Getting a new smartphone is always exciting. Even if this job can make unboxing a new device feel a little less special than when this was, at best, a once-a-year prospect, there’s still thepromiseof discovering some new, life-changing feature. Even with asmartphone as similar to its predecessor as the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, I still felt pretty excited when it landed on my doorstep on Wednesday — in the middle of yet another Western New York blizzard, no less. So, while Samsung took the stage to make its trio of 2024 flagships official, I got my device set up, and I’ve been using it ever since.
This is usually where I’d walk through what my first couple of days with the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra looked like — how it fits into my life, little things I’ve noticed during app transfers, or while paying for an order at a restaurant. But that aforementioned blizzard (and an unfortunate pre-CES car accident) have kept me mostly stuck at home since I got back from Vegas. Don’t get me wrong, I still have plenty of impressions to share, but if you’re looking for selfies taken in a ramen restaurant (as I provided last year), prepare to be disappointed.
The Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra is still the best, unless you take photos
Samsung’s latest phablet feels like a do-over
This hardware is nice, but it’s the performance that really impresses
Rather than break down my schedule by the hour — do youreallyneed to know how many30 Rockreruns I streamed on Wednesday night? — I’ll be splitting this up into a few sections, almost like a mini-review. Naturally, I’m kicking this off with some thoughts on the hardware now that I’ve got it in my hand. My unit (and, seemingly, everyone else’s) is Titanium Gray, and while I wasn’t particularly drawn to this model in myinitial hands-on session, it’s grown on me a bit.
I appreciate how the warmth of the phone changes depending on the light it’s shot in — it adds something unique to the color — and the matching frame means this device is missing the two-tone combinations from Samsung’s other colorways that might clash a little too much for some. But at the same time, I’m still wishing the titanium made a bigger difference. Apple reduced its flagship’s weight by nearly 20 grams, while the Galaxy S24 Ultra continues to weigh in at a hefty 233g, only a single gram lighter.
You know what’s pretty great, though? Everything under the hood. I haven’t seen this phone slow down once, even while it installed my usual roundup of apps. I’ve only felt it get mildly warm once or twice through regular use, although it’s possible Samsung has the benefit of colder weather on its side. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 seems to be yet another killer TSMC-manufactured chipset from Qualcomm, and it’s great to see Samsung keeping it in all S24 Ultra models around the world.
Some early battery impressions.
Likewise, battery life has been fantastic. As I write this, I’ve only gone through one full day of use, but I was as hard as I could be on the phone Thursday, and I still ended the day with 37 percent left after just shy of seven hours of screen-on time. This battery is almost certainly capable of making it through two days of mixed usage, though keep in mind Ihavebeen on Wi-Fi most of this week. It’ll get a more thorough test on cell networks over the weekend.
Some One UI 6.1 questions linger
I’ve already written a bit about some of Samsung’s new AI features — both the Live Translate tools for phone calls and itsvoice recorder features left me mildly impressedwith plenty of room to grow — but what about the rest of the phone? One UI 6.1 actually does make a few big changes,including an all-new always-on displaythat seems to take an unfortunate page out of Apple’s playbook. But the more I played around with it, the more questions I had about some missing features — and unfortunately, Samsung has yet to get back to me regarding what’s going on here.
Let’s start with that always-on display. Samsung has, in the past, allowed for all sorts of customization options for its AOD. A lot of those seem to be gone with its latest software, including the ability to change the clock or the text color. Thanks to dynamic theming, I’m stuck with purple text on my S24 Ultra, and, as best as I can tell, there’s no way to change it. Here’s a comparison between the AOD menus in One UI 6 (on anS23 Ultra) and One UI 6.1. There’s alotmissing, and I’m not sure why.
AOD settings on the Galaxy S23 Ultra (1,2) vs. on the S24 Ultra (3).
Update, 1/23:After digging around more, it turns out these settings now sync directly with your lock screen, which you can control by long-pressing anywhere on the lock screen, followed by tapping on the clock. Personally, I’d like to see these separated back into their own preferences; it seems silly to restrict the AOD into mirroring your lock screen in such a strict way. Likewise, the dynamic text color is controlled based on lock screen settings, but only shows up on the always-on display; the logic isn’t quite there.
Also missing: Samsung Cloud backups. Yes, the company has left plenty of its cloud-based services in the past for the sake of relying on Microsoft’s OneDrive service, but one of the big selling points of using Samsung accounts to begin with is the option to sync settings and system preferences across devices. I’m still seeing the option to do this on my S23 Ultra running One UI 6 (as are other AP writers), but on the S24, this menu has been replaced with a list of AI features, which feels… less useful.
Iwasable to move my preferences over from my S23 Ultra byrelying on Samsung’s (relatively) new backup system, but you need to know this even exists to do it — there’s no actual prompt for it during the initial setup process, which feels like a big miss. It can take a lot of time to get everything back to how you had it when moving phones, so with any luck, future One UI updates will make a bigger deal out of transferring this data from one phone to the next.
Oh, and speaking of setup weirdness: the Galaxy S24 Ultra didn’t prompt me to scan my fingerprints, and I’ve confirmed with at least one other journalist that it happened on his review unit as well. Some very odd things happening on One UI 6.1, everyone.
Yep, this camera still struggles with motion
Being stuck in my house makes taking photo samples in the winter even more complicated than usual — I promise, my home is nice enough but certainly not all that interesting. Unfortunately, that leaves my camera impressions pretty simple: I’m not all that impressed. One of my biggest regrets of last year was not going hard enough on Samsung’s issues with motion during my review period with the S23 Ultra — it wasn’t a new issue, and it was never solved throughout a year’s worth of patches.
During my hands-on with the S24 series, Samsung told me it improved how the phone handles moving subjects. Frankly, I’m not sure I’m seeing a big difference. Within the first day of using the device, I got blurry photos of both of my cats, despite neither doing anything particularly speedy. It’s one thing for a phone to struggle with one of my cats racing through my living room; it’s another for it to fail to capture Murphy licking a catnip toy or Linus looking around the room.
I think I’m fully out of excuses for Samsung’s camera woes. No other major smartphone company — not Apple, not Google, not even OnePlus through its Hasselblad partnerships — is failing to get motion right in the same way. And whileAP’s resident Samsung expert ZKDhas assured me I can improve this experience by disabling Scene Optimizer in the “Intelligent Optimization” settings (and I will be giving it a shot), frankly, no regular user should be expected to tweak unclear preferences just to get something as basic as this right.
Lots more Galaxy S24 Ultra thoughts to come
While I’ll be leaving it here for now, I have plenty left to say about this phone. Samsung might’ve kept things pretty boring this year — and based onTM Roh’s comments to Digital Trends' Andrew Martonik, this is by design — but that doesn’t mean I don’t have thoughts. Our full review is coming sometime next week, with all of the camera samples (including, yes, 5x and 10x comparisons between this and last year’s flagships) and concrete battery impressions you could ask for.
Here’s the good news: the snow is slowly but surely letting up in Buffalo, and I’ve got plans to go to a Sabres game, a Bills watch party (of some sort), and at least one meal out to eat. Lots of excuses for photos and so much more. If my work week ended up being a little more boring than usual — minus having to drag the snowblower out once a day — at least my pre-review weekend is looking a lot more lively.
Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra
It’s not an overhaul by any means, but even small changes like (finally) swapping back to a flat touchscreen and seven years of system updates help the Galaxy S24 Ultra stand apart from its predecessors. Galaxy AI’s suite of features are front and center, as well as Google’s latest utilities like Circle to Search, and this AI craze even brings its magic to the Ultra’s cameras for after-the-fact super slo-mo.
