Samsung’s S24 and S24 Plus put new AI smarts in a polished package

By Muhammad JuniadPublished On 23 Jan 2024

Samsung’s Galaxy S24 and S24 Plus don’t have the bigger screen or 5x telephoto camera of the more expensive Galaxy S24 Ultra, nor do they have its stylus. But in a year when “Galaxy AI” is almost all Samsung wants to talk about, it feels like those differences will matter a little less than usual when these phones start shipping on January 31st.

Yes, Samsung’s suite of new AI-infused features is here, and perhaps the single most important thing to know about Samsung’s new S24 lineup is that these are the same whether you opt for the $799.99 Galaxy S24, the $999.99 Galaxy S24 Plus, or the $1,299.99 Galaxy S24 Ultra. In the US, the phones are all using Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processors, meaning the performance of the on-device AI features should be similar.

Samsung is also promising seven generations of OS upgrades and seven years of security updates across the three phones, matching the impressive support period Google promised for its Pixel 8 lineup.

My colleague Allison Johnson has a rundown of the AI-powered features in her preview of the Galaxy S24 Ultra. It’s a broad spread, even if some of them are reminiscent of features from Google’s Pixel lineup. (This isn’t a coincidence: Samsung is relying on Google’s Gemini foundational models to power its AI features.) As an example, the Samsung voice notes app in the phones can transcribe a recorded conversation and then automatically summarize the resulting transcription. For photo editing, there’s a Magic Editor-style feature that lets you move subjects around the frame after a photo has been taken. The S24 series will also support Google’s new Circle to Search trick.

Elsewhere, there’s a previously teased feature that’ll offer two-way real-time translations of phone calls between 13 different languages, and it’ll provide translations of text messages, too. Samsung is also equipping the keyboard in this year’s S24 lineup with a feature it’s calling “tone tweak” (essentially Samsung’s version of Google’s Magic Compose, which is also available on these phones) that lets you adjust the tone of written text alongside offering more typical grammar and spelling suggestions. Available tones include “professional,” “casual,” “#social,” “polite,” and “emojify.”