Samsung Galaxy S24: What’s There?

DESIGN AND DISPLAY

The look of the Galaxy S24 isn’t too far off that of the S23. The screen and back panel are both flat and are joined by metal side rails, but the phone has adopted a unibody-like design that blends all the separate panels brilliantly. The Galaxy S23 already felt like a refined and well-built device but the S24 takes it that little bit further.

It’s a pity that the frame’s made of aluminium again, rather than the titanium offered on the Ultra. Similarly, the new Gorilla Armor Glass material used to protect the Ultra’s display is not found on the base or Plus. Although you still get the previous-gen Gorilla Glass Victus 2, which is rather tough already. Both phones benefit from their IP68 rating, ensuring they’ll survive water splashes in the shower — or worse — being completely submerged under water.

Looking at the screen itself, the base model Galaxy S24 gets a larger 6.2-inch OLED display with slimmer bezels, compared to the Galaxy S23, while the Galaxy S24 Plus has gone from 6.6 inches to 6.7 inches.

The phones feel no larger than before but offer more display space, a rather excellent combination that ever so increases their screen-to-body ratios. The screens’ brightness, which Samsung rates for up to 2,600 nits, was plenty high enough to be visible under the harsh lighting of Samsung’s demo zone.

Both models also get an upgrade to a full 1 – 120Hz adaptive refresh rate, which was an Ultra model exclusive. The S24 Plus also gets a QHD+ display, allowing it to offer more detail on its larger panel.

The last thing to mention is the colour selection. There are four choices by default for both the Galaxy S24 and Galaxy S24 Plus, with Cobalt Violet being my personal favourite for its rich purple tone. The other bold colour choice for the range is Amber Yellow, which is oddly pale under bright light but otherwise an appealingly cheerful hue. Onyx Black and Marble Gray are very smart-looking.

SAMSUNG GALAXY S24: CAMERAS

Both the Galaxy S24 and Galaxy S24 Plus have the same cameras as last year. Those are a 50MP main camera, 12MP ultrawide camera, 10MP 3x telephoto camera and 12MP selfie camera, in case you’re not familiar already.

It would have been nice to have some sort of camera sensor upgrade, like the Ultra got for its higher-res telephoto camera, but in my time with the S24, I found it capable of taking sharp, vivid photos, backed up with some of the best photo processing in the business though, especially with the AI abilities I’ll get to later. It’s also good to see Super HDR support. This means brighter and more colourful images in the preview window when taking photos and when looking at them later in the Gallery app and also on Instagram.

AI FEATURES AND SOFTWARE

With Android 14 with One UI 6.1 installed by default, you get plenty of features to play with as standard on the Galaxy S24 series, like enhanced lock screen customization and a sleeker Camera app design. But the real treat with the Galaxy S24 is the Galaxy AI-branded features that will hopefully make common smartphone tasks easier or more powerful.

One you’ll likely come across quickly is Chat Assist, which lives on your keyboard. This tool gives you the option to rewrite a text or email to make the tone fit the purpose you have in mind, or even translate it to one of Galaxy AI’s 13 available languages at launch. Or just run your message through a spelling and grammar check if you’re confident you’re not being too impertinent to your boss in your message asking him to go ahead and present without you.

When you come across something you want more information on, you no longer have to open your browser to search thanks to Galaxy AI. Its Circle to Search with Google ability lets you press and hold the home button or gesture bar at the bottom of the phone, then simply draw around something on-screen to send a query to Google. You can then ask the AI follow-ups, such as asking it to plan a trip for you to the interesting landmark you just circled

PERFORMANCE

The chip you get in the Galaxy S24 or Galaxy S24 Plus depends on where you buy it. For U.S. customers, these models are equipped with a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy chip just like the Galaxy S24 Ultra. But outside of the States, including in the U.K., these two handsets get Samsung’s own Exynos 2400 for Galaxy.

We’re confident that S24s with the Snapdragon chip will offer some of the best phone performance available to date, but given previous Exynos chips have offered weaker performance than equivalent Snapdragon chips, buyers outside the U.S. may be getting a worse deal.

Let’s move on to other specs. The Galaxy S24’s default 8GB RAM and 128GB of storage spec is a bit stingy, although you can upgrade that to 256GB of storage if you wish. The S24 Plus has a more generous 12GB RAM and 256GB package as standard and can be specced up to 512GB if you need more space.

BATTERY AND CHARGING

Samsung’s upped the battery capacity of both the Galaxy S24 and the Galaxy S24 Plus. The S24 now has a 4,000 mAh battery instead of the S23’s 3,900 mAh, and the S24 Plus a 4,900 mAh instead of a 4,700 mAh.

To power these batteries, Samsung is using the same charging systems as their Galaxy S23 equivalents. For the base S24 that’s still 25W charging,  which Samsung claims will charge the phone to 50% in 30 minutes. That’s a sedate charging pace compared to some rival phones but on par with Apple and Google’s latest.

Samsung’s 45W charging standard is only for the Plus model and above, and is rated to power the Galaxy S24 Plus to 65% in half an hour. Slightly better but still not that quick in the grand scheme of things.