Galaxy S24 Ultra Review // Three Months Later

[Music] [Applause] [Music] this is the Galaxy s24 Ultra and I know I'm pretty late to the party here but I actually wanted to use this phone for an extended period of time before providing any thoughts on it and so that's exactly what I've done and in fact I've actually been using this phone as my main everyday device for over a month now I've been using it with my favorite home screen configuration and all of the apps I rely on within any given month and after all that time I've come to a pretty resounding conclusion this phone is very very similar to last year's s23 Ultra but obviously there's way more to it than that and so 3 months after its initial launch after a bunch of software updates and after an extended period of time using it I'm finally bringing you my full review you ready let's dive in okay in the just of saving some time I just wanted to start this review by listing off every way in which this phone is nearly identical to last year's s23 Ultra which are as follows the S Pen the haptics the fingerprint sensor and the performance and I don't care what Samsung or anyone else says about any changes in each of these areas you will not notice any difference with these four aspects between the two phones now that's not necessarily a bad thing because each of those aspects were already top tier with last year s23 Ultra and despite us being another year on now they're still top tier compared to pretty much every other phone on the market and honestly I don't even really want or need any improvements in terms of the S Pen the haptics or the performance but I will say after several years now of Samsung using the exact same ultrasonic fingerprint sensor I was really hoping they'd be a little more bold and place a larger sensor into their Ultra lineup but alas that was obviously not to be the case surely with Nexus phone though right oh and the fact that we still do not have any sort of fix for the awful face unlock fingerprint scanner disappearing issue that I've complained about in all of my past Samsung reviews is seriously frustrating I mean xiaomi nothing and Google pixel phones have all addressed this in the past year or two whereby if you have face unlock set up the fingerprint sensor icon does not disappear from the lock screen whenever your face is successfully registered and it makes a world of different so Samsung please address this ASAP so I can actually make use of your face unlock system but then we turn our attention to the things that Samsung did change with the s24 ultra and I'll be up front a lot of the changes are incredibly subtle but despite that we're still going to talk about them and what better way to start than with the design now most aspects about the s24 Ultras design are identical to the s23 ultra but there are two small tweaks that they made which I really appreciate the first is that much like apple did with the iPhone 15 Pro lineup Samsung switched to using this matte coded titanium for the side panels which is a really nice improvement from the glossy side panels that we had on the s23 ultra last year and it honestly does make the phone feel much nicer in the hand the second small change which is equally as appreciated by me is that we finally have evenly sized bezels the entire way around the display and this was pretty much the only complaint I had regarding the design of last year's s 23 Ultra so to see Samsung finally addressing this made me super super happy now speaking of the display on paper not much has changed and in terms of the actual display itself yeah the specs are nearly identical we do supposedly have a brighter display compared to last year's s23 Ultra however in real world use it seems very very similar in terms of Max brightness when using it Outdoors that being said what has changed this year is that Samsung has used this really anti-reflective coding across the panel which as the name implies helps to greatly reduce Reflections and whil this is a really cool add-on I personally only really notice this feature whenever I'm filming the phone which is when I'm hyper aware of avoiding Reflections wherever possible in real world use honestly don't even really notice the feature even when using other phones side by side but that doesn't mean it's not hugely appreciated I guess I just kind of understand why Samsung didn't overhype it during their launch presentation instead deciding to keep it on the down low and therefore allowing it to be a really neat surprise to anyone who picks one up themselves I do also selfishly hope that other manufacturers will follow suit and integrate this feature on their own smartphones going forward cuz yeah it just makes filming that much easier which I know hardly applies to anyone else but hey it's the little things that count right real quick I did want to mention that whilst on paper the battery in this phone has the exact same capacity as last year's s23 Ultra I've actually been having ever so slightly worse battery life compared to that phone now don't get me wrong it is still really impressive battery life but I guess that brighter display and that higher performing chipset do kind of take their tall cuz where I would struggle to get the s23 Ultras battery to much below 50% after a solid day of medium use with the s24 ultra I'm finding that I'm only ending the day with around 50% left if it's been a day of Fairly light use on days with medium to heavy use I'm getting through a much larger portion of the phone's battery even heading under that 20% mark on some days which I just never really experienced on last year's s23 Ultra so I don't know whether Samsung still needs to iron out some Kinks with efficiency or whatever but yeah slight disappointment in the battery Department this time around all right now before we press on just wanted to take a quick moment to thank today's video sponsor pulseway for those who haven't heard of it pulseway is the go-to remote monitoring and management solution designed to help you monitor and manage any Windows Linux or OSX system and not only is it available to use on the Galaxy s24 Ultra but it's also available on essentially every single Android and Apple device as well and it does so much more than just helping you to manage your system devices it actually allows you to unlock their Peak Performance too so you'll receive realtime actionable alerts that allow you to tackle issues and Patch devices on the Fly you can remote into any system and transfer files or run a plethora of automations to Auto remediate issues like clearing unneeded data taking up valuable storage space or installing software updates and because of their state-of-the-art app you can do all this and more from anywhere and at any time which I just reckon is so so great and the best part is that you can try it completely for free so to take control like never before by staying connected and secure download pulseway using the first link down in the description below all right from there let's chat about the software on this phone and this is actually the first Samsung phone that I'm reviewing with the Android 14 update and we're now up to oneui version 6.1 and man there is a lot that I love about this software now it is still very very similar to past oneui versions like the settings menu looks nearly identical and even the Quick Settings panel looks the same though we do now have a redesigned expanded Quick Settings panel which I kind of like the look of and at least it's something different right but all of the core features are very much the same and I genuinely think it's about time Samsung mixed these aspects up a bit that being said what I absolutely adore about Samsung software is the incredible customization flexibility that we have I mean the fact that I can have a homescreen grid size of 7 by7 to place my app icons in this configuration without having to resort to a separate third party widget app or the fact that I can customize the look of the recent screen here without sacrificing fluidity or again the fact that I can have custom third party icon packs within the stock launcher itself that is the sort of stuff that I seriously love a man that doesn't even touch the surface of everything that you can do with one UI which I won't get into in this video but needless to say if you're a power user and you love the Android mentality of yester year where you as the user got to decide how you wanted your phone to look and behave well then there's really no better option than a Samsung phone now do I need the s24 Ultra to do all of this no which is why I can't really consider this to be a selling point of the s24 ultra itself but I do want to give credit to Samsung for not locking us into a home screen style that they think we should use the fact that to this day we can still have this much control over how the oneui software looks and behaves is seriously amazing and so finally we have the cameras and in all honesty part of me really wanted to just lump the cameras in with the other similarities that I listed off at the start of this video because as far as I'm concerned the cameras on this phone are so so similar to those found on last year's phone in fact all but one of the cameras are actually exactly the same but Samsung did make one incredibly controversial change with the camera configuration this year which is that they swapped out that much loved 10 megap 10x Periscope lens from the s23 ultra and replace it with a 50 megapix 5x Periscope lens instead and whilst initially I was like man I loved that 10x lens from last year's phone and was so sad to hear that they'd gotten rid of it after using the s24 ultra for a month I got to say I kind of get it for example we still have that 10x button within the camera interface and across the past month there have been a significant amount of times where I've tapped it but have then found that the framing was too tight and have therefore switched to the 5x mode which has been by and large a much more usable field of view so as a result I to get it 5x is a much more practical level of zoom and in all honesty for shooting images thanks to software processing you can still use that 10x mode and get nearly the same level of quality as what the physical 10x lens got us on the s23 ultra the area that does take a hit though is when trying to use that 10x mode for shooting videos there's just no way right now to emulate Optical quality when shooting a video like what you can achieve with image processing so do I wish Samsung just went crazy and gave us an extra 5X lens without removing the 10x lens for those French scenarios of course and in some cases when you're paying this amount for a phone you kind of think maybe they should have but acknowledging that space and fitting in that many lenses into a single phone is a serious issue not easily overcome I think ultimately I'm okay with the decision that Samsung made to remove the 10x lens and go instead for a better quality 5x lens and the fact that we can capture incredible images and videos at 1X 3x and 5x field of views is seriously killer I will just quickly note I think it might be time for Samsung to make some upgrades to the ultra wide lens though cuz there is a noticeable drop off in quality when shooting with it particularly during videos and I also think that sensor cropping trick they use to achieve better quality images at both 2X and 10x magnification should come into play when shooting videos as well though my guess is that they probably need to use larger sensors for that which in all honesty I'm hoping they upgrade next year anyway so still some improve movements to be made and I still think that the actual shooting experience and quality that you can get with a xiaomi flagship phone is far better than what we have on the s24 ultra so if you're looking for the best camera experience all around on an Android phone then you might want to look at one of those instead but as far as versatility goes no phone can match the camera configuration that we have with the s24 ultra now with all of that being said 3 months after this phone's release do I think it's a device that you should consider getting well if you're coming from an s23 ultra then definitely not this phone is so similar to that phone that you will hardly notice the difference but for anyone else man this phone is incredible it ain't cheap but compared to pretty much any other phone on the market it's the sort of phone that kind of makes its price feel justifiable and I will say whilst I don't think it's necessarily the best at anything aside from maybe customization flexibility it does still rank in at least the top three across all phones when it comes to the key pillars most people look for in a premium smartphone so camera performance design the display battery life and I'm also going to throw in haptics which is a key pillar for me whilst the s24 ultra isn't the outright best at any of those categories it's definitely up there competing with the best and more importantly there are absolutely no deal breaking issues with this phone that might make me a little more hesitant to recommend it like pixel phones are amazing in almost every category but have all customization flexibility and struggle a bit in performance nothing phones they have average cameras and poor haptics xiaomi phones pretty average software and customization flexibility like every major phone right now always seems to have one or two areas that you got to be wary of before picking one up the s24 ultra honestly it has no issues whatsoever and it's without a doubt the best allaround package that you can buy if price is not an issue now that all being said I do think that Sam Samsung has been playing it very very safe for the last few years now and need to think about making some bigger more tangible upgrades to this lineup of phones but you can kind of see why they don't feel the need to cuz if I'm being completely honest even after years of trying no other phone can match the sheer level of quality and features in such a well-rounded package as what is offered by the s24 ultra [Music]

Channel: Sam Beckman

Views: 74,597

Keywords: sam, beckman, samsung s24 ultra, galaxy s24 ultra, s24 ultra, s24 ultra review, samsung galaxy s24 ultra, galaxy s24 ultra review, samsung s24 ultra review, galaxy s24, samsung galaxy s24 ultra review, s24 ultra 3 months later, samsung galaxy s24, s24 ultra vs s23 ultra, samsung galaxy s24 ultra camera, galaxy s24 ultra long term review, s24 ultra long term review, iphone 15 pro max vs galaxy s24 ultra, i switched to the galaxy s24 ultra, samsung s24, galaxy s24 ultra camera

Id: uLzc6efe2Bs

Length: 14min 12sec (852 seconds)

Published: Wed May 08 2024