2024-02-04 10:06:28
For several years now we have been complaining that there are no innovations in the smartphone industry. Apart from the folding screens, we haven’t really seen a change in the capabilities of our smartphones and also the folding screens are still considered niche.
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The AI revolution (or artificial intelligence) managed to shake the world in 2023, mainly thanks to the chatbot – ChatGPT capable of producing: texts, images and music. Now this revolution is coming to smartphones and Samsung is the first to bring AI to its products.
The Galaxy S24 series announced in January of this year includes three devices, with the most advanced model being the Galaxy S24 Ultra.
Design: Rectangular Galaxy with titanium
At first glance, the S24 Ultra is very similar to the model from last year, but if you look a little deeper into the design you will see the differences. The screen itself no longer slides to the sides, it comes flat this time. Another thing, the frame itself is made for the first time in a Samsung device from titanium, instead of aluminum, which is a stronger material.
Speaking of durability, the glass is Corning’s Gorilla Armor type, which should keep the screen at one level or another. The glass on the back of the device is also Gorilla Glass. Of course, there is still water and dust resistance to the IP68 standard, which means immersion in water up to a depth of 1.5 meters for 30 minutes.
In general, this is a smartphone that looks really good, especially in the gray-silver color, when together with the titanium frame you get a luxurious look. On the other hand, it is still a large smartphone that weighs quite a bit – 232 grams.
Galaxy S24 Ultra (Photo: Tzachi Hoffman)
Screen: Excellent image with strong lighting (very)
The 6.8-inch screen is large and looks excellent, the colors are very rich and deep, almost standing out, when together with the high definition and the high image refresh rate (120 Hz), you get a smooth movement that is fun to look at. The image refresh rate is adaptive, which means that it knows how to adjust itself to the feature being used, so that at the appropriate time it goes down and saves battery.
This year Samsung improved the lighting intensity which was already strong in the previous generation (1760 nits), now it is 2600 nits which come to enable viewing the monitor even in extremely strong direct sunlight.
Interface: The AI changes the experience
The operating system here is Android 14 on which the Samsung One UI 6.1 interface is dressed, the AI capabilities that Samsung has added here make this device different from other smartphones. It is worth noting that while some of the capabilities work in Hebrew or do not require Hebrew (as in the camera), in other parts we suffer from the language limitation. Let’s hope that later this will change.
Circle to Search is an ability that allows, while watching videos or photos, to circle an object with your finger or pen and this will give information about it. For example, when you see a photo of a friend and want to know where you can buy the shirt or you want to know what the building is in the background of the photo. This option works great and allows you to change the search experience.
In the field of reading, you go in to read an article and you don’t have the strength to read the whole thing? Clicking on the star icon in Samsung’s browser will bring you a short summary of it in Hebrew. There is also an option to translate articles from one language to another, but this does not include Hebrew. Yes, there is support here for Spanish, Polish, French, German and more.
For writing, there is an assistant that knows how to improve the written text, including grammar, this ability works in Hebrew and is available through the Samsung keyboard. It allows you to change the wording to a more polite, professional one and even with emojis. For users writing in English, this feature helps with English grammar, which is a great ability for people sending professional emails.
Samsung’s AI also makes it possible to talk on the phone with a person in another language (not Hebrew). For example, during a conversation with a person who speaks French, his speech will be translated on your side in real time into English, so that you can understand what he is saying. The translation can be in voice or text. For some reason this option does not work by default, you need to look for a feature called “live translation” in the settings and activate it.
Samsung also integrated the AI into its “recorder”, so if you record a conversation in English (or other supported languages), you can get a transcript and a summary of it, so you don’t have to listen or read the entire transcript. As far as AI in the camera is concerned, the expansion follows.
Before and after the editing (photo: Tzachi Hoffman)
Hardware: works smoothly with a recent processor
It is not surprising that this is a smartphone with powerful hardware that allows it to work smoothly. The processor here is Qualcomm’s new generation – Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 with 12 gigabytes of working memory (RAM). The fingerprint sensor located under the screen (Ultrasonic technology) responds well, there is support for UWB technology which is used to identify the location of nearby objects, for example, in the Galaxy SmartTag 2 (and there are also vehicles that already use it to open the door), WiFi 7 support which we hope that in the future we will see widespread use of Internet networks in Israel and of course also space for two SIM cards, in addition to eSIM (perhaps someday the major cellular operators in Israel will allow us to enjoy this technology).
In the area of audio, we get support for the latest Bluetooth 5.3, alongside the LE device that some manufacturers of wireless headphones have begun to support (the device offers better audio quality, along with lower battery consumption) and good stereo speakers.
Galaxy S24 Ultra (Photo: Tzachi Hoffman)
Camera: Galaxy S24 Ultra – a very successful camera, but its AI is more interesting
The camera comes with four sensors: main 200 megapixel, wide – 12 megapixel (120 degrees), telephoto – 50 megapixel with double optical zoom 5 and another telephoto sensor with a 10 megapixel sensor and double optical zoom 3. The selfie camera comes with a sensor 12 mega pixel.
The camera itself is excellent, whether it’s in daylight photos with rich colors, lots of detail and high definition to bokeh/portrait shots where the background looks blurry from behind. Even photos in closed places came out in good quality and even photos with 5x optical zoom maintained the quality. In night mode with street lighting I got a relatively clean image with lots of lighting. Selfies were fine, only the face was a little noisy.
What’s interesting about the camera are the editing capabilities you get thanks to the AI. This is about generative editing capabilities, after taking the picture you can move an object, say the child from place to place within the picture, when the software will know how to fill in the lack created in it as a result of moving the object. It works great and allows you to really play with the images, move people from one side to the other and make them disappear. In case the software has trouble creating a clean background that looks like the original, it inserts another object, which should match, in the picture I removed a huge object that was on a table and she put a small flower pot in its place.
Galaxy S24 Ultra (Photo: Tzachi Hoffman)
Battery: Strong battery, but charging is not fast enough
The Ultra’s battery has no difficulty working a full and intensive day, when I have 20% energy left from 7 am to 11:30 pm. The screen time was long: 4 hours and 50 minutes. The wired charging that you get here is not as fast as that of the big Chinese manufacturers, it is only 45 watts and there is also no charger inside the kit. Wireless charging is only 15 watts and there is reverse charging (4.5 watts), for charging headphones and watches from the back of the smartphone.
Price: NIS 5,050 for the 256 GB version
Bottom line, Samsung has integrated AI capabilities into almost every important feature of the Galaxy S24 Ultra. Whether it is photo editing capabilities that make complex tasks of a graphic artist simple, through English grammar correction to article summaries or voice recording transcriptions (and even its summary in English). The AI here is not a gimmick, it is a capability that makes this smartphone a better product than the competition. Other than that, it’s still a smartphone with a great looking screen, strong hardware, a battery that lasts a long time and an excellent camera.
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