The Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra makes all the right changes — here’s our first look

As the resident big phone fan at CNN Underscored, I am excited to report that the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra looks and feels just right. And that’s coming from a perennial iPhone user. Ahead of today’s Galaxy Unpacked, I recently got some hands-on time with Samsung’s latest 6.8-inch phone, which I praised the second I wrapped my hand around it. It even packs significant under-the-hood adjustments, including display upgrades. Oh, and if you rock with generative AI? Meet Samsung’s Galaxy AI, which offers tricks to assist both image and text editing.

But what will matter the most to you? And since the S24 Ultra is $100 more than the S23 Ultra, is it worth that price bump to own one of the likely best smartphones of 2024? Let’s break it all down.

The titanium Galaxy S24 Ultra is much easier to hold

When I compared the S23 Ultra and iPhone 15 Pro last year, I quickly gave points to Apple for how its latest phones felt better to grip. A few months later, I can report that Samsung’s figured out how to match Apple on this key aspect. Gone are the S23 Ultra’s rounded left and right edges, as the Galaxy S24 Ultra offers only slightly curved (and much flatter) sides. While the S23 Ultra’s sides were not “sharp” by any means, they did press too much into my palm and fingers when I’d hold it. While many will slap a case onto their S24 Ultra, this change could push users to let their phone go naked like I do with my iPhone 15 Pro Max.

Similarly, Samsung also made another upgrade that will be familiar to iPhone 15 Pro owners: The S24 Ultra (unlike the S24 and S24+) features a titanium body instead of an aluminum design. This change is reflected in the names of its four color options — Titanium Black, Titanium Gray, Titanium Violet and Titanium Yellow — and I’m most partial to the yellow (though it looks more like a cream) and violet designs. Samsung’s also selling blue, green and orange versions on its own site. The S24 Ultra also features a “satin” finish that felt nice to the touch in my hands-on time and secured its phone with new Corning Gorilla Armor for increased durability.

That said, the S24 and S24+ both feature a bolder purple hue for their matching handset, continuing an annoying industry-wide trend of pricier phones featuring more muted colors that we last saw in the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro.

A new telephoto camera promises sharper resolution

Just like last year’s excellent Galaxy S23 Ultra, the Galaxy S24 Ultra packs both 12-megapixel ultrawide angle and 200-megapixel wide-angle cameras, along with a 10-megapixel telephoto sensor with 3x optical zoom. The big difference this year comes in the other camera, which switches things up a bit. Now, you get a 50-megapixel telephoto camera with 5x optical zoom — which some might see as a downgrade considering the S23 Ultra’s other camera (a 10-megapixel sensor) packed a 10x optical zoom.

This basically means you get super-sharp 50-megapixel photos with a 5x zoom, which (on paper) should be clearer than the iPhone 15 Pro Max’s 5x optical zoom, which uses a 12-megapixel sensor. The S24 Ultra, however, also gives you a 10x zoom option that uses a crop of the 50-megapixel sensor’s 5x zoom. In my testing, this feels like a trick people will use to get a tighter shot while avoiding digital zoom issues.

I found the 10x-zoom crop perfect for getting great angles on food across the room, as well as street art adorning a nearby building.

A big display that appears to be worth the price

Those who spend Ultra amounts on their phone likely expect to see big gains year over year, so we’re not surprised to see Samsung boast notable upgrades for screen brightness and visibility. The S24 Ultra’s 6.8-inch AMOLED display still offers smooth refresh rates of 1 to 120Hz, and it now hits a peak brightness of 2,600 nits, which is 40% higher than what the S23 Ultra offered. The company also claims that screen glare is down as well, which I look forward to testing in bright daylight.

Looking at a photo of a blue sky on a S23 Ultra and S24 Ultra sitting side by side, the generational gap was easy to notice. I don’t know what portion of the S24 Ultra’s $1,300 price tag it’s worth, but it’s definitely of note.

I have questions for our new Galaxy AI overlords

Generative artificial intelligence is basically a must-have in any big, splashy 2024 tech release (unless you’re talking about Apple’s Vision Pro headset), so we’re not exactly shocked to see new smarts here. The most intriguing stuff for me comes in the form of image editing and search. For example, you can shrink and enlarge items in images just by selecting them, as I saw my colleague Mike Andronico do rather quickly. I was happy to see a small watermark on the image to identify this image as one that’s been edited.

When I get the Galaxy S24 Ultra in my hands for our extensive review, though, I’m curious to discover how easy it is to remove that watermark. And while that trick is familiar to anyone who’s seen the Google Pixel 8’s Magic Editor, I’m excited to test another trick Samsung’s revealed, as we also saw Galaxy AI remove a shadow obstructing a face in a photo, as well as remove a reflection in a window.

Two other prominent Galaxy AI features focus on language tricks: Chat Assist for suggesting different ways to send a text message and Note Assist for summarizing and translating articles and reformatting text. Maybe I’m too much of a writer, but I could not conceive of a use case for myself as I watched all these features tested in front of me.

There’s also Circle to Search, where you can gain more information about an image by holding the circular navigation button and circling items (a feature also coming to the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro). We tried this to find out more details about a specific breed of cat, which Google quickly pointed out was a tabby.

All the other big and small feature upgrades

The S24 Ultra features the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy, the latest custom-for-Samsung silicon that iterates on the S23’s Gen 2 chip. Not only will its CPU and NPU enable snappy performance from Galaxy AI, its improved GPU is supposed to deliver smoother gameplay with better ray tracing for more realistic lighting and reflections.

Samsung claims the S24 Ultra improved internal cooling by 92%, thanks to changes to the vapor chamber, and I hope that leads to a phone that doesn’t warm up as much as my iPhone 15 Pro Max. You still get a 5,000mAh lithium ion battery, but Samsung’s also claiming it’s made battery optimization tweaks, which will hopefully translate to amazing endurance on par with the S23 Ultra, which offered around two days of juice on a single charge.

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra specs vs the competition

The takeaway

While the Galaxy S24 Ultra does look better than ever — those easier-to-hold sides are a game changer for me — it’s also $100 more than the S23 Ultra. This is frustrating, but something you’ve probably noticed across a range of new tech products.

While the value of Galaxy AI will definitely vary by user, the phone’s increased peak brightness, new 50-megapixel camera and improved design should definitely excite those living in the Samsung Galaxy. Stay tuned for my full review.