Products in this video:
Samsung S24 Ultra (Affiliate Link)
Fujifilm X100VI (Affiliate Link)
(Note: It’s often hard to acquire this camera. We used HotStock to acquire ours. They’re not a sponsor)
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Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra Review – 6 Months Later
Display Quality
It’s been six months since I bought a Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, and the question I think anyone would ask after spending six months with this phone is, why would you get anything else? This is one of the best phones I’ve ever used. Yes, there are some downsides to it, which I’ll get to in a bit, but the first standout feature of this phone is its display. The big new thing is the new Gorilla Glass Armor Samsung is using, which is not only four times more scratch-resistant than the previous generation, but it also lessens the likelihood you’ll see micro-scratches on it. This new glass is also three times more drop-resistant than the previous generation. Most importantly, the display has 75% less glare than the previous glass on the S23 Ultra. Some have complained that the new coating mutes the colors on the display, but to me, the colors look plenty saturated, and it’s been fine.
Another feature Samsung added to the display is Adaptive Color Tone, which adjusts the display’s brightness and color temperature to better match the lighting environment around you. For those sensitive to the OLED dimming technique called Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM), Samsung increased the PWM to 492 Hz, up from 240 Hz, which should help those sensitive to it.
Battery Life
Battery life is the next major thing I’ve noticed with this phone, and in my experience, it’s just been incredible. It’ll easily last me all day; usually, I’ll see the battery in the 70% to 60% range by the time I need to charge it at night. That makes it the best smartphone battery of any phone I’ve tested in recent memory. I’ve even been able to use its battery for two full days without turning on any low-power mode. Another thing I’ve noticed is how good its standby battery is. I test a lot of phones, so there have been periods where it’s just sat on a shelf for a few days. Its standby battery is much better than my Pixel 8 Pro’s, which will die in about three days without charging, while the Samsung’s battery depletes more slowly.
Camera System
Now, the camera system is the reason I think a lot of people look at the S24 Ultra. Smartphone camera systems are still the most convenient cameras we typically carry around today, so when you look for a new smartphone, you likely want one with a good camera system. While this one does have its faults, overall, it’s still very good. It produces vibrant shots with a nice color balance; images look sharp, though sometimes a bit too sharp.
Take a look at this shot of the Cape Lookout Lighthouse in the distance.
Now, take a look at a similar vantage point shot on the Fujifilm X100V, which shoots at 35mm with a 40-megapixel sensor. Apologies for the difference in focal length; the 1X on the S24 Ultra is a wider equivalent, and Samsung doesn’t have a 35mm equivalent, as you can select on an iPhone 15 Pro Max, for example. Notice how Fuji’s image in these same conditions isn’t as sharp while keeping everything still in focus. The S24 Ultra’s just looks a bit oversharpened in comparison. This isn’t always the case; for example, in this image of the Cape Lookout Lighthouse, I don’t have that issue, but I’ve noticed it enough to warrant pointing it out to you, and yes, it does occur in videos as well. Notice the trees in this shot; they look overly sharp with their shadows. I have noticed more issues with images looking overprocessed six months later with the S24 Ultra than I did with the S23 Ultra six months later.
If you don’t want Samsung to be processing your images as much, they do give you an option in the main camera settings to adjust the photo optimization, but in my limited testing, I haven’t found that much of a difference with this setting. The zoom ability of this camera system is a big highlight and still gives you one of the best zoom ranges out of any phone. The 5x optical camera that replaced the 10x optical on the S23 Ultra has an overall larger and better sensor and still produces a decent 10x, if not slightly below the quality of the S23 Ultra’s. It’s still great for capturing action from far away, and the footage is still usable. Portrait photos overall look good, though, like all portrait modes, if you look at the photos long enough, you’ll start to see some flaws that make them look worse than a regular camera with a good lens that can produce a shallow depth of field.
Overall, when people are in the frame, I think this camera system does a great job reproducing skin tones as well as automatically zooming out the selfie camera for large groups. Colors often look a bit warmer than the previous S23 Ultra, as I mentioned in my comparison between these two phones. You rely on the camera system to make a lot of choices for you, like saturation, sharpness, and white balance. Of course, the trade-off is the time you’d have to spend before taking the photo adjusting all of those settings or doing some of it in post if you shoot in RAW. The S24 Ultra does have a Pro mode that allows you to adjust some of these settings before you take a photo, and in the main camera settings, you do have the option to switch between 12MP and 200MP images. For my testing purposes, I kept it on 12MP because that’s the setting I think most people will use since it takes up less storage.
Vacation Worthiness
A new question I’ve really started to ask myself when looking at smartphone camera systems and cameras in general is, would I be happy if I had this phone with me on vacation, taking memories I’m never going to get a chance to capture again? The answer to that question for this phone is sure. It was the primary phone I used on my Montreal trip, but would I have been happy if this was the only camera I had on my recent beach trip? No, I think smartphone camera systems are adequate for everyday photos, but for those really important moments in your life, like when you’re going on a trip and want to capture something in really high-quality, high-fidelity photos, for those situations, I do think you are better off with a dedicated camera.
Performance and One UI
Another highlight of this phone is performance. After six months, this phone just feels solid. Apps download quickly; everything on it feels fast, stable, and fluid. Part of that is thanks to One UI. It adds a bit of polish to the core Android experience, like with Modes and Routines. With Sleep Mode, for example, you have the option not just to turn the Always On Display off but also to turn the phone to grayscale at night and enable dark mode. Multitasking is another highlight of One UI. Samsung’s Edge Panel feature makes saving your favorite apps easy, and then you can simply drag them onto the screen to enter the multitasking view. It’s a nice feature, though if I’m being totally honest, it’s not a feature I’ve found a great use case for in my own use. Samsung also has the Good Lock app, which allows you to customize One UI even further, such as creating more volume levels, easily remapping the Side Key to trigger Google Assistant instead of Bixby, or adjusting the multitasking app window layout.
Setup Experience
The last highlight of my experience with the S24 Ultra is actually the setup experience. Going from one Samsung phone to another was seamless. You didn’t have to plug the phones into each other; their wireless connection was decently fast, and it only took 15 minutes to transfer 23 GB of data between the phones.
Features I Rarely Use
So, what features, six months later, have I not found myself using all that much with this phone? Well, the first one is actually Galaxy AI. Features like note summarization just aren’t important to me because I typically need a notes app like Notion that works across all of my devices. Features like message translation as well as live call translation, which is seriously cool, though for my use case here in the US, it’s not as useful as if I lived somewhere else where English wasn’t so overly dominant.
Generative Image Editing and Keyboard Preferences
Generative image editing is another feature I’ve found to be very cool but haven’t found a major use case for yet. You can select a part of a photo to delete or draw around something in the image you want to delete, but for this, I still find myself going to Google Photos, where you can circle or draw the parts of the image that you want to delete or move, just like Generative Edit, but in my experience, Google’s Generative Edit is better at picking up on the part of the image that you’re trying to adjust, and I’ve overall gotten better results with Google’s version.
Samsung’s default keyboard is another feature I haven’t used much. I find it doesn’t correct as many typing mistakes as Gboard does. Now, what about the S Pen? Do I think it’s worth having in this phone? For me, not really. I do like the versatility you get with the S Pen and all of the things it can do, but I mainly find I use it to navigate around the phone more than anything. I don’t take handwritten notes, though I can see a use case for it. But at this point, I think I’d trade the S Pen for a lighter phone that’s a little bit less bulky with the same camera system.
Downsides
So, what about downsides? In my experience, there aren’t very many with this phone other than the camera ones I’ve already mentioned. The main downside is that the S24 Ultra is just too heavy and bulky to hold in your hand for long periods of time. I thought that when the company switched to using their new titanium finish, like Apple’s iPhone, the S24 Ultra’s weight would be reduced, but that just wasn’t the case.
Also, I found two odd quirks with One UI over the past six months that I did want to mention, but these are just slight downsides. One is when playing a podcast via Pocket Casts, Samsung’s custom player for the lock screen doesn’t switch to showing the skip forward and skip back buttons as Google’s stock Android now-playing widget does. But when you hit the skip track buttons, they actually skip forward and back a few seconds. Another downside is Samsung, for some reason, decided to take away the ability in Good Lock to set the app drawer to vertically scroll and is now only reportedly adding it back into One UI in the 6.1.1 update, which is out later in July. And one other slight downside with the S24 Ultra I want to mention, like with other smartphones today, is that the battery isn’t easily replaceable by the average user. That is something I’d like to see Samsung and other phone manufacturers work on, especially now that Samsung has seven years of software updates with this phone.
Is It Worth It?
So, why would you get anything but the S24 Ultra? It’s a solid phone and easy to recommend to most people because I think it’s such a great phone. To help you figure out whether or not you should consider this phone, I’m going to go over who I think this phone is not for. If you’re a fan of smaller phones, don’t need or want the S Pen and camera system combo, or are a fan of foldable phones, or a die-hard Apple or Pixel user, or you already have an S22 or S23 Ultra, I would say the S24 Ultra is not for you.
Now, if you’re just looking to upgrade the camera experience of your phone, you just want to take better photos, but if your phone already takes decent photos, at least, I’m not sure that this camera system is going to be that big of an upgrade for you. The main upgrade you’d get is the 5x and 10x zoom. My general advice now for anyone looking to upgrade their smartphone camera system by buying a new phone is to take that money that you were going to spend on the new phone, save it, and then put it towards a dedicated camera. Even though the dedicated cameras are going to cost a little bit more than a brand-new smartphone like this, the smartphone is $1,200. The Fujifilm X100V, if you can find one, typically retails for $1,600, but it’s just typically going to net you way better photos overall.
Conclusion
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