Galaxy S24 Ultra after 7 days: I was wrong

I’ve now had the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra in use for almost a week. It’s my new daily driver, and I’m even saying by now that an upgrade from the Galaxy S23 Ultra could be worth it. There was already a video about the differences on paper. Only after a few days in real life do you notice where the true changes are felt.

Design: small changes, big effect

On paper not much has changed in the design, but enough that the cases for the S23 Ultra no longer fit. The S24 Ultra is 1 mm shorter, 0.9 mm wider and 0.3 mm thinner. Together with the now flat display, it sits surprisingly better in my hand. The 1 mm in length and width makes it more balanced, which I welcome, because at 6.8 inches it’s a real beast, just like the S23 Ultra.

Weight hasn’t changed, it’s 1 g lighter. Of course you don’t notice that. I had hoped we’d get down about 5 g.

Because of the titanium frame, the feel is a bit rougher, which I find very pleasant. It hasn’t become any less slippery, it remains a slippery little devil. On the plus side, there are no more fingerprints, even on the frame. Titanium Grey is the most beautiful color I’ve ever seen on a smartphone.

Display

You now notice the thinner, perfectly symmetrical bezels and the brutally sharp, bright display. Normally I set the resolution to Quad HD+. On the S24 Ultra, though, the display is so razor sharp that my eyes hurt, and I switched it to Full HD+. If you like very sharp displays, this is the right one. At 2,600 nits it is the brightest on the smartphone market. It’s no coincidence that even Apple uses Samsung displays for its iPhones.

Overall, the S24 Ultra is among the most high-quality things the market has to offer in design and build.

Processor and Galaxy AI

I had doubts about whether you’d even notice the difference between the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 in the S23 Ultra and the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 in the S24 Ultra. Already during setup it’s clear that something extra has been added here. In the past with Galaxys you had to wait 10 to 20 seconds in between. The S24 Ultra whips through the setup process. Whether you need this performance is another question. But I believe it’s necessary to make the new AI features this smooth and fast. Some of them are also coming to the S23 Ultra, and I’m curious whether they run just as fast there.

• Circle to Search: You circle what you see and get results within a fraction of a second. Besides live translation on calls, this is the Galaxy AI highlight for me. It simplifies searching enormously, and you only understand that once you’ve tried it yourself.
• More features: Erasing unwanted people from vacation photos, having your own interpreter with you on vacation.

To everyone who says this is just fluff, I disagree. Interpreter and live translation on calls make language barriers disappear. You can talk fluently with locals on the most remote island in Thailand. For many people without English skills, the language barrier is a valid reason not to travel to faraway countries. That helps our world move closer together.

Camera and battery

There’s only one change to the camera: the second telephoto lens now has 5x instead of 10x optical zoom. In return it has 50 instead of 10 megapixels, and more light comes in. Decide for yourselves in the video which shots you like better, from the S23 Ultra or from the S24 Ultra.

The battery still has 5,000 mAh. With the new processor, though, I get through more than two full days.

Verdict

Sometimes it’s precisely small changes that have big effects: millimeters in the design, a few more nits of brightness, a translation feature that now also works on phone calls. That probably wasn’t rocket science in development. But this way the language we grew up with can no longer be a barrier. I hope Samsung and others keep integrating these often-ridiculed small changes into our everyday lives, because that’s the only way we move forward: one step at a time. This was the first of several reviews and comparisons of the S24 Ultra after one week.