I’ve been obsessed with portable gaming consoles since the 1990s and my first Game Boy, and while I love mine Nintendo switch it is relatively weak. Meanwhile, the more powerful Steam deck is too bulky and short-lived to be portable, proving that modern handheld gaming can struggle to get the balance right.
However, redemption may have come in the form of… Samsung Galaxy S24Ultra.
Looking at the recent ones Samsung Galaxy unpacked I noticed the impressive specs and started wondering if my next gaming handheld should also be my next mobile phone.
I play Android games like Call of Duty: Mobile, Minecraft, and Genshin Impact on my mobile devices. And I recently bought a Retroid pocket 3+ to play both Android and emulated games, although this device runs on Android OS but has serious limitations in terms of CPU power.
Even the best gaming phones I’ve used before felt clunky, limited, and didn’t really manage to be both a phone and a gaming device. Conversely, all previous Samsung phones I’ve used offered at least a streamlined smartphone experience and decent gaming.
Heavy hardware
The Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra seems to outperform almost all my handhelds and most phones I’ve used thanks to its Samsung-specific overclocked 3.39GHz Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip, which should give the S24 Ultra an edge over even other Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 phones.
The built-in graphics chip is an Adreno 750 GPU which, according to Samsung, is 25% more powerful than its predecessor and 25% more efficient. It also packs 12GB of RAM, just behind the Steam Deck’s 16GB LPDDR5 and well ahead of the Nintendo Switch’s 4GB DDR4.
Storage on the Galaxy S24 Ultra can be an issue as it comes with fixed internal storage in 256GB, 512GB or 1TB configurations. However, the Nintendo Switch, Retroid Pocket and Steam Deck can all have internal storage supplemented by microSD cards.
Displays on smartphones are much more advanced than even the best handhelds like the Steam Deck OLED and the 7.4-inch screen supports a 1200×800 resolution and a 90Hz refresh rate. The Nintendo Switch uses a 7-inch OLED screen that only supports a maximum resolution of 720p and a maximum refresh rate of 60Hz, but has the distinct advantage of being easy to connect to a TV.
Despite its slightly smaller 6.8-inch screen, the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra dominates the others thanks to its higher QHD+ resolution and a panel that looks smooth and fluid thanks to its 120Hz refresh rate.
Outdoor gaming shouldn’t be a problem as the Galaxy S24 Ultra has one of the brightest displays on the market with 2,600 nits of brightness and the adaptive display technology detects the lighting in your environment and adjusts accordingly.
Real ray tracing on smartphone
The Samsung S24 Ultra’s graphics capabilities seem to be more in line with a powerful gaming handheld than a smartphone, due to its impressive hardware and the addition of hardware-accelerated ray tracing compatible with the Unreal 5 engine.
For the uninitiated, ray tracing is a graphics-intensive process that mimics how light interacts with objects by tracing the path of individual light rays to create realistic lighting, reflections and shadows in real time, creating more realistic and immersive games.
Mobile ray tracing may not be as complex or powerful as ray tracing implemented on expensive graphics cards and gaming consoles, as it only has a fraction of the amount of power to draw from compared to an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 pulling in 320W and the Xbox series However, it is still a remarkable technology that has been miniaturized and incorporated into phones.
At the moment, the selection of games on mobile that currently use this feature is limited. But over time, more developers will likely adopt this technology and hopefully we’ll see more realistic and immersive games than ever on a mobile platform. Some of the games currently using this technology are PUBG Mobile, Rainbow Six Mobile, War Thunder Edge, Bright Memory Mobile, CarX Street and Arena Breakout.
By comparison, the Nintendo Switch has no ray tracing support and the Steam Deck’s ray tracing is quite limited.
Cool but compact
All that power is of no use if the device can’t use it for a long time and Samsung claims that the Galaxy S24 Ultra can maintain this high performance thanks to the redesigned cooling systems and larger vapor chamber.
If the Galaxy S24 Ultra can stay cool during long gaming sessions, then Samsung may have found a way to overcome a widespread problem of heat and performance throttling that compact gaming devices like the Switch and especially the Steam Deck are known to struggle with. But we’ll have to see if this proves out in a full review and our own testing.
An abundance of games
Advanced hardware isn’t the only deciding factor when looking for a new gaming device; the selection of games can be even more important. The Nintendo Switch wins at this point, with around 10,000 games, while the Steam Deck supports over 8,000 Steam Deck verified and playable titles, leaving me spoiled for choice.
The Google Play store has some options for the Galaxy S24 Ultra and there is also the option to play classic titles using emulation.
However, the easiest and legally more secure option would be to use game streaming options such as Nvidia GeForce Now, Xbox Cloud Gaming, PS Remote Play and Luna. These game streaming services offer a large choice of games, provided you have sufficient connection speeds that should be covered by the 5G, LET and Wi-Fi 6E connections and you are in an area with sufficient reception.
So taking that into account, and the countless Android games available, the Galaxy S24 Ultra won’t be short of anything to play.
Chilling costs
The biggest downside to the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra is its high price: from $1,299 / £1,249 / AU$2,199, it costs more than two Steam Deck OLEDs or four Nintendo Switch OLEDs and double the price of a PlayStation 5 console. The only handheld that comes close to its price tag is the Ayaneo Kun, which is closer to a portable PC like the Steam Deck.
Of course, the Galaxy S24 Ultra can do a lot more than just gaming, with powerful cameras and a host of AI features (check out our Samsung Galaxy S24 AI FAQ) to justify the price, even for a flagship phone.
In short, the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra could be the best non-gaming gaming device that could become my next portable ‘console’ of choice. And if it does indeed deliver ray tracing and console-quality gaming, then it could be a signal for gaming handheld makers to up their… game.
Check out our hands-on for our first impressions of the new Galaxy phones Samsung Galaxy S24 reviewhands on Samsung Galaxy S24 Plus reviewand hands-on Galaxy S24 Ultra review.