Ever wish you could have the most phone? For several years running, Samsung’s S-series Ultra has been that device, and the company is going just as big with the Ultra for 2024. The Galaxy S24 Ultra is here with a new titanium finish, lots of AI tools, and a higher starting price: $1,299, up from an already high $1,199. The other big change up front is the display. The S24 Ultra comes with a 6.8-inch 1440p display, just like the S23 Ultra, but it finally ditches the curved edges inherited from the Note series in favor of a flat screen.
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TechTranscript
00:00 Samsung is making no secret that this year's Unpacked is all about AI. You really can't miss
00:05 it. But what does that mean when every gadget in 2024 has some kind of AI on it? Meet the S24,
00:11 the S24 Plus, and S24 Ultra. They look a lot like last year's devices, with a few exceptions and
00:19 one higher price tag. More on that in a bit. But the main changes are all under the hood.
00:24 All three phones get the same AI features, and that includes a new live transcription in the
00:29 recorder app and the ability to translate your chats into a different language. You can even
00:35 have AI help you tailor your message to a certain tone, like more professional or more chatty.
00:41 Thanks, AI. There's also something called Circle to Google, and that's available everywhere in the
00:47 phone. You just pull down the Home button and you circle the thing you want to search for.
00:52 It'll pull up a page of Google results and tell you what you're looking at. It's really handy,
00:57 actually. But of course, there's a ton of photo and video editing tools you can use,
01:02 now powered by generative AI. And some of them look a lot like what the Pixel 8 Pro is capable
01:08 of. You just circle your subject and you can take them out of the frame or resize them and move
01:14 them around. Not always the most convincing. Sometimes it totally invents something that
01:19 looks a little wonky, but it's a lot of fun to play with and could be really useful. And if
01:24 you're someone like me who always takes crooked photos, there's a new way to adjust the horizon
01:30 and have generative AI fill in the edges rather than punching in. That's really helpful.
01:34 One of the coolest features we saw was the ability to turn any video you've taken from any camera
01:41 into a slow motion video. It doesn't matter whether you shot it at 30 frames per second
01:45 or 60 frames per second. It uses AI to fill in the gaps between the frames and give you
01:51 a slow motion video. You just hold down on the subject and voila, it looks really good.
01:58 You can see me here playfully whipping my hair back and forth and I don't know,
02:03 it looks really convincing. But let's talk about the big guy, the S24 Ultra, the flagship.
02:10 This time it's back with a totally flat screen, which I love. Sorry if you liked the curved
02:16 screen, but it's gone now. There's also a titanium build, which unlike Apple, Samsung isn't really
02:22 touting it as a lightweight solution. It's just a more durable and kind of nice looking build.
02:29 And of course, you've got a whole bunch of cameras, including a three times zoom and this
02:33 time a five times optical zoom. That's down from the 10x zoom on S23 Ultra. Samsung assures us that
02:41 the 10x quality is actually better than the previous generation. Of course, you still have
02:46 a hundred times base zoom. It looks weird, but it's a cool party trick. So this year, the price
02:54 has jumped up from $1,199 to $1,299. That's a pretty hefty price tag for a phone. That brings
03:00 us to the S24 and S24 Plus, and there's not a whole lot that's new here. The bezels on the screens are
03:06 slightly smaller, so the screens themselves have gotten a little bit bigger. The batteries are a
03:11 little bit bigger this time around, and they still cost the same. The S24 starts at $799,
03:17 S24 Plus starts at $999. Do those bigger batteries add up to better battery life? I'm
03:22 going to find out as soon as I start testing them. Very soon. The S24 Plus screen gets a
03:28 jump in resolution from 1080p to 1440p. It's 2024 and that's a big screen, so we really need all
03:36 that resolution. So that's the S24 series. There's not a lot that's changed, but kind of a lot that's
03:43 changed. Are you into the new AI features? I'm excited to try them out. Let us know in the comments.