Samsung recently announced its latest S Series smartphones, with the Galaxy S24 Ultra sitting at the top of the line.
Here’s how the S24 Ultra stacks up to last year’s Galaxy S23 Ultra when it comes to its build, screen, performance, AI and camera.
The Galaxy S24 Ultra has a titanium frame
One of the biggest design changes on the Galaxy S24 Ultra this year is the new titanium frame.
Samsung has followed in Apple’s footsteps in swapping out the aluminium frame on the Galaxy S23 Ultra for a stronger titanium one, which should improve the phone’s durability and longevity. On top of this, the S24 Ultra is actually slimmer than its predecessor so you can expect to get a more comfortable grip when holding the device.
The Galaxy S24 Ultra has a brighter screen
The display has been given a major upgrade, too.
The screen on the Galaxy S24 Ultra is capable of hitting 2600 nits of brightness, making it the brightest Galaxy display yet. Outdoor visibility has also been improved with the new Vision Booster feature.
The Galaxy S23 Ultra peaked at 1750 nits of brightness.
The Galaxy S24 Ultra is powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy
As always, Samsung has updated the chipset across its S Series phones with its latest update. This year, the Galaxy S24 Ultra is equipped with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy, a custom version of Qualcomm’s latest flagship chipset optimised for Galaxy Samsung phones.
Along with the usual performance boost, the latest Snapdragon chip also includes a huge NPU update allowing for better, more efficient AI processing compared to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2-powered Galaxy S23 Ultra.
The Galaxy S24 Ultra has new Galaxy AI features
Speaking of AI, the Galaxy S24 Ultra is packed with new artificial intelligence-powered features with “Galaxy AI” being the focus of this year’s keynote.
New features enabled by Galaxy AI include Live Translate for real-time, two-way voice and text transitions of phone calls and Interpreter for translating conversations on a split-screen view when speaking in person.
There’s also Chat Assist to help perfect conversational tones in messages and other apps and Android Auto to summarise incoming messages and suggest replies in the car. Note Assist makes organising your Samsung Notes easier with templates and summaries, while Transcript Assist transcribes, summarises and translates audio recordings.
Finally, there’s Circle to Search which lets you hold the home button and circle or tap anything on your screen to learn more about it.
The Galaxy S24 Ultra has a 50-megapixel periscope lens
When it comes to the camera, the Galaxy S24 Ultra is equipped with a 200-megapixel main sensor, a 12-megapixel ultra-wide angle sensor, a 50-megapixel periscope lens and a 10-megapixel telephoto lens, resulting in 10x quad optical zoom and 100x Space Zoom.
The Galaxy S23 Ultra also included a quad camera consisting of a 200-megapixel main camera, a 12-megapixel ultra-wide sensor and 100x Super Resolution Zoom. However, the S23 Ultra came with two 10-megapixel telephoto lenses and supported 10x dual optical zoom.
Some of the biggest mobile photography upgrades this year come via the ProVisual AI Engine. These include enhanced digital zoom, improved Nightography capabilities, Edit Suggestions and Generative Edit for tweaking photos and filling in parts of the background when changes are made, and Instant Slow-mo for slowing down action.
Lastly, there’s Super HDR for lifelike previews before pressing the shutter and on social media apps, including Instagram.
