The Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra: A Camera Revolution

One of the biggest differences between the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra and its predecessor, the S23 Ultra, is the new 50 megapixel telephoto camera. This camera offers what Samsung claims to be an optical 5x Zoom, a significant improvement over the 10 megapixel 10x optical zoom on the S23 Ultra. In practice, I have noticed a difference, although it requires zooming in quite close to see the upgrade. To illustrate this, I took a picture of some house plants at 5x zoom on both phones, and when I really zoomed in, I could see that the S24 Ultra captured more detail than the S23 Ultra. Again, however, I had to zoom in closely to notice these differences in terms of general image quality.

The Galaxy S24 Ultra also handles different lighting conditions quite well, even in dimly lit environments like cocktail bars and areas with low light. This is probably thanks to the larger new pixels that are in the S24 Ultra compared to the S23 Ultra. While the S24 Ultra's photo may not be the brightest compared to the S23 Ultra or other phones like the iPhone 15 Pro Max or the Google Pixel 8 Pro, it did preserve a lot of detail, which resulted in a great overall photo. I also think that the Galaxy S24 Ultra does a better job of making skin tones and colors look more natural than the Galaxy S23 Ultra, compared to other cameras.

It's really hard to tell which camera phone is the best, as all three phones have great cameras with their own strengths and weaknesses. The Galaxy S24 Ultra excels in capturing detail in low light environments and has the most zooming options, but the Pixel 8 Pro also preserves a lot of detail when zooming and has generally better color and brightness in some scenarios. In my opinion, the iPhone 15 Pro generally has the most accurate skin tone and colors.

Design Changes

The Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra looks a lot like its predecessor, the S23 Ultra, but with some subtle changes that become more obvious when you look closely. First of all, there's a new titanium design that gives it a bit of a different finish. It's also just ever so slightly lighter than the S23 Ultra. The other change I think is more significant is the new flatter edges. Unlike the S23 Ultra, which has subtle curves to its edges, the S24 Ultra does not. Additionally, the screen itself is also flatter around the edges, making it easier to hold and use. In my opinion, these changes make a big difference in terms of ergonomics.

Screen Brightness

The Galaxy S24 Ultra has a 6.8-inch screen, but Samsung claims that this time around, the screen is much brighter with a 2600 nit display. When I held it side by side next to the Galaxy S23 Ultra, however, I couldn't really tell that much of a difference in terms of brightness. This may be because Samsung screens were already quite bright, so there's not as much of an improvement this time around.

Battery Life

One aspect where the S24 Ultra does differ from its predecessors is battery life. It has a 5000 milliamp battery, which should be capable of lasting all day on a single charge. In my experience, however, battery life still varies depending on how you're using your phone. After about 12 hours of use, I had 69% of the battery left on casual use, but this did drop more quickly when I was processing a lot of generative edits and using language translation features or playing games.

Performance

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor that powers the Galaxy S24 Ultra is generally quick and snappy. Language translations happen really quickly, and games like Devil May Cry: Peak of Combat and Diablo Immortal ran smoothly. However, generative edits can take a little bit of time to process, which may rely on cloud processing rather than the processor itself.

Recommendation

Ultimately, the Galaxy S24 Ultra is hard to recommend unless you're willing to pay top dollar for its features. The giant screen, extra camera, and S Pen are all significant upgrades, but at $1,300, it's a premium price tag. Additionally, I think Samsung missed an opportunity by not including more exclusive Galaxy AI features on the S24 Ultra.

In conclusion, the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra is a powerful phone with excellent cameras, impressive design changes, and long battery life. However, its high price point may deter some buyers.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthis is the Galaxy s24 Ultra and it's all about AI when it comes to Samsung's new Galaxy phones especially the ultra It's usually the hardware that's the star of the show think of the 200 megapixel camera that debuted last year and the embedded S Pen that debuted on the s22 ultra just one year earlier but this year with the s24 things are different it's the software that's in the spotlight that's because the Galaxy s24 series are the first phones to launch with Galaxy AI a new set of features powered by generative AI which creates content in response to prompts based on training data that said I don't know if these features alone are worth upgrading for especially since these Galaxy AI features are available across all of Samsung's Galaxy s24 phones not just the super expensive Ultra which starts at $1,300 Sam Samsung has also said that Galaxy AI will come to the Galaxy s23 series as well which also kind of makes it hard to justify buying the s24 ultra but aside from Galaxy AI there are some other new things that are different with the s24 ultra compared to the s23 ultra for one it runs on qualcomm's new Snapdragon 8 gen 3 processor it has a brighter screen and there's also a new 50 megapixel telephoto camera that offers crisper shots at a 5x Zoom here's what it's been like to use it for the last week Galaxy AI is by far the most interesting new thing about the Galaxy s24 series some of these features do feel familiar like generative edit for example which lets you erase or manipulate objects in photos that sounds very similar to Magic edit on the pixel 8 some of the other features like the ability to organize and summarize notes in Samsung's Notes app and the recorder app are also very familiar but part of that is intentional Samsung and Google worked together on these features for the Galaxy s24 so it seems like they're really embracing this partnership but on the other end that could make it harder for Samsung to make the s24 series stand out from Google's pixel 8 series but just because generative edit and Google's Magic edit are similar it doesn't mean they're exactly the same I tried using both on the same photo and the results were a little bit different I tried to erase a part of the blanket in the background Samsung kind of added a new blanket there to replace the one in the photo and Google kind of did something a little bit different it looks a little bit like the same blanket that was already there but Google also gave me more options to choose from that I can just kind of swipe through of all of the Galaxy AI features I've been using I feel like language translation feels like the most unique Samsung has put language translation natively in its keyboard and in the phone app which means if you're texting someone or calling them and they speak a different language you don't have to hop between apps to translate or copy and paste text or anything like that I've been playing around with this a lot in the messages app and it's been working really quickly when I tried to translate it an entire text message thread between myself and my husband all it took was a few Taps to have the entire thread of our conversation translated with no copy and pasting required with phone calls it's similarly easy you just start a phone call like you normally would and then tap the chat assist button this did work well in my experience but it can be a little bit awkward and it can take a little bit of time to get used to basically the way this works is Samsung's AI is kind of acts as an intermediary and translates your speech and also translates the speech of the speaker on the other end so that the two of you can understand each other even though you're speaking different languages so even though it does work well it can be hard to know when it's your turn to start speaking because you do have to wait for Samsung's U AI translator to finish talking but I do think this could be really useful for people who travel a lot maybe for people who have family members that don't speak English or their native language or for people who need to communicate with work colleagues in different countries I do feel like it could be helpful so one of the most interesting new AI features is called Circle to search and Samsung is partnering with Google on this feature and basically just like the name implies you can Circle almost anything on your phone screen and it'll launch a Google search for whatever that item is so I just took a photo of the Tea House in this um so if I want to learn more about it after I've held that button down I can just draw a circle around it and as you can see almost instantly this little panel comes up and it brings up similar uh search results based on what I circled so Circle to search also works in apps so if you see something on Instagram or another app and you want to know more about it or maybe where to buy it or something like that um you can just circle to search and it'll bring up some results once again I'm just going to hold that button and I'm going to draw a circle around this and sure enough there's a bunch of recipes for grilled cheese sandwiches and then here are some restaurants for places near me that serve grilled cheese sandwiches and even more videos another feature I really loved is called instant slowmo and just like the name implies you can can instantly turn any clip into a slow motion video just by pressing and holding on the footage and then just watching it slow down in real time and this isn't a game changer it's not a reason to upgrade your phone but I think it's just a a fun feature that's a nice application of uh Galaxy AI to the camera but not all Galaxy AI features are that useful there are some that I felt like I either wasn't really using very much or I feel like could use a little bit of work one is called chat assist so chat assist is kind of an umbrella term for different features that you can use when you're sending text messages one of them like I mentioned earlier is translation another one can rewrite your text messages in a different tone this is really similar to Google's uh Magic compose and again this is another feature that the two companies worked together on and I just don't really find myself using it and when I have used it I've noticed that it just doesn't sound like me which I guess is kind of the point now that's not necessarily a bad thing I could possibly see this being useful for times when maybe you want to text a coworker or a colleague and you want something that sounds a bit more formal than your normal language but um it's just something that I don't feel like is a game changer that impressed me nearly as much as the translation features and circle to search another thing I've noticed is in the notes app which can organize your notes into bullet points and summarize notes for you sometimes when I had a really long note like 1400 to 1500 words it had a hard time summarizing in it but my biggest complaint is that Samsung I feel has missed an opportunity here to put features on the s24 ultra that are specific to the s24 ultra these Galaxy AI features are not exclusive to the ultra you can get them on Samsung's cheaper phones and while I am really happy that Samsung isn't making you pay top dollar to get access to Galaxy AI I really H that they would have thrown at least a couple of extra features in there that were just for the ultra the biggest thing that's different about the s24 ultra camera compared to last year's phone is the new 50 megapixel telephoto camera that camera offers what Samsung claims to be an optical 5x Zoom compared to the 10 megapixel 10x optical zoom that was on the s23 ultra so in practice I have noticed a difference although you do have to zoom in really close to tell I took this picture of some house plants at 5x zoom on both the s24 ultra and the s23 ultra and when I really zoomed in I could see that the s24 ultra did capture a good amount of detail more than the s23 ultra but again I did have to zoom in really closely to notice these difference in terms of general image quality the Galaxy s24 Ultra deals with different lighting conditions pretty well even dimly lit cocktail bars and areas like that and that's probably thanks to the larger new pixels that are in the s24 ultra compared to the s23 ultra even if the Galaxy s24 ultra's photo wasn't the brightest compared to the s23 ultra the iPhone 15 Pro Max or the Google pixel 8 Pro it did preserve a lot of detail which in general still resulted in a great overall photo I also think the Galaxy s24 Ultra did a better job of making skin tones and colors look a bit more natural than the Galaxy s23 Ultra now compared to the Google pixel 8 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro it's really hard to to tell which is the best camera phone because honestly all three phones have great cameras but they excel in different ways the Galaxy s24 Ultra for example is good at capturing detail in low light environments and has the most zooming options but the pixel 8 Pro also preserves a lot of detail when zooming and has generally better color and brightness in some scenarios in my opinion and the iPhone 15 Pro generally has the most accurate skin tone and colors in my opinion the Galaxy s24 Ultra looks a lot like last year's Galaxy s23 Ultra but with some subtle changes that become more obvious when you look closely first of all there's a new titanium design that gives it a bit of a different finish and it's also just ever so slightly lighter but the other change that I personally think is more significant is the new flatter edges the edges of this phone don't have that subtle curve that the Galaxy s23 Ultras have and the screen itself is also flatter around the edges which in my opinion makes it much easier to hold and just generally feels better in the hand like the s23 ultra the s24 ultra also has a 6.8 in screen but Samsung says it's much brighter this time around with a 2600 nit display however when I held it side by side next to the Galaxy s23 Ultra I couldn't really tell that much of a difference good news is that Samsung screens were already plenty bright so I'm sure in bright sunlight this will be even easier to see in the sun however I personally haven't seen a difference yet the Galaxy s24 Ultra has a 5,000 milliamp battery which is capable of lasting all day on a single charge but battery life will always vary depending on how you're using the phone on my first full day with the phone after about 15 and 1 12 hours of use it still had 69% of its battery left this was mostly during casual use but I did notice that when I started to process a lot of generative edits and use some of more of the language translation features and play games and things like that the battery life did drain a lot faster so it really does truly depend on how you're using your phone the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 gen 3 processor that powers the Galaxy s24 Ultra is generally quick and snappy language translations happen really quickly games like Devil May Cry peak of combat and Diablo Immortal ran just fine scrolling around the operating system feel smooth basically anything that you would expect of flagship phone to handle does happen pretty quickly The Only Exception is that generative edits can take a little bit of time to process but that relies on the cloud not so much the processor on its own despite Samsung's flashy new AI features the main reason to consider the ultra over the s24 plus and regular s24 comes down to the same things it always has the giant screen the extra camera and of course the S Pen at $1,300 the Galaxy s24 Ultra is hard to recommend unless you really care about those features and are willing to pay top dollar for them and again I do think Samsung kind of missed an opportunity here by not putting some more exclusive Galaxy AI features on the s24 ultra so what do you think of the s24 ultra let me know in the comments and don't forget to keep following CET for more Samsung coverage thanks for watching and I'll see you next timethis is the Galaxy s24 Ultra and it's all about AI when it comes to Samsung's new Galaxy phones especially the ultra It's usually the hardware that's the star of the show think of the 200 megapixel camera that debuted last year and the embedded S Pen that debuted on the s22 ultra just one year earlier but this year with the s24 things are different it's the software that's in the spotlight that's because the Galaxy s24 series are the first phones to launch with Galaxy AI a new set of features powered by generative AI which creates content in response to prompts based on training data that said I don't know if these features alone are worth upgrading for especially since these Galaxy AI features are available across all of Samsung's Galaxy s24 phones not just the super expensive Ultra which starts at $1,300 Sam Samsung has also said that Galaxy AI will come to the Galaxy s23 series as well which also kind of makes it hard to justify buying the s24 ultra but aside from Galaxy AI there are some other new things that are different with the s24 ultra compared to the s23 ultra for one it runs on qualcomm's new Snapdragon 8 gen 3 processor it has a brighter screen and there's also a new 50 megapixel telephoto camera that offers crisper shots at a 5x Zoom here's what it's been like to use it for the last week Galaxy AI is by far the most interesting new thing about the Galaxy s24 series some of these features do feel familiar like generative edit for example which lets you erase or manipulate objects in photos that sounds very similar to Magic edit on the pixel 8 some of the other features like the ability to organize and summarize notes in Samsung's Notes app and the recorder app are also very familiar but part of that is intentional Samsung and Google worked together on these features for the Galaxy s24 so it seems like they're really embracing this partnership but on the other end that could make it harder for Samsung to make the s24 series stand out from Google's pixel 8 series but just because generative edit and Google's Magic edit are similar it doesn't mean they're exactly the same I tried using both on the same photo and the results were a little bit different I tried to erase a part of the blanket in the background Samsung kind of added a new blanket there to replace the one in the photo and Google kind of did something a little bit different it looks a little bit like the same blanket that was already there but Google also gave me more options to choose from that I can just kind of swipe through of all of the Galaxy AI features I've been using I feel like language translation feels like the most unique Samsung has put language translation natively in its keyboard and in the phone app which means if you're texting someone or calling them and they speak a different language you don't have to hop between apps to translate or copy and paste text or anything like that I've been playing around with this a lot in the messages app and it's been working really quickly when I tried to translate it an entire text message thread between myself and my husband all it took was a few Taps to have the entire thread of our conversation translated with no copy and pasting required with phone calls it's similarly easy you just start a phone call like you normally would and then tap the chat assist button this did work well in my experience but it can be a little bit awkward and it can take a little bit of time to get used to basically the way this works is Samsung's AI is kind of acts as an intermediary and translates your speech and also translates the speech of the speaker on the other end so that the two of you can understand each other even though you're speaking different languages so even though it does work well it can be hard to know when it's your turn to start speaking because you do have to wait for Samsung's U AI translator to finish talking but I do think this could be really useful for people who travel a lot maybe for people who have family members that don't speak English or their native language or for people who need to communicate with work colleagues in different countries I do feel like it could be helpful so one of the most interesting new AI features is called Circle to search and Samsung is partnering with Google on this feature and basically just like the name implies you can Circle almost anything on your phone screen and it'll launch a Google search for whatever that item is so I just took a photo of the Tea House in this um so if I want to learn more about it after I've held that button down I can just draw a circle around it and as you can see almost instantly this little panel comes up and it brings up similar uh search results based on what I circled so Circle to search also works in apps so if you see something on Instagram or another app and you want to know more about it or maybe where to buy it or something like that um you can just circle to search and it'll bring up some results once again I'm just going to hold that button and I'm going to draw a circle around this and sure enough there's a bunch of recipes for grilled cheese sandwiches and then here are some restaurants for places near me that serve grilled cheese sandwiches and even more videos another feature I really loved is called instant slowmo and just like the name implies you can can instantly turn any clip into a slow motion video just by pressing and holding on the footage and then just watching it slow down in real time and this isn't a game changer it's not a reason to upgrade your phone but I think it's just a a fun feature that's a nice application of uh Galaxy AI to the camera but not all Galaxy AI features are that useful there are some that I felt like I either wasn't really using very much or I feel like could use a little bit of work one is called chat assist so chat assist is kind of an umbrella term for different features that you can use when you're sending text messages one of them like I mentioned earlier is translation another one can rewrite your text messages in a different tone this is really similar to Google's uh Magic compose and again this is another feature that the two companies worked together on and I just don't really find myself using it and when I have used it I've noticed that it just doesn't sound like me which I guess is kind of the point now that's not necessarily a bad thing I could possibly see this being useful for times when maybe you want to text a coworker or a colleague and you want something that sounds a bit more formal than your normal language but um it's just something that I don't feel like is a game changer that impressed me nearly as much as the translation features and circle to search another thing I've noticed is in the notes app which can organize your notes into bullet points and summarize notes for you sometimes when I had a really long note like 1400 to 1500 words it had a hard time summarizing in it but my biggest complaint is that Samsung I feel has missed an opportunity here to put features on the s24 ultra that are specific to the s24 ultra these Galaxy AI features are not exclusive to the ultra you can get them on Samsung's cheaper phones and while I am really happy that Samsung isn't making you pay top dollar to get access to Galaxy AI I really H that they would have thrown at least a couple of extra features in there that were just for the ultra the biggest thing that's different about the s24 ultra camera compared to last year's phone is the new 50 megapixel telephoto camera that camera offers what Samsung claims to be an optical 5x Zoom compared to the 10 megapixel 10x optical zoom that was on the s23 ultra so in practice I have noticed a difference although you do have to zoom in really close to tell I took this picture of some house plants at 5x zoom on both the s24 ultra and the s23 ultra and when I really zoomed in I could see that the s24 ultra did capture a good amount of detail more than the s23 ultra but again I did have to zoom in really closely to notice these difference in terms of general image quality the Galaxy s24 Ultra deals with different lighting conditions pretty well even dimly lit cocktail bars and areas like that and that's probably thanks to the larger new pixels that are in the s24 ultra compared to the s23 ultra even if the Galaxy s24 ultra's photo wasn't the brightest compared to the s23 ultra the iPhone 15 Pro Max or the Google pixel 8 Pro it did preserve a lot of detail which in general still resulted in a great overall photo I also think the Galaxy s24 Ultra did a better job of making skin tones and colors look a bit more natural than the Galaxy s23 Ultra now compared to the Google pixel 8 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro it's really hard to to tell which is the best camera phone because honestly all three phones have great cameras but they excel in different ways the Galaxy s24 Ultra for example is good at capturing detail in low light environments and has the most zooming options but the pixel 8 Pro also preserves a lot of detail when zooming and has generally better color and brightness in some scenarios in my opinion and the iPhone 15 Pro generally has the most accurate skin tone and colors in my opinion the Galaxy s24 Ultra looks a lot like last year's Galaxy s23 Ultra but with some subtle changes that become more obvious when you look closely first of all there's a new titanium design that gives it a bit of a different finish and it's also just ever so slightly lighter but the other change that I personally think is more significant is the new flatter edges the edges of this phone don't have that subtle curve that the Galaxy s23 Ultras have and the screen itself is also flatter around the edges which in my opinion makes it much easier to hold and just generally feels better in the hand like the s23 ultra the s24 ultra also has a 6.8 in screen but Samsung says it's much brighter this time around with a 2600 nit display however when I held it side by side next to the Galaxy s23 Ultra I couldn't really tell that much of a difference good news is that Samsung screens were already plenty bright so I'm sure in bright sunlight this will be even easier to see in the sun however I personally haven't seen a difference yet the Galaxy s24 Ultra has a 5,000 milliamp battery which is capable of lasting all day on a single charge but battery life will always vary depending on how you're using the phone on my first full day with the phone after about 15 and 1 12 hours of use it still had 69% of its battery left this was mostly during casual use but I did notice that when I started to process a lot of generative edits and use some of more of the language translation features and play games and things like that the battery life did drain a lot faster so it really does truly depend on how you're using your phone the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 gen 3 processor that powers the Galaxy s24 Ultra is generally quick and snappy language translations happen really quickly games like Devil May Cry peak of combat and Diablo Immortal ran just fine scrolling around the operating system feel smooth basically anything that you would expect of flagship phone to handle does happen pretty quickly The Only Exception is that generative edits can take a little bit of time to process but that relies on the cloud not so much the processor on its own despite Samsung's flashy new AI features the main reason to consider the ultra over the s24 plus and regular s24 comes down to the same things it always has the giant screen the extra camera and of course the S Pen at $1,300 the Galaxy s24 Ultra is hard to recommend unless you really care about those features and are willing to pay top dollar for them and again I do think Samsung kind of missed an opportunity here by not putting some more exclusive Galaxy AI features on the s24 ultra so what do you think of the s24 ultra let me know in the comments and don't forget to keep following CET for more Samsung coverage thanks for watching and I'll see you next time\n"