We go Hands-On with Samsung’s new Galaxy S24 Series and Galaxy AI!

This year, with the Galaxy S24 series, Samsung isn’t focusing as much on specs, and they really haven’t for a number of years now. And that’s because the specs are mostly the same across the board on phones these days. What Samsung is really focusing on this year is Galaxy AI, and I got a chance to demo a lot of these features with Samsung last week.

The one thing that really came across during my roughly two hours using these new Galaxy S24 devices is that Samsung isn’t just throwing in AI to use the buzzword in their press release. But instead, using AI to help with the user experience. There are a number of great AI features included in the Galaxy S24 series.

Galaxy AI is here to help

Samsung isn’t new to artificial intelligence; many of you might be familiar with Bixby – which is here to stay, though it’s not getting much of an update this year. The new Galaxy AI features are separate from Bixby and are basically baked right into the phone. One of my favorites is “Circle to Search,” which is powered by Google. Now obviously, since this is searching the web with Google, this particular AI feature is not on-device. However, quite a few other features are on-device.

Circle to Search is basically exactly what it sounds like. You are able to long press the home button, then circle what you want to search with your finger or the S Pen (on Galaxy S24 Ultra). And Google will tell you what it is. You can do this with pictures, a section of text, really anything. You no longer need to juggle different apps to search for stuff. In my limited hands-on time with it, it seemed to work really well. We’ll have to see how well it works in the real world when we get our own review unit.

A couple of other features that are really cool sit in the Samsung Keyboard. These are Chat Assist and Transcript Assist. Chat Assist will let you type out a message, then you can tap on the Chat Assist icon in the Samsung Keyboard – you do have to use the Samsung keyboard unfortunately – and you can have Chat Assist write a better message. You can choose the writing style, and Galaxy AI will give you a few different options for the message and automatically put it in the chat box. It does not automatically send it, however. So you can still change your mind before sending it.

Transcript Assist works pretty similarly, basically it lets you send a message in one language and have it appear in another to the other person. It will show your message in both languages so you can keep up with the conversation. So, say you are texting someone in China, you can send it in English and have Transcribe Assist work to show it in Mandarin. Now your messages will appear in both English and Mandarin.

One last Galaxy AI feature that I think is worth talking about is Live Translate. Say you are traveling in another country, and don’t know the language, with Live Translate you are able to type something in English, and show it to the person in say French if you’re traveling in Paris. You can also have it flip on the phone, so you both can type on the Galaxy S24. Currently, Live Translate works with only 13 languages and 17 dialects, but we’d expect more to come.

These AI features aren’t here to speed up your phone or compensate for a lower-end processor, but they are here to help you out. And so far, they have worked spectacularly. I can’t wait to get my own unit and really try this out in Barcelona next month during Mobile World Congress.

Pretty major camera upgrades for Ultra

There are some pretty major camera upgrades for the Galaxy S24 Ultra. The biggest change here is actually the removal of the 10x optical zoom lens. Instead, Samsung has included a higher-resolution 5x optical zoom lens, which is now 50-megapixels. With this, Samsung is able to punch in on that 50-megapixel lens to get you a lossless 10x image while still offering a really good 5x optical zoom option. This was not the case before on the Galaxy S23 Ultra.

So with the Galaxy S24 Ultra, there is a 200-megapixel main sensor, 10-megapixel 3x optical zoom, 50-megapixel 5x optical zoom, and a 12-megapixel ultrawide. There’s also the 12-megapixel front-facing camera. I have to say, the Galaxy S24 Ultra is able to move through these very fluidly. And take some absolutely stunning pictures; there’s definitely no downgrade here on the Galaxy S24 Ultra camera, even though the spec sheet might have you think that.

Now for the Galaxy S24 and S24 Plus, we’re looking at basically the same cameras, though the sensors have been upgraded slightly. We’re looking at the 50-megapixel main sensor, a 10-megapixel 3x telephoto sensor, and a 12-megapixel ultrawide on this one.

Samsung also has a bunch of photo editing features powered by AI; now, these do differ across the lineup, but that is mostly due to the hardware, and the Galaxy S24 Ultra has better camera hardware than the other two. Samsung is using Generative AI to remove things from your photos, move people around in the photos, and so forth. Once you edit the photo, there will be a watermark in the corner, so you can easily tell that it was edited. You can also create slow-mo videos without having to shoot in slow-mo, among a few other AI features. In the demo I experienced, it all worked really well. Again, Samsung isn’t doing stuff just to do it, like Google did with the Pixel 8, it’s stuff that you’d want to be able to do on your phone, like a bunch of auto edits to your photo based on your style.

Samsung Galaxy S24 goes up for pre-order today, shipping by the end of the month

If you’re interested in purchasing the Galaxy S24, well we have good news for you. Pre-orders opened up today. It starts at $799 for the Galaxy S24, $999 for the Galaxy S24 Plus, and $1299 for the Galaxy S24 Ultra. Only the Galaxy S24 Ultra has received a price increase, which Samsung says is due to the supply chain, and that makes sense given the rampant inflation happening worldwide. Also, when you pre-order, you’ll get a free storage bump. So if you buy the Galaxy S24 128GB, you’ll get 256GB for the same price. And this year, this does work on the Galaxy S24 Ultra 512GB, so you can get 1TB for that price.

Pre-orders are expected to ship on January 31.