Annual phone upgrades used to be very common. Nowadays, phones have become very expensive if you can’t find the right deal, and it’s completely unreasonable to pay full price in most cases.
So, is the new $1,300 Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra worth the upgrade? The answer depends entirely on the device you want to upgrade from.
Galaxy S23 Ultra users should stick with what they have unless there’s an issue. All the new AI features in the Galaxy S24 Ultra will be available in the One UI 6.1 update on the Galaxy S23 Ultra, and the camera changes in the S24 Ultra are not expected to be worth the upgrade.
But, if you’re coming from an older Galaxy phone, there are plenty of amazing Galaxy S24 deals and trade-in offers that will let you upgrade to the best phone Samsung currently makes.
What’s more, Samsung’s seven-year system update guarantee means the Galaxy S24 Ultra will look like new for a very long time, thanks to new system features and other upgrades that will happen along the way.
Although we haven’t gotten a chance to review the Galaxy S24 Ultra yet, some of you are no doubt already wondering if it’s worth upgrading to the device. We hope this report helps you if you’re thinking about hitting the pre-order button.
Reasons to upgrade to the Galaxy S24 Ultra
If you’ve never used a Galaxy S Ultra phone, you’re in for a real treat. Samsung combined the Galaxy S and Galaxy Note series a few years ago and has now added an S Pen to the Galaxy S24 Ultra body to make it easier to take notes.
To make matters even better, the Galaxy S24 Ultra’s screen is flat for the first time since Samsung brought the two lineups together.
Previously, Samsung was using a screen that curved from the left and right edges, which made the phone look sleek, but made taking notes on the edges more difficult than it should be.
The curved glass also meant that finding a good screen protector was difficult. A friend of mine’s Galaxy S23 Ultra screen shattered due to very simple drops, even with a screen protector. This shouldn’t happen with the S24 Ultra.
All of Samsung’s new AI features are available on all Galaxy S24 models, but many of them, like Circle to Search, are better used on the S24 Ultra because of the S Pen. Using the S Pen is much more precise than using a finger, and it also makes editing text much easier.
Aside from the S Pen, you’ll love the new camera array on the back of the Galaxy S24 Ultra.
Samsung has changed things up this year and added a new 50-megapixel camera with 5x optical zoom instead of the old 10-megapixel camera with 10x optical zoom.
While this seems like a letdown at first, Samsung said that most of its users have never zoomed beyond 10x.
By making this change, Samsung has ensured “optical quality” of any image taken with optical zoom between 1x and 10x. We’ve yet to test this new camera ourselves, but on paper, the change makes a lot of sense for any user who doesn’t care about zooming beyond 10x.
If your phone is more than two years old, it makes sense to replace it with a Galaxy S24 Ultra and get very powerful specifications.
Reasons not to upgrade to the Galaxy S24 Ultra
As I said before, there’s almost no reason for a Galaxy S23 Ultra owner to bother spending money to upgrade this year.
There simply aren’t enough changes to justify the extra money, especially since the cheapest Ultra phone model has increased in price by $100 this year, now costing $1,300.
Galaxy S23 users will get all the new AI features in the S24 series with the One UI 6.1 update, so there is no new software feature to upgrade to the new version of the phone.
Of course, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy processor inside the S24 series is great and offers a 25% increase in performance compared to the processor in the Galaxy S23 series, but it won’t impress anyone coming from these phones.
Games like War Thunder Mobile and Arena Breakout also support cool new ray tracing features, but they’re not worth spending a lot of money on. It would be much better to spend the money on a PS5 with ray tracing capabilities.
And while this processor is technically a little more battery efficient — by 5%, to be exact — Samsung hasn’t increased battery capacity or improved charging speeds on this phone, so you won’t see a difference there.
There’s also no Qi2 support on the Galaxy S24 Ultra, so wireless charging offers the same experience.
It is worth noting that Samsung has improved the technical aspects of all Galaxy S24 displays, but the company still avoids making any changes to the flash frequency for PWM-sensitive individuals.
Meanwhile, companies like OnePlus, Motorola, Honor, and others have been making strides in offering new eye health features to keep users feeling well in the long run.
In short, Galaxy S23 owners will have to wait at least another year before upgrading. Meanwhile, everyone just needs to think about whether the price makes sense, especially considering the increase.
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