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Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra Review After Two Months

zedfighter.com 23 September 2024 Reviews

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Introduction

The Galaxy S24 Ultra has been out for nearly two months now and there’s still quite a few things that no one’s talking about.

Yeah, people have talked about specs performance and whatnot.

But there are a couple of things you only get to know after you’ve actually used the phone and that’s what I’ll talk about.

So,Let’s get started.

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra Display

Firstly, it’s a display and I cannot tell you in enough words just how clear this display is and no iPhone 15 Pro Max and no OnePlus 12 with 4500 nits of brightness come even close.

Look the big deal is not that it’s super bright, it’s bursting with colors, it’s accurate and crazy sharp.

It’s the fact that even when OnePlus says it’s got 4500 nits of brightness and this has 2600 nits of peak brightness, this is still better.

It’s the best I mean just the way it maintains the colors, the readability and the accuracy of the content is just amazing.

Second, it’s got a layer on this that makes it less reflective. So, let light fall on it and just see how much less reflection is there on the 24 Ultra.

It’s just this thing that really adds Clarity which I was talking about.

It’s easier on the eyes especially outdoors and at many more angles than any other smartphone.

Third if you wear polarized sunglasses you would have noticed an odd darkening or rainbowing effect on your phone.

Now, I don’t know what they’ve done on this but the display goes right through your sunglasses and it looks super clear.

Look, I use the iPhone 15 Pro as a daily parallel phone and I can tell you that the S24 Ultras display is not only brighter and sharper, it’s also much more readable and a lot stronger. It’s just a league ahead from all phones right now.

The Discomfort of Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra

The other thing that I feel people haven’t talked about enough is the size of this, it’s huge.

Now look, I understand the need for large displays but this one, it just goes a little over the line.

I mean as good as the display is, the form factor makes it quite difficult to use with just one hand.

You always have to use two hands to use this phone and if you don’t, you will have that risk of this slipping through your hands.

The reason behind this is that they’ve made this a bit thicker and a bit wider. That makes it tougher to hold in one hand more comfortably than let’s say the S23 ultra.

Now, if you’re going to put on a case on this it’s going to add to the size and the weight.

Sure, but you know what you’re actually better off doing that, because you know when you hold this and you’re using it, the corners tend to dig into your palm.

So, having a case is just going to make that a little more comfortable and needless to say this phone is quite easy to jut out of your pockets too it’s unapologetically large.

Well, there’s a positive and a negative side to it. Now the good thing is there’s still a base and a plus model, but yeah, they are no Ultra.

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra Durability

Now, next I want to talk about the durability of this thing and no, not the fact that it’s IP68 water and dust resistant, but the titanium build.

The fact this said this has 4X more scratch resistance and it’s crazy, but it’s true.

Look, I’ve got the base S24, and this has Gorilla Glass vicus 2 which is very strong but the S24 ultra has gorilla glass armor which is the latest generation of Gorilla Glass.

If you notice here on the S24 base I already have very tiny scratches even though I’ve used this a lot less than the S24 ultra.

But the S24 ultra has not had a single tiny spec of scratch, it’s Flawless and no I’ve never applied any screen protector or tempered glass on this thing.

But you know, just the other day I was trying to shoot something and while I was running, I actually dropped this flat on concrete.

Any other phone I’m guaranteeing would crack, but this one just didn’t.

All it got was a little scuff on the edge of the titanium frame but that’s about it.

The display glass had absolutely no scratches, it’s unbelievable. So, if you’re someone who enjoys using a flagship phone without any kind of case, this is the one to get.

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra Ai Features

Now let’s talk about Galaxy Ai. I know Samsung went really all out advertising Galaxy AI.

But honestly, I have never felt the need to use it much. See there’s live translate and chat assist where you could have a conversation with someone over a call or text in a foreign language and Galaxy AI will translate for both of you real time.

Now look, it works for sure, but I don’t have calls or texts from people who don’t speak my language and I think that would be true for majority of the people.

Sure, I will use it probably when I’m traveling to a country where English isn’t as widely spoken, very small use case.

But there’s something about Samsung Notes that I think is a little useful.

Like I made this list and I could easily align my handwriting and even just convert this quickly into text by selecting everything and then convert into text. Now this is a lot less embarrassing to share with someone.

The ability to shorten an article with just a single tap into a summary, I think is remarkable. It really saves me time especially if it’s a longish article.

Circle to search is very nice. But I think it’s just something you need to use more intentionally. Like you have to remind yourself to use it.

However, I find myself just using it to highlight text. copy it and share it with someone, that’s it.

The photo editing features are quite cool like generative fill. of course, pixel phones have also had some of this for a while, but for me personally I’ve not had the need to use it too much.

All in all, I think it’s great that these AI features exist and it’s really going to be useful for people who travel a lot or who communicate with people who speak different languages.

But for me I guess I didn’t end up using them as much as I thought I would.

Let me also address the elephant in the room.

Now I know there’s been talks about Galaxy AI being free for a limited time and that they’re going to start charging for it later.

But as I see it it’s just Samsung’s way of covering themselves up that if in case Galaxy AI was to become a really big thing, that they should be able to charge you.

They’re just keeping that window open. It doesn’t mean that they’re going to charge you monetarily and even if they do there’s still going to be some things about Galaxy AI which is going to still be free.

Some high-end features they’ll probably make that under a subscription plan. So, it’s not like everything’s going to be chargeable.

We’ll just have to wait it out next.

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra Battery Performance

I guess this is really important and that’s battery life.

It’s a little bit weird because I’ve not been able to finish up the battery in a full day in the last 6 to 8 weeks that I’ve been using it.

It typically lasts more than a day. So, I wake up with 100% charge in the morning and then I feel the need to charge next day morning. That’s absolutely a full day’s battery life.

It’s not like I use my phone any less. I’ve got everything going on emails, slack, WhatsApp, YouTube, gaming, camera, Instagram just like everyone else and I’ve always had it connected to my Galaxy watch 6 with location and always on display have been always on.

I was running on auto refresh rate, auto brightness and FHD plus screen resolution.

I never switched on power saving, I never charged it in between and I used it just like you would when you get this phone.

So, clearly the new Snapdragon 8 gen 3, the 1 UI 6.1 and the 1.9 times larger Vaper chamber are really doing their thing.

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra Camera

Now let’s talk about Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra’s cameras.

First question, is it a lot better than the Galaxy S23 Ultra? Second question is it the best camera in the world of Android smartphones? and third, is it better than the iPhone 15 Pro series.

Let’s go one by one. So, first comparing it to the S23 ultra there’s quite a lot of difference.

Colors are captured better, highlights are better managed too and if you compare theme side by side, you will notice that the whites are Overexposed on the S23 ultra. But it’s all much well balanced on the S24 ultra.

Even the dynamic range is better on S24 Ultra and the colors on the S23 ultra they look a little washed out.

Overall, I’d say that the S24 ultra manages dynamic range a lot better and is able to capture a more accurate scene in low light too.

While the overall detailing is a bit higher on the S24 ultra, you’ll see that the S24 ultra is also able to handle well-lit scenes or light sources better.

The lights don’t get Overexposed and it tones down the exposure to bring some of that detail back.

But selfies are where things really take a downturn for the S23 ultra.

In the daytime the difference isn’t much at all. It’s during low light where the difference truly showed.

Now I don’t remember the S23 ultra being so bad and trust me I didn’t do anything to make it look like this. But this is a huge difference and the S24 ultra is clearly clear.

However, the new 5x 50MP zoom lens is an absolute Banger. It’s actually a lot more useful than the 10x Zoom 10MP lens that we had.

So, if you compare between the S23 ultra zoom capabilities with that of the S24 ultra, it’s quite clear that the S24 ultra is actually doing a better job.

So, even with that shorter Zoom range but a higher resolution sensor, I think it was just a better swap.

Also, when you’re shooting a video and you try to switch between different lenses it’s definitely smoother than before.

But I still feel there’s a bit of a jerk that Samsung can still work on and sure it’s a small use case, but I do that quite often. So, I thought I’ll point it out now.

Let’s talk about 4K video recording. I think both are really good.

But I really wanted to see if there was an upgrade in the low light performance and I’d say not by a whole lot, but I think the S24 ultra is just a little brighter and just a little less noisy.

The greens if you see are a bit brighter, the overall scene is slightly more well-lit in the S24 ultra footage and that’s about it.

Also, Samsung really talked about how they’ve improved the native camera capabilities to be used in apps like WhatsApp Instagram and Snapchat they really have.

So, I took some pictures directly from within the WhatsApp’s camera and they are actually quite good and well detailed.

I would say that they are a bit over sharpened especially if you look at in this picture.

I mean they doesn’t look bad, but definitely a bit of aggressive sharpening over there.

But is it the best camera in the Android world and is it better than the iPhone 15 Pro?

So, to test that, I compared S24 Ultra with iPhone 15 Pro and Vivo X100 Pro.

Look, first of all, all three are absolutely amazing cameras with their own list of pros and cons.

It’ll come down to your personal preference. See, iPhone tends to be warmer rather more magenta, the S24 ultra tends to be greener and the vivo tends to be brighter.

iPhone will always tend to take more natural yet dull photos while the S24 and the X100 Pro will take brighter, punchier pictures and that’s why I said it’s really about what you prefer as a picture more.

However, when it comes to selfies, I strongly felt that the S24 ultra and the X100 pro did a better job than the iPhone 15 Pro.

The skin tones on the iPhones a little softer pinkish and in low light it really suffers even in details.

In regular low light scenes while the iPhone isn’t bad, I personally found the S24 ultra in the X100 Pro doing a better job.

iPhone again adds that magenta Hue that takes away from the natural night scene field.

Samsung with its nigtography features and the X100 pro with its 1-inch large sensor are definitely better.

Overall, in indoors, I felt they were all pretty much the same, very minor differences and I wouldn’t read into it too much.

In terms of 4K videos, I still think iPhone is slightly better than the other two during daytime videos. It feels more natural, it’s got great stabilization and obviously a lot of details.

However, in low light the iPhone again takes a bit of a back seat. The S24 ultra and the X100 pro again take the lead with lesser noise. more stable and they’re just more color accurate as well.

So yeah, if you prefer all three that’s Punchy brighter pictures, better low light performance and very high quality 4K videos the s24 ultra definitely looks like a better option than the iPhone 15 Pro.

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra Vibrations

The next thing I really want to talk to you guys about is the vibration on this thing.

I’m generally the kind of person who would not realize when the phone is in my pocket and vibrating, so I miss calls a lot.

But this one is amazing. So, it doesn’t matter whether I’m wearing jeans which is more firmly pressed to my body or chinos or track pants that don’t press the phone as firmly, I get to know when the phone vibrates.

That’s true not just for longer call vibrations but also you know smaller notifications for messages.

Now you might think what’s the big deal about that. But come to think of it, if notifications are important to you then that really matters.

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra Software

Lastly the software. So, it’s called Android 14 obviously, but it’s running One UI 6.1 which no other Samsung phone has as of now.

It’s got a lot of the new stuff and a lot of different ways of doing the old stuff.

So, you can have alarms with custom or even video backgrounds.

you have Samsung’s own way of implementing depth wallpapers and apply creative effects to wallpapers on the lock screen a lot like how iOS did it.

There’s photo ambient wallpaper that can depict live weather on your lock screen on the wallpaper that you put.

There’s generative AI wallpapers much like how we saw in pixel 8.

There’s adaptive color tone now and more ways of increasing battery life.

Even the camera app now has a couple of updates with dual recording and slow motion at 4K quality which looks phenomenal, I must say.

Also, I noticed that the fingerprint reader on this thing is crazy fast. Like even the lightest of taps quickly unlocks the display.

This is still the ultrasonic fingerprint reader which is a lot more secure than the optical fingerprint sensors that you get on all other Android smartphones.

Also, it’s a great phone. But it’s pointless if you don’t run the right apps on this phone.

Anyway, those are a few things that I felt not a lot of people have talked about in detail or have given as much importance as I think someone should have.

I know I haven’t touched upon performance but come on guys Snapdragon 8 gen 3 which is also slightly overclocked for the Galaxy phone.

So, performance is not really an issue on this phone. Everything is super Snappy.

But I just wanted to give you a very realistic experience of using the S24 ultra and hopefully I’ve been able to do that.

But hey if you guys still have any questions, concerns or doubts, let me know in the comments section and I’ll definitely help you out.

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