The standard Samsung Galaxy S24 has caught my eye – and it could be a bargain too
Normally I’m a flagship phone guy. As Managing Editor of Mobile Computing at Ny Breaking, it is useful to have one of the latest high-end phones at hand for my work, and to provide you, dear readers, with several interesting insights and thoughtful analyses.
So with the unveiling of the Samsung Galaxy S24 series during the first Samsung Galaxy Unpacked of 2024, I thought the Galaxy S24 Ultra would have a stranglehold on my attention; it is the flagship of the new flagship phones and I am already using the Galaxy S23 Ultra. But this was not the case.
Rather, it was the smaller and less-specified Galaxy S24 that tickled the mobile tech synapse of my gray matter.
It’s been a while since I’ve used a standard Galaxy S-series phone; the last time I put my SIM card in one was in 2021 with the Galaxy S21, the phone that codified the common design language of its successive successors. I remember being a bit charmed by the nice combination of the phone’s design, sleek display, performance and camera capabilities.
However, the appeal of several other larger phones like the Galaxy Ultra, Folds, and several Pixel Pro phones made me move away from the Galaxy S21. So I had half forgotten how nice a more compact Galaxy phone is.
Samsung Galaxy S24: AI smarts in a sleek chassis
Before Unpacked, I had the chance to get my hands on the Galaxy S24. And a flood of nostalgia washed over me as I remembered how beautiful a phone with a 6.1-inch screen can be.
As you’ll see in Senior Phones editor Alex Walker-Todd’s hands-on Samsung Galaxy S24 review, the latest base model offers a lot more than just that lovely palm-sized screen. Trimmer bezels on the new standard Galaxy phone allow it to fit a 6.2-inch screen with the same total surface area as its predecessor. The screen is brighter too, with a top speed of 2,600 nits, and can now be reduced from 120Hz to just 1Hz to extend battery life – the Galaxy S23 could only go down to 48Hz. And there are additional upgrades too.
These won’t surprise you, but the battery is now 100mAh bigger, there’s a chip upgrade in the form of the Exynos 2400 or Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 – depending on which region of the world you live in – new Armor Aluminum takes care of a stronger telephone chassis where the telephone uses a unibody ‘One-Mass Design’. Moreover, there is a wide choice of Samsung Galaxy S24 colors to choose from.
All these small adjustments already provide a nice upgrade compared to the Galaxy S23, and even more so for people who doubt an upgrade from the Galaxy S22. But they’re not the main reason why the Galaxy S24 catches my attention.
All the AI-powered smarts that the Galaxy S24 Ultra has also come to the Galaxy S24 and Galaxy S24 Plus. That means access to live translation and note-taking features, the powerful Generative Edit AI technology that lets users change the composition of a photo without Photoshop skills, and take advantage of suggested edits to fix a hastily taken photo and make it worthy of sharing. Even the handy Circle to Search feature that uses the S Pen of the Galaxy S24 Ultra can also be used on the Galaxy S24.
As an overall package, the Galaxy S4 has a plethora of upgrades over its predecessor and a slew of clever generative AI tools that could actually be useful in everyday phone use rather than nice to have. And it has all this for a starting price of $799 / £799 / AU$1,399.
That’s the same price (cheaper in Australia) as the $799 / £799 / AU$1,499 iPhone 15, which has one less rear camera, a 60Hz display, a smaller screen, an arguably less pleasant design and no generative AI tools.
So I think the Galaxy S24 is shaping up to be a bargain, especially since it doesn’t fall short that much compared to its Ultra stablemate. And if I were to buy one of the new Galaxy phones with my own money, I think I’d be more attracted to the Galaxy S24 than I expected.
We’ll still have to fully review the phone, but the early signs are promising, and I’d be surprised if the Galaxy S24 didn’t score highly on our best Android phones and in the overall best phones list.