How much better is the S24 Ultra vs. the S23 Ultra? We'll take you through the best features, downgrades, give you an in-depth look at the camera systems and the new Galaxy AI features to help you decide. Sponsored by Backblaze. Start your 15 day trial at https://backblaze.com/6monthslater
We’ll also take you through new features like Call Translations, Chat Assist, go through the display differences (which there are many!) between these two phones, the new Circle to Search and Generative Edit features, plus an in-depth camera comparison between the two camera systems.
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????️Timestamps:
0:00 - Exterior design differences
0:52 - Display differences
2:54 - Galaxy AI features
4:15 - Circle to Search with Google
4:30 - Generative Edit
4:40 - Backup your stuff with Backblaze
6:11 - Camera comparison
9:18 - Slow Motion AI
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All the products seen in this video were purchased by 6 Months Later. The channel has no relationship with Samsung. This video’s sponsor is Backblaze.
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#Samsung
#GalaxyAI
#S24Ultra
#Smartphone
I've spent well over the past 6 months using a
Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra, and now that the S24
Ultra is out, I'm going to break down what really
differentiates them and answer the question:
How much better is the S24 Ultra over the
S23? First, let's take a look at the design
of these two phones. Now, at first glance, they
look pretty similar, right? But look closer,
and you'll see Samsung actually made a ton
of changes to the design of this phone.
The most obvious one you'll likely notice
first is the material. It's now titanium,
very similar to what Apple used with their latest
iPhones. Now, if you're thinking great, Samsung
must have also improved the weight of the Ultra
like Apple did with their 15 Pro Max last year,
unfortunately, that is not the case. The S24
Ultra is just about as heavy as the S23. Now,
a larger change that Samsung made to the S24's
exterior design that's probably harder to pick
up on camera is with the display. Not only did
Samsung finally embrace a flat display with the
S24 Ultra, but they made some significant
improvements to this display as well. The
display now can go as bright as 2,600 nits,
which is way more than the 1,750 nits of the
S23 Ultra's display, and it is very noticeable
in direct sunlight; it's seriously bright.
Another improvement to the display that's
quite noticeable is the new anti-glare coating.
Samsung partnered with Corning to develop a
better glass material called Gorilla Armor.
It's four times more scratch-resistant and
three times better with drops. On their site,
Corning mentioned they worked significantly
to reduce the micro-scratches as well,
which Jerry Rig Everything did confirm
in his teardown of the phone. Samsung
also announced a new feature with this
display called Adaptive Color Tone,
which will automatically adjust the white balance
based on your ambient lighting conditions to make
the colors appear more natural. Also, look at
what happens when I slow down the frame rate
between the S23 and S24 Ultra's display panels.
What we're looking at here is the display rapidly
turning on and off. This display technology is
called Pulse Width Modulation, or PWM for short,
and even though you can't see the OLED panels do
this in normal use, your eyes can actually still
perceive this rapid movement if the frequency
of the PWM is low enough, which can cause all
sorts of problems for people like headaches,
dizziness, and more. With the S24 Ultra,
Samsung has increased their PWM to 492 HZ, up from
240 HZ in the S23 Ultra, and this hopefully should
improve the experience of looking at the display
for those sensitive to Pulse Width Modulation.
Some other smaller changes you'll notice when
holding both of these phones are that Samsung
now has two microphones at the top and a smaller
hole for the S Pen to be stored at the bottom.
All right, so those are a lot of the
things with the exterior of the phone,
but now let's talk about the software on
the inside. One of the biggest changes
Samsung brought to this year's S24 models
is what the company calls Galaxy AI. Now,
I know what you're thinking: oh gosh, what kind of
gimmicky useless features did Samsung market for
this Galaxy AI? But actually, the features
that make up Galaxy AI are pretty useful,
like Call Assist, which provides you real-time
voice translations while you're on a call with
someone who's speaking in another language.
Samsung also debuted a new interpreter mode,
which will translate in-person conversations
in real-time. And yes, all of this is processed
locally on the device. Galaxy AI also gets you
Chat Assist, which will help you translate text
messages into another language and even
help you rewrite the tone of a message,
which uses Google's new Gemini Nano on-device
model. Galaxy AI also powers Photomoji, which lets
you turn photos into emojis. It'll automatically
summarize your group messages in Android Auto
recap lectures and meetings with Transcript Assist
found in the native voice recorder app, and it can
even separate different speakers. Samsung Note
Assist can easily clean up your handwriting,
organize your thoughts, and summarize your notes
too. And then there's Circle the search. Look
how cool this is. It's a powerful new way to use
Google search across Android devices, where you
tap the bottom bar and then circle anything
that you see on the screen to search it. It
works in videos too and is pretty great. Samsung
also debuted a new competitor to Google's Magic
Editor called Generative Edit, which allows you
to move, reposition, or remove parts of an image.
Now, the last major difference between these
two phones is their camera system. And before we
talk about that, here's a quick message from this
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All right, next let's talk about the cameras.
There is actually quite a difference in the way
the S24 Ultra processes photos compared to the
S23 Ultra, which I was not expecting. Just look
at this photo. See how bright the background is,
but also there isn't a lot of contrast? All right,
now look at the S24 Ultra's version of this
photo. The background and part of the steeple
on the right side are illuminated, but the rest
is in shadow. It's much closer to what you'd get
out of a DSLR camera, not to mention closer to how
the steeple appeared in real life. This new photo
processing that comes with the S24 Series this
year is powered by what Samsung calls their Pro
Visual Engine. It powers a new suite of AI-powered
camera tools, some of which I've mentioned already
like the Generative Edit, and it'll help you
get better shots by improving noise performance,
color reproduction, and HDR, which stands for
High Dynamic Range Imaging. Overall, the images
produced by the S24 Ultra are slightly warmer and
have a more natural contrast across the board;
they just look a bit less processed compared to
what I get with the S23 Ultra. And for the first
time, Super HDR and video stabilization are
actually supported within the camera of the
Snapchat and Instagram apps. The S24 has upgraded
nightography capabilities thanks to the larger
pixel size of its main sensor compared to the
S23 Ultra, and that's shown in my experience
so far. There is noticeably better low-light
detail performance across the board with the
S24 and less noise smoothing going on. Though
when taking videos at night, I have noticed
instances where the S24 Ultra has a bit more noise
than the S23 Ultra with the main wide camera.
Now, one of the biggest changes Samsung made
to the S24 Ultra is removing the 10x Optical
that the S23 Ultra had and replacing it with
a 5x Optical, but one that has a 50-megapixel
sensor. This allows Samsung to still get about
the same 10x quality as they had before on the
S23 Ultra. I say about the same because there
are some instances where I've noticed the 10x
on the S24 Ultra is slightly worse than
the S23 Ultra. In videos like this video,
there's a bit of a stutter on the plane I'm
tracking, and I don't get the same effect
when using the 10x Optical on the S23 Ultra. The
S24 Ultra's 10x video is also slightly noisier,
probably due to that sensor crop. Image
stabilization is also slightly worse at 10x.
And when comparing the 5x on the S24 Ultra versus
the 23, well, it's not much of a competition. As
for selfies, they've looked pretty much
the same, though in low-light scenarios,
I do notice a bit more detail on my face with
the S24 Ultra. For video, the tendency to let
shadows be shadows also continues with the S24
Ultra footage. Its HDR is slightly better with
color accuracy, but the difference in video
quality aside from just the 5x versus 10x
Optical is less noticeable than the differences
in photo processing between the two phones.
Now, after you're done taking a video, the S24
Ultra does have one more new trick up its sleeve.
Watch what happens when I just hold down on a
video plane. It becomes a slow-motion video. Now,
I didn't take this video at 240 frames
a second or even 120 frames a second;
these videos are shot at 4K 60. But what Samsung
is doing is using AI to generate the missing
frames in order to make the video a slow-motion
video, which is insanely impressive, and actually,
it works really well. Though, yes, if you have a
subject like a bird flying behind tree branches,
for example, you can see the AI occasionally
screw up a bit when drawing where the bird
and limbs would be in those missing frames.
But still, this feature is really impressive.
So, that's what's new with the S24 Ultra and
what it does better than the S23 Ultra. There
are quite a few features that Samsung has added
that make it a pretty substantial upgrade over
the S23 Ultra. Now, this isn't a situation where
I'd say yes, you absolutely need to upgrade your
S23 Ultra to an S24 Ultra, but if you want to play
around with Samsung's new Galaxy AI features and
don't mind spending $600 to $700 after trading in
an S23 Ultra like I did, so far, I think you'll
be pretty happy with this phone. But I can't
give you my final verdict on the S24 Ultra yet;
that'll happen in my full 6 months later
review of the device out in July. Until then,
you can see more of my thoughts on the S23
Ultra in the 6 months later review I did of it,
as well as comparison videos. You can get to
those by clicking here. And then I've also
got comparison videos planned between the S24
Ultra, iPhone 15 Pro Max, and Pixel 8 Pro. So,
if you want to see those videos, make sure you're
subscribed to the channel and smash that like
button if you like this video. For 6 months
later, I'm Josh Teder. Thanks for watching.