Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra Review - The Refined S23 Ultra

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Hi all Chris here and I've got the Galaxy  s24 Ultra I've been using it for quite a few   days now and just full on since I've got it and  this is a follow-up video to my Hands-On in Las   Vegas so as you probably know there are some big  improvements to the screen so it's brighter it's   now a flat screen it's got gorilla glass armor  less reflective more scratch resistant too which   is of course welcomed we've got the same battery  capacity 5,000 Mah hours up to 45 W charging with   it the S Pen and I'll be covering the cam cameras  battery life and all that wasn't in that Hands-On   in Las Vegas to let you know a lot more about this  here the Samsung Galaxy s24 Ultra with its Galaxy   Ai and is it enough to entice s23 Ultra owners  to upgrade to this latest model here now the   unboxing experience here is rather short because  this is all that is included so we have our type   c to type c cable SIM tray tool and a quick start  guide that's it no charger is included or case and   what is different now taking a look at them at  their build design well not a lot it's two grams   lighter now we have a titanium frame and no more  rounded edges on the back of it which is still   Gorilla Glass it does feel a little bit B but  you don't notice that difference in the weight   we're talking about 2 G here and you can't really  distinguish that difference at all build quality   is excellent It's still ip68 and you'll see along  the top we've got a minor change there an extra   microphone compared to the s23 ultra with our  s24 Ultra s down at the bottom and the same   location does support two nano SIM so no micro SD  card support we've got our Spen still that's the   same as last year you notice a slight difference  to the loudspeaker it's now just this little slot   there it almost looks like an SD card slot but  of course it is not and we still have Android   auto of course video out and Samsung decks with  it you can see the microphone down here too in   the same location and the antenna Lines no changes  there volume buttons and power button located on   the right hand side in the same place you can  easily get your thumb to that power button and   the big difference with the cameras is we now have  that five times periscopic camera 50 megapixel so   that is five times optical zoom it's electronic  and optically stabilized as well we have the 200   map camera again our three times camera which is  10 megapixels that is from the previous Model 12   megap Ultra wide no changes to those there at  all the big change is our screen so still 6.8   in it's a quite HD display but it's now brighter  with our s24 Ultra this panel can now output 2600   nits versus the 1750 we have with the s23 ultra  which I've got here on the right of the screen   now it's less reflective it's covered with gorilla  glass armor and those Reflections are apparently   75% less and just looking at them now with some  reflection of the background there it does look   a little bit clearer to me and you can see the  Slimmer bezels too as well on the right again   that of course is the s23 ultra and the bezels  do look a little bit larger we have the curve to   the screen here on the edges which I do like it  makes it feel comfortable in hand not that it's   uh uncomfortable the s24 ultra it still feels  very good and you just get those Slimmer bezel   so it's got a sleeker look to it it looks I think  slightly nicer and in hand feels better with that   titanium frame so the screen is incredibly clear  it's very bright it's response to touch really   well we've got a oneui 6.1 here based off Android  14 and the UA is really smooth I don't notice any   lag at all I've got 12 GB of RAM in fact all  models have the 12 GB of RAM and my model here   that Samsung sent out to meet does have 256 GB  of ufs 4.0 storage which is incredibly quick as  

you'll see later on with my benchmarks now under  settings we have all typical options here that   you do see with Samsung and most Android phone so  the Adaptive brightness that's there of course I'm   just using it at the moment to test it out and I  found that it does work quite well I don't find   the screen to be overly bright or too dim it seems  to adjust with that ambient light sensor really   well now the screen resolution by default is on  Full HD Plus and I've put this onto QHD plus do   you see a difference well when you're looking at  the screen really close yes on QHD you notice it's   a little sharper but at normal viewing distances  the full HD Plus isn't actually a bad resolution   you don't really notice that you won't see any  pixels no matter what resolution you're using   out of those two so you see we do have options  for our mode which I do have the screen mode here   in Vivid that's by default and you can put it on  to natural and in Vivid you can adjust the white   balance there and there's further tweaks you can  apply to the display so it's an excellent looking   display touch gestures they're working fine no  issues there it really is a topnotch panel here   from Samsung now if you don't like the cutout  there with the camera which is 12 megapixels   same as last year well you can hide that if you  want you can have the black bar at the top but I   don't see really anyone doing that because this  is a very minimal little cut out there it's not   that large and I don't find it really offensive  it doesn't get in the way at all so as I mentioned   it is running one UI and this is version 6.1  now that comes with the Galaxy s24 Ultra and   the performance of it is excellent very smooth  I've had no issues no bugs and this is the first   firmware so there will be of course updates and  they will fix any bugs if there are any there and   improve upon the performance but it is really good  really responsive and it seems to be running at   120 frames per second I don't notice any lag with  it now battery life this is the fixed test that I   do which is PC Mark and why I do this is because  it's a fixed test that just keeps looping I set   the same brightness the same settings with all  the other phones and you can compare all of them   in all of my phone reviews and you see here we  got 12 hours 42 minutes now this is about 1 hour   better than what I got with the Samsung Galaxy s23  Ultra so battery life has improved now I ran this   with Quad HD and it is by default their full HD  Plus resolution so if you run that you will get   slightly better battery time but it seems to be  around about 8 hours of on screen time if you run   the default full HD Plus of course at Quad HD it  will be a little less so the charge time that is   67 minutes with a 45 wat charger that I did use  to test it out so This falls behind a little bit   of what we're getting from some other flagships  there are flagships out there that have 120 W   charging and they can charge in about 22 minutes  or so so this is one area that I really wished   that Samsung could improve upon was the charging  speeds but they kept it the same as the previous   model internal storage so as ufs 4.0 extremely  quick here look at this we're getting over 4,000   sequential reads rights have over 3,000 and random  access that is over 1,000 megabytes per second so   really quick that is impressive to see how quick  the storage is so here we have Anu now this is of   course now with the Snapdragon 8 gen 3 it's the OC  version and with this here the score is slightly   faster than that of what we got with the previous  model and of course I do have my Galaxy s23 Ultra   here and you can see the differences between them  that it's not really a lot now we're getting a   boost there in the CPU GPU across the board there  and that is similar so a little disappointing here   I was expecting a bit more I was expecting  close to say 2 million points here uh but it   is not really noticeable the performance between  both of them they seem to be about the same when   you're in the UI gaming and everything there's  not too much of a a difference there so I just   show you twoo this which is a wildlife extreme  stress test which does test out the throttling   and you can see the result that I got here the  stability with the s24 ultra drops down to 55.1%   where it's 80 with the Samsung Galaxy s23 Ultra so  it doesn't throttle as much the s23 we get a lot   more throttling with the s24 here now this be in  mind is on the first firmware so this could change   and will likely uh I would say be improved upon  with some firmware updates here you can see that   the best Loop score there is very high getting  well over uh 4,800 compared to the almost 3,800   there with the s23 ultra and then the lowest score  here is actually lower on the s24 ultra which is   interesting to see that the performance there  wind running for long periods does drop right   down as expected now to the touch thermals it  got up to well 44° here until the touch it gets   up to about 42 so you do feel it getting a little  hot when you push it really hard with a test like   this and you'll see that the wide Vine level one  SE of course it does have this so Netflix Amazon   Prime video that is all going to be in full HD  Disney plus all of those streaming services we   have a level three here too with camera API so if  you want to test out gcam ports or open camera any   third party camera application is going to work  with the Galaxy s24 Ultra so we still have our S   Pen and I find it a fantastic stylist the latency  is pretty much almost instant very low and you can   see it Clips away into the same location so it's  changed slightly the design of it it's a little   bit more squared off and when you press in you  hear a nice little click and it pops out just   that little rear of it so you can pull it right  out and get it out and very easy to do so so you   have the same options as we had before with the  Spen smart select screen right and I'm just going   to create a note here just to quickly show you  what it is like now the latency I find to be very   good really quick here you can see when you write  it's basically instantaneous especially here with   a note app and it's a really good feature here  to have and excuse my bad writing just going to   quickly scribble down here Tech tablets so it's  as it was before they don't really me need to   make any major changes to this there are some  more refinements with one UI 6.1 to it with a   few little additions but overall it's just as good  as it was before fantastic stylus experience onto   gaming performance now this is Gen CH impact and  I've got it set to the maximum settings so that is   highest and 60 frames per second and I've noticed  that the gaming performance feels and looks pretty   much exactly the same of what I remember when  just using my Samsung Galaxy s23 Ultra you really   don't see too much of a difference between the  Snapdragon 8 gen 3 and the Gen 2 here now the game   runs really smooth really well on these highest  settings you don't notice really any lags any   issues frame bits or any problems and The Thermals  aren't as bad as when running that synthetic   Benchmark that I showed you so 3D Mark stress  test that got it really quite warm but gaming   like this I notic that the phone gets a little  warm but nowhere near as hot and the performance   seems to be exactly the same you notice sometimes  a little bit of a diff dip off in the frame rate   but overall it's very steady really playable and  looks absolutely fantastic on this 6.8 in screen   really is a stunning game then we have Samsung's  Galaxy AI so this is a very useful feature right   now I'm just in a text message so I'm going to  send a text off to someone I've selected it I can   press the AI button here and change the writing  style if I wanted to make the say a little bit   more professional than what I just wrote it would  give me some options so you can see there's the   original text hi David it's Chris where are  we meeting tomorrow there's the professional   option which is basically fluffed it out a little  bit there there's casual social polite there too   and other options you can put even some emojis in  there that it's done too to add that now this is   uh very useful for just translating texts as well  so you can use this with different languages and   you can have it two-way conversation now this  AO is going to work with the translations not   just in text message but also calls and it can do  it too in your WhatsApp and Messenger application   so basically where where you have a text input you  can use this and change it and here I'm going to   show you how to translate some text that I'm going  to do so I'm just sending another message here and   I want to just select all of that and I can now  tap to translate this so it's going to translate   it translate it from English into Spanish and I  can just get it to replace that so this is Handy   and again it's a two-way thing too as well so  if this person replies in Spanish it will then   send you that to and translate it into English so  very handy and I'll show you another one of the AI   features too so this image for example which is  I know it's the Oakland Sky Tower but imagine I   don't know what tower this is and I want to  identify it while I can hold down here this   is of course the gestures that I have enabled  but if I keep holding that then enables me to   Circle something and it will identify it so if  I do this here it's going to use its Ai and find   out what that is so it managed to find here okay  Oakland Sky Tower tickets and tours Oakland Sky   Tower so it did identify that so it's very handy  for the image identification I think that would   be a useful feature for something like maybe you  want to identify some fruit that you don't know   what it is or maybe an insect while it's going  to be able to use that with Galaxy Ai and tell   you what it is and what about our speakers so  no changes compared to the previous model we've   got the downward firing speaker and then our  earpiece we have another one they sound very   loud there's a little bit of Base to them some  treble and mids to give you sample now at 100%   volume just to give you an idea of what the  speakers sound like in the Samsung Galaxy s24 [Laughter] [Applause] Ultra over to our cameras now with our Samsung  Galaxy s24 Ultra so front-facing camera no changes   here compared to last year 12 megapixels can shoot  4K 30 4K 60 frames per second audio bit rate is   256 kobit per second and what I've noticed is the  wind filtering seems to be a little bit better   with this model perhaps they made some Hardware  changes to those microphones aw some Hardware   filters in there but I do notice that it doesn't  seem to pick up that wind as much as it did before   and it is quite windy right now yet you can hear  me quite clearly but yes a little bit of that wind   noise let's take a a look at those rear cameras  now the ultra wide the same again so 12 megapixels   we've got electronic image stabilization and I'm  shooting here out at a place called maray Tha in   the distance that's why hickey Island handing  around it dos look very good this quality no   dropped frames this is now the main camera which  has Optical and electronic image stabilization 200   megapixels we got our three times and you can swap  over to all of these cameras at 4K 30 or even 4K   60 frames per second and now this is the change  the new camera Al periscopic five times very   steady good stabilization I'm just going to move  slightly here and then I can go now to 10 times   wouldn't really go over 10 times video once you  do I'll just show you I'll just tap here and go to   the 20 preset you can see it's got a lot of noise  now and grain so it degrades the quality back to   five times now have a look at a there we go SE go  three times and then the one times again so this   is 4K 30 that I'm shooting at to match my timeline  so what about our cameras is it a big upgrade that   zoom camera well with video I noticed the quality  is a little sharper however the electronic or   Optical image stabilization doesn't seem to be  quite as good as the 10 times Optical camera   we have with the s23 ultra the previous model  also does handle bright flowers B capturing   more details not so much saturation less clipping  so clearly to me there are some updates required   we are on the first firmware remember with this  phone Zoom photos both of them right now at 10   times I noticed there's a different color science  to the s24 ultra that it has more saturation look   at the green grass here it's a little bit overdone  it's more natural with the s23 ultra when you zoom   in this is now 200% prop you can see that the  sensor has less noise than the s23 ultra so   in that regard there in that area it is better  the s24 ultra zoom camera but it depends on the   situation great to see that Samsung has toned down  on the oversharpening with our main camera so you   can see the difference here between the s23 ultra  at first glance it might look better but when you   crop in this is a 200% crop you can see clearly  that the s23 ultra is oversharpened overdone   a little bit I do prefer here the s24 ultra so  that's a welcome change there from Samsung with   the night charts the s24 ultra I have noticed is  marginally better than its predecessor you can   see a little bit more detail with this shot here  the grass has a bit more detail a little clearer   around where that shed is and you notice when I  crop it here to 200% but if you want to see all of   the changes make sure you check out the sidebyside  comparison with the s24 ultra versus the s23 ultra   because there are some very interesting results  there it's quite mixed as you'll see so all up   this is an excellent phone and it's a very minor  upgrade over the s23 ultra so far in my time using   it it just feels like a refined s23 Ultra and it's  not a huge leap ahead sure we do get the flatter   screen the brighter screen with that gorilla glass  armor the latest version so it's less reflective   40% more scratch resistant which is great and well  they claim 75% less Reflections on this and I've   noticed that it does fair a little bit better and  being flat it does feel nice the rear is now flat   there's no curve to it so in hand does it feel  better than the s23 ultra I think it does because   mostly because of the titanium around the outside  of it has a good feel to it just feels higher   quality compared to the more smoother finish of  the the steel frame the alloy frame that we had   before the titanium just makes it feel that a  little bit more premium Now the Spen great to   have no changes there it's the same as before they  didn't really need to do anything with it it's got   that ultra low latency it works really well those  pressure sensitive levels and I find myself using   it a lot for just minor notes and things and I  know a lot of people don't really take advantage   of it but if you're say an architect a designer  an artist then you're going to love that and this   will be the flagship to go for for the S Pen and  all the built-in features so the charging rate I   really feel like Samsung should have done  something more there 45 watts is fine yes   it charges in just over an hour but if you look  at the competition out there with other Android   flagships we're getting charge times of under 25  minutes and most of those will charge well under   an hour so they're slipping they're falling behind  a little bit there on the charge rate but I still   find 45 is good and of course the charge is not  in the box there we don't have a 3.5 mm headphone  

jack and no micro SD those sadly have gone forever  but I would have loved to seen their comeback   Samsung could have surprised us with a 3.5 M mm  headphone jack micro support but sadly not there   with it so the changes to the five times zoom  camera while going from 10 times to five times   now it is slightly better it's a marginally better  camera we can now shoot 8K video with that zoom   camera which is a welcome change there in addition  and I've noticed that the wind filtering with the   s24 ultra is a lot better than the s23 ultra they  made some changes there it's probably down to   Hardware with the microphones maybe a little bit  of wind filtering built into it now or perhaps   just software but it is a noticeable difference  there the battery life being slightly better than   the s23 ultra as well is another welcome tweet and  overall it's a tweak refined version of the s23   ultra is it enough to entice s23 Ultra us users  to upgrade to the s24 ultra I really don't think   it is but if you do have say the s22 S21 or below  then this is going to be a big upgrade for you if   you're a few Generations back then really it is  a no-brainer to upgrade to the s24 ultra with all   its built-in features amazing build quality it's  an all-rounded phone and it's probably going to   be like my s23 Ultra one of my favorites for the  year I can see with just what is on offer here   with the Samsung Galaxy s24 Ultra so thanks a lot  for watching this early review of it and do check   out my camera comparisons between the iPhone  15 Pro Max and this phone versus the older   s23 Ultra it's really interesting if you want  to know exactly how much it has improved those   Zoom cameras as well video whatnot all covered  there I'll see you in the next one bye for now

2024-01-29

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