Samsung Galaxy S24 Plus review.
If you want a proper flagship experience, you will get it here with probably the best Android skin out there. The camera, the design, the display, and the premium features all are there and work absolutely smoothly. But if you game on your smartphone or are a heavy user, this may not be the best smartphone for you.
So Samsung’s flagship series for 2024, the Galaxy S24 series has created a lot of buzz ever since the smartphones have been launched. However, the hero of the story (S24 Ultra) and the little one (S24) have taken up most of the attention. The middle child (S24 Plus), on the other hand, has been sitting in the back seat, which has been a bit unfair since for those wanting Samsung’s new AI smarts without sacrificing on the battery or their wallets.
The Samsung Galaxy S24 Plus shares everything with its smaller sibling, the Samsung Galaxy S24 Plus, apart from the screen and battery size. Yes, there is also the Rs 20,000 price difference that comes with the bigger S24 Plus but then again, battery and display size are two of the most important things for many users. So does the Samsung Galaxy S24 Plus justify the Rs 20,000 difference between itself and the Samsung Galaxy S24? Let’s find out.
The design of this year’s Galaxy S24 series, like every year, is an incremental update over last year’s design. Like we saw Samsung doing away with a camera module last year with the S23 series, this year the company has kept a similar look and feel, but with some minor changes. The biggest one is the completely flat frame. The Samsung Galaxy S24 Plus and the Galaxy S24 both have a completely flat frame, making these phones feel more like an iPhone than ever before.
Another change that I have noticed this time around are the bezels. The bezels on the Samsung Galaxy S24 Plus are much thinner as compared to the predecessor, giving the smartphone a more edge-to-edge look up front. Now, in terms of design there isn’t much to talk about since the smartphone looks quite similar to its predecessor.
Display is something Samsung always does great with. Samsung displays are said to be one of the best out there. With the Samsung Galaxy S24 series, Samsung has also brought a lot of new things with its smartphone displays. For example, the anti-reflective coating, or the new Corning Gorilla Glass Animal protection. There is new stuff both in terms of how the display looks and how rigid it would be. We also get one of the brightest display on any Samsung smartphone so far with a 2600 nits of claimed peak brightness, among other things.
So, on paper, this is a 6.7-inch FHD+ Dynamic AMOLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate and LTPO tech. And on the face of it, this is a smooth, crisp, and bright display that will never leave you asking for more. But what does our deeper testing tell us? I’ll show you.
Starting with the colour accuracy, the Samsung Galaxy S24 Plus showcased a brilliant average DeltaE of 1.5, meaning that there is only a marginal error of 1.5 in terms of how accurately this smartphone is displaying colours. For smartphones, an average DeltaE of 3 or under is considered good, so this is brilliant.
Coming to brightness, the Samsung Galaxy S24 Plus has up to 2,600 nits of peak brightness, but that’s not something you see at all times. This number is usually of the brightest 1 percent of the complete display. In real life, however, the Samsung Galaxy S24 Plus still showcased very good luminance, measuring at 632 nits under bright sunlight. Now, while the Samsung Galaxy S24 Plus will never have visibility issues under however bright conditions, the 632 nits number using a Lux Meter is a bit low as compared to competition. in the colour checker analysis, however, the Samsung Galaxy S24 Plus showcased a white luminance of 747 nits.
So the display, in the most typical Samsung fashion, is very good. We are getting a vibrant AMOLED panel, a very responsive 120Hz refresh rate with LTPO, a super bright panel and very accurate colours at the same time. Add to that, Samsung’s customization options like giving RGB sliders in colour profile settings and allowing users to pick any of the three preset resolutions.
Performance-wise, my expectations from the Samsung Galaxy S24 Plus weren’t great. This year, Samsung has brought back its Exynos chips in the vanilla models of the flagship S-series. The Samsung Galaxy S24 and Galaxy S24 Plus both come with an Exynos 2400 chipset paired with up to 12GB of RAM.
Now, on paper this looks fine. With a 4nm chip and sufficient RAM, users should be sorted in terms of power and performance. Even in synthetic benchmarks, the Samsung Galaxy S24 Plus holds its own among the competition. But in real life, the picture is slightly different. Now, the Samsung Galaxy S24 Plus is a good performer for users who have a rather light usage, not for heavy users.
This is one of the few smartphones I have reviewed with proper time. Which means this also gets to be my primary phone and during my day-to-day, it gave me some issues. While nothing major, gaming is not the Samsung Galaxy S24 Plus’ cup of tea. The smartphone, more often than not randomly just hangs while playing heavy games like Call of Duty Warzone or Battlegrounds Mobile India, which is a bit frustrating for a phone priced at close to Rs 1 lakh.
Further, at times, I also faced issues with in-app links not opening, or switching between apps takes a couple of seconds sometimes. While none of these are pressing issues and not persistent throughout all apps, at times I felt that the smartphone could have been more snappy in terms of opening and closing apps or switching between two.
The bigger issue with the Samsung Galaxy S24 Plus is heating. This device heats up a lot. Even during basic stuff like scrolling through Instagram or watching a video on YouTube, the Samsung Galaxy S24 Plus heated up. During charging or playing games, or even using the camera for a long period of time just makes the smartphone heat up to quite an extent. I measure the temperature to be about 48 degree celsius at one point – this was after charging the Samsung Galaxy S24 Plus wirelessly, which is very warm.
The battery of the Samsung Galaxy S24 Plus is also disappointing. The smartphone lasted a meagre 300 minutes (5 hours) in our video loop test and during day-to-day usage also, the backup is just not good. Pair that with the persistently bad stand-by times that Samsung’s smartphones are known for, this is quite a bad battery experience. The saving grace here is that Samsung has given 45W fast charging with the Plus variant this year so that is good.
Coming to the camera, this is something a lot of people will be very excited to find out about. Here, we are getting a triple rear camera setup with a primary 50-megapixel shooter, a 12-megapixel ultrawide angle lens, and a 10-megapixel telephoto shooter that enables 3x optical zoom.
The camera performance is as good as you’d expect from an Android flagship. The images are sharp, crisp, and have very good dynamic range. Be it any light conditions or even if you’re clicking photos against the light, the images from the primary shooter of the Samsung Galaxy S24 Plus are almost always quite nice.
The ultradwide angle shooter also clicks good photos and the best part is that the images are very similar to the results we get from the primary shooter.
Further, the telephoto lens is also great and given that we are getting 3x optical zoom, the 3x shots are sharp and there is no lack of detail.
Yes, like every Samsung flagship, the colour science here is more vibrant than true-to-life, but that is something that can be adjusted and many people actually prefer their photos to be more vibrant. Nevertheless, there is no lack of detail in photos from any of the three shooters.
The portraits are also nice. We don’t get 5x portraits like the elder sibling, Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, but here also the edge detection and background blur is kickass, and the Samsung Galaxy S24 Plus doesn’t lose any detail on the subject. Best thing about the portraits is that even after clicking the photos, users can adjust the aperture level and focus point on their portrait shots.
So that was the Samsung Galaxy S24 Plus. The middle child in the new Galaxy S24 series which probably garnered the least amount of attention with this year’s AI-charged flagship series from Samsung.
The Galaxy S24 Plus is a great flagship for those who want a simple but big smartphone. The only drawbacks being the battery and performance. While this year Samsung has given 45W fast charging with the Samsung Galaxy S24 Plus, it still seems meager as compared to what some of the competitors are offering.
So yes. If you want a proper flagship experience, you will get it here with probably the best Android skin out there. The camera, the design, the display, and the premium features all are there and work absolutely smoothly. But if you game on your smartphone or are a heavy user, the Samsung Galaxy S24 Plus may not be the best smartphone for you.
Now, while the issues with performance and battery are there, I would still use the Samsung Galaxy S24 Plus as my primary phone for some time now. Why? Because firstly, I don’t play a lot of games on my primary smartphone so the performance requirement is not as great. Secondly, Samsung’s OneUI is my favourite Android skin. It is just easy to use and very streamlined as compared to any other Android skin. Further, there are other conveniences like having Samsung Pay (Samsung Wallet now) or wireless charging, or a decent enough camera to be able to click good photos with.
