Samsung Announces First Update for Galaxy S24 Series Phones

Samsung this week announced that it will soon ship its first software update for the newly released Galaxy S24 series phones. Among other things, it addresses a complaint that only a long-time Samsung fan would understand: As originally shipped, the incredibly vivid “Vivid” screen mode isn’t vivid enough.

“With Galaxy AI, Samsung aims to empower you with the ability to conduct barrier-free communication, unleash creativity, and enhance productivity,” Samsung’s announcement notes. “Early users of the Galaxy S24 series are experiencing just that — but different users have varying needs. Based on your feedback, through an upcoming update, we aim to provide enhanced options and experiences across the device display and camera, enabled by advanced hardware and software integration efforts.”

As with previous S-series phones, the Galaxy S24 series phones provide a Screen mode option in system settings that lets the user choose between “Vivid” and “Natural” screen modes and configure the white balance. But with the Galaxy S24, Samsung changed how the two modes work, and the “Vivid” mode, which was overly vivid in previous S-series phones, is now only subtly different from “Natural.” This was the right decision, as many users found “Vivid” to be hyper-unrealistic. And as Samsung noted at the time, it made the change to “provide more accurate and comfortable viewing during use … This display behavior is an intentional color adjustment, and is not a product defect.”

Well, many users have gotten used to and expect “Vivid” to be overly vivid, and so Samsung is bringing back the “Advanced settings” button to Screen mode settings, moving the white balance controls back to the Advanced settings page it opens, and adding a Vividness slider. So everyone can have the vividness they desire.

Additionally, this first S24 series update will include vague “enhancements across the camera experience, including upgrades to the device’s zoom functions, Portrait Mode, Nightography, rear camera video shooting capabilities, and more.” I’m a lot more interested in this part of the update and hope there are more details soon.

The update ships “in February,” Samsung says, so sometime in the next 10 days or so.