Just over a week ago, a handful of purported real-life shots of the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra appeared online predicting a slightly refined look. Now, the folks over at Windows Report have shared alleged product renders of the entire Galaxy S24 trio ahead of a rumored January 27 launch.
It seems the in-hand photos of the Ultra trim, which appeared on X (formerly Twitter) a few days ago, were the real deal. Samsung hasn’t given any aesthetic makeover to the top-tier model — the flat sides are here to stay, and so is the floating ring aesthetic for the camera lenses at the back.
The only two key changes are a different material for the frame and a couple of new colors. Shoppers will have the option of a new yellow shade that was recently seen on the Samsung Store-exclusive variant of its Galaxy Z flip foldable phone. Then there’s a new purple trim, which looks identical to the same shade on the Galaxy S23 FE, down to the contrasting metal frame polish.
Gray and black will be the other shades on the table. The biggest change is that Samsung, following in the footsteps of the iPhone 15 Pro, is reportedly using Titanium for the Galaxy S24 Ultra. The regular and Plus variants will likely stick with armored aluminum and a glass back with Corning Gorilla Glass protection.
The rumored specification list is your usual flagship-tier affair and includes Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip, a 120Hz OLED display, 12GB RAM, up to 1TB storage, and a 5,000mAh battery.
The report notes that the vapor chamber cooling system inside the S24 Ultra will be nearly twice as big as its predecessor’s, which was already in a league of its own. Buyers can expect the phone to maintain its cool during demanding tasks such as gaming, high-res video capture, and generative AI-aligned tasks.
The camera hardware also remains the same as this year’s Ultra phone, save for a curious change to the zoom camera. Instead of a 10-megapixel periscope camera with an industry-leading 10x optical zoom output that we saw on the Galaxy S23 Ultra, the upcoming phone is said to embrace a 50-megapixel sensor, but with a lower 5x optical zoom range.
That’s a curious trade-off between megapixel count and range. It’s worth noting here that Samsung has taken special pride in the raw zoom capability of its top-tier Galaxy S phone ever since the Galaxy S20 Ultra arrived on the scene.
As far as the regular Galaxy S24 and its larger Plus variant go, the looks stay identical to their 2023 counterparts. However, I can’t help but notice that Samsung has somehow made them look more boxy, apparently due to the flattened sides and sharp edges. Color options will reportedly include black, gray, violet, and yellow.
The entry-level model is said to offer a 6.2-inch 120Hz OLED screen, a 4,000 mAh battery, 8GB RAM, and up to 512GB storage. The rear camera hardware is the familiar 50MP primary + 12MP ultrawide + 10MP telephoto array. The Plus trim will jump to a bigger 6.7-inch screen and a 4,900mAh battery.
The curious situation here pertains to the processor inside. It seems that Samsung’s Exynos chip is making a return, which doesn’t sound like good news based on its history of bad thermals and subpar performance. Samsung will reportedly sell the Galaxy S24 and its Plus version in two flavors, one with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and the other one drawing power from the in-house Exynos 2400 chipset.
I’m curious to know whether those promised AMD GPU upgrades will finally do some magic on the Exynos chip next year. For now, we don’t have any credible information on the Samsung Galaxy S24 series in this regard, but given Samsung’s history of containing leaks, it won’t be long before we get more information regarding the sticker price and market availability.
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