Samsung Galaxy S24 Extremely evaluation: Spectacul...

Samsung’s Galaxy S24 Ultra, the corporate’s newest flagship smartphone, checks practically each field for what you’d need in a high-end smartphone in 2024. It boasts the newest Qualcomm processor for clean efficiency, has a giant, brilliant show and a digital camera setup that turns anybody right into a budding photographer. Oh, and the battery life — it goes for days. Actually.

Over the past two weeks, I examined the S24 Extremely, utilizing it as my fundamental telephone every day. Exterior a couple of refined modifications to the design and a handful of software program options, I am not satisfied I might have instructed the distinction between it and final 12 months’s S23 Ultra if I did not know any higher. Certainly, the S24 Extremely is a boring replace. However, perhaps that is not a foul factor? Let’s take a more in-depth look.

Samsung Galaxy S24 Extremely

Really useful

100x Area Zoom, a vibrant, curve-free AMOLED show, an S Pen with nice options, and much more wrapped up in a titanium package deal. The Galaxy S24 Extremely is Samsung’s assertion on what a standard slab smartphone ought to be in 2024.

Professionals

• A very flat show that appears nice
• A battery that does not know what give up means
• A powerhouse in efficiency

Cons

• A tried and true design
• The digital camera tends to overexpose photographs

Worth, specs, and availability

Samsung started taking preorders for the Galaxy S24 Ultra on Jan 17, with deliveries and in-store availability set for Jan. 31. Nonetheless, preorders began arriving earlier than the official launch date.

As regular, Samsung has a number of colour choices obtainable, a few of that are unique to orders positioned by way of Samsung. The Samsung unique colours embrace titanium inexperienced, titanium blue, and titanium orange. Colours with wider availability embrace titanium black, titanium violet, titanium yellow, and titanium grey.

The S24 Extremely begins at $1,299 for 256GB of storage, with the 512GB and 1TB fashions costing $1,419 or $1,659, respectively. All three fashions include 12GB of storage

What I like concerning the Galaxy S24 Extremely

Flat shows are again

There are just a few design modifications between final 12 months’s S23 Ultra and the 24 Ultra, a few of which you will be hard-pressed to even discover. One such instance is the truth that the S24 Extremely’s housing is now made from titanium as an alternative of aluminum, making the telephone barely lighter than its predecessor, however retaining the identical general aesthetic of being a flat-edged rectangular field.

Arguably the most important design change from final 12 months is the swap from a curved edge show to a wholly flat show. Samsung, together with different telephone makers, have used curved edge shows to make bigger telephones really feel thinner and simpler to carry, nevertheless it has come at the price of errant touches and different usability points.

In October, Google made an analogous change to the Pixel 8 Pro, and it vastly improved the general expertise. The identical might be stated concerning the S24 Extremely — the flat show feels extra pure to faucet and swipe throughout. The S24 Extremely is not a lot thinner than the S23 Extremely, but I do not really feel prefer it’s any more durable to carry.

One other show enchancment I recognize is the increase in general brightness to 2,600 nits, which is useful when viewing the display screen in direct daylight.

Nonetheless, my favourite design change is the brand new Gorilla Glass Armor that removes reflections from the display screen. Technically, it reduces the S24 Extremely’s show reflectivity by as much as 75% according to Corning. I am unable to vouch for the precise proportion, however I can say that overhead lights all however disappear from the display screen, and even utilizing the S24 Extremely exterior, beneath a brilliant solar, I not often discover any reflections or points.

Samsung has lengthy been an business chief in smartphone show high quality, and the S24 Extremely continues to bolster Samsung’s declare to the throne.

Easy efficiency

Contained in the Galaxy S24 Extremely is Qualcomm’s newest Snapdragon Gen 3 processor, 12GB of reminiscence and both 256GB, 512GB or 1TB of storage.

Qualcomm and Samsung tout varied efficiency will increase, all of which really feel correct and true after utilizing the S24 Extremely for a few weeks. For individuals who care about specifics, the Gen 3 chip is meant to carry a 30% efficiency increase over the Gen 2, whereas being 20% extra environment friendly.

My S24 Extremely utilization has been a mixture of social media, inbox triage, Slack messages, streaming music, watching YouTube movies, often gaming, and taking a bunch of photographs and movies.

I am unable to vouch for the 30% enhance in efficiency, however I can say that the S24 Extremely’s efficiency was clean and hiccup-free.

I did run Geekbench 6, a benchmarking app that assessments single and multicore efficiency for a extra goal measure of the S24 Extremely’s efficiency chops in comparison with the S23 Extremely. In single-core efficiency, which is leveraged for extra routine and mundane duties like scrolling the net or sending a textual content, the S24 Extremely was roughly 8% sooner than the S23 Extremely. Multicore efficiency, used when doing extra resource-intensive duties like gaming, modifying photographs, and even utilizing the S24 Ultra’s new AI features, had an general efficiency increase of 20% over final 12 months’s Extremely.

Associated

What is Galaxy AI? Samsung’s generative AI features explained

All the eye is on generative AI and the most important manufacturers which have but to leap into the pool. Apple is one among them, however what about Samsung?

Battery life is bananas

Over the past two weeks, I’ve persistently been in a position to get nearly two full days of use out of the S24 Extremely’s battery earlier than I needed to cost it. I might solely dream of doing that on my iPhone 15 Professional Max and Pixel 8 Professional.

Once more, my use consisted of duties that have been taxing on battery life — gaming, streaming video, watching Reels, and quite a lot of use open air in direct daylight with the show set to max brightness — together with extra mundane duties, like doom-scrolling Mastodon and Threads or replying to emails.

Associated

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra vs iPhone 15 Pro Max: Does Android’s latest win over iOS?

Samsung’s newest Extremely debuts spectacular AI software program and an up to date digital camera, however how does it evaluate to Apple’s most up-to-date Professional?

For practically each telephone I evaluation, I run the identical battery life benchmark that consists of setting the show brightness to 50%, turning off Bluetooth, enabling Do Not Disturb, and taking part in a 4K video on a loop. I monitor the telephone utilizing a Wyze Cam in timelapse mode, capturing an image each 60 seconds. As soon as the telephone turns off, I evaluation the timelapse video and calculate how lengthy the telephone’s battery lasts.

Associated

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra vs Google Pixel 8 Pro: Which AI powerhouse should you buy?

Samsung and Google have created a few of the most succesful Android telephones, boasting spectacular AI options and smooth casing. Which is value your cash?

The Galaxy S24 Extremely powered by way of 20 hours and 47 minutes earlier than turning off, besting Google’s Pixel 8 Professional by practically 9 hours and half-hour.

Suffice to say, battery life will not be a priority with the Galaxy S24 Extremely.

What I do not like concerning the Galaxy S24 Extremely

The design lacks character

The design of Samsung’s Extremely collection of telephones has adopted the identical primary strategy during the last couple of years, with flat edges on the highest and backside of the telephone, and curved edges on the vertical sides.

The design of the S22 Extremely and even the S23 Extremely felt like extra of a transition design as Samsung tried to determine incorporate the Observe’s beloved S Pen into its flagship S-series telephone, however with the S24 Extremely utilizing the design, it feels as if Samsung is simply mailing it in at this level.

Possibly my destructive emotions in direction of the S24 Extremely’s design are indicative of an general downside with smartphone design feeling stale on the whole. All of them really feel boring and rancid, to some extent.

However the S24 Extremely lacks the identical type of character you get from Google’s Pixel line or the identical degree of refinement discovered on Apple’s iPhone.

The S24 Extremely is an unapologetic rectangular slab of glass and metallic. That is it. To Samsung’s credit score, getting rid of a curved edge show was the precise name, however that is the place my appreciation for the S24 Extremely’s design begins and stops.

Galaxy AI is helpful, however not essential

A significant a part of Samsung’s Galaxy S24 occasion was the rollout of Galaxy AI, a collection of options and capabilities making their debut on the S24, S24+ and S24 Extremely.

Samsung’s Galaxy AI options embrace instruments to summarize notes you’ve got entered in Samsung Notes, provide the tl;dr model of a information story you are studying in Samsung’s Web browser, enhance transcriptions of conferences when utilizing the Voice Recorder app, or act as an interpreter for telephone calls or in-person interactions. There are even a couple of Galaxy AI options for serving to edit photographs and one other one which helps you craft a message by adjusting the tone of your writing.

Out of all these new AI options, the one one I discovered myself utilizing repeatedly was Circle to Search. Now we have a complete guide detailing how and when you should utilize the function, however the gist of it’s this: when utilizing your telephone, and also you see an merchandise in your display screen, be it in an Instagram Reel, TikTok video or on a webpage, you long-press on the underside of your show to set off the function. Then you’ll be able to draw a circle across the merchandise and Google will present a collection of search outcomes, all with out you ever having to depart the display screen you are on.

I’ve used Circle to Search to seek out random issues like a e book from a photograph of its backbone, or getting extra details about a particular sort of cheese I did not know the identify of.

It is a captivating use of AI and Google search in an nearly addictive type of approach. When you get used to utilizing it, you will end up utilizing it increasingly. I do know I did.

Many of those AI options, nevertheless, aren’t unique to the S24 Extremely, though your choices are restricted to Google’s Pixel 8 lineup or any of the Samsung Galaxy gadgets, together with the S23 collection, Samsung has said will obtain an replace that features Galaxy AI’s capabilities.

The digital camera is nice, however…

The S24 Extremely has a four-camera setup on the rear of the telephone, just like the S23 Extremely, however with some tweaks and enhancements. Arguably probably the most notable change is the swap from a devoted 10MP 3x telephoto lens on the S23 Extremely to a 50MP 5x telephoto shooter on the S24 Extremely.

I haven’t got sturdy opinions about whether or not a devoted 3x digital camera is healthier than a devoted 5x digital camera, particularly as a result of Samsung can use software program to give you 0.6x, 1x, 3x, 5x, 10x, and 30x zoom ranges, however I’ll say that photographs taken at 5x and past appeared clear and sharp. The additional megapixels give Samsung extra flexibility for zoomed-in photographs.

However there appears to be a standard theme amongst all of the photographs I’ve captured with the S24 Extremely during the last two weeks — they’re all barely (or in some circumstances very) overexposed.

Samsung is infamous for cranking up the saturation on photographs captured on its smartphones, which typically meant that the publicity ranges have been additionally too excessive. However that latter a part of the equation was an exception, not the norm.

With the S24 Extremely, nearly each photograph I captured with S24 Extremely had some degree of being overexposed.

Do not get me improper, the S24 Extremely’s digital camera captures good photographs. Nice, even. I am being, admittedly, considerably nitpicky right here, particularly as a result of the publicity ranges are one thing you’ll be able to tweak with just some faucets within the Gallery app. However you should not should.

Verdict

Samsung Galaxy S24 Extremely

Really useful

The Galaxy S24 Extremely is an exceptionally good, however boring telephone. The return of a flat show is welcome, however the design is dated and lacks inspiration. Granted, most individuals put a case on their telephone, hiding the design.

The digital camera takes completely acceptable photographs, nevertheless it does are likely to overexpose some areas, so simply be aware of that. And the brand new AI options are handy — helpful, even — however not a sufficiently big cause to improve to the S24 Extremely, particularly when you have an older Galaxy machine that can get them by way of an replace.

Efficiency, show and battery life are the S24 Extremely’s killer options, and as is often the case for Samsung’s flagship telephone, different telephone makers are going to have their work minimize out for them in 2024 in the event that they wish to compete with Samsung. The S24 Extremely positive appears to be like prefer it’s the Android telephone to beat this 12 months.