Galaxy S24 Ultra is finally official: The ultimate AI Android phone

The new Galaxy S24 Ultra keeps the 'always-hit-no-miss' formula behind Samsung's top flagships, which has been kept mostly intact since the Galaxy S22 Ultra. An S Pen wielding large device that's mostly reminiscent of the Galaxy Note phones of olden times, with all the top hardware and software features that Samsung has in the arsenal. The differences with the Galaxy S23 Ultra are few but quite remarkable ones and should greatly improve the overall user experience. 

How have things changed for the Galaxy S24 Ultra and what's new? Let's explore!

Galaxy S24 Ultra with 512GB is now 12% off on Amazon

The S24 Ultra finally sells at discounted prices on Amazon. You can now save $175 on the model with 512GB of storage.

$175 off (12%)

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Galaxy S24+: get at Amazon with a $150 Gift Card

The Galaxy S24+ is also available on Amazon. At the moment, no model retails at lower prices, but Amazon offers a $150 Gift Card with your purchase.

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Galaxy S24 is available on Amazon

The S24 arrives on Amazon at its standard price on Amazon. On the bright side, you get a $50 Gift Card with your purchase.

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The big new thing about the Galaxy S24 Ultra is its titanium design. Taking a page from the iPhone 15 Pro Max book, the new Samsung flagship does away with Armor Aluminum in favor of the more premium metal. Additionally, the display up front is now completely flat and with even thinner bezels, maximizing the usable screen real estate. 

However, while the design is mostly flat on all sides, the side frame still has a certain outward curve which makes holding the phone in your palm a more comfortable and ergonomic experience. That's unlike the Galaxy S24 and Galaxy S24 Plus, which are both completely flat on the sides. 

There's IP68 water and dust resistance on the Galaxy S24 Ultra, which allows you to freely dunk your phone in up to 3ft of water for up to 30 minutes. The S Pen stylus is of course back with a bang, even better than before and still positioned on the left hand-side of the phone. 

In terms of the Galaxy S24 colors, the phone is available in Titanium Yellow, Titanium Violet, Titanium Black, and Titanium Gray. As is tradition, Samsung has a few extra color versions that will be exclusive when purchasing the Galaxy through the Samsung.com store: Titanium Orange, Titanium Green, and Titanium Blue.

The Galaxy S24 Ultra also comes along with the new Corning Glass Armor shielding, which should give you a peace of mind that your Galaxy won't scratch or crack easily.

Speaking of the display, we still do get the large and expansive 6.8-inch QHD+ Dynamic AMOLED 2X display that was found on previous Galaxy Ultra devices. Due to the lack of a slight curve, the full expanse of the display is usable. 

This one is still LTPO 3.0 and provides a very smooth and dynamic refresh rate in the 1-120Hz range. The big new thing here, however, is the 2,600-nit peak brightness, which automatically makes the Galaxy S24 Ultra one of the phones with the brightest displays at the moment. Sure, some rivals might get even brighter, but this shouldn't take away from the Galaxy S24 Ultra's achievement.

First and foremost, the bombshell! The Galaxy S24 Ultra will be supported for 7 years, matching Google's recent pledge for prolonged software support. We are not talking about security updates, but for full-fledged major OS upgrades, Android and One UI both!

Without a shadow of a doubt, the big deal about the Galaxy S24 Ultra is the abundance of AI features sprinkled all over the One UI 6.1 interface. Samsung has invested quite a lot into the AI capabilities of the phone, which rightfully are the biggest new feature on the Galaxy S24 series. 

One of the exciting new features is Chat Assist, which in a ChatGPT-like fashion will intelligently suggest rewriting your text and suggest a different tone depending on who you're communicating with. This feature is built right into the Samsung keyboard, so it will be compatible with any messaging app you might have on your Galaxy S24 Ultra. 

Samsung Notes gains an AI-powered Note Assist feature which will summarize your long notes for you, check your grammar and spelling, and even fully translate your note into another language. Notes taken with your S Pen will also get straightened out so that they look more legible and presentable, which is nice. 

Speaking of translation, a Live Translate feature built-into the Phone app allows for two-way, real-time voice and text translations of phone calls in real-time thanks to on-board AI. Another similar new Galaxy feature is Interpreter, allowing you to make a conversation with another person in split-screen mode and have your conversations instantaneously translated from one language to the other.

Circle to Search is also another new AI-powered feature that allows you to simply press your home button (or the general area where it should be if you have gestures enabled) and then circle anything on your screen to invoke a relevant Google search. Just press the button, circle what interests you, and voila.

You can also remove reflections from photos with the power of on-device AI. There's nothing worse than seeing your reflection in glass when you take a picture through a window, but that would likely no longer be an issue thanks to Galaxy AI. Remastering pictures is also part of the same package, and so is a seemingly vastly improved Object Eraser, which does a much better job at removing unwanted objects from your photography masterpieces. 

So, what's making the Galaxy S24 Ultra kick and tick? In all regions around the globe, that'd be the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. This chip is manufactured by TSMC on a 4nm node and offers 10% better system than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. 

The CPU itself is 30% faster and 20% more efficient in comparison with the previous generation, while the Adreno GPU is also 25% faster and more efficient. Samsung also boasts that the Galaxy S24 Ultra is a very capable gaming machine, especially when mobile ray-trace graphics are considered. Keeping all of this raw power in check and actively working towards keeping the phone cool is a vapor cooling chamber that's 92% larger than the one on the Galaxy S23 Ultra. 

All Galaxy S24 Ultra versions come with 12GB of RAM. There are three storage versions with 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB storage; no expandable storage is available. 

A big change for the Galaxy S24 Ultra camera system is the removal of the 10MP 10X periscope camera, which has been a staple on the Galaxy Ultra line for years. In its place, we get a 50MP 5X telephoto, which allows for higher-res zooming and the good ol' 100X Space Zoom. The rest of the camera setup remains the same: a 200MP main camera, a 10MP 3X telephoto, and a 12MP ultra-wide in tow, along with a 12MP front-facing camera tucked in a punch-hole cutout. 

When it comes to the Galaxy S24 Ultra price and release date, the flagship with 256GB is set to start at $1299.99 in the US, which is a $100 increase over last year's Galaxy S23 Ultra. This price increase also carrier over to the 512GB and 1TB versions of the new Samsung flagship, which start at $1419.99 and $1659.99, respectively. 

Pre-orders for the Galaxy S24 Ultra kick off starting January 17. 

Typically for Samsung, potential adopters will be able to enjoy a plethora of discounts and deals that would bring that potentially hard-to-stomach price tag down to a more palpable level. Actually, one of the pre-order promotions will allow customers to get the 1TB version at the price of the 512GB version, which is difficult to pass by.

Overall, we expect that the Galaxy S24 Ultra will easily remain one of the go-to recommendations when it comes to best phones regardless of the OS and the ecosystem. We will reserve our judgement for the full review, but from a historical standpoint, there's little chance that the Galaxy S24 Ultra wouldn't be a win for Samsung.