Galaxy S24 Ultra - My experience after 6 months
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00:00Wow, it has already been six months since the Galaxy S24 Ultra came out.
00:07It feels like it was yesterday.
00:09We were comparing it to the iPhone 15 Pros and 15 Pro Max.
00:13We were comparing it to the normal S24, but it's already been six months and I've had
00:18a very long and good overall experience with the S24 Ultra.
00:24That's why I want to make this video, so I can give you a proper, experience-based video.
00:31No BS kind of video where I'm not going to read you the specs of the phone and tell you
00:36what it is and what it does, because you probably already know what it is.
00:40I'm going to give you my personal experience, telling you the things that I've liked, the
00:44things that I didn't like, just based on, as I said, my usage with the phone.
00:48Because even though it's not my personal phone right now, I've had it and I've used it as
00:52my personal phone during some parts of these last six months.
00:56As always, I want to start by talking about the exterior design, which, as you can see,
01:01is the classic Ultra slash Note look we've had for the past, I think, what, eight years now?
01:08And well, you can love it, you can hate it, but it's undeniable that it is iconic.
01:14With those sharp corners, with that boxy look and design, and well, for the past three years
01:20with the same back overall look, we have the same camera arrangement as we had with
01:25the S23 and S22 Ultra.
01:27We have the same shape and size as with those other two phones, the same matte glass.
01:32The only thing that's changed is that with the newer S24 Ultra, now we have a titanium
01:38frame instead of, I think it was stainless steel on those other phones.
01:43And it is also slightly flatter.
01:45It is something very subtle because it's not completely flat like on the S24, but it
01:50doesn't have that dramatic of a curve on the sides.
01:54So it's going to be different.
01:56I don't feel confident saying it's better or worse than the other two phones.
02:01In my personal opinion, I think it's better.
02:03It holds better in the hand.
02:04It's more grippy and more ergonomic, but that's my personal preference.
02:08You may think the curvier sides were better on the older phones.
02:12What I can tell you though, is that it is more comfortable than both the S24 and S24
02:19Plus.
02:20They have very flat edges, those other normal phones, and they do feel a little bit less
02:25comfortable, less ergonomic in the hand.
02:27But I'm assuming most of you interested on the S24 Ultra are not really considering those
02:32other phones because they're smaller and they don't have the, you know, sort of flagship
02:37phone vibes that this phone gives you.
02:39And of course, we also have the S Pen, which comes from the Note lineup.
02:44A lot of people wanted it on the Ultra phone, so Samsung decided to include it too.
02:48We also have this button.
02:50I don't think this was a thing before, but it gives us, you know, functionalities.
02:56Like in this case, if we double tap it, we can see, uh, wait a minute, let me, there
03:01it is.
03:02Oh my God.
03:03What?
03:04What?
03:05That's crazy.
03:06I didn't knew this.
03:07So if you long press the, uh, if you long press the button on the S Pen, it loads the
03:12camera.
03:13I think you can probably customize this to, to open any app you want, but that's very
03:16interesting.
03:17Of course, we also have a quick notes, so you can write something down very easily.
03:22We, if we lock the phone, I think it, it allows you to, let me see.
03:27Nope.
03:28Doesn't seem like it's working.
03:30It should allow me to, to make it like a quick note.
03:33I tried it earlier.
03:34If you take the S Pen out from the lock screen, uh, nope, it doesn't seem to be working, but
03:41it did work before.
03:43I'm not sure why it's not working.
03:45It allowed me to make a quick note in the lock screen without having to access the phone.
03:49But anyways, um, can I not, can I hide this somehow, please?
03:55Can I do something about this?
03:57Samsung, please.
03:58You're embarrassing me in front of everybody.
04:00I'm saying you're a good phone, but you're not letting me move this note.
04:04Okay.
04:05There we go.
04:06Thank you very much.
04:07Anyways, the, the S Pen, you love it or you don't like it.
04:11I don't think anybody would hate it because it, you know, if you don't want to use it,
04:15you don't use it.
04:16It's just added functionality.
04:17When it comes to the internal components, we have the best of the best.
04:21We have 12 gigabytes of Ram and we have the Snapdragon eight generation three.
04:26So the best of the best.
04:27Of course, every single app is going to, to not only work fast and fluid, but it's
04:32going to remain, uh, loaded up in the background because we have, as I said, 12 gigabytes of
04:37Ram.
04:38So it's very easy for apps to stay open and not have to reload every time you want to
04:42use them, which is very, very convenient because you know, at the end of the day, it's not
04:47only about the experience when it comes to using the app, but it's also about the speed
04:52and not losing time, reloading things all the time.
04:55As you can see, I guess if you have 20 apps opened at some point, some of those apps are
04:59going to have to close.
05:00But if you're a casual user and you use your typical games and apps, the phone is just
05:05going to fly through.
05:07I don't think it's a surprise to anybody that these games that are very casual and that
05:11are meant to be played in pretty much every phone are going to work like butter on the
05:16best Android phone in the market right now.
05:19I mean, uh, they work amazingly well.
05:22There's no bugs, no hiccups.
05:23They open instantaneously.
05:25And it's funny because some of these games are not properly optimized and it's something
05:30you can only notice on like low-end phones because since they are not very well optimized,
05:35if the phone doesn't have leftover resources, the game becomes, you know, a little buggy,
05:40a little laggy.
05:41But on the S24 Ultra, there's so much leftover power that even if the game is not working
05:47properly or it's not optimized, the phone kind of makes up for that lack of optimization
05:52with raw power.
05:5312 gigabytes of RAM, one of the best processors for any phone.
05:57It just makes anything work, even if it's not meant to work on the phone.
06:02But what about more demanding games like Call of Duty Warzone or Genshin Impact?
06:07Well, in this case, things get a little bit more interesting.
06:12And I've said that the phone is great.
06:15I've only praised it during the video, but I'm about to give you the only one flaw that
06:20I'm actually a little concerned about with the S24 Ultra, and it's that if you play a
06:25demanding game like this, like Genshin Impact, for a long time, meaning 10, 15, 20 minutes
06:31at high settings, like you max out the phone so you can get a good experience, the phone
06:36is going to heat up.
06:38And people said this about the iPhone when it came out, the iPhone 15 Pros, and I didn't
06:43really experience this, or at least to the same extent as I have with the S24 Ultra,
06:48which people don't seem to be concerned about the temperatures.
06:52Maybe it's an issue with my unit, I guess I've come to conclude, because if nobody else
06:57is talking about it and I constantly experience these overheating issues, it might be an issue
07:03with my unit.
07:04So I encourage you to see other people's reviews and see if anybody else has encountered high
07:09temperatures with the S24 Ultra.
07:11But in my personal case, anytime that I do something demanding, not only playing games,
07:16if I want to export a 4K video with CapCut or something like that, the phone is not afraid
07:21of reaching uncomfortable temperatures, like 45 degrees Celsius, maybe sometimes reaching
07:2750, which starts getting uncomfortable in the hand, you feel like you want to drop it
07:32and let it cool.
07:33But anyways, as I said, it might be an issue with my personal unit because I have not seen
07:38a lot of people talk about it.
07:40I'm just giving you my personal experience, and if I have experienced high temperatures
07:44with the S24 Ultra, I'm telling you.
07:46When it comes to the software, we have OneUI 6.1 and Android 14, which are the latest available
07:53versions of the OS.
07:55I think Samsung's working on OneUI 7, Android 15 has just been unveiled by Google, but none
08:03of those are available right now.
08:06So if you buy the phone right now and you just want to use the latest available non-beta
08:12version of the OS, this is what you're going to get.
08:14And let me tell you, it is very, very good, very stable, very snappy, very well optimized.
08:21It doesn't, you know, give you hiccups or lags or anything like that, no bugs.
08:26It works amazingly well, and I was surprised because this was not always the case.
08:31Back in the day, I remember having an iPhone as opposed to a Samsung phone meant a lot
08:36more optimization, a lot more fluidity, mainly because Samsung's layer of Android, which
08:42is called OneUI, wasn't always the snappiest, wasn't always the best, and I was very surprised
08:48when I got the S24 Ultra because I just, through, you know, past 10 years, maybe not having
08:54the best experience with Samsung's Android, I just came to expect a lot worse of an experience
09:00that I ended up getting, and this is not because it's a new phone.
09:04As I said, this is a six months later video, I've had it for six months, I've installed
09:09a ton of apps, done a ton of things, and I've given the phone enough time to sort of, like,
09:14start slowing down, which is what usually happened.
09:16After a couple months, the phone started to feel very, very laggy and buggy, but it's
09:21not the case, and it's the case with every phone that has been able to update to the
09:25latest OneUI versions, like OneUI5, OneUI6, even the older S21, S22, which I've been trying
09:32recently, they work amazing.
09:35So it's clearly an improvement in the optimization by Samsung to their OS, combined with all
09:43of the new AI features we get on the S24 Ultra and on the S24, like circle to search, we
09:50can circle anything on the screen and it will tell you what it is and where to buy it if
09:55it's something you can buy.
09:56You can also edit images on the editor, like, look, if I want to delete my dog for some
10:03reason, I don't want to delete my dog from the image, I love my dog, but imagine I wanted
10:08to do it.
10:09I can just circle around my dog, it's going to understand I want to focus on the dog,
10:14I can tap it, I can erase my dog, generate a new image without him, and in a couple seconds
10:19of editing and AI tweaking, the phone is going to give you an image without my dog, and sure,
10:25it's not going to look, you're going to see it now, it's not going to look perfect, sometimes
10:31it does things like this, it just added a plant for some reason, it looks a little weird,
10:36but yeah, it understood that I wanted to delete my dog, deleted my dog, and it added something
10:42else, I guess because the empty space didn't look as realistic as it wanted, so it just
10:49added a plant so it looked better.
10:51I don't know, it's funny, it's AI, it always gets better, so yeah, in a couple of months
10:56it's going to do a better job than it did right now, and in a year it's going to do
10:58a much better job, so it's one of those beautiful things about AI that once it's enabled on
11:03the phone, it's kind of like it's constantly updating, it's constantly improving without
11:08you necessarily having to buy a new phone or update the phone, it's just going to become
11:12better every single day, that's one of the beautiful things about AI, and with the S24
11:17and the S24 Ultra, we get all the features from Samsung's AI, which is kind of Google's
11:23AI with a couple tweaks, by the way.
11:25When it comes to the battery life, there's not a lot to say because it's one of the best
11:30phones on the planet when it comes to battery life, I've compared it to the 15 Pro Max,
11:35I don't have it here so I'm going to show you the 15 Pro, but as I found out on my review
11:39and as you probably did on other people's reviews, they are almost identical, and that's
11:44great, because that means whatever brand you want to get, whatever phone you choose
11:49to buy, you're going to get the best experience when it comes to battery life.
11:53The only bad news is that it feels like it's not going to change much in the next couple
11:59years because we've reached a point where the optimization companies have done to batteries
12:04and operative systems to make the most out of it has kind of reached a peak where there's
12:10not much else to be done.
12:12The only thing you can do now is just to physically make a bigger phone, that's why nowadays,
12:17usually the 6.1 inch compact phones have about the same battery life, the bigger 6.7, 6.8
12:28inch phones have about the same battery life, it's because nowadays the biggest factor when
12:33it comes to battery life is just the physical size of the phone, the bigger the phone, the
12:36bigger the battery, the longer duration.
12:39All of this comes to say that if you want a very good battery life, you will get it
12:42on the S24 Ultra, and only if you are willing to get an even bigger phone, even less ergonomic,
12:50you will find a better battery life.
12:52The only disappointment I had with it is that there were rumors back in 2023 that Samsung
12:58was going to include some version of MagSafe with their newer phones, I think it's called
13:04Qi Charge 2.0 or something like that, and they ended up not doing it, I think because
13:09of a lack of time, that was very disappointing, because one of my favorite features on the
13:14iPhones is the MagSafe connectivity, being able to connect it to a dock on your car without
13:20having to use any dongles or cases or weird mechanical attachments or anything like that,
13:27you just slap it in the MagSafe dock, or you want to charge it, you don't have to be adjusting
13:32it to the coil so it doesn't overheat, it's very simple, automatic, easy, and I was very
13:40hopeful that the S24 was going to have that, and it ended up not having it.
13:44I think next year's S25 Ultra is going to have that new mechanism, and I couldn't be
13:50happier because it's amazing.
13:53If you've never tried a MagSafe or magnetic connectivity, dude, like you're missing out,
13:58it's awesome.
13:59Anyways, probably one of the best, most exciting features on the S24 Ultra is the display.
14:06This is a beast of a display.
14:09We have 2600 nits of brightness, 1440p resolution, 120Hz LTPO panel, and of course, the latest
14:18technologies when it comes to colors, contrast, whatever, the best panels in the industry.
14:26As many of you know, Samsung is the one responsible to make the panels on pretty much every phone
14:31you can buy right now.
14:32Even the iPhones have Samsung panels on them.
14:35By the way, something even better, Samsung has, and this is amazing, they have included
14:40an anti-reflective layer on the S24 Ultra that's surprisingly effective.
14:47I'm going to show you in comparison to the iPhone 15 Pro how strong it is.
14:52If we point it at a light source, it is incredibly efficient at reducing that light reflection
15:00without affecting the quality of the panel and the viewing angles at all.
15:05That's amazing because, funny enough, Apple has been going crazy trying to get anti-reflective
15:13technologies on their devices, charging you $500 for the anti-reflective coating on the
15:19iPads and on the Macs, and it has never really been that useful.
15:24People that have tried anti-reflective technology on Apple products have said that, sure, it
15:30kind of like scatters the light a little bit, makes it a little bit more soft, but it doesn't
15:34really fix the issue.
15:36Out of the blue, Samsung has come with probably the best anti-reflective technology that I
15:42have ever seen in my life because, as I said, it doesn't affect the glossiness of the display,
15:47it doesn't affect the viewing angles, it doesn't affect the visuals of the phone.
15:51It looks exactly the same as if it didn't have that anti-reflective coating, but it's
15:55very effective.
15:56I mean, sure, you can still see reflections on the phone, but it's way less, way less
16:03than you would have on a Samsung Galaxy S24.
16:06Look, it's the same phone, same brand.
16:08The only difference is that it doesn't have that anti-reflective coating, and as you can
16:12see, it's way, way more shiny and contrasty as opposed to the S24 Ultra.
16:19This is one of those things, maybe it's not the most useful because most of the time I
16:23use the phone either on a shadowed area or indoors, so I don't really care, I don't really
16:28care about the anti-reflective coating most of the time, but it's one of those things
16:31where it's like, damn, what is Apple, like Apple, one of the companies with most resources,
16:36has not been able to pull this off, and Samsung just out of the blue came in, did it, and
16:41made a way, did a way better job and did it for free.
16:44Love you Samsung for this.
16:46Damn.
16:47I just, this is one of those things that made me like this phone and be excited about buying
16:51the phone.
16:52The fact that I, you know, feeling like Samsung gave me the $1,400 worth of a phone for $1,400,
17:00which is something I don't always feel when buying iPhones.
17:03But anyways, I'm sorry for yapping for five minutes about an anti-reflective coating.
17:08Let's move on to the cameras.
17:10As you can see, we have the same camera layout we had in the, in the S22 Ultra and S23 Ultra,
17:16but we have some very interesting improvements.
17:19We have a 12 megapixel ultrawide camera, we have a 200 megapixel main sensor, which may
17:25seem like a marketing gimmick, but you'll see now, it's not a marketing gimmick.
17:30And we have a 5X, I think, telephoto with 50 megapixels.
17:34Those are the main cameras.
17:36Of course, we have the typical depth sensor and the 3X telephoto that's smaller and worse,
17:42and I'm not really sure people are going to use, but it's there.
17:45As I said, probably the most exciting thing about the S24 Ultra, in my opinion, and having
17:50tried the cameras for a while, I've taken a bunch of photos using every feature, every
17:55mode, and every time of day, nighttime, daytime, indoors, outdoors, to me, the most exciting
18:01feature on the S24 Ultra is the sharpness of the 200 megapixel sensor.
18:07And I know, it feels like a gimmick when you say 200 megapixels, it's a marketing thing,
18:13but I just want to, I want to demo how sharp the 200 megapixel is.
18:19Look, this is a photo of my dog, taken with the main sensor.
18:22You can't really distinguish any specific features on my dog, but what if I zoom in?
18:27What if I zoom in like, what, 200%?
18:29Now you can start seeing some, you know, some of the hairs, his nose, his ears.
18:35What if I zoom in at 500%?
18:37Oh, now we can see, we can start seeing some detail on the eyes, we can start seeing some
18:41details on the mouth, we can see the tongue.
18:44What if I zoom in?
18:45What, 1000%?
18:46Well, wow, we can see individual details on the lower lip, we can see the individual teeth,
18:54we can see the lips, we can see the, the, the little crevices on his nose, we can see
19:00individual hairs.
19:03This is absolutely insane.
19:05Like, let me say it again.
19:07This is a 200 megapixel camera, and even though it may feel, that's, it's just pretty fucking
19:15insane.
19:16Look, this is a normal photo.
19:17If you, if I showed you this photo of his eye, you would think I took it, if I crop
19:22it in like this, the top and the bottom, you would think that's a 3x, 5x photo I took
19:26with no zoom.
19:28But it's a, you know, 700% zoom on, on a main camera photo, it's pretty insane.
19:33So I thought it was marketing at first, I always thought the multiple megapixel thing
19:38was a scam, so to say, it was not useful.
19:41But after seeing this photo and many other photos I've taken of stuff in my house, look
19:46this, I can just read text I couldn't see in real life at this distance, like at this
19:51distance from the, what is this, the ventilation system, I could not read the little text on,
19:58the warning text printed in there, and I can't actually read it zooming in.
20:03It's pretty remarkable what they've been able to do.
20:06And I know, this is only applicable for daytime photos with the 200 megapixel mode enabled,
20:12but even then, when the conditions are right, being able to take a photo at any distance
20:17you want and then just cropping into your desired look without losing any detail whatsoever,
20:24it's pretty remarkable.
20:25Like, I just, I don't want to repeat myself because I've already said it, but it's insane.
20:31Like the amount of detail you can get on some of these photos, it just makes absolutely
20:37no sense.
20:38And if you add 4K video at 120 FPS, you add 8K video recording, you add, well, one of
20:44the best 5K, let me try to show you a picture of the 5K sensor if I have any, don't remember.
20:52There we go.
20:53Look, 5, this is the 5X telephoto camera, which even though it's not as good and as
20:57sharp as the, as the main sensor, it's very, very good.
21:01We have a very good ultrawide camera, they all recorded 4K 60 FPS.
21:06I mean, a lot of people are going to, you know, fight me over this, but I think this
21:11year, both in photo and video, the S24 Ultra has better cameras than the iPhone 15 Pro Max.
21:18Anyways, I'm sorry for the yapathon on, on both the anti-reflective coating and then
21:22the cameras, but those are genuinely the two things that I'm most excited about on the S24 Ultra.
21:28I'm going to wrap, wrap the video up saying that for anybody looking to buy this phone,
21:34I 100% recommend it.
21:35The only reason why I would not buy the phone is if you want to use iOS.
21:44Because in that case, you're not going to enjoy this phone.
21:47Because if you're used to iOS, you use iOS apps, there is a clear advantage having an
21:52iPhone because it has iOS.
21:54But if you don't care about the operative system, I would honestly go for the S24 Ultra.
22:01And if you are thinking about maybe getting the S24 because it's almost the same thing,
22:05but it's cheaper, well, I cannot make the argument that it, this is a clearly better
22:11choice because this is also a very, very good phone that for, I think, under a thousand
22:16bucks gives you 90% of the features on the S24 Ultra, including 8K video recording.
22:21It's, it's amazing.
22:23But if you have the money and you want a flagship phone, I, I of course, 1000% recommend the
22:29S24 Ultra.
22:30I hope you guys enjoyed the video.
22:32I'm sorry for the yap-a-thon, but I guess that was the whole point of the video.
22:36There's Amazon links for the S24 Ultra down below in the description with a nice discount,
22:40just in case you want to take a look or buy it.
22:43And I will see you all in the next video.