Samsung Galaxy S24, S24+, and S24 Ultra Review

Let’s start with the fun stuff. With AI showing up in every manner of new tech products—from laptops to smart fridges—it can be tricky to determine what’s a gimmick and what’s a real game-changer. But, on the whole, I find the Galaxy AI features to be genuinely helpful for everyday tasks. Here are a few of the standouts.

One of the niftiest new tricks is the Circle to Search function. Created in partnership with Google, it’s a visual search tool that works just like it sounds: You hold the home screen button down and circle (or scribble across) something in a photo, video, or string of text to learn more about that thing. Google results then pop up at the bottom of the phone’s screen—even if you’re in an app like Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok—without requiring you to open another browser tab. Got what you need? Simply swipe the search results away. 

I tried a few circle searches myself and found the tool easy to use. I circled a photo of the Seattle skyline and quickly learned the shot was taken from the city’s picturesque Kerry Park. When watching a viral TikTok video, I circled a dancing cactus children’s toy and the exact model popped up in the Google search results, where I could click to buy it. While scrolling through #booktok, I circled a string of book covers and easily pulled up info on the authors and Goodreads scores.

The feature is particularly handy—maybe dangerously so—for online shopping. Love a jacket that someone is wearing on Instagram? Circle-search and you instantly find it, either the exact one or something pretty similar. 

The feature is available on all three S24 models, as well as the Google Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro. It will expand to select Android devices in the future, Google says. 

As a reporter who regularly records interviews, I love the idea of the S24’s AI-enhanced transcription feature. While the S23 can already transcribe speech in real time, as part of the phone’s accessibility features, the S24 line can transcribe audio in the Voice Recorder app, identify different speakers, much like Otter.ai and other services, and, impressively, create summaries of the recording’s key points.

It can then translate that transcription into 13 languages. To test out the feature, I recorded a popular TED Talk on procrastination. While the transcription wasn’t totally accurate, the summary notes were surprisingly astute. You may not be able to send notes from a recorded meeting straight to your boss without an edit, but the AI gives you a solid enough first draft that it saves you time.

I also tried recording a casual chat with a friend, and the feature could indeed differentiate between our voices. In the Notes app, AI can similarly summarize key points, clean up the formatting, and even straighten out messy handwriting scribbled with the Ultra’s S Pen.

Galaxy AI can live-translate texts and calls in 13 languages, regardless of whether the person on the other end of the exchange is using a Samsung phone, an iPhone, or a landline. Once you select the alternate language to use, the person on the other line hears a translation of your voice and you hear a translation of their replies.

On texting, the translation appears below the text in real time, allowing friends to more naturally chat in their native languages. The phones I used in my evaluation weren’t equipped to call and text, so I couldn’t try the feature out myself, but I saw it in an in-person demo and was impressed. If it truly works that effectively and easily, it could be a great tool for frequent travelers and friends who want to more easily chat in their native languages.

There are also a number of AI tricks on the photo and video side. Let’s dive into those now.

The Galaxy S23 line offers impressive smartphone cameras, but these latest models perform a bit better than their predecessors, according to our testers. The upgrades aren’t major, but they may appeal to photo buffs.

Let’s talk hardware first. The S24 and S24+ have the same triple-rear camera setup as their S23 predecessors: a 50-megapixel front camera, 12-megapixel ultrawide camera, and 10-megapixel telephoto with 3x optical zoom. They have the same 12-megapixel selfie camera too.

For the S24 Ultra, Samsung has switched things up a bit and our testers say that, on the whole, the model’s camera system is even better than the one on the S23 Ultra.

The S24 Ultra retains the 200-megapixel primary camera, 12-megapixel ultrawide, and 10-megapixel telephoto with 3x optical zoom found on the back of last year’s model, as well as the 12-megapixel selfie camera. But Samsung has swapped out the 10x telephoto for a 5x telephoto with a higher 50-megapixel resolution.

Even though it may seem like a step backward, the 5x zoom is more handy for everyday use, in my view. And the higher-resolution sensor helps you get to 10x digital zoom.

I took a stroll around Brooklyn to snap some photos for comparison. Here’s a shot of the Manhattan Bridge taken with the S23 Ultra’s 10x zoom camera (left), next to the same shot taken with the S24 Ultra’s new 5x telephoto cropped to 10x digital zoom. It’s hard to spot the difference.

The S24 and S24+ look much like their S23 predecessors and perform virtually the same, too, in our rigorous testing. Our technicians were able to immerse them in our dunk tank and repeatedly drop them in our tumbler without breaking them. The S24 Ultra also got a new titanium frame, which Samsung touts as tougher and more scratch-resistant, and we can report that it was rugged enough to survive 100 drops in the tumbler with no noticeable marks.

The Ultra’s display uses the latest Corning Gorilla Glass Armor, which Samsung says is the strongest yet, replacing the slightly rounded edges with a flatter, more rectangular design—more iPhone-esque, really. While the difference is subtle, I find the boxier S24 Ultra a bit easier to grip than its predecessor. The model’s popular S Pen is still around, tucked into a built-in storage space accessed at the bottom of the device. 

While the S24 and S24+ models both retain their aluminum frames, all three models do have marginally slimmer bezels, meaning you get slightly more screen for your buck. I can’t say I notice a difference, though. Samsung also tweaked the color palette—to black, silver, yellow, and violet (my personal favorite). You can get green, blue, and orange if you order online from Samsung.

The S24 line delivers better battery life, according to our testing, which Samsung says is thanks to the more efficient processor and advanced cooling systems. The batteries in the S24+ and S24 have slightly bigger capacities—4,900 milliamp hours and 4,000mAh, respectively, up from 4,700mAh and 3,900mAh a year ago—and that led to a 10-hour increase in battery life for the S24+ and 5.5-hour increase for the S24. That means you get roughly 50.5 hours per charge for the S24+ and 42 for the S24.

The S24 Ultra has a battery capacity of 5,000 mAh, which translates to a 49-hour battery life in our labs—a 4-hour increase over that of the S23 Ultra.

Samsung also added more RAM to the S24+ (12 gigabytes vs. 8GB). The storage sizes range from the basic 128GB tier on the S24 to the 1-terabyte maximum on the S24 Ultra.

As for the screen, the OLED displays on all three models can now reach a peak brightness of 2,600 nits—nearly 50 percent higher than last year’s models, which could hit 1,750 nits. But the difference between the S23 and S24 lines is not likely to impact everyday content viewing, unless you regularly use your phone outdoors or in well-lit spaces.

All three models now have a 120-hertz refresh rate, which allows for smoother scrolling and graphics performance. Overall, our testers find the displays on all three models to be very high-quality, with great color, clarity, and touch-responsiveness.

Samsung’s flagship phones generally perform well in our labs and the models in this S24 line rate among the very best.

All in all, I was impressed with the suite of Galaxy AI features, finding them useful and, well . . . intelligent, even if some of the flashiest advances are not quite foolproof.

The question is how compelling you find them to be. 

If you’re in the market for a new phone, the Gen 3 processor, brighter screen, and AI chops could certainly be enough to justify the upgrade to an S24 model. And Samsung says the three phones will receive seven years of security and OS upgrades—up from five years of security and four years of OS upgrades, which means your investment is relatively futureproof.

But if you’re happy with the phone you have, it looks like many of the buzziest AI features will get passed down to some earlier Samsung models in the near future.