Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra review
One UI 6.1 with Galaxy AI
Samsung's S24 family is launching with Samsung's latest One UI 6.1 on top of Google's latest Android 14. Despite the fairly small ".1" numbering update, One UI 6.1 brings some new stuff to the table - most notably Galaxy AI features, which we hope will eventually trickle down to other Galaxy models as well.
As part of its green initiative, Samsung is quite ambitious with the S24 generation, offering the remarkable seven years of OS and One UI updates and security patches. That's up from four years of OS updates and five years of security patches on the previous S23 flagship generation.
The Galaxy S24 devices can eventually expect to end their support cycle running Android 21, whatever that ends up being called. Hopefully, many S24 family devices will stay out of landfills for much longer, perhaps with a mid-cycle battery replacement. Here's hoping.
Every S24 model essentially has the same software functionality in its roster, including the new AI. The only major software difference stems from including the S Pen in the Ultra. As has been the case for several generations of S Pen-equipped Galaxies, the stylus here is an active one, and it has a battery inside as well as a gyro, an accelerometer and Bluetooth connectivity for communicating with the phone without immediate proximity. This enables Air actions - a set of gestures that can execute actions in various apps, including the Gallery and browsers (Samsung's own, and also Chrome), but perhaps most usefully - the Camera.
Other than that, the S Pen has all of the functionality users have come to expect. You can scribble, draw, and use handwriting recognition in about 100 languages, or at least that's how many options there are in the menu.
There isn't anything new about the S Pen this generation, which was also the case with the S23 generation. Not that the S Pen has been lacking it in the past - it's just that things should all be familiar.
You can read more about the new One UI 6.1 features in our dedicated One UI 6.1 review.
Performance and benchmarks
The Galaxy S24 and S24+ dual chipset arrangement does not affect the S24 Ultra. No matter where you get your unit, it will have the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset by Qualcomm. The chip is made on a 4nm TSMC N4P manufacturing node.
Samsung has a customized version of the chipset yet again, with a slightly higher-clocked prime core. The CPU config, as reported by the device, includes one prime Cortex X4 core, clocked at 3.4 GHz, three Cortex-A720 ones, working at up to 3.15 GHz, another two Cortex-A720 ones working at 2.96 GHz and finally two Cortex-A520 cores working at up to 2.27 GHz according to official specs and 2.26 GHz as per the phone's reporting. There's not much of a difference, but it's worth noting.
There is an Adreno 750 in the GPU department, clocked at up to 1,000MHz. It is rated for about the same performance as the Xclipse 940 GPU inside the Exynos 2400 and the Immortalis-G720 MC12 inside the MediaTek Dimensity 9300.
The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 is paired with quad-channel 4,800 MHz LPDDR5X RAM, 12GB of it across all of the storage tiers. Storage options include 256GB, 512GB and 1TB, all with UFS 4.0 flash chips.
Let's kick things off with some CPU benchmarks and GeekBench. Devices with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 span the entire range of the chart, including the top where we would expect them, as well as near the bottom of it. It's an interesting development, but one that comes down to how these devices have their performance profiles tuned.
Both the ROG Phone 8 Pro and OnePlus 12 tend to go for power-saving in their default performance profile. Anyway, the Galaxy S24 Ultra spreads its wings nicely and pretty much squeezes the most it can from the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. Let's not forget that this is the special "for Galaxy" variant of the chipset with a slightly higher prime core clock. This is shown by the higher scores in single and multi-core tests compared to the Realme GT5 Pro, rocking the regular Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 variant.
GeekBench 6
- Multi-core
- Single-core
vivo X100
vivo X100 Pro
iPhone 15 Pro Max
iPhone 15 Pro
Galaxy S24 Ultra
Galaxy S24+
Realme GT5 Pro
Some slight variances in score aside, we can see that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy inside the Galaxy S24 Ultra basically performs the same or slightly better than Samsung's Exynos 2400 in CPU tasks. The MediaTek Dimensity 9300 has a bit of a lead in all-core workload scenarios but not so in single-core scenarios. Apple and its A16 and A17 Pro chips remain at the top of the single-core food chain.
AnTuTu is a compound benchmark that has GPU tests and also takes into account things like memory speed. The Galaxy S24 Ultra is positioned pretty much where we would expect, amid the rest of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 crowd. It's hard to say whether the extra 100Mhz prime core clock speed is helping the particular SM8650-AC variant of the chipset all that much in this specific set of tests.
Once again, we see that Samsung's new Exynos 2400 inside the Galaxy S24 and S24+ is not far behind in score, and definitely not by a margin that would be noticeable in real-world use.
AnTuTu
- v9
- v10
vivo X100 Pro
vivo X100
Galaxy S24 Ultra
ROG Phone 8 Pro
Asus Zenfone 10
Oppo Find X6 Pro
Galaxy S24+
Finally, we have GPU testing and 3DMark. In case you were wondering, we did test the S24 Ultra both at its default FHD+ and its maximum QHD+ resolution. But, as expected, since 3DMark tests employ off-screen rendering, there was no difference in results. The Galaxy S24 Ultra and its Adreno 750 basically led the pack in most tests, though blows were traded with the Immortalis-G720 MC12 inside the MediaTek Dimensity 9300.
Regarding traditional raster rendering, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy does seem to hold a small but noticeable lead over the Exynos 2400 and its Xclipse 940 GPU. Once we step up to the more difficult Solar Bay test, however, with its ray tracing graphics, the Exynos 2400 quickly makes up lost ground. Make of that what you will.
3DMark (offscreen)
- Wild Life (1440p)
- Wild Life Extreme (2160p)
- Solar Bay (1440p)
Galaxy S24 Ultra
OnePlus 12
Realme GT5 Pro
vivo X100
vivo X100 Pro
Galaxy S24
Galaxy S24+
Samsung upgraded its vapor chamber cooling solutions across the S24 lineup. Most notably, the S24 Ultra has a chamber 1.9x the size of the one inside the S23 Ultra. That, however, seems to be done to account for the increased heat production by the new chipsets rather than better sustained performance.
The S24 Ultra exhibited massive thermal throttling in our testing and lost a huge chunk of its maximum performance over time, a whopping 53% in 3DMark. This is notably worse than both the S24+ and the S24, as well as the S23 Ultra. While you could call this an okay showing, it's still more on the disappointing end of things.
CPU-based throttling isn't quite as bad (35% performance loss), but is still far from ideal. The only potential positive observation to make is that the surface of the phone never got too hot or uncomfortable to hold, even after an hour-long torture test.
Thermal throttling
Reader comments
- Anonymous
- 18 Dec 2024
- gn2
Does anyone know if it’s possible to use a side bar AOD again with the UI 7 update?
- Anonymous
- 15 Dec 2024
- AAX
At least S24U with flat screen makes it much more easy to apply a screen protector without it looking bad. Very big advantage of a flat screen. On the other hand, the curved display looks more premium. So it had its advantages and disadvantages...