Samsung has kick-started its journey for 2024 with the Samsung Galaxy S24 series. The new Samsung Galaxy S24, Galaxy S24 Plus, and the Galaxy S24 Ultra come with upgrades across the board with a major focus on AI. Samsung has said that this is the “first AI smartphone” meaning that there are AI-based features that we have never seen before. Well, kind of. Let us take a look at what’s new with the new Samsung Galaxy S24 series and dive into the new AI features that the smartphones come with. What is, what could have been, and what I can’t wait to try out!
Samsung Galaxy S24 first impressions: AI galore
It is no secret that AI is the thing this year for the Samsung flagship series. But just how good or how new is everything that Samsung has unveiled? Well, let’s just say that it’s something we have seen before but packaged in a way that more people will use it for their benefit. With the Samsung Galaxy S24 series, Samsung aims to achieve what Google aimed to achieve with the Google Pixel smartphones.
For example, there is the magic editor, which we have been seeing in the past two Google Pixel generations, but now comes with the Samsung Galaxy S24 series and is not limited to a certain set of users or subscribers. Similarly, the call translation and transcription features which were first introduced in Google Pixel smartphones are now here, but in a better and more usable form.
While Google did bring live translation and transcription on their Pixel smartphones, the way Samsung is doing it in real-time over calls and texts just makes it easier for people to make use of. For this, yes we’ll have to go into the phone app settings and download language packs for each language, but the AI in the phone app will give you both options to translate stuff in real time over both audio and text. Now, this isn’t the first time we are hearing about it and I didn’t get the chance to go to San Jose and try it out myself, but from every report I’ve read or YouTube video I’ve watched, it is quite fast. How accurate? Well we’ll have to wait for my full review to find out.
For photos, we get the automatic enhancing and remastering, the object eraser – which was there before the S24 series as well, without any AI in the Samsung Gallery app. As I’ve already mentioned, there is also the magic editor on the Samsung Galaxy S24 series, which is the same as the one on Google Pixel, allowing us to change and remove things, make them bigger, move them within the frame, and the likes. From what I have heard so far, this magic editor works in a better, less intrusive way than that of the pixel.
And then of course there is the circle, scribble, or tap to search feature which allows users to search for things without moving from their current screen. Just a long press on the home button or the gesture bar will open this feature and you can easily circle, scribble, or tap on things to search for them on Google. Pretty neat. This also is not something we have seen for the first time. I remember Google once having a feature where we could tap on things to just search for them, but well, Samsung is making it easier and more intuitive for users.
So overall, while there are a lot of AI-based features, a lot of them aren’t so new that we haven’t seen anything like it before. However, with the Samsung Galaxy S24 series, the packaging of these AI features looks much more neat and the integration is much better. Furthermore, you may have noticed that most of these features are inspired from Google. For this, Samsung has actually worked with Google to bring all these AI enhancements to the Galaxy S24 series. The partnership between the two brands has now gone ahead where Google and Samsung have worked together to make the Samsung Galaxy S24 series the “first AI phones.”
Samsung Galaxy S24 series first impressions: Camera
Coming to cameras, this will confuse most people. First, let’s talk about the big one, the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra. This year, we get a primary 200-megapixel shooter, a 50-megapixel telephoto shooter, a 12-megapixel ultra-wide angle lens, and another 10-megapixel telephoto shooter. Now, the confusing part here is that at a time every other brand is going for a periscope telephoto shooter, Samsung chose to go back to a 5X telephoto shooter with a 50MP lens.
Why is that? Well, firstly the new 50MP telephoto shooter can now shoot 8K videos in full 5X zoom, which makes the Galaxy S24 Ultra the first smartphone to do so. Furthermore, the 10X optical zoom was being captured with a 10-megapixel lens. With a 50MP lens, Samsung can actually crop the frame and offer a 10X digital zoom, while still maintaining the level of optical zoom quality. With the new AI enhancements, it is quite believable that the quality will match that of last year’s 10X optical zoom.
For the vanilla Galaxy S24 and Samsung Galaxy S24 Plus, the camera on paper remains the same. We get a 50-megapixel primary shooter, 12-megapixel ultra-wide angle lens, and a 10-megapixel telephoto shooter for both the vanilla models. This is the same as the camera setup on last year’s Samsung Galaxy S23 and S23 Plus.
Samsung Galaxy S24 first impressions: Other stuff
Apart from the awesome AI and camera changes, there are other things to focus on, but not enough to write a whole subheading for. For example, Samsung is now the second company to promise 7 years of OS updates, thanks to the deeper collaboration with Google. Although it is tough to imagine an Android phone lasting 7 years, but it’s good to hear.
There is also the Exynos 2400 chip for the vanilla Samsung Galaxy S24 and Galaxy S24 Plus. The Exynos makes a comeback for the flagship series after two years in India. While it is subject to testing as to just how good (or bad) this new Exynos 2400 chip is, Samsung is promising quite a lot. Furthermore, there are a few of these new AI features that are limited to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip, so the Exynos 2400 also limits the Samsung Galaxy S24 and Galaxy S24 Plus a bit when it comes to the AI features.
Finally, the display. This is also the brightest display we are seeing on Samsung’s flagship series. All three – the Samsung Galaxy S24, Galaxy S24 Plus, and the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra have the same 2,600 nits peak brightness, which is great to see in terms of both the improvement and the unified brightness on all three models.
Now, a lot of these things I talked about are subject to testing but while I wait to get my hands on the Samsung Galaxy S24 series, this article highlights what I thought about these new AI features and the upgrades that we have seen this year with the Samsung Galaxy S24 series. As always, review of these smartphones will soon be live on this space so keep following Digit for all your tech content.
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