Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra User Experience: Does Galaxy AI even matter?

The Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra has been announced for about two weeks now. While the netizens are pretty much in argument mode where one side of the camp makes fun of Samsung being the next Apple while the other side defends Samsung’s decision on the direction of the S24 series. Frankly speaking, I think a majority of commenters on the internet are quick to judge before they even touch the device.

So, after using the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra for about two weeks, I can safely say this phone is not just about incremental upgrades. Let’s keep calm, put down your pitchforks, and find out why I said so.

Disclaimer: Samsung provided the early review sample for us reviewers to create content. Despite so, they have no say in the direction and our conclusion on the device. This review is written based on my objective views and actual personal experience.

Galaxy AI?

Before we go into the hardware evaluation like how usual reviews are going. This is the first time I wanted to highlight the software features before anything else. Galaxy AI, does it even matter?

Let’s face it, we cannot ignore how artificial intelligence impresses us with its raw capabilities. However, a tool cannot be useful to the masses if it doesn’t blend into how we use it. Galaxy AI is made to harness the AI powers by building a layer of user interface. For instance, natural language processing (NLP) is being used to understand human input for transcription and translation.

Take a look at how Samsung incorporates this feature into the Samsung keyboard whereby you can modify your written sentence’s tone or even ask the AI to format your message.

On top of that, by incorporating pattern recognition with the human handwriting model, the software is now capable of understanding even human handwriting and converting it to text for further processing.

Besides, one of the excellent uses of image or pattern recognition is the development of Circle to Search. We have explored how this feature works and the quality of life improvements it could bring for the users. This is a perfect example of how a healthy collaboration between software giants is capable of contributing to the betterment of humanity. An important aspect of this feature is that it allows you to search on whichever app or website you are on, without having to leave it, making it a minimally distracting task so you can continue to go on and finish what you were doing on the app in the first place. It will even work with text and understanding the context.

The built-in photo editor that incorporates AI that helps with photo remastering and generative fill is quite remarkable, just that the result could be hit-or-miss just take a look at this post by SoyaCincau.com whereby select, remove and fill can be a bit wonky. What I wanted to say is, that the tool can be useful for mobile content creators, however, if you’re serious with imaging works, just do it on a computer.

Design that Works, except for me

As for the general design, the S24 Ultra is identical to its predecessor. I’m not a fan of companies changing major phone designs every year just for the sake of appealing to different groups of customers. Just to remind everyone that we have left behind the wild-west smartphone era whereby companies are experimenting with different designs every year hoping to get the product that works.

What has changed this year can be simplified into two things, Titanium frame and flat display. I can sort of understand how everyone has been jumping on the Titanium frame bandwagon after Apple did it with their iPhone 15 Pro series. Frankly speaking, Titanium is not a rare material for smartphones as Vertu has been doing it for years, just that the iPhone 15 Pro series is the first mass-produced consumer smartphone that pushes the Titanium industry forward.

Is it more durable than Aluminium? I can’t say so but it seems more resistant to dents from this drop test. So it is great news as my Galaxy S23 Ultra has been dented around the corners.

That is the primary reason why I say this design is not for me. The sharp corners are a nightmare to carry in a jeans pocket. Go figure.

And the S Pen is still around for quick notes and excellent image annotations.

An Excellent Display That Samsung Forgot to Talk About

The most surprising change for the S24 Ultra is the flat display at the front. Samsung has been so proud of its curved display that they have included it as a flagship feature for many years. It is unsure why Samsung has decided to proceed with flat display but hear me out, this is a GREAT change.

You see, a curved screen looks nice when the device is printed on a marketing material. In terms of real-world usage, it offers absolutely ZERO practicality. Looking for a tempered glass screen protector? Too bad, hydrogel it is. Accidental screen-edge touch? That sucks, use a case.

What you get on the S24 Ultra is a standard flat display that is practical and S Pen friendly. No more sliding off from the edge when you’re trying to fit in that few characters at the same line. Paired with the ever-excellent Dynamic AMOLED 2X display, this device will make sure you enjoy every single content you put on it.

One thing the Samsung HQ marketing screwed up is ignoring the use of Gorilla Glass Armour at the front. The social media is furious not because the glass is bad. They are so angry at the marketing for ignoring the potential of this feature. The brand-new Gorilla Glass Armour is so good at eliminating reflection that it makes the iPhone and Galaxy S23 Ultra seem like a joke. That also explains why the screen looks so nice even under bright daylight. Someone in the marketing team needs to understand the significance of such features. Don’t overlook it like what they did to the battery bypass charging feature that came with the S23 Ultra.

Same Camera but with a Twist

Again, the camera module is largely the same as its predecessor. You can expect excellent photography performance from this camera module. Just that we have observed some quirky behaviour with the post-processing whereby the image correction is a bit on the aggressive side.

While there were rumours about a firmware update that could fix this, it is still not available at the time of writing this review.

The periscope camera has been updated with a higher resolution and bigger sensor, albeit the zoom range has been shortened from 10x to 5x.

Why? For those who don’t understand the physics behind this design, the logic is simple. The new sensor is larger at 1/2.52″ and the lens aperture is also larger at f/3.4. This combination allows a better performance in terms of capturing light. Resulting in a brighter and sharper image.

Does it mean we need to sacrifice 10x zoom for a brighter 5x zoom? Technically no. Samsung has upgraded the sensor to 50MP which allows digital cropping in the middle of the frame for a 12MP image without losing details. In other words, benefiting the 5x Zoom as well as 10x Zoom.

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Performance – Qualcomm Gitgud?

Geekbench 6

Geekbench 6 shows a significant multi-core performance upgrade on the S24 Ultra. The reason is largely due to the new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 with updated ARMv9.2A architecture compared to the older ARMv9.0A architecture. Besides, Qualcomm also relocates one of the efficiency cores in favour of a 3.2 GHz performance core. That probably helps with the peak multi-core performance by sacrificing the efficiency cluster.

Geekbench ML

CPU

GPU

NNAPI

Galaxy AI can harness the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3’s processing power through offline interpretation, unfortunately, the feature is still exclusive to the S24 series which we are unable to compare with the Galaxy S23 Ultra. Unless Samsung releases an update which I believe the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is still capable of handling.

3DMark Solar Bay

The GPU has been upgraded from Adreno 740 to Adreno 750 with a major boost in GPU frequency – 680MHz to 900MHz. The result is a significant improvement when it comes to graphics performance. It is very obvious from the 3DMark Solar Bay benchmark test that shows an almost 50% score increment.

As seen on our sister site’s gaming test video, the Galaxy S24 Ultra is capable of handling Genshin Impact at the highest graphical settings while keeping the frame rates consistently above 50fps. The community is generally impressed with the gaming capabilities of the device given that some games allow up to 120fps.

CPDT

Last but not least, the storage performance. Even though on paper both the S24 Ultra and S23 Ultra have UFS 4.0 storage, upon testing we realized the S24 Ultra is generally faster in all aspects. Notably, the sequential read speed is almost doubled from its predecessor. Gamers and mobile content creators would benefit from this.

Battery Life

The battery life is solid. A single full charge of the 5000 mAh will easily last for more than a day. Your mileage may vary as everyone has a different way of using a phone. On a heavy usage day, which was a few days ago, I was testing the device with benchmarks and games, my total screen-on-time was 5 hours and 31 minutes which used up about 48% of the charge. That is pretty impressive.

Conclusion

At launch, we can see how the netizens reacted to Samsung’s decision to go all-in with Galaxy AI. Some even commented how Samsung is no longer the old Samsung. Is that true? I think not. Our generation of users has been spoiled by technical reviews that put so much emphasis on hardware and benchmarks to the point that a phone is only good when it has BIG numbers. Sure back in the day, a single-core CPU was a nightmare to use and the release of dual-core and quad-core CPUs changed the way we use a phone. Performance skyrocketed and since then people always look for benchmark scores when they are looking for a device.

Samsung knows about how chasing down the best hardware will only lead us to an endless toxic cycle especially when we reach a certain hardware & physics limitation. Besides, the shareholders would be furious if Samsung decided to do away with annual releases. So what they are indirectly telling you is, you don’t have to upgrade every single year. Your device is powerful enough to serve you longer than that. The perfect indication is how Samsung is now committed to 7 years of software support and updates.

Hence, the launch of Galaxy AI is a double-edged sword for Samsung at the moment. It shifts the focus from hardware to software. A lot of users would either choose to settle down with older devices or switch to competitors, forcing the company to figure out ways to make money from the software alone. It is a challenging path to take but sooner or later, they will have to face the software running cost. Whether our society is ready to pay for software is a topic for another day.

As for those who are pondering about the upgrade decision, I would say it depends on what you do on your phone. Everyday users probably can’t tell the differences especially since the older Galaxy S23 Ultra is still an awesome device that triumphs over many other options in the market. Plenty of current owners would vouch for the excellent camera module that takes wonderful images without any hesitation.

The Galaxy S24 Ultra would be more suitable for those demanding users, such as gamers and content creators. The added performance headroom over the Galaxy S23 Ultra would be beneficial to gamers seeking that extra fps while content creators would fully utilize it for faster multimedia exports. Apart from that, content creators would appreciate the Galaxy AI features such as AI photo/video editor and AI transcription.