Is the Samsung Galaxy S24 the Best Compact Smartphone of 2024?
The landscape of smartphones has shifted dramatically, with larger displays becoming the norm. However, there’s still a dedicated community who crave the convenience and portability of compact smartphones. The Samsung Galaxy S24 aims to cater to those users, offering powerful internals and impressive cameras within a compact form factor. While the Galaxy S24 offers a compelling case for those seeking a smaller flagship, is it actually the best compact smartphone of 2024? Let’s delve into its strengths and weaknesses to find out.
Samsung Galaxy S24 Price in India
Before we dive into the details of the Galaxy S24, it’s essential to consider its pricing. In India, the Galaxy S24 starts at ₹79,999 for the 8GB RAM and 256GB storage variant. If you crave more storage, you’ll need to shell out ₹89,999 for the 512GB model. The absence of a higher RAM variant, especially considering the phone’s price tag, might be a deterrent for power users.
Samsung Galaxy S24 Review: Design
If you’re familiar with the Galaxy S23, the Galaxy S24 might seem like a familiar sight. The design remains largely unchanged, retaining the sleek and sturdy aluminum glass sandwich construction. The rear panel features Gorilla Glass Victus 2, ensuring durability. The Galaxy S24 feels solid in hand, weighing in at 167 grams, with flat sides making it easy to grip. The compact form factor shines for one-handed use. This year, the aluminum frame boasts a slight curvature, ensuring a more comfortable grip. The rear panel showcases three camera rings, with a smaller circle for the flash module placed beside them.
The front display boasts slim bezels surrounding a center-aligned hole-punch cutout for the front camera. Although slightly larger than its predecessor, Samsung has managed to maintain similar dimensions. The Galaxy S24 is also IP68 certified for dust and water resistance, with the screen protected by Gorilla Glass Victus 2. Overall, the Galaxy S24 retains a distinct resemblance to its predecessor, albeit with a slightly larger screen and improved screen-to-body ratio.
Samsung Galaxy S24 Review: Specifications and Software
Under the hood, the Galaxy S24 makes a bold move by opting for Samsung’s own Exynos 2400 SoC, paired with its Xclipse 940 GPU. This marks a departure from the Qualcomm silicon used in previous years, a choice that will undoubtedly spark debate. This chipset is coupled with up to 8GB LPDDR5X RAM and 512GB UFS 4.0 storage.
The phone houses a dual nano-SIM slot supporting dual 5G standby, along with a USB Type-C port at the bottom, featuring a speaker, microphone, and SIM card slot. The power and volume buttons have shifted to the left frame of the device. Connectivity options include dual-band Wi-Fi 6e, Bluetooth 5.3 with LE, GPS (Glonass, Beidou, Galileo, QZSS), and NFC.
Samsung continues to leverage an ultrasonic fingerprint scanner, a feature increasingly sought after. It’s conveniently positioned under the display, offering fast and reliable performance.
Powering the Galaxy S24 is a 4,000mAh battery, smaller compared to competitors but larger than its predecessor. The phone supports 25W wired fast charging, 15W wireless charging, and 4.5W reverse charging.
In terms of software, the Galaxy S24 runs Android 14-based OneUI 6.1 out-of-the-box. Samsung has committed to providing seven years of Android OS updates and security patches, a significant advantage. With the increasing emphasis on AI, Samsung has incorporated several Galaxy AI features, allowing users to remove objects from images, create custom wallpapers, transcribe phone calls, utilize real-time translation, and more. However, it’s worth noting that most of these AI features will be free only until the end of 2025.
Samsung Galaxy S24 Review: Performance
The Galaxy S24 delivers a smooth and efficient performance, effortlessly handling any task you throw at it. While the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 would likely have delivered even better results, the Exynos 2400 still proves capable. Benchmarks like AnTuTu, Geekbench 6, 3D Mark, and GFXBench showcase the Galaxy S24’s performance prowess, although it falls short of some competitors.
Game performance is excellent, with titles like BGMI and Asphalt 9: Legends running at the highest settings without hiccups, even after prolonged gameplay. However, extended gaming sessions might lead to minor frame rate drops as the phone throttles to manage temperature. The phone remains comfortably warm to the touch during shorter gaming sessions. The Galaxy S24 delivers a truly enjoyable gaming experience thanks to its 120Hz refresh rate display with a 240Hz touch sampling rate, the capable chipset, and impressive sound quality.
The Galaxy S24 features hybrid stereo speakers, providing clear audio with good separation and decent bass. Call quality is also exceptional.
The Samsung Galaxy S24 boasts a 6.2-inch LTPO AMOLED 2X panel, offering an adaptive 120Hz refresh rate and an impressive 2,600 nits of peak brightness. This translates to 50 percent higher brightness than its predecessor, ensuring excellent readability even under direct sunlight. The phone also includes an Extra brightness mode for optimal outdoor viewing.
The display offers Vivid and Natural color modes and an Adaptive color tone that dynamically adjusts colors and white balance based on ambient lighting conditions. Viewing angles, contrast, and colors on the display are exceptional—a standout feature for a compact phone. Watching videos and playing games on the Galaxy S24 is truly immersive.
Overall, the Galaxy S24 delivers a flagship-level performance. We didn’t encounter any significant heating issues, slowdowns, or lags during both heavy and regular usage. The 4,000mAh battery performed very well, lasting almost 24 hours on most days with a mix of gaming, camera use, YouTube streaming, texting, GPS, and calling. A 20W adapter took approximately 1 hour and 20 minutes to fully charge the device. However, Samsung’s 25W wired and 15W wireless charging speeds fall behind the competition, and faster charging options would be a welcome upgrade.
Samsung Galaxy S24 Review: Cameras
Samsung has consistently delivered impressive camera hardware on its Galaxy S series phones, resulting in excellent photos and videos. The Galaxy S24 continues this tradition, offering a triple rear camera setup, similar to its predecessor. It comprises a 50-megapixel Samsung ISOCELL GN3 primary sensor, a 10-megapixel telephoto camera with 3x optical zoom, and a 12-megapixel ultra-wide camera with a 120-degree field of view. The front camera features a 12-megapixel sensor. One notable omission is the lack of auto-focus on the ultra-wide camera, a feature that is increasingly common among competitors.
The Galaxy S24’s camera app is user-friendly, offering various modes like Night mode, Pro mode, Pro video mode, hyper-lapse, slow motion, and Expert Raw (which requires a separate download).
In daylight, photos captured with the primary camera are sharp, detailed, and exhibit excellent exposure and white balance. In some cases, the HDR might be a tad overzealous, leading to halos around objects/subjects, but this is relatively infrequent.
The main camera continues to perform well in low light, although some grain might be noticeable. Despite this, the photos retain good detail, saturation, white balance, and dynamic range. The camera app automatically enables Night mode in dark environments, and users can also access Night mode manually, allowing up to 25 seconds of exposure time when placed on a tripod, further enhancing sharpness and detail.
The ultra-wide camera delivers satisfactory daylight images, but the colors are still saturated. Skies, in particular, appear bluer than they should be. Outside of that, the results closely resemble those of the primary camera. Under low-light conditions, photos from the ultra-wide camera exhibit noise and a loss of detail around the edges. Even with auto Night mode enabled, noise can still be an issue in ultra-wide shots.
The telephoto camera excels in portrait photography, with excellent edge detection. 3x zoom shots taken in daylight are rich in detail and provide good dynamic range. However, under low-light conditions, the 3x telephoto camera struggles, even with Night mode activated. Images often suffer from noise and distortion.
The selfie camera impresses with its performance in both daylight and low-light scenarios. The phone also supports 4K video recording at 60fps. Portrait and night mode selfies produce good results with detail and some noise but avoid over-sharpening.
Video recording on the Galaxy S24 is excellent. Features like dynamic range, colors, sharpness, exposure, dynamic range, and stabilization are impressive. All four cameras on the phone can capture 4K video, and color matching between them is praiseworthy. The main rear camera also supports 8K recording at 30fps. In low-light conditions, the primary and ultra-wide cameras perform well, although some noise is present. The telephoto camera struggles in low light.
Samsung Galaxy S24 Review: Verdict
The Samsung Galaxy S24 stands out as a flagship compact smartphone, but it faces stiff competition in its price range. Chief rivals include the Apple iPhone 15, Google Pixel 8, OnePlus 12, Vivo X100, Xiaomi 14, and the Galaxy S23. The latter deserves mention considering the limited upgrades offered by the Galaxy S24. The new phone does bring a better display, a slightly larger battery, a new chipset, and modestly improved cameras.
The Apple iPhone 15 offers less overall versatility compared to the Galaxy S24, lacking a telephoto camera. However, its performance and battery life are undeniably superior. The Google Pixel 8 struggles with performance but redeems itself with its impressive camera system, a larger battery, a compact form factor, Google software and AI features, and a slightly lower price tag.
The OnePlus 12 and Xiaomi 14, both significantly cheaper than the Galaxy S24, offer comparable features, albeit without the AI bells and whistles. They come with superior performance, larger displays, and bigger batteries. However, they feature updated camera hardware.
Is the Galaxy S24 the best compact smartphone of 2024? Our answer is a definitive NO. It’s a fantastic compact phone, but the updates might not justify a significant upgrade from the Galaxy S23 (or even the Galaxy S22). However, if you’re considering switching from an iPhone and seek a compact Android all-rounder with an excellent display, versatile cameras, decent battery life, AI features, and long software support, the Galaxy S24 is an excellent candidate. With compact flagship options growing increasingly diverse, the Galaxy S24 stands as a strong contender for the best compact phone of 2024.
