For the Galaxy S24, Samsung goes all-in on AI

Is Galaxy AI the future of Samsung's smartphone line? I suppose so.

If you thought Samsung was going to redesign its entire Galaxy S lineup for 2024, you’d be wrong. If you thought they would revolutionize the smartphone industry with some new hardware feature, you’d be wrong. If you thought there would be a massive upgrade under the hood, you’d be wrong.

Instead, Samsung is taking a different approach with its new Galaxy S24 series, one that fits the overarching storyline in the tech world of the past 13 months. At Unpacked in San Jose, California, the company unveiled the Galaxy S24, S24 Plus, and S24 Ultra with similar designs, cameras, and specs as last year’s S23 series. The biggest difference? Galaxy AI.

The company has been drumming up hype for its new phones by leaning into artificial intelligence, something Google has done over the past few years with the Pixel series. Samsung is now taking its own approach with a set of features powered by AI in hopes of convincing people that they, indeed, need a new phone because AI is awesome.

I spent a good amount of time reading the press materials for the S24 series the morning of the announcement, and I’m not sure these features will be enough to convince you to switch away from whatever you’re using. But they do make an intriguing case for where Samsung sees its smartphones going in the future, a future where your phone will do more and you will do less.

Galaxy AI

Across the entire Galaxy S24 series, Samsung’s Galaxy AI is defined by several features. The most talked-about thus far is Circle to Search, which is also coming to the Pixel 8 series at the end of the month. Long-press on the home button or gesture bar at the bottom of the screen to bring up a Google search screen. From there, you can circle, scribble, or highlight anything on your screen and the device will use AI to identify what you’re looking at and give you search results based on it. It’s sort of like Now on Tap from 2015, expect a lot more powerful since it has object and scene recognition.

There’s also Live Translate, which is one of the most impressive new features. It lets you have a phone conversation with someone who speaks a different language than you, translating their voice into both text and audio in real-time and vice versa. You can also use your S24 to speak to someone in real life through translations using Interpreter, but having that functionality in phone calls is quite compelling.

Chat Assist, available through the Samsung Keyboard, can help you communicate with others in the tone that you’re aiming for (you can ask it to transform your text into something friendlier, more playful, more serious, etc.). Note Assist uses AI to summarize your notes and keep them organized. Transcript Assist helps to transcribe your voice recordings with others and generate summaries (similar to the Recorder app on Pixel).

Then there’s a bunch of AI tools in the camera, giving you AI-generated edit suggestions to tweak your photos the way Samsung’s algorithms think they should look. You also get a full-fledged Magic Editor competitor called Generative Edit that lets you move people, objects, and more and automatically fill the background with AI-generated content. There’s also Instant Slow-mo which can take a normal video and turn it into a slow-motion clip by generating extra frames to stretch it out.

Some of these AI features are run locally on your device (like the translation stuff), while others rely on the cloud to operate (like the photo editing tools). Samsung says they’ll remain free until the end of 2025 (whatever that means), and I’ve heard rumors that some of them will eventually roll out to older Galaxy S smartphones.

Did any of these features stand out to you? I’m genuinely curious because Samsung is betting big on them helping the S24 series get off to a good start. Hit me up on X or Threads @LegendaryScoop and let me know, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

A Galaxy S24 and S24 Plus breakdown

Left to right: Galaxy S24 Plus, Galaxy S24

Elsewhere, the Galaxy S24 tells a very similar tale to the S23 series. The standard S24 and S24 Plus have 0.1-inch larger displays than last year, measuring 6.2 inches and 6.7 inches, respectively. They each have Dynamic AMOLED 2X panels with 120Hz refresh rates, the S24 comes with a Full HD+ resolution, and the S24 Plus gets upgraded to Quad HD+. Both phones also now reach a peak of 2,600 nits of brightness, making them some of the brightest smartphones on the market.

Samsung tweaked the phones’ designs a bit with much flatter sides and edges, protected by Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2 and aluminum. And of course, you still get IP68 ratings on both.

Under the hood, there’s the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor paired with 8GB of RAM on the S24 and 12GB on the S24 Plus. The S24 still starts at 128GB of storage (with an optional upgrade to 256GB), while the S24 Plus starts at 256GB and can go up to 512GB. You also get a 4,000mAh battery in the S24 and a 4,900mAh battery in the S24 Plus, with 25W and 45W fast charging, respectively. And yes, wireless charging is here as well.

On the back, you get the same camera specs as last year with a 50MP main lens, a 12MP 120-degree ultra-wide, and a 10MP 3x telephoto. Samsung didn’t focus on hardware changes to improve its cameras; instead, it says it improved the quality of HDR and nighttime photography, while also bringing full HDR support to apps like Instagram and Snapchat so you can share higher-quality content with your followers.

The Galaxy S24 Ultra goes titanium

The flagship among flagships, the Galaxy S24 Ultra, also makes few hardware improvements compared to last year. It looks almost identical to the S23 Ultra, save for its flat display that is already a hit across social media. It means you won’t have to deal with any annoying curves when writing with the S Pen, and you’ll get less edge reflections when watching videos.

The phone also uses a titanium frame instead of aluminum. Samsung says it’s to make the phone more durable since titanium doesn’t have a weight advantage compared to aluminum, so it’s not exactly taking the approach of the iPhone 15 Pro which swapped hefty stainless steel for the lighter material. It also appears that Samsung isn’t making a huge deal that the S24 Ultra uses titanium, which is fine by me since it’s literally just a build material.

The 6.8-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X display is still Quad HD+ and still comes with a 120Hz refresh rate, and it too gets boosted to 2,600 nits of peak brightness. Under the hood, there’s a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 “for Galaxy,” which means Samsung made some level of special optimizations to the chip to perform a little better on the Ultra. It’s paired with 12GB of RAM, up to 1TB of storage, and a 5,000mAh battery with 45W fast charging.

Flip the phone around and you’ll find a familiar set of cameras, with one exception. You still get a 200MP f/1.7 main lens (which now comes with 60 percent larger pixels), a 12MP 120-degree ultra-wide, and a 10MP 3x optical telephoto lens. The fourth camera on the back is new for the S24 Ultra: instead of a 10MP 10x telephoto like the S23 Ultra, Samsung swapped it for a 50MP 5x telephoto. This will not only increase the resolution of zoom photos, but it also gives users a more common zoom range; Samsung found that there weren’t a lot of people using 10x zoom, but they were using 5x. Of course, you still get a 10x hybrid zoom button in the camera app if you’re a stickler for 10x.

Samsung also made improvements to its processing algorithms to improve the quality of photos, videos, and more. You’ll get better results at night, too, and you can share the same HDR photos and videos to social media like you can on the regular S24.

Oh, and you still get 100x Space Zoom. It’s one of my favorite features of the Galaxy S Ultra line, so I’m happy to see it return on the S24 Ultra.

Seven years of updates

One of the coolest aspects of the Galaxy S24 series is its software support guarantee. Samsung is promising seven years of OS upgrades and security updates, which means these phones should be supported all the way up to Android 21. It’s the same software plan that Google gave the Pixel 8 and 8 Pro, and it’ll make holding onto your smartphone for years on end much easier.

No Qi2 for you

As I’m sure you’ve heard by now, there’s no Qi2 support on the Galaxy S24 series. In case you haven’t heard, Qi2 is the successor to Qi, the most popular wireless charging standard in the world. It’ll give you faster charging performance and a magnetic connection for lining up the coils easier, much like MagSafe on the iPhone (Apple had a hand in designing Qi2). But for whatever reason, Samsung decided against including the superior standard and stuck with plain ol’ Qi.

At this point, I have no idea when the first phone with Qi2 support will come out, but I imagine it’ll happen sometime in 2024. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

The rise of AI phones? Yeah… sure…

The S24 series is guided by a similar playbook to the Pixel: make good phones with great hardware and throw in a bunch of super-smart features you can’t quite grasp how they work. And as long as you call it AI, you’re golden.

We’re going to see that a lot throughout 2024 as artificial intelligence continues to invade every sector of the technology industry. Whether it’s enough to drive smartphone sales remains to be seen, but we’re about to find out just how effective these types of features can be.

Pricing, availability, and colors

The Galaxy S24 starts at $799, the S24 Plus starts at $999, and the S24 Ultra starts at $1,299, a $100 increase over last year. All three are up for pre-order now on Samsung’s website and a variety of retailers and carriers. If you want the best deal, you’ve got to go through Samsung who will give you up to $900 if you trade in the right device, driving the cost of any of these phones significantly down. You’ll also enjoy deep discounts on accessories and free storage upgrades.

The S24 and S24 Plus come in Onyx Black, Marble Gray, Cobalt Violet, and Amber Yellow. Meanwhile, the S24 Ultra is available in Titanium Gray, Titanium Black, Titanium Violet, and Titanium Yellow.

I’m sure I’ll be reviewing at least one of these phones in the near future, so stay tuned.