Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra Preview

I ordered a Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra largely because of an expanded Google partnership and the resulting explosion of useful AI features. I’m sure I’ll go back to using the Pixel 8 Pro when done and hand this smartphone over to my wife. But you never know: I’m quickly coming around to the notion that AI is already making big enough changes for me to rethink the tools I use. And that’s true of both hardware and software.

Granted, this isn’t entirely new in the smartphone space: For years, Google has marketed its Pixel smartphones as “the helpful phones” and the usefulness of their AI-based features has long exceeded any of the capabilities we see in the iPhone or rival Android handsets. But based on the recent Galaxy Unpacked January 2024, something curious is happening between Google and Samsung: The partnership between the two companies is literally expanding, and Google is now letting Samsung use AI functionality that it previously would have kept in-house for itself. Including some hybrid generative AI capabilities that span Google Cloud, Google’s Gemini AI models, and Samsung’s devices.

It’s worth debating what this means to the future of Pixel and Android, I guess, but for now, I’d like to focus on this device specifically and how its software and hardware together make it more compelling than I originally believed.

As Samsung did at its recent event, let’s look at the software first.

When Google announced Gemini, it revealed that the Pixel 8 Pro would be the first smartphone to use the smallest Gemini model, Nano, on-device and that this model would power the new Summarize feature in the Recorder app and Smart Reply in GBoard, starting with WhatsApp (with more messaging apps coming next year). But the Galaxy S24 family marks the next step in this advance, and Gemini Nano will power similar new AI features on Samsung’s devices. If anything, it appears there will be more Gemini-powered features on Samsung than on Pixel, though that could change.

So what is this software? There’s a lot of it.

Live Translate will remove language barriers by providing real-time voice translations, in both directions, verbally and with on-screen text, between two people on a phone call or interacting in person. I assume I don’t need to explain how key this functionality is for my wife and me given that we own a place in Mexico, only partially speak Spanish, and routinely need to speak with people on the phone, over the apartment’s intercom, and in person on the streets, in stores and restaurants, and elsewhere.

Similarly, a new Chat Assist feature built into Samsung Keyboard now detects languages and translates them in real-time using AI. A Magic Compose uses formal and casual modes for communicating with workmates or friends and family in appropriate ways, with tone changes. These work across any app that needs a keyboard, whether it’s note-taking, chats, social media, or whatever.

There are Android Auto integrations that include bringing Samsung’s One UI to the car dashboard and numerous messaging features so that you can get group message summaries, use quick replies, take recommended actions, and more without touching your phone. A Transcript Assist feature will now create transcripts of group meetings or lectures that identify speakers and summarize the discussion. A Note Assist feature will clean up messy handwritten or typed notes, and add headings and bullets automatically, with different styles.

Circle to Search got a lot of attention in the wake of the event, and I guess it deserves it, given how obvious and simple this new way to search is: You just long-press the Home button, and Circle to Search lets you highlight, tap, or circle whatever you’re looking at on-screen and see search results in a pop-up panel without needing to take a screenshot, leave the app, and then search manually yourself.

The privacy- and security-aware will be interested to learn that Samsung is offering its S24 customers the ability to process AI data only on the device and not in the cloud. Obviously, some functionality requires cloud integration, and most users will want that. But many of the features noted above work entirely on-device. And Samsung also has updated its Knox security chip to support end-to-end encryption of personal data and backups between these devices and Google Cloud.

Looking past the Google partnership, Samsung also talked up the AI prowess of its camera systems, much as Apple and Google do at their events. This bit is particularly interesting to me, of course. But I should note that it’s also important to my wife, who is a Samsung user and doesn’t care much about tech specs or terms, just that her photos look great. Anyway, Samsung suffers from the same branding diarrhea as Apple, with names like ProVision Engine, Nightography, and Space Zoom.

But it’s the results that matter. And with its Quad Tele System—there we go again—the Galaxy S24 Ultra features an interesting twist on recent Samsung camera systems, with a new telephoto lens with 5X optical zoom (matching the Pixel 8 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max) and a 50 MP sensor (dramatically exceeding the iPhone 15 Pro Max). Samsung also offers a 200 MP wide (main) lens, and then a more typical 12 MP ultrawide lens, and, oddly, a second 10 MP telephoto lens with 3x optical zoom. What’s curious here is that its predecessor had 10x optical zoom on its 108 MP wide (main) lens, a feature the new wide lens lacks. But Samsung says it will deliver similar if not better results via 5x zoom and the Space Zoom hybrid/digital zoom. (They call it “optical quality” at 10X zoom, but it’s basically just a cropped part of a larger image file, much like Apple and Google do.)

There’s more AI and more branding silliness throughout, but you get the idea. The only question here is whether Samsung has raised the bar on computational smartphone photography. And for that, we’ll need to wait on the reviews and, for me, my coming hands-on experience. But Samsung is making all the right claims.

Samsung also appears to be stepping into Google territory with its generative AI-based photo editing capabilities. It can realign angled photos or move a person or other object within a shot and fill in a blended background. Stupidly acceding to the concerns of the AI Chicken Littles, Samsung will put an AI watermark on images edited in this fashion, but users can at least disable that. And on the video front, you can add slow motion to existing videos.

Powering all this are the expected silicon advances, with a slightly modified 8-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy processor, Adreno 750 graphics, and what Samsung calls its most powerful NPU yet. (Some countries will get an Exynos processor and graphics instead.) There’s 12 GB of RAM, and 256 GB, 512 GB, or 1 TB of UFS 4.0 storage. Interestingly, Samsung also talked up its ray-tracing capabilities for gaming, mostly as something for the future, but it fell short of promoting desktop-class games as Apple did with the iPhone 15 Pro series. But even the S24’s power management is enhanced by AI, it said.

On the outside, the Galaxy S24 family doesn’t look all that different from their predecessors, and the S24 Ultra in particular looks nearly identical to the previous few versions. But with Apple overtaking Samsung in global smartphone sales for the first time last year, it is perhaps not surprising that Samsung is once again copying some key iPhone features. For example, the display on the S24 Ultra is finally and blessedly flat after years of horrible curved edges. And this premium handset has also moved to Titanium for the exterior, though in this case there are no corresponding weight savings.

Titanium is more durable than aluminum, Samsung claims—Apple said otherwise when it moved the PowerBook G4 from titanium to aluminum decades ago—but the S24 Ultra is also the first smartphone to utilize Corning Gorilla Armor, the toughest Gorilla Glass yet. It’s four times more scratch-resistant than its predecessors, and it reduces screen glare by up to 75 percent. This all sounds great to me.

AI may be the “Eureka moment” that Samsung claims, but of equal value, I think, is its new 7-year guarantee for both OS version upgrades and security updates. This is notable for a lot of reasons, but the big one is that it required Qualcomm, which makes the core chipsets, to get onboard too. There was no explicit mention of the machinations behind that announcement, but the 7 years of updates pledge matches what Google now offers on the Pixel. (Well, probably. Google promises “at least 7 years” of updates.)

So there you go. I’ll let you know what happens when the Galaxy S24 Ultra arrives. I don’t expect to suddenly shift to Samsung, a brand I find troubling for its unnecessary bloatware. But with an expanded Google partnership and AI innovations that seem to blur the advantages we see today in Pixel, it’s worth looking at. And let’s face it, my wife is hoping this won’t work out: She’s happy to take the upgrade.