The Samsung Galaxy S24 series arrived during Wednesday’s Galaxy Unpacked event, highlighted by the Galaxy S24 Ultra. The next wave of the company’s traditional smartphone line comes as Samsung places heavy emphasis on AI implementation within its family of devices, and the tech giant positioned the S24 Ultra as the jumping off point during Wednesday’s presentation.
The new package of AI tools, collectively known as Galaxy AI, brings marked improvements to live call and text-based translation, the new Circle to Search feature developed in collaboration with Google and tools like Transcript Assist and Note Assist that use generative AI to produce organized text summaries.
Where the new Galaxy AI suite adds specific improvements to the S24 Ultra over its sibling devices is the camera. Samsung showed off what it called its “Quad Tele” camera system, a back camera array composed of four lenses: a 200MP wide, 12MP ultrawide, 10MP 3x telephoto and the new 50MP 5x telephoto. The company demoed the array’s ability to produce crisp images from distance thanks to the improved telephoto lenses and Space Zoom feature along with a new Pro Visual Engine.
Samsung also introduced AI-powered photo editing tools that use generative AI to automatically suggest edits for photos and allow the movement or removal of image subjects similar to what was introduced on the Google Pixel 8 Pro last year. Thankfully, the company also noted that any image edited using these AI tools will be watermarked to denote that fact as well as having that information stored in the image’s metadata.
But what about the phone itself? Following Apple’s lead, Samsung’s top-tier smartphone received a titanium upgrade to its chassis, with flatter edges and a 6.8-inch AMOLED display protected by Corning Gorilla Armor glass, described by the company as its strongest most anti-reflective casing yet. The whole package is powered by the third generation of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 processor.
Battery size hasn’t changed from last year’s S23 Ultra, though the company touted the same “all-day” battery life enjoyed by 2023’s entry in the series. It remains to be seen if adding the Galaxy AI suite impacts exact battery life measurements as Samsung hasn’t released specific battery life estimates. Upping the base S24 Ultra to 12GB RAM is a solid choice though, and storage options range from 256GB to 1TB.
And, of course, it comes with Samsung’s trusty S Pen.
The Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra is available for preorder now ahead of its Jan. 31 release and starts at $1,299. It comes in Titanium Black, Titanium Blue, Titanium Gray, Titanium Green, Titanium Orange, Titanium Violet and Titanium Yellow.