Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra Review: AI-Powered Flagship

Samsung's Galaxy S24 Ultra arrives in eco-friendly packaging that eliminates most plastic components, reflecting the industry-wide shift toward sustainability. The box contains the S24 Ultra, a USB-C cable (notably faster than previous generations), the S Pen which magnetically attaches to the device, and documentation. The titanium frame immediately distinguishes this generation from the aluminum S23 Ultra - it feels more rigid and premium, though the visual difference is subtle. Our Titanium Violet unit showcases Samsung's refined color work, with the matte finish providing excellent grip and fingerprint resistance. The flat display marks a significant departure from Samsung's curved-screen heritage, improving durability and making the S Pen more practical along the edges. At 232 grams, this is not a lightweight phone, but the weight distribution feels balanced and the titanium construction provides reassurance about durability.

Galaxy AI represents Samsung's most ambitious software initiative, bringing generative AI capabilities directly to core smartphone functions. Live Translate enables real-time conversation translation during phone calls - speak in English, and your words are translated to Spanish (or other supported languages) for the person on the other end, with their responses translated back to you. This works surprisingly well in practice, though occasional awkward phrasing reminds you it's machine translation. Circle to Search is brilliantly intuitive - draw a circle around any object on screen, and Google's AI identifies it and provides search results, shopping links, and contextual information. Generative Edit in the Gallery app allows sophisticated photo manipulation, letting you move objects, remove elements, and fill in backgrounds using AI generation. The 200MP main camera sensor captures extraordinary detail, though Samsung sensibly defaults to 12MP binned images that offer better dynamic range and low-light performance for everyday use. The new ProVisual Engine improves nighttime photography noticeably, reducing noise while preserving detail in shadows.

Our battery testing showed the S24 Ultra delivering 11-12 hours of screen-on time during typical usage that included video streaming, social media, photography, and web browsing. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip runs cooler than its predecessor, with sustained performance during gaming benchmarks remaining stable for over 45 minutes without significant thermal throttling. Camera testing revealed exceptional versatility across the quad-lens system - the 200MP sensor captures stunning detail in good light, the 3x and 5x telephoto lenses produce excellent zoom shots, and the ultrawide maintains impressive edge-to-edge sharpness. Low-light photography showed improvement over the S23 Ultra, particularly in preserving highlight detail while brightening shadows. Galaxy AI features worked reliably when connected to WiFi, though performance varied on cellular data depending on connection speed. Live Translate handled conversational speech well but struggled with rapid speakers or heavy accents. The S Pen latency felt indistinguishable from the S23 Ultra at 2.8ms, which is to say, excellent for note-taking and artistic work.