Samsung is coming for the only differentiator Google’s Pixel phones held in the Android world and that’s intuitive and useful machine learning and AI features with its new Galaxy S24 lineup.
Back in 2018, Samsung began taking a concerted effort to shape and focus its traditionally unwieldy software experience with OneUI and that evolution is coming to a head with its latest Galaxy phone release and the advent of artificial intelligent-led platforms.
During its Samsung Unpacked event for 2024, the company introduced its Galaxy AI alongside arguably incremental hardware updates this year, but for anyone who may be teetering between leaving the Galaxy ecosystem for the Pixel one may stay for the enhanced Translate, Interpreter, Chat Assist, Notes Assist, Transcript Assist, and photo enhancement tools now onboard.
Samsung AI
Samsung has flirted with what it believes are intuitive feature sets for its phone for some time now whether it be blemish removal, skin softening, and early iterations of the digital assistant Bixby, however with the introduction of Samsung AI, the company has seemingly matured its philosophy behind what it thinks constitutes as useful.
One of the standout features now powered by Samsung AI will be its Live Translate ability. Live Translate enables live two-way conversations in different languages both via text or voice leveraging on-device language packs and translations.
It’s unclear what engine is powering the translation as Live Translate does not utilize any third-party plugins or branding from any of the bigger translation platforms such as Google or Bing Translate.
Nevertheless, Galaxy S24 customers will be able to host “secure” and private conversations similar to Google Pixel’s which also utilize Google Translate on phones with a nifty split screen experience where different language text is translated in real time for both conversing parties.
Live Translate works with or without Wi-Fi or mobile data enabled and showcases its best use case when one of 13 language packs 500MB in size are downloaded to the phone so that translations can work offline and in any location.
Another Samsung AI powered feature is headed to Samsung Notes which continues to be overhauled into a very comprehensive add-on for the Galaxy line. The new Note Assist feature integrates into Samsung Notes and uses AI to translate script writing into templated text formats as well as provides concise summarizations of more lengthy or in-depth notes.
Note Assist can be applied to both newly created and previous Samsung Notes. Paired with Microsoft’s OneNote and OneDrive storage, Samsung Notes is becoming a fairly robust experience for users.
Next up is Chat Assist which will expand upon some of the auto correct detections Samsung currently utilizes in its chat app. Chat Assist offers similar ChatGPT ‘punch up’ options to text before their sent such as adjusting conversation tones, more concise summarizations, and syntax edits.
Moving past language, Samsung AI will also attempt to dethrone Google’s Pixel photography editing prowess with its own bevy tools such as Edit Suggestions, Generative Edit, and Instant Slow-mo. Edit Suggestions are as implied, a new icon will appear after certain photos are captured that Samsung AI believes can be enhanced. Edit Suggestions attempt to tackle after capture photo processing for items such as shadows, poor lighting, alignment, saturation, and more.
Generative Edit stands as a background composite tool that helps to fill in the background of an image using generative AI. When subjects are moved around in an image, the Generative Edit tool will lean on AI to fill the now blank area left behind.
Instant Slow-Mo works regardless of if videos are captured in 30 or 60FPS initially and use Samsung AI to fill in frames to create the desired Slow-Mo effect. When demoed, users simply held down on the video to slow the desired period and were presented with a saved option. Whole videos or just sections of a video can have Slow-Mo applied.
One of the most highlighted Samsung AI features during the Unpacked 2024 event was the company’s Circle to Search feature which leverages Google’s Bard pre-generative technology.
Similar to a reverse image search, Circle to Search allows users to highlight specific areas or items in an image to enable a robust search of the selected section. Users can long press the home button, or the gesture bar located at the bottom of an S24 phone to activate the feature and then follow through by either using the S-Pen or their fingers to tap, scribble across, highlight or circle anything that’s captured on screen in a screenshot like environment.
Despite it being the lead demo in Samsung’s big AI push for its S24 lineup, Circle to Search is a Google enabled AI feature that will eventually make its way to the company’s Pixel line in time.
It should be noted that Samsung chose to go with Google’s Bard and Gemini LLM platform over its other partner, Microsoft’s OpenAI/ChatGPT alternative for its image search. On the face of it, it may come across as a snub, but Google and Samsung have had a lasting search partnership and Circle to Search is the natural progression of that agreement as well as some of the pre-generative features coming to Android Auto and Android’s Quick Share platform.
S24 Phones
Even though Samsung is pivoting towards software led improvements to the Galaxy line, the company is still a hardware provider at heart and the enhancements to the S24 lineup prove so.
Galaxy S24 Ultra
Briefly the S24 Ultra looks identical to the previous S23 Ultra equipped with the same 6.8-inch QHD + Dynamic AMOLED 2X panel and 120Hz variable refresh rate display. Samsung is looking to take the crown for brightest display with its 2,600-nit peak brightness panel on the S24 Ultra edging out Apple’s 2000 nits on the iPhone 15 Pro Max.
Samsung is ditching its curved screen technology in full of the Ultra, instead opting for a flat-flushed screen that allows the panel to reduce its bezel footprint as well as shrinking the size of the camera punch hole to allow even more usable screen real estate.
Identical to Apple, Samsung is also introducing the S24 lineup with a titanium frame, however, unlike Apple, Samsung is not touting any weight reduction with the advent of the new metal frame. On spec pages, the S24 Ultra does come in a hair lighter than the S23 Ultra.
Powering the entire S24 Ultra rig is the acclaimed Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip that dons a special ‘Made for Galaxy’ branding which often denotes a bit of overclocking.
Samsung made a few tweaks to the camera hardware on the S24 Ultra. While not a full lens replacement or addition, the S24 does switch up its 10MP 10X telephoto camera with a 50MP 5X zoom instead of the 10X zoom from previous models. Utilizing Adaptive Pixel Sensor technology, Samsung says the perceived downgrade will actually benefit image quality as it retains more detail.
Otherwise, the other two cameras on the S24 remain unchanged from the S23 in both the 200MP main and 12MP ultrawide.
Samsung also made some internal changes to the S24 that include a new larger heat sink area as well as a small upgrade in the size of the battery this year up to 4,900mAh for both the Ultra and Plus while 4,000mAh for the standard S24 phone.
Galaxy S24 Plus
The middle child of the Galaxy line got the largest relative upgrade this time around as its screen moves up from the kiddie table of FHD resolution to QHD+. In previous models, the S Plus lines shared the same FHD resolution panel as did the regular S-Series phones, however, in 2024 the S24 Plus joins the elite S24 Ultra in hosting a much higher resolution screen that now measures 6.7-inches and a new variable refresh rate that supports a rest state of 1 to 120Hz and Vision Booster.
The S24 Plus will follow in the footsteps of the Ultra with its camera arrangement as well as internal glow ups with improved heat sink and battery capacity increases.
However, the S24 Plus will not have the same titanium love as the S24 Ultra when it comes to the frame. Instead, the S24 Plus gets a matte coated aluminum frame that is much flatter than previous models and mimics the sides of an iPhone 15.
Configurations of the S24 Plus support 256 and 512GB of storage with a standard 12GB of memory onboard.
Galaxy S24
The smallest of the Galaxy line gets a slight increase in screen real estate with a bump up to 6.2-inches and a retains its FHD+ Dynamic AMOLED 2X panel. However, supported refresh rate on the S24 gets improved to a variable 1 to 120Hz as well as support for Vision Booster.
The screen on the S24 is also just as flat as the S24 Ultra and Plus, and its side have been flattened just like the S24 Plus and retains the aluminum construction but with a matte finish applied.
The S24 will keep the unimproved 10MP telephoto camera alongside the 50MP main, and 12MP ultrawide camera set up, same as before.
The battery capacity of the S24 gets bumped up to 4,000mAh and should help the phone last a bit longer than its predecessor.
Configurations for the S24 support a standard 8GB of memory and 128, 256, or 512GB of storage.
Pre orders were made available yesterday and the Ultra’s pricing starts at $1,300, the Plus at $1,000, and the S24 at $800 with color options that include Onyx Black, Marbel Gray, Cobalt Violet, Amber Yellow, Titanium Gray, Titanium Black, Titanium Violet, and Titanium Yellow.
Other Announcements
While Samsung didn’t roll out its tablets, laptops, earbuds, or watches during this event, it did have a couple of other miscellaneous announcements it presented at Unpacked 2024 that include its Galaxy Ring that looks to take on Oura. The Samsung Ring will act as a less intrusive calories and step tracker than a Galaxy or Apple Watch.
Not much else is known about the Samsung Ring at this moment and we predict it will launch next to its Fold and Flip line up later this year alongside its earbuds.
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