First Impressions: Samsung Galaxy S24

The Galaxy S24 might seem like a carbon copy of its predecessor at first glance, but there’s plenty to get excited about including notable upgrades to the display and the bevy of features brought about by Galaxy AI. Only time will tell, but the iPhone 15 and the Pixel 8 could have a serious contender on their hands.

Introduction

Samsung has just revealed the Samsung Galaxy S24 at an event in San Jose, California. The 2024 flagship, along with the rest of the S24 collection, offer a few key ugprades that help it stand out from the crowd.

Chief among these new features is, rather unsurprisingly given Samsung’s heavy teasers, Galaxy AI. It’s an umbrella term that encorporates a range of GenAI-powered tech on the Galaxy S24, ranging from photo editing capabiltiies to the ability to rewrite texts, translate phone calls and even summarise entire websites with the tap of a button.

So while the hardware may not be that different to last year’s Galaxy S23, the introduction of Galaxy AI could have the potential to change everything.

While I’m not yet ready to deliver my final thoughts on the 2024 flagship, I did get the opporutnity to spend a couple of hours with the Samsung Galaxy S24 ahead of its reveal. Here’s what I think so far, with a full review to follow in the coming days. 

Design and screen

• Refreshed design
• Slimmer bezels around the display
• Slightly larger 6.2-inch AMOLED 120Hz screen

The Samsung Galaxy S24 looks largely the same, but a little bit different. It still sports that same minimalistic design as its predecessor, complete with a trio of lenses on the rear without a big, bulky camera housing like much of the competition. 

However, the rear glass now sports a matte finish that’s much nicer to touch and hold than the glossy backing of its predecessor – and it means that fingerprints and smudges aren’t nearly as much of an issue either.

The most noticeable change in design however is the upgraded unibody design that utilises strengthened Armour Aluminium rather than the Titanium of the top-end Galaxy S24 Ultra, but it’s not exactly a dealbreaker in everday use. More importantly, the S24 does away with the curved frame of its predecessor, offering a look that’s flatter, more angular and, dare I say, more like an iPhone. 

The Galaxy S24 remains the ‘baby’ of the S24 collection with the smallest screen of the bunch, but with slimmed down bezels, it’s actually 0.1 inches larger than its predecessor, now measuring in at 6.2 inches despite no real difference in overall dimensions. 

That’s not really going to be noticeable in unless you’ve got the Galaxy S23 to hand – it’s still very much a pocketable, one-handed smartphone – but the added real estate is a nice touch, especially if it doesn’t make the phone any bigger. 

What is appreciated is the trickle-down of LTPO tech that was previously exclusive to the top-end Ultra model, with both the S24 and S24 Plus now also able to render content between 1-120Hz for a much more battery-effiicent experience. 

It’s also way brighter with a maximum brightness of 2600nits that matches that of the high-end S24 Ultra, and that should translate not only to better HDR viewing but easier use in bright daylight, although the latter wasn’t something I could confirm in a rather dimly lit hands-on area. 

Tie all this together and the end result is a much cleaner overall design, but one that’s slightly let down by a rather lacklustre collection of finishes, ranging from grey to blue, to black and yellow. 

It’s a huge step away from the comparatively vibrant S23 range, although it’s likely that Samsung will offer a few exclusive hues via the Samsung Store. We’ll have to wait and see for sure.

Cameras

• Same camera hardware as Galaxy S23
• New AI capture and editing tools
• Up to 30x digital zoom

If there’s one area where the S24 is similar to its predecessor, it’s the camera department. Sporting the same trio consisting of a 50MP main, 12MP ultrawide and 10MP 3x telephoto lens as the Galaxy S23, there’s no real improvement to camera performance here – at least in terms of pure hardware.

Samsung’s new AI-powered ProVisual Engine camera tech should improve general performance however, with Samsung claiming that it’s designed to reduce noise, deliver much-improved skin tone accuracy, lossless digital zoom and more. 

I will say that images that I snapped in the hands-on space certainly looked pleasing to the eye, with plenty of detail, vibrant colours and near-instant capture, but that was also the same of last year’s Galaxy S23, so more in-depth testing is needed here.

Instead of upgrading hardware, Samsung has put all its S24 camera eggs into one AI-themed basket, hoping that smart tech can give it an edge in performance. That’ll enable new AI-powered elements like enhanced digital zoom when capturing content, but it’s once the photo has been captured that things truly begin to get interesting.

That’s because, upon opening the Camera app and tapping on the photos I’d just taken, I was presented by a handful of AI-powered Edit Suggestions, allowing me to remove the reflection in an image I took with a single tap – and the results were genuinely impressive too. 

There’s also Google Pixel-esque object removal tech to clean up the background of your shots, and you can even move the subject of the photo and get the phone to fill in the empty space. You can use that same generative fill tech to straighen up wonky photos, with the S24 automatically filling in the spaces at the sides in a surprisingly natural way. 

Combined with Samsung’s camera hardware, the new AI photography focus could give the regular Galaxy S24 an edge over the similarly priced competition, especially considering it has been the Pixel 8’s niche until now. It seems like Google’s time as the only AI-focused phone manufacturer is coming to an end.

Performance and software

• Exynos 2400 for Galaxy or Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy
• New GenAI-powered software features
• 7 years of OS upgrades

Performance is a bit of a sticky situation for the Galaxy S24 and the Galaxy S24 Plus, as both come with the same annoying chipset split as the S22 range and other predecessors. 

That essentially means that the chipset powering the phone will depend on where in the world you are, with those in the US getting access to the same exclusive Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy as the top-end S24 Ultra, while those in the rest of the world will find the Exynos 2400 for Galaxy chipset within. 

Samsung claims that the two chipsets are near-identical in terms of processing power and efficiency, but as we’ve seen in previous Galaxy releases, that’s not always the case. It’ll certainly be intersting to benchmark the Exynos 2400-equipped phone once we get a sample back to the Trusted Reviews office. 

That’s coupled with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage as standard by the way, which is a bit of a deficit compared to the 12GB/256GB of the Plus and Ultra models but one that seems more fitting for the £799 asking price – at least in Samsung’s mind.

Regardless of chip specifics, both the 8 Gen 3 and Exynos 2400 have a particular focus on Generative AI, allowing Samsung to implement some pretty cool features.

That starts with the Galaxy S24’s keyboard, which sports a new Galaxy AI icon hiding a range of text-focused features. This not only includes the ability to rewrite a text, email or social media post to change your tone (formal, friendly, social media focused, emoji, etc) but the ability to translate to and from a whoppinh 39 languages, all without the need for Google Translate.

The translation prowess doesn’t stop there either; the phone app not only provides live transcription of the call on-screen for easy recall, but you can use real-time translation to converse with someone in another language. The phone will even ‘speak’ the recipeient’s native tongue on your behalf, and it’ll translate incoming words and phrases too. 

The Notes app has also had some AI love, boasting the ability to transcribe and even translate conversations in real time with the ability to automatically tell the difference between multiple speakers. 

Not only that but once you’re done with your meeting, you can get Galaxy AI to automatically summarise the recording in bulletpoint form, or format it in a particular way. For journalists like me who regularly join briefings and conduct interviews, this will be an absolute game-changer. 

There’s also a few handy AI-powered features within the Samsung Internet app. Rather unsurprisingly at this point, it’ll translate websites with the push of a button, but the handier addition for me will be the ability to summarise huge chunks of text – Wikipedia entries and the like – into bite-sized chunks. 

Importantly, due to the chipset’s GenAI support, this is all done entirely on-device, meaning it’s not only faster than the likes of ChatGPT but it’s far more privacy-friendly too, with no need to upload data to a cloud server to get a response.

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