Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra review: The best Android phone you can buy today

• Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra with 100GB data: £44.99 per month, £199 up front, Mobiles.co.uk
• Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra with 10GB data: £53.99 per month, £99 up front, Idmobile.co.uk

The design of the S24 series remains roughly the same as the previous S23 series, but the S24 Ultra gets a refresh with a new flat display, thinner bezels, a satin matte finish and a stylish titanium frame.

It’s a subtle change to the older design, but one that makes a big difference. By getting rid of the “waterfall edge” seen on last year’s device, Samsung has made using the S-Pen stylus way more comfortable. The tip of the pen no longer slips off the side of the phone when you’re doodling near the edges of the screen, creating the impression that you’ve a lot more space to write on.

That titanium case unibody frame feels premium too, and while it makes the phone slightly heavier than the S23 Ultra and the iPhone 15 Pro, it’s a worthwhile compromise. Samsung says the titanium casing improves durability, which will take some more testing to prove, but the new design exudes top-tier build quality. It’s simply a nice object to hold, though the sheer vastness of that 6.8in display makes it a little cumbersome for anyone with less-than shovel-sized hands.

Samsung’s gone subtle with its range of colour options in 2024. You’ve a choice of black, light grey, or muted shades of violet and yellow. The official Samsung store also offers some exclusive colourways this year, which are a little spicier: rich blue, green and our personal favourite, a gorgeously vibrant burnt orange. It’s just a shame Samsung doesn’t offer a matching S-Pen stylus in each colourway.

All three phones now run at a smooth scrolling 120Hz this year, but now the baseline S24 and S24 Plus can drop down to a 1Hz refresh rate – previously something only the Ultra could do – meaning improvements to battery life and power efficiency.

On the S24 Ultra we find the same sharp 1440p display found on last year’s phone, though this year the top-end Galaxy is brighter than ever, topping out at 2600 nits peak brightness. Phones typically only ever need to pump out that much brightness to contend with very strong, direct sunlight, so it’s overkill if you live in the UK or at similar latitudes.

The Ultra is powered by the new Snapdragon 9 Gen 3 processor, tuned by Samsung to work more efficiently with its hardware, and comes with 12GB of RAM as standard. That’s a small step up from the baseline 8GB of RAM found in the S23 Ultra, and keeps Samsung’s most powerful phone feeling zippy and responsive, even when loading multiple apps, when running the phone in the desktop-style Dex mode or when playing games.

The camera on the S24 Ultra benefits from a larger sensor this year, which offsets a reduction in the optical zoom range of its periscoping telephoto lens.

The camera software is where the real improvements can be found, with Samsung using its new AI smarts to produce richer and more detailed photography in a much wider range of conditions. Better night sight processing means videos look more vivid and crisp in low light and when zoomed in, while AI features such as ‘erase reflections’ and ‘erase shadows’ promise more professional photography results at the push of a button.

The results of Samsung’s automatic photo-editing tools are roughly on par with the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro. Interestingly, Samsung seems to be a lot less strict about the kinds of things you can apply AI to in its photo editor. Google (presumably trying to avoid scandal) doesn’t allow you to use AI-tools on pictures of humans, for example, whereas Samsung gives you free reign to manipulate images as you please.

On top of the usual spec upgrades, the headline improvement to this year’s Samsung Galaxy S24 series is a range of new artificial intelligence-powered features. Advanced photo-editing tools enable users to move or erase people and objects from images, by using generative artificial intelligence to fill in gaps, and to instantly remaster photos with additional detail, depth of focus effects and more.

The editor works incredibly well and is intuitive to use, quickly zhuzhing up your dull photos at the tap of a button. The results look natural and aren’t overly processed.

Samsung also brings its new-found AI skills to bear on transcription and notetaking. Audio recorded at meetings can discern between dozens of different speakers, and the resulting minutes can be automatically formatted into headers and bullet points, or summarised by Samsung’s on-board AI, for easy reference.

The S24 series also introduces ‘live translate’ – a feature embedded into the phone app that can translate between 13 different languages in real-time, between two callers. It’s an incredibly powerful tool, though one that many people would rarely need to use. In our tests it was accurate and speedy enough to hold an intelligible conversation in another language, with just a few poorly translated words occasionally tripping the software up.