Galaxy S24 Ultra vs S23 Ultra: How Samsung’s top-end phones stack up

Galaxy S24 Ultra (right) and Galaxy S23 Ultra (left) (Image: Nandagopal Rajan/The Indian Express)

That said, this is not exactly a dramatic reduction from the S23 Ultra’s 234 gram weight and 8.9mm thickness. And if we’re being honest, we expected more in terms of weight reduction considering the phone gets a titanium frame this year. For comparison, the iPhone 15 Pro Max saw a substantial 20-gram weight loss by shifting to titanium.

A more meaningful improvement is seeing upfront of the handset, which thanks to the combination of a flat display and a trimmed bottom bezel, now features symmetrical bezels all around.

The S24 Ultra also introduces an appealing new lineup of colour options. The S23 Ultra played it relatively safe with Phantom Black, Cream, Green and Lavender as widely available colours. By contrast, the S24 Ultra really embraces colour with options like Titanium Gray, Titanium Black, Titanium Violet, and Titanium Yellow for all retailers. Even bolder Titanium Green, Titanium Blue, and Titanium Orange colours join the lineup as Samsung.com exclusives.

Display

The most noticeable change with the new Galaxy S24 Ultra is that its display has been hammered completely flat. Samsung has progressively reduced the display curvature of the Ultra models over the past couple of years and it’s now finally settled for completely flat edges, with the S23 Ultra being the last holdout with curved edges.

Galaxy S24, S24+, and the S24 Ultra (from left to right) (Image: Nandagopal Rajan/The Indian Express)

Additionally, the S24 Ultra gains a brightness boost up to 2600 nits peak compared to 1750 nits on its predecessor, which should make the screen more visible and usable outdoors.

Aside from these upgrades, the core display specs remain very similar between the two models:

– Same massive 6.8-inch diagonal size
– Identical QHD+ resolution of 3088 x 1440 pixels
– Variable LTPO refresh rate support of up to 120Hz

Performance

The Galaxy S24 Ultra features an upgrade in processing power over its predecessor, packing the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset. This replaces the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 found in last year’s Galaxy S23 Ultra model.

With artificial intelligence being all the rage, the upgraded Snapdragon processor aims to provide a boost to AI capabilities. Qualcomm’s already shown that the new chip brings faster performance when using large language models, Stable Diffusion, generative AI applications and more that leverage machine learning.

The new chip is also engineered to deliver enhanced graphics for mobile gaming without sacrificing battery life. However, we’ll have to get our hands on the S24 Ultra to see if these performance gains are as substantial as promised over the previous generation.

Galaxy AI

Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S series has seen incremental upgrades over the past few generations, with no major leaps forward each year. However, with the launch of the Galaxy S24 Ultra, Samsung is focusing on revolutionary AI capabilities rather than minor spec bumps.

The standout upgrade in the S24 Ultra is Galaxy AI, a suite of useful AI-powered features. While the S23 Ultra boasted impressive hardware, it simply can’t compete with the S24 Ultra’s intelligent software.

Galaxy AI enables real-time translation during calls and texts with Live Translate. It also offers in-person translation with Interpreter mode. For productivity, Note Assist provides handy summaries and formatting for your notes. Chat Assist helps you strike the right tone in messages, whether chatting with coworkers or connecting on social media. And Circle to Search lets you draw a circle around anything on screen to instantly search for it.

Camera

The new Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra boasts of several AI-powered image editing and enhancement features over its predecessor, the S23 Ultra. But when you strip away the AI-powered software tricks, the hardware isn’t as different as you might expect.

Let’s break it down. The S24 Ultra comes loaded with nifty new AI camera features like Edit Suggestion, which makes recommendations to improve your photos, and Generative Edit, which can fill in background details using AI. There’s also Instant Slow-mo for buttery smooth slo-mo videos. Pretty neat stuff.

However, the actual camera hardware is nearly identical to the S23 Ultra with a 200MP primary camera, 12MP ultrawide, 10MP telephoto with 3x optical zoom, and 12MP selfie camera.

Galaxy S24 Ultra now has a 50 MP 5x optical zoom lens (Image: Nandagopal Rajan/The Indian Express)

The big change is the second telephoto lens. On the S23 Ultra it’s 10MP with a 10x optical zoom range. The S24 Ultra bumps the resolution up to 50MP but drops the zoom range to just 5x. Early Twitter comparisons suggest this new 50MP 5x telephoto lens produces noticeably lower quality 100x zoom photos compared to the S23 Ultra. This shows there’s only so much fancy AI can make up for hardware limitations.

So while the S24 Ultra introduces some cool new AI camera tricks, the underlying hardware remains largely unchanged from its predecessor. Except for that questionable downgrade to the telephoto lens. But maybe Samsung can tweak the AI over time to improve the zoom quality. We’ll have to wait and see.

Verdict

So should you upgrade to the Galaxy S24 Ultra? The choice isn’t as clear-cut as you might think. On paper, the Galaxy S24 Ultra has some advantages: it’s lighter, thinner, and faster than its predecessor. The AI features also look promising based on the demos we saw at the launch event – if you think you’d use the AI capabilities often, the S24 Ultra could be worthwhile.

The Galaxy S24 Ultra’s biggest advantage lies in its extended software support. You get a full 7 years of security updates and Android version upgrades, up from 5 years for the S23 Ultra. That’s impressive longevity, even if most people don’t keep their phones for 7 years.

That said, the differences between the two models aren’t drastic. Casual users who already own the S23 Ultra may not feel the need to upgrade right away. But if you’re due for an upgrade or want those AI features and future-proof software support, the Galaxy S24 Ultra makes a compelling case as your next premium Samsung phone.