Samsung Galaxy S24 review: Well-packaged compact premium phone

Samsung's latest premium Galaxy S24 excels in all key aspects such as premium build quality, display, performance, and photography.

Recently, Samsung rolled out its premium Galaxy S24 series in India. It comes in three variants—Galaxy S24, S24 Plus and S24 Ultra.

The Galaxy S24 is the smallest of the three S24 series models. The Galaxy S24 is available in two configurations—8GB RAM + 256GB and 8GB RAM + 512GB storage—for Rs 79,999 and Rs 89,999, respectively.

The company is offering the device in three colours--amber yellow, cobalt violet, and onyx black.

I received the amber yellow (8GB RAM + 256GB storage) variant for the review. I used it for a little over a week and here are my thoughts on Samsung's latest premium Android phone.

Design, build and quality

The Samsung Galaxy S24 retains the design language of its predecessor. When placed side-by-side with the S23, people will have a hard time distinguishing the two. It flaunts signature metal-ringed camera islands at the back.

Samsung Galaxy S24 series.

On the front, it has a punch-hole display design with a tiny camera at the top.

However, the new phone comes with improved build quality and also thinner bezels with a 90.9 per cent screen-to-body ratio.

The Galaxy S24 features an Armour Aluminium (2nd Gen) frame and an IP68 certification. It is capable of surviving accidental drops not just on hard surfaces but also in water bodies for up to 1.5 metres (approx. five feet) depth for close to 30 minutes.

Also, the device is well protected against scratches when kept in backpacks or pockets. The company has incorporated Corning's Gorilla Glass Victus 2 on both the back and front panels.

Samsung Galaxy S24 series.

The Galaxy S24 sports a 6.2-inch full HD + Dynamic AMOLED 2X Display. It is bright and can support variable refresh rates (1~120Hz). Depending on the apps, the device can automatically change the refresh rate and this helps in conserving battery life.

It also comes with the Vision Booster feature that enables the display to automatically adjust brightness according to the environment. If the device's sensor notices there is direct sunlight, it boosts the brightness to the max (2600 nits) and when indoors, it lowers the brightness.

There is also an eye comfort shield, which reduces the blue light emission and lessens the strain on the eyes at night and in low-lit rooms.

The in-screen fingerprint sensors work smoothly as long as the finger is dry and clean.

Performance

The new Galaxy S24 houses Samsung's Exynos 2400 deca-core processor.

[Note: In global markets, all the three Galaxy S24 models come with Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. In India, only the S24 Ultra feature the Qualcomm chipset and the other two—S24 and 24 Plus—feature the aforementioned Samsung Exynos chipset]

The Exynos 2400 chipset can clock a peak CPU speed of 3.21 GHz. It does well in performing day-to-day tasks and even gaming too. It waltzes through the day smoothly without any pressing issues, such as lags.

Samsung Galaxy S24's CPU and GPU performance scores on Geekbench 6.0 app. 

However, I did not notice that the Galaxy S24 gets warmer a bit faster when running performance benchmarking apps.

The warming issue is not that overwhelming, as it is normal for phones with metal and glass to exhibit such behaviour when pushed to the limit with tasks such as 4K video recording and playing graphics-heavy games when solely dependent on cellular connection. It is just that it is not that efficient in terms of heat dissipation compared to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3-powered Galaxy S24 Ultra.

The USP of the Galaxy S24 series is the Galaxy AI feature. It is powered by Google's generative Artificial Intelligence (gen AI) Gemini Large Language Models (LLM)—Nano and Pro.

Depending on the complexity of the task, it switches between Nano and Pro. For tasks that don't need an internet connection, the Galaxy AI relies on Gemini Nano. And those that require cloud connectivity, it switches to Gemini Pro.

Like the Galaxy S24 Ultra, it does a fantastic job with transcribing English and Hindi languages. But, it only works well for short audio clips.

With other tasks such as Circle to Search, creating summaries of the notes, and Generative Edit (including creating custom wallpapers and themes with text prompts), the phone manages to perform smoothly.

Overall, the Galaxy AI features are satisfactory at best. However, Samsung has a lot of potential to further improve the user experience on smartphones.

The Galaxy S24 comes with a 4,000mAh battery. It consistently delivered a full day's battery life under normal usage. However, it should be noted that when the phone is fully dependent on a cellular network for Internet browsing, scrolling on social media platforms, and streaming content on OTT platforms, there is faster draining of the battery. On Wi-Fi, the draining is noticeably slower.

The interesting thing about the S24 is that it has full control over apps that run in the background. It minimises the unnecessary use of battery when the phone is not used by the owner. It barely drops a few points during the night.

The phone supports 25W wired charging speed. It can power up from zero to 50 per cent in under 30 minutes. It can reach the 100 per cent mark in little over an hour. The Samsung phone also supports 15W wireless charging speed and 4.5W reverse wireless charging through the PowerShare feature.

Users can just go to Settings >> Battery >> scroll down >> enable Wireless power sharing feature to make use of these features.

The Galaxy S24 runs on the Android 14-based One UI 6.1 software. It is clean and easy to navigate through the phone's settings to find and enable/disable a feature. Also, the phone comes pre-loaded with productivity applications such as Microsoft 365, OneDrive, LinkedIn and Outlook. The rest are core Google apps such as Gmail, YouTube and Samsung's proprietary apps such as SmartThings (to control smart home gadgets), voice recorder, Wearable (to connect to Samsung earphones and watches), Health apps, Wallet and more.

The extra apps don't consume too much storage, as there is more than 220GB of storage available for users. This is more than enough to store thousands of images/videos, and also install all your favourite apps without any anxiety about running out of storage anytime soon.

Further, Samsung has confirmed that the Galaxy S24 series will get seven years of Android OS and security software support. Only Google offers such a long period of software support for the Pixel 8 series.

This initiative will help Samsung to build strong loyalty among customers. But, it should also take care of offering spare parts such as battery replacements, display and other components for S24 service, for at least up to 2031. If this aspect is not covered, the long software support won't serve any purpose.

Photography

The new Galaxy S24 houses a triple-camera module—a main 12MP ultra-wide camera (f/2.2, 120-degree Field-Of-View 120) + 50MP wide camera (with OIS: Optical Image Stabilisation, f/1.8, 85-degree FOV) + 10MP telephoto camera (with 3x Optical Zoom, f/2.4, 36-degree FOV) with LED flash.

Samsung Galaxy S24 camera sample. 

Though the Galaxy S24 is a watered-down version of the S24 Ultra, it does an amazing job of capturing colourful and detailed pictures in natural sunlight.

However, it artificially boosts the colours of the subjects such as flowers. But, I won't complain as they look visually appealing on the phone's screen than what they appear through our eyes.

In controlled light conditions indoors, the Samsung phone manages to get good-quality photos.

Samsung Galaxy S24 camera sample.

Even at night, the phone manages to get crisp photos. As you can see, it does well on balancing the light coming from the street lamps, and the decorative lights as well. Also, it doesn't artificially brighten the sky and make the photo look like it was taken in the evening.

Samsung Galaxy S24 camera sample with night mode on.

With ultra-wide mode, the Galaxy S24 can cover a wide area. Unlike other phones, it doesn't artificially try to bend structures inwards to accommodate more objects in the scene.

It supports up to 30X zoom. But, beyond 10X, the images get grainy and lose quality.

It can record 8K videos. The quality is really good. Even with a shaky hand, the phone manages to capture stable videos without any noticeable issues.

Samsung Galaxy S24 camera sample with portrait mode.

On the front, it houses a 12MP front camera (with f/2.2, 80-degree FOV). It takes brilliant selfies in light conditions.

It can record videos up to 4K videos and they are really good.

Final thoughts

Samsung's premium Galaxy S24 excels in all key aspects such as premium build quality, display, performance, and photography.

Samsung Galaxy S24.

Also, despite the small form factor, the device is well-optimised to offer a full day's battery life under normal usage.

Further, the Google Gemini-powered Galaxy AI works well in most of the tasks, but as noted above, there is room for improvement.

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