Unless you’re remarkably easy to shock, it shouldn’t come as a huge surprise that Samsung is working on the Galaxy S24 series. As the number at the end neatly demonstrates, this is quite a long running smartphone line (even if it skipped a few between S10 and S20).
Nonetheless, Windows Report has outdone itself by getting specs and images of the S24 family long before Samsung bangs on about how revolutionary its yet-to-be official devices are at an event still tipped to be 67 days away.
So, what can we expect? Actually, very little that hasn’t been tipped already. For the S Pen-toting S24 Ultra, the titanium frame is mentioned again, as is the upgrade to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset.
Samsung is also tipped to be making a curious change to its second telephoto lens: gone is the 12MP 10x zoom, replaced by a 50MP 5x one. Less distance but higher resolution, in other words — which is probably a good payoff overall, but we’ll have to see.
The S24 and S24 Plus handsets, meanwhile, are less exciting. In the case of the former, the only differences beyond a processor refresh are a 0.1in bigger screen and a 2.5% larger battery — the very definition of incremental change.
Against that very low bar, the S24 Plus looks positively revolutionary. It’s getting 4GB more RAM, a QHD+ display and a 4.25% increase to battery.
Curiously, it’s listed as getting the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, while the basic S24 gets Samsung’s own Exynos 2400 chip. That might be dependent on the region you buy it in, however.
A cynic might be questioning whether any of these handsets are worth the upgrade, but Samsung has an ace up its sleeve. Well, maybe — it depends whether the words “artificial intelligence” make you grin or groan.
Yes, the S24 is set to embrace generative AI. Windows Report says that artificial intelligence will power a variety of apps and features, letting you do things like translate conversations into “over a dozen languages”.
Additionally, generative AI will “help edit and improve your photos”, which sounds like code for sapping any authenticity from them for Instagram likes, but we’ll see. It will also bring “enhanced search capabilities”, where you can highlight parts of an image and find extra information via Samsung’s AI.
Generative AI is notoriously intensive, and given Samsung has already said some of this will be done locally, the company is apparently taking precautions. All three models have bigger vapour chambers for cooling — ranging from 1.5 times bigger in the S24 to 1.9 times larger in the S24 Ultra, the report says.
Of course, you may find yourself a bit cynical about all of this, given Samsung’s Bixby virtual assistant makes the extremely fallible Alexa and Siri look like geniuses. We’ll have to
