With the launch of the Galaxy S24 family, boldly declares the end of the smartphone camera wars as it enters the AI era. And the $1,300 S24 Ultra is its torchbearer for this new era of mobile design.
While there doesn't appear to be many changes to the S24 Ultra, there is a major design update as well as a handful of small tweaks. The move to a titanium frame (available in four colors: titanium yellow, purple, gray and black) resembles what Apple did for the last fall. The big difference is that as Samsung's previous flagship featured an aluminum chassis, unlike the heavier stainless steel construction of the the weight of the S24 Ultra (8.22 ounces) is virtually unchanged from (8.25 ounces). This means that aside from some very slight changes in texture, there aren't many outward signs hinting at the increased durability of the S24, which includes the same IP68 rating for dust and water resistance .
More subtle improvements include a new Corning Gorilla Armor panel on the back (instead of Gorilla Glass Victus 2 as on the standard S24/S24+), even thinner bezels (42% thinner than before), and a slightly more square. The latter might not be something most people notice, but it's part of an ongoing trend for Samsung moving toward phones with flatter screens. On the S24 Ultra, aside from some slight rounding around the perimeter of its screen, it's almost entirely rectangular. So for everyone who hates screens with curved edges, congratulations, you've won.
Inside, the S24 Ultra features a with 12 GB of RAM and up to 1 TB of storage. Samsung says it has installed a larger vapor chamber, almost twice the size of the previous model, to help control the phone's thermal temperatures. The Ultra's screen is also slightly brighter with a peak of 2,600 nits for its 6.8-inch OLED display at 120Hz. There is still a storage slot for the Ultra's S Pen with a system of spring-loaded magnetic attachment and its basic functionality hasn't changed, so you can expect the same super-responsive pen input.
It's important to note that the S24 Ultra's camera setup is largely unchanged. You still get a 200 MP main sensor and a 12 MP ultra-wide-angle, but instead of a 10x lens, the S24's telephoto lens is now based on a 50 MP sensor (instead of 10 MP) with 5x optical zoom. . Samsung says this change was made based on customer feedback and usage patterns, where 5x was the most frequently used focal length. Although its overall range has apparently decreased, the phone uses pixel binning and AI to achieve what the company calls “10x optical quality” zoom while still offering 100x total spatial zoom. In our limited hands-on time, the Ultra's telephoto lens still looked sharp even at the shorter focal length, although, as before, image quality starts to deteriorate quickly beyond 20x.
Of course, the Ultra's zoom is just one small application of AI. The entire S24 family has a comprehensive suite of machine learning-based features. Similar to what's available on the Pixel 8, Samsung uses AI to help you edit photos and create new slow-motion sequences. You can use the S24 Ultra's stylus (or your finger on other models) to draw a lasso around a subject before tapping and holding it to move it whenever you want. Then all you have to do is press the Generate button and the phone uses AI to fill in the missing items. And it's not limited to moving objects either, as you can delete objects, resize, recompose and much more.
Samsung's photo app can also detect things like shadows and reflections and will ask you if you want to remove them from your photo. This may be my favorite AI app because it streamlines editing while making more complex corrections incredibly easy. And while I was only able to test this using sample photos provided by Samsung, it worked surprisingly well. After finding a photo in the Gallery app, all I had to do was tap the Info button to see a list of suggested edits, which almost instantly transformed a mediocre image into something I'd be proud of to share on social networks.
Samsung's slow motion feature was also quite impressive. This works on virtually any local clip, not just footage shot by an S24. While playing a video, you can simply touch and hold on it. Then the phone looks at the framerate of the footage, quadruples it (e.g. from 30fps to 120fps) and uses AI to create additional frames, all on the fly and on the device, so that nothing is not sent to the cloud.
But it's not just photo tips. The S24 uses its AI powers to help you communicate both on the phone, via the new live translation feature, and in text, with enhanced proofreading, summarizing and tone correction capabilities. During calls, activating translation is as easy as pressing a button. From there, it will recognize your speech and automatically convert it into what the other person is saying (or you can save a tiny bit of time and select the language yourself). Granted, this means conversations will take a little longer since you'll have to pause to give the phone a chance to process and translate what you're saying. But if you're in a hurry while traveling, I wouldn't hesitate to try it.
As for the S24's synthesis capabilities, they're similar to what you get on the Pixel or in services like ChapGPT, Bard and others. You can point the phone at a website or file (including those in Samsung Notes) and the phone will condense the items into a handful of main bullet points. But potentially the most useful tool is the tone correction feature, which, in addition to basics like highlighting typos, also gives you options for rephrasing things to make them sound more positive or encouraging.
Notably, because you have a handful of options and the choice to ignore or implement things as you see fit, it becomes less about policing yourself and more about adjusting language to convey your message more effectively. Honestly, this is something everyone could probably use from time to time, even if it's just to avoid sending an angry text or email.
The only aspect of S24's AI powers that isn't handled locally is a new circular search tool. Developed in partnership with Google, the feature allows you to highlight both text And images before sending a query to the cloud and returning the results. In practice, this amounts to combining traditional search aids and visual search aids like the Google Lens app into one thing. It's a nice upgrade from a general usability standpoint even if it doesn't revolutionize how the phone works.
Finally, following a similar approach , Samsung will now provide a full seven years of regular operating system and security updates. This is something I hope to see from all Android phone makers, so I'm glad Samsung is stepping up now.
The two complaints I have are that, for a device that starts at $1,300, I think the S24 Ultra's design is pretty plain. It's just a 6.8-inch phone with plenty of sensors and camera lenses on the back. Not to mention, I don't think Samsung's special titanium-colored paint jobs stand out as much as the company hopes.
The other problem is the lack of support. The S24 is in the second half of Samsung's two-year product cycle, which means we're probably not going to get any big facelifts or design changes until next year. But as the largest Android phone maker, it's pretty disappointing to see a new flagship not adopt what could be an incredibly important cross-platform wireless charging standard.
Honestly, I was a little surprised by how good its AI features were. In fact, I had to stop myself several times from writing about what a pleasant surprise one of the phone's newest tools was. Unlike Google, which has been advocating machine learning for over a decade, Samsung's mobile expertise has always seemed to lie more in hardware than software. But with the S24, Samsung shows that it is taking the transition to the AI era very seriously.
The Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra will start at $1,300. Pre-orders go live today and on Samsung.com will include a free upgrade that will double the phone's storage, while official sales are scheduled for January 31.
This article was originally published on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/samsung-galaxy-s24-ultra-hands-on-a-fresh-titanium-frame-combined-with-a-big- bet-on-ai -180050005.html?src=rss
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