and Samsung Notes AI summarise/alignment are two notable ones that I find myself using most often. These are done on-device, so it’s not certain if local features utilizing AI like this will be subject to Samsung’s future subscription models.