After plenty of teasers, the Galaxy S24 lineup has finally been revealed. It’s an iterative upgrade, but it’s the first Galaxy release to include seven years of OS and security updates. That said, if you’re a hardcore Samsung Galaxy fan hoping for massive hardware upgrades, you’d better hop into a time machine and skip to 2025.

Last year’s Galaxy S23 series was extremely similar to the Galaxy S22 lineup. With the Galaxy S24, Samsung is giving us more of the same. This is perfectly understandable—if you own a Galaxy S22 or S23, you don’t need to upgrade, as your phone will receive future OS updates. Customers who are using older phones have a real reason to buy into the Galaxy S24 series, as it offers some minor improvements over last year’s lineup and kicks off Samsung’s seven-year support cycle.

The Galaxy S24, S24+, and S24 Ultra now use a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset, which powers new AI capabilities like Live Translate in phone calls, an Interpreter for face-to-face conversations, and Circle to Search, which allows you to run any on-screen content through Google Lens. Plus, at the behest of many enthusiasts, Samsung is committing to 12GB of RAM in all configurations of the Galaxy S24+ and S24 Ultra.

The Galaxy S24 Ultra gets a bit more love than its siblings. Its most notable upgrade is a new 50MP telephoto camera with 5x optical zoom. Interestingly, this new camera is combined with the old 3x 10MP telephoto lens that we all know and love—that’s two cameras behind one piece of glass. Any other photography improvements will be at the whim of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset, as Samsung is reusing last year’s 12MP ultra-wide lens, 12MP selfie shooter, and 200MP main camera (though a larger 1.4 μm pixel size is now used to boost night photography).

We should also see improved display performance in bright environments. The Galaxy S24 Ultra boasts a 2,600 nit peak brightness (up from 1,750 nits), and it uses Corning Gorilla Glass Armor, which provides world-class glare diffusion. (Oddly, the Galaxy S24+ gets the biggest display upgrade—a QHD+ panel. This is the only major upgrade for the non-Ultra models.)

If you’re worried about thermals, Samsung has practically doubled the size of the Galaxy S24 Ultra’s vapor chamber. There’s also a new titanium frame on the S24 Ultra, kind of like the iPhone 15 Pro. And, thankfully, the Galalxy S24 Ultra offers Wi-Fi 7 capabilities. Last year’s S23 Ultra was technically capable of Wi-Fi 7, but the feature was never turned on. We hope that Samsung retroactively activates Wi-Fi 7 for last year’s phone after the new one launches.

That’s it for upgrades. But we should take note of a potential problem. Stop me if you’ve heard this before; Samsung made minuscule changes to the size and shape of each Galaxy S24 device, meaning that S23 cases may not fit the S24 lineup. We’ll update this post when we learn more.

I’d also like to point out that the Galaxy S24 series does not include satellite connectivity or Qi2 wireless charging. Presumably, these features are being withheld until next year’s release.

Pre-orders for the Galaxy S24 lineup begin today, with orders shipping January 31st. The Ultra model starts at $1,300—a $100 price increase. But the standard Galaxy S24 and the Galaxy S24+ retain last years prices, which are $800 and $1,000, respectively. You can save $100 on your purchase by pre-ordering at Samsung’s website, and most carriers are offering $1,000 off the S24 Ultra with an eligible trade-in.

Source: Samsung