Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra

Big, bold and bursting with features, but how well does it handle movies and music?

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Smartphone £1249 whf.cm/GalaxyS24Ultra

In some ways, the Galaxy S24 Ultra follows the current trend of samey-looking spec bumps that we have seen from Sony, Google and Apple. In other areas it’s a revolutionary phone that is bursting at the seams with new AI-based features and subtle tweaks that make it a seriously interesting portable device.

The new Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor, here a “for Galaxy” version of the chip, is backed by 12GB of RAM and either 256GB, 512GB or 1TB of storage; and the S24 Ultra absolutely flies through the Android 14 operating system. Samsung has promised seven years of security updates and seven generations of Android updates; thus impressively future-proofing it, too.

What we are interested in, though, is the phone’s talents for movies and music. The S24 Ultra has an expansive 6.8 in AMOLED display with a resolution of 1440 x 3120 and a variable refresh rate of 1Hz to 120Hz, with a boost over last year’s S23 Ultra to 2600 nits peak brightness. It is compatible with HDR10+, but not Dolby Vision.

Punchy and sharp