Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra Review – Ultra Convenience

Unboxing the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra Review – Box

The Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra comes with practically the same packaging as its predecessor last year. If anything, the difference is only in the picture of the device, where the S Pen can be seen in the illustration this time around. If you’re expecting any added accessories this time around, that is not the case unfortunately as inside the box, we found the following items:

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra Review – Box content

• USB-C to USB-C cable
• SIM ejector pin
• Documentations
• The Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra itself

Specifications

Performance

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra Review – Antutu v10

Starting off with Antutu v10, the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra had a superbly strong showing, easily taking the top spot in our list of benchmarked devices. In fact, it performed nearly 20% better than the Z Fold5 and Tab S9 Ultra, both of which are powered by last year’s flagship Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip. This should give you an idea how much more powerful the new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy is.

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra Review – Geekbench 6

It had a strong showing in Geekbench 6 as well, though it lost to the iPhone 15 Pro Max with its new A17 Pro chip. With that being said however, the gap that we’ve seen in previous years when comparing to Apple devices have diminished significantly, with the multi-core performance being on par for once.

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra Review – 3DMark

Moving on to 3DMark’s Wild Life Extreme Unlimited, the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra easily takes the top spot, overtaking both the A17 Pro chip as well as the older Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip. It’s not just CPU strength as the GPU also sees a healthy boost in performance. As for thermals, it does get rather hot and the numbers prove it with a stability rating of 58.9%. Thermal throttling is certainly present, which isn’t a surprise given how much power this is packing inside.

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra Review – PCMark

Lastly on PCMark’s Work 3.0 benchmark, the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra took the top spot if you don’t account for overclocked devices. It was beaten by the ROG Phone 7 Ultimate running on X-Mode, resulting in even stronger performance from the older flagship chip. Regardless, there’s more than enough power here to be an above average daily driver.

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra Review – Battery endurance test

As for battery life, the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra sees some healthy improvements over its predecessor, lasting 689 minutes in 2K and 830 minutes in Full HD. The S23 Ultra only lasted 653 minutes in 2K and 772 minutes in Full HD. In case you were wondering, both devices ran with adaptive refresh rate enabled, and they have the same battery capacity. This proves that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 brings good improvements in terms of efficiency, and you can definitely feel that it lasts longer than the S23 Ultra.

If you want to compare it to the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra, click right here.

Camera

The Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra has the same 200MP main camera, 12MP ultrawide, and 10MP telephoto camera. As for the other telephoto camera, which is 50MP with 5x optical zoom. While the zoomed shots might look about the same as last year, the difference is more apparent as you zoom further in as it retains more detail along with better colors and generally looking more accurate. In fact, pictures taken at 10X feels like there’s no quality depreciation whatsoever, as if you’re on optical zoom, while 30x is still usable but more dependent on light. Anything past 30x is practically unusable.

The main and ultrawide cameras are practically on par with the S23 Ultra but it appears to have more balanced colors / contrast, which I believe is due to the software. Low-light shots typically come off pretty well but there are times when you might want to disable Night Mode to make it look less grainy. One thing I did notice however is that it takes a bit longer to really focus on people’s faces. If you’re trying to get a quick snap, as soon as you get a subject in frame, they will appear in the picture with a softer look. With objects, it’s still okay but ideally, just give it a good second or two to really focus in. I did hear about a software update that improved the camera performance but I’m not sure if it has anything to do with making it focus faster.

The Good

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra Review – Display

There are a good number of reasons to consider getting the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra. For starters, the display has gone back from curved to flat. This may sound like a step backwards for some of you but a flat display does come with its benefits. This includes less accidental touches on the sides, generally easier to view, and it’s easier to find accessories for it. Furthermore, you still get a flagship-caliber display that only Samsung can give; a monstrous 2K+ 6.8-inch AMOLED display with adaptive refresh rate going from 1Hz to 120Hz, with the brightness now going even higher at 2,600 nits peak.

It’s not just the display as the build quality has seen significant improvements with the new Titanium chassis and Gorilla Glass Armor. The former is a big deal as it’s twice as strong as aluminum while being nearly half as light as steel with the same strength. Furthermore, titanium is resistant to fingerprint smudges and corrosion, further adding to its improved build quality. As for the latter, it’s said to be up to 3 times better in drops tests and 4 times more scratch-resistant when compared to similar aluminosilicate glass. It also reduces reflections by up to 75%, thus making the screen less glaring and easier to view, which is especially noticeably in broad daylight.

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra Review – SIM card slot, USB-C port, speaker hole, and S Pen slot

While this wasn’t explicitly focused on, the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra has some of the best stereo speakers in a non-gaming smartphone ever. It’s stereo speakers consisting of a front-facing and a bottom-firing one, with volume that is more than loud enough for most consumers without having the audio start to break or distort. You can even feel a smidgen of bass, which is surprising for built-in speakers in a smartphone. This, together with its excellent display, makes it quite the multimedia powerhouse.

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra Review – Chat Assist and Note Assist with Galaxy AI

Normally with new iterations of a model, people would be focused on raw performance or camera upgrades but this time, the biggest evolution is Galaxy AI. This brings a suit of AI-based features designed to make your life a lot easier. There are actually quite a lot to go through so I will talk some of the ones I find very useful (aside from the camera-based features);

• Live Translate = A real-time two-way call translation that works via the native Phone app. Currently supports up to 13 languages but will add more in the future. It might have a little bit of trouble depending on how you enunciate words but works fine for the most part. I just wished it was a little faster but that’s expected to improve over time.
• Chat Assist = You can let the AI write a message in different tones, such as a friendly or professional tone, based on what you’ve written to convey things more aptly depending on the recipient. You can also translate messages using it, with the same 13 languages being supported for now. I wouldn’t overly rely on it as it can make you sound more robotic or convey a completely different personality compared to your own writing style.
• Circle to Search = You can highlight any picture, video, or text within the display and immediately search it up on Google without leaving the app that you’re on. Arguably the most convenient tool to pop up and one I foresee many people make use of moving forward. The use of the S Pen makes this feature more intuitive to use.
• Note Assist = Using the Samsung Notes app, you can turn your notes into something far better by letting Galaxy AI create summaries, handle the formatting, spellcheck, translate, and more. For people like me who lack the creativity to make our own notes pop out better or have the tendency to write in ways only we ourselves can understand, this is a godsend.
• Transcript Assist = Using the Voice Recorder app, you can get the audio to be automatically transcribed, complete with the ability to identify when different speakers are talking. At times, it might have trouble getting the right word down due to how some words are enunciated and if they can be heard clearly but for the most part, works pretty well.
• Interpreter = A 2-way real-time translation tool where you can select two different languages and have a conversation. This is perfect for travelers and the UI design makes it easy for two people to look at the screen and communicate but the 13 language limitation means there are a lot of places out there you still can’t make use of it yet.

Lastly, the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra comes with 7 years of guaranteed software upgrades together with 7 years of major security updates. Previously, they were holding the record with 5 years of software upgrades but with this, they are clearly not backing down from Google’s own Pixel 8 offering as it matches them evenly with this. Simply put, you can use this smartphone and be well updated until the year 2031, which is quite insane to think about.

The Bad

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra Review – Circle to Search and Transcript Assist with Galaxy AI

As good as the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra is, it does have its fair share of drawbacks. For starters, the Galaxy AI in its entirety is still fairly new, and like any other AI-based applications, it needs a lot of data to work flawlessly or even come close to it. As such, don’t expect it to be the perfect solution as it has plenty of room for improvements, especially language support. Even with English, a slightly different pronunciation could lead to different results. Moreover, there is a footnote on the official website which states that “Galaxy AI features will be provided for free until the end of 2025 on supported Samsung Galaxy devices”, so while it is free for now, there is a chance it might require payment in order to use it starting 2026.

Next up, while Titanium is a light material given its durability, the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra is still a heavy device. At 232g, you will definitely feel it when you hold it in your hands or place it in your pockets. Sure, the weight is distributed well across its large size so it doesn’t feel oddly uneven but if you had to place in certain accessories like a gimbal stabilizer or a car phone holder, that’s when you’d find some issues as it might not be supported or you’d have to use a heavy duty variant of said accessories.

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra Review – Rear

While the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra is a powerful smartphone with notable improvements over its predecessor, it still suffers one issue from previous years, which is that it needs a better cooling system. We get a more powerful chip every year but if it can’t sustain the performance, there’s not much of a point to it. If the 3DMark stability rating has the figures improve to at least 70%, I think we’d be fine given how hot it can get to the touch and the thermal throttling occurrences, it’s certainly an issue to think about. Sure, it’s not an issue that everyone will face as not everyone is a power user or a heavy gamer, but keep in mind that you will also feel the heat just from using the camera alone for 5 to 10 minutes.

Lastly, the price has seen quite a bump. The Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra is retailing for RM6,299 and RM6,799 for the 256GB and 512GB variants respectively. This is an RM600 increase over the S23 Ultra, with the 256GB and 512GB retailing for RM5,699 and RM6,199 at launch respectively. To me, this is a mixture of our depreciating Ringgit paired with the added cost of better materials like Titanium being used in the new flagship, so I can’t say that it’s not justified, but it doesn’t change the fact that it is pricey.

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra Verdict

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra Review

The Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra has started off 2024 with a huge bang in terms of what to expect with Android flagships. It’s no longer bound by just hardware upgrades as it sets a precedent on how AI can vastly improve multiple facets of our daily lives. Of course, that’s not to say that the hardware improvements are minuscule by any means since it brings a whole host of solid improvements like battery life, flat display and more but the star of the show is clearly Galaxy AI.

At the end of our Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra review, I award this flagship smartphone with our coveted Gold Pokdeward.

Big thanks to Samsung Malaysia for sending us this smartphone for the purpose of this review.