Price: Samsung Galaxy S24: Rs 79,999; Galaxy S24+: Rs 99,999
While it’s customary for cutting-edge features to be reserved solely for flagship smartphones, Samsung has broken away from this tradition by extending its AI capabilities beyond the confines of the Galaxy S24 Ultra. Despite the S24 Ultra’s impressive array of premium features, including a titanium frame, SPen stylus, and top-notch camera, the spotlight isn’t solely on this model when it comes to artificial intelligence (AI) innovations. Instead, the AI goodies are also available on the younger siblings, the Galaxy S24 and Galaxy S24+, ensuring that these models too partake in the technological advancements and excitement.
It might sound peculiar, but I quickly became enamoured with the “circle to search” feature on the S24 Ultra, and I was delighted to find it available on the S24 and S24+ models as well. While other smartphones offer similar functionalities, such as Apple’s option to select text and search the web, I found the functionality on the Galaxy S24 series to be remarkably intuitive. This involved long pressing the home button and circling the word or image, and voila! The search results were instantly overlayed, without having to switch between the multiple apps. This feature remains consistent regardless of the application I’m using, whether it’s the gallery, web browser, Netflix, or any other. The true value shines through, especially when expressing a search query verbally becomes challenging. Another feature that came handy was the automatically generated transcript from voice recording. Although not 100% accurate but it still came handy while transcribing interviews.
Even though Samsung has continued with the same camera hardware for the S24 and S24+, the AI features take the photography experience to the next level. Without going overboard on the megapixel counts, it packs in a 50MP wide-angle, 12MP ultrawide and 10MP telephoto. The cameras on both devices excel at capturing details and rendering colours accurately. With summer approaching, the early morning and evening skies present stunning shades of yellow, orange, and pink, and both phones excel at capturing this vibrant colour palette. They also do justice to the bright hues of purple petunias and red poppy flowers. The gallery presents with seamless editing options including eraser where I was able to get rid of the unwanted objects and humans from the image just by circling. Overall, the images captured are Instagram-ready, boasting vibrant colour reproduction and perfect exposure. Portrait shots taken with these phones are particularly impressive, exhibiting professional-grade quality as they adeptly identify edges and blur the background. Overall, the colours are slightly oversaturated compared to the shots captured from iPhone, and it is a personal choice of what one prefers. Although the low-light imaging falls short but that’s the problem with most phones in the market. The front facing camera captures decent selfies too.
In today’s world, where smartphones play a central role in our daily tasks, many users prioritize devices that are comfortable to hold. The Galaxy S24 and S24+ excel in this aspect. Despite featuring large displays—6.2 inches on the S24 and 6.7 inches on the S24+—their ergonomic design with flat edges ensures that they don’t dig into the hands like many rectangular phones tend to do. Samsung has opted for a 2340 x 1080 (FHD+) display for the S24 and a 3120 x 1440 (Quad HD+) resolution AMOLED display for the S24+. Both devices boast a peak brightness of 2600 nits, resulting in excellent sunlight legibility. These display panels are vibrant and engaging, making activities like streaming movies, playing games, and reading e-books a pleasure. To safeguard against accidental damage, Samsung has incorporated Gorilla Glass Victus 2 and IP68 protection into both devices, providing users with added peace of mind.
While the S24 and S24+ boast premium hardware and provide access to AI features, one aspect that may not be well-received by many users is Samsung’s decision to utilize the Exynos chip to power these devices, rather than the Qualcomm Snapdragon processor. That’s also the case in India and several other countries. Speaking about performance, the Exynos chip leaves little to complain about. It effortlessly manages everyday tasks, from browsing on the Chrome browser to utilizing the AI circle to search feature, engaging in photography and AI image editing, extensive language translation, recording transcripts, handling emails, and even gaming. While I didn’t experience any lag, I did notice that the devices tended to get warmer after extended gaming sessions, although this wasn’t the case when using AI features.
The phones offer fairly decent battery backup. The S24+ with its 4900 mAh battery easily lasted me a day, with approximately 20% charge remaining, whereas the S24, equipped with a 4000 mAh battery, just managed to survive the day. One area where Samsung could take a cue from the competition is in implementing support for Super fast charging. Unlike some competitors’ devices, which conveniently juice up in less than an hour, these two phones fall short in this regard. The S24+ supports 45W charging, while the S24 supports 25W. Additionally, it’s worth noting that there is no charging adapter included in the box, only cables.
Overall, both the Galaxy S24 and S24+ are seasoned Android smartphones with premium features topped with some AI tech that enhances the overall experience.