The S24 Ultra has a titanium frame, and the Korean smartphone maker is listing it at $1,300, up from last year's $1,200. Samsung's flagship weighs the same as the S23 Ultra (232 grams), making it slightly heavier than the iPhone 15 Pro Max.

The other noticeable change is the display. The S24 Ultra comes with a 6.8-inch 1440p display, just like the S23 Ultra, but it's no longer rounded like on the Note line, but flatter. This should help reduce the chance of the S Pen slipping off the edge of the screen.

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The Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra has a titanium case, a large flat screen, and uses a fine-tuned AI chip from Qualcomm. Photo: TheVerge

Another hardware upgrade is Samsung's use of a 50 megapixel 5x zoom rear camera (compared to the 10 megapixel 10x zoom on the S23 Ultra). While 10x isn't the original focal length, since the device uses lossless crop zoom, it's still easily a step up in zoom quality over its predecessor.

In addition, the camera setup is unchanged from last year, including a trio of rear lenses: a 200-megapixel f/1.7 main camera, a 10-megapixel 3x telephoto lens, and a 12-megapixel ultra-wide lens. On the front, there is a 12-megapixel selfie camera.

The S24 Ultra, S24 Plus, and S24 all feature local and cloud-based AI capabilities, powered by Google's Gemini AI platform. However, Samsung's top-of-the-line smartphone will come with a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset, while the S24 Ultra's two younger siblings will only be powered by Exynos chips outside of North America.

The S24 Ultra will start at $1,300 for 256GB and ship starting January 31. Customers can pre-order starting today.

AI Phone

The S24 Ultra comes with new AI-powered photo and video editing tools, which are highlighted across the UI with a Google Bard-like star icon.

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S24 Ultra is deeply integrated with AI features: search, translation, photography. Photo: TheVerge

With Photos, users can circle objects in a photo to isolate, resize, move the object around, or remove it from the frame entirely. You can also adjust the level of the horizon in the photo and let AI fill in the edges.

Notably, users can now turn any video into a 120fps slow-motion effect, regardless of the mode, frame rate, or device it was shot in. The feature uses AI to interpolate missing frames and deliver impressive results.

Other features, also available on the S24+ and S24, include Google’s new “Circle to Search” feature. In any app, you just press and hold the navigation or home button, circle whatever you want to search for on the screen, and let Google do the rest.

Translation is also a focus of Samsung's investment. The S24 Ultra can act as an interpreter when users make calls, translating content in real time and supporting up to 13 different languages. Similar to Google's Pixel, the S24 series also has the ability to translate audio recordings into other languages.

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