Samsung Unpacked 2024 - Galaxy S24 Announcement

[RejZoR]

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

There is no need to be salty.

You bought the S23 with the promise of 5 years of security updates and 4 generations of OS updates. That's what you signed up and paid for.

 

Someone else buying a different product and getting something better should not be seen as a "fuck you" to you. I think it is a very bad mentality to get mad at others who buy later products getting a better thing than what you got. I see this with things like CPUs and GPUs as well and it never made any sense to me. You almost always get something better if you wait and buy the next generation. 

It's not like your purchase got worse just because someone else got something better. It just comes across as someone being salty and whiney because someone else got something better for waiting.

 

 

Some of the AI features will come to the S23 too. It remains to be see which ones will come and which ones won't. My guess is that all the ones that use Gemini Pro will be available since that's done on Google's servers. When it comes to the on-device AI features I think it will a mixed bag. If I had to guess I'll say that the detection of different speakers will arrive on the S23 too, but the generative fill-in images and videos won't. They require a lot of processing and even if the s8gen2 is capable of doing it, it would be pretty slow and probably not a good experience.

When Qualcomm demoed Stable Diffusion on the Snapdragon 8 gen 2 it took them "less than 15 seconds" to generate a 512x512 image.

When they demoed it on the Snapdragon 8 gen 3 they did it in under 1 second.

 

Just because the s8gen2 was faster than the s8gen1 does not mean it is fast enough to do all the things the s8gen3 can do.

Again, you bought what you bought. Don't be mad at Samsung and others just because their latest product is better than the previous one, and you happen to own the model from last year.

 

Just to be clear, Samsung never said the S23 was incapable of AI. They expressively said the exact opposite because they said they would bring some features to the S23 too.

 

 

 

Yeah, how dare they improve their products year after year! They should just stop making phones better so that the ones who own the previous generation phones won't feel like they don't have the best anymore.

Even Apple doesn't pull crap like this. APPLE of all companies. They often gave longer support than promised to much older devices than from just 1 year ago. I "signed up" to 4+1 because that's all you could get and it was only time I could even get a Snapdragon as European user. Then again, since they entirely ditched white color, I wouldn't buy it either way if I think about it. Who the hell thought not offering a variant of white entirely was a good idea?

 

As for all the Ai, I don't care if it takes 1 second or 15, if the feature is there for non real time operations. Like image processing. I don't particularly care about real time call translating, but I do about image processing. Some features are available already which makes me confused why Samsung was bragging about being new on S24 and questioning what will be with those that aren't available on S23...

 

So, yeah, most of changes and limitations are based on some bizarre arbitrary set of rules Samsung put out to sell S24.

[goodtofufriday]

After getting so disappointed buy the pixel 8 that I returned it, I was hoping to upgrade to the s24. 

 

But it literally is the same phone as my s22, just a little faster. 

 

My only gripe with this phone is the cameras. But the s24 has the same ones. 

Not interested in using AI features.

 

Shame. If the pixel 8 had even half the software QoL of Samsung then I have kept it for the camera. But there was just way too much functionality missing. 

[Commodus]

2 minutes ago, goodtofufriday said:

After getting so disappointed buy the pixel 8 that I returned it, I was hoping to upgrade to the s24. 

 

But it literally is the same phone, just a little faster. 

 

My only gripe with this phone is the cameras. But the s24 has the same ones. 

Not interested in using AI features.

 

Shame. If the pixel 8 had even half the software QoL of Samsung then I have kept it for the camera. But there was just way too much functionality missing. 

The Galaxy S24+ is worth upgrading if you have an older model, since it brings back a 1440p display (not seen since the S20) and includes a larger battery on top of the other minor upgrades. But I will agree the regular model is a tough sell for many people.

[Origami Cactus]

25 minutes ago, goodtofufriday said:

After getting so disappointed buy the pixel 8 that I returned it, I was hoping to upgrade to the s24. 

 

But it literally is the same phone as my s22, just a little faster. 

 

My only gripe with this phone is the cameras. But the s24 has the same ones. 

Not interested in using AI features.

 

Shame. If the pixel 8 had even half the software QoL of Samsung then I have kept it for the camera. But there was just way too much functionality missing. 

The first few, maybe 3-4 generations of the pixel phones had the same exact cameras every year, but they also improved massively yearly too.

Image sensors really aren't the barrier in these age of platoed tech development, it is more about the image processing.
I guarantee the S24 pictures will come out better than the S22 ones in all situations, even if you aren't interested in AI, this is exactly where it helps.

[goodtofufriday]

29 minutes ago, Origami Cactus said:

The first few, maybe 3-4 generations of the pixel phones had the same exact cameras every year, but they also improved massively yearly too.

Image sensors really aren't the barrier in these age of platoed tech development, it is more about the image processing.
I guarantee the S24 pictures will come out better than the S22 ones in all situations, even if you aren't interested in AI, this is exactly where it helps.

Any image that needs any zoom looks bad, and not great to terrible in low light situations. 

That's been true for my s10e, s21, and s22. 

My old Sony Xperia x compact looked better. 

 

The supposed bump in processing never made it look much better between all these phones. 

 

The pixel 8's telephoto lens was great for zooming in close on things. 

[goodtofufriday]

54 minutes ago, Commodus said:

The Galaxy S24+ is worth upgrading if you have an older model, since it brings back a 1440p display (not seen since the S20) and includes a larger battery on top of the other minor upgrades. But I will agree the regular model is a tough sell for many people.

Sadly they are just too large for me.

Ive got a rule that if I can't use the whole screen one handed, top to bottom, side to side, then I don't want it. 

[Origami Cactus]

1 hour ago, goodtofufriday said:

Any image that needs any zoom looks bad, and not great to terrible in low light situations. 

Can you please explain what you mean by that? If you are a bit more specific then that would be helpful.

If you mean that zooming in gallery after the fact when the photo is taken, then yeah. 12Mp really means that you need to get the image right out the gate and you can't zoom in on it afterwards. I owned the X compact, that was 20mpix, so had a bit more freedom in that aspect. But on the S22 you should be able to do 50mpix too.

In low light situations you need to use the dedicated night mode, it isn't built into the normal "photo" mode, you need to swipe to video, then swipe up again until you get to night mode. It is about 20x better than the normal auto mode, and nothing less than impressive in low light situations.

[igormp]

I'm really considering upgrading to a S24 from my S22, mostly due to the battery bump. I can do the upgrade for ~$200 given the tons of discounts samsung has given here in Brazil.

 

Will wait a bit and see proper reviews on it with battery life measurements before I pull the trigger tho

[Mykie]

I currently have an S10 that I'm still rocking with. Wish they brought back the microSD card for storage expansion lol

[LAwLz]

8 hours ago, Sauron said:

iirc apple's titanium version was actually more prone to bending than the aluminium one due to the titanium being too thin... might not be the case here but at the very least it's more expensive without a real reason.

Well in this case the new model is cheaper than the old one, so if there is a cost increase then it seems like Samsung is absorbing that in their margins and not passing it on to consumers. I just see it as a good thing.

 

 

8 hours ago, Sauron said:

Speaker recognition is also not new, it has existed for a long time without "AI"; it was just never integrated into widespread voice recorders (afaik) and I suspect the reason is that it's not that useful. 

Do you have a source for that? I've tried looking around and can't really find much about it, or how well it worked.

Maybe it wasn't widely used because it was prone to errors and difficult to implement, possibly requiring quite a lot of computational resources. In any case, I think it's a neat feature. I don't really see why you wouldn't want this if you use the transcription feature. Even if Samsung isn't the first to do it I still think it's a neat feature that just improves their existing app.

 

 

8 hours ago, Sauron said:

I mean, yes... sort of. I don't use spell checking. It's not even that I always expect my spelling to be perfect, but I hate it when a system changes my input - I know what I'm trying to type, thank you very much.

You're getting spell-checking mixed up with autocorrect. They are two different things. 

My point is that it seems like you're looking for things to be mad about and picking really weird ones. That's not a good attitude to have.

 

 

 

8 hours ago, Sauron said:

I don't know why you'd take what I said to mean I find these features offensive... I just don't find them very useful.

Because you have used words like "stupid idea" and your reaction to "hey, we have a feature that can style text for you if you want" was to say "sounds like they expect you to be illiterate".

It's a very weird and hostile reaction to a harmless thing.

[IAmAndre]

5 hours ago, goodtofufriday said:

Sadly they are just too large for me.

Ive got a rule that if I can't use the whole screen one handed, top to bottom, side to side, then I don't want it. 

Exactly my opinion too. I've bought a OnePlus 7 back in 2019, which I'm still using. I thought I'd get used to it but I still think it's too large although it would be considered compact by today's standards with a 6.4" screen.

 

Sadly we don't have that many options: the Pixel 8 with the lackluster SoC performance, inconsistent battery life and network issue; the Xiaomi 14 that might never come out in the West; the Zenfone 9 with only 2 years of software updates; and the S24 with the Exynos SoC.

[Fasterthannothing]

Decided to trade in my s22 ultra for the s24+ because of the 7 years of updates and also the free storage upgrades and pricing of the s24+ after trade in. I was able to get a 512gb s24+ and the galaxy buds pro 2 for $318 including taxes. Plus I used cashback sites to get even more off that. I'm very impressed with the price to performance of the s24+ this year. The 24+ has the same ram and screen resolution/refresh of the ultra it's basically the ultra without the pen and crazy camera configuration which I didn't find myself using enough to justify the price difference.

[Sauron]

9 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Do you have a source for that? I've tried looking around and can't really find much about it, or how well it worked.

Maybe it wasn't widely used because it was prone to errors and difficult to implement, possibly requiring quite a lot of computational resources.

It's been used primarily for biometric authentication for at least a decade: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speaker_recognition

 

In phones for certain since about 2016, so if it worked on a 2016 phone I'd expect it would be no issue for a 2024 phone in computational terms. CNN inference isn't that computationally cheap either to be fair.

 

Interestingly enough it's been made obsolete as a biometric authentication method by AI voice synthesis.

[LAwLz]

7 hours ago, IAmAndre said:

Exactly my opinion too. I've bought a OnePlus 7 back in 2019, which I'm still using. I thought I'd get used to it but I still think it's too large although it would be considered compact by today's standards with a 6.4" screen.

The S24+ and OnePlus 7 are pretty much the same size.

The S24+ is 0,8mm taller, 1,1mm wider, and 1,5mm thinner.

 

Volume wise the S24+ is 4,4% smaller.

 

https://www.phonearena.com/phones/size/OnePlus-7,Samsung-Galaxy-S24+/phones/11090,12114

 

 

I don't agree that the OnePlus 7 would be considered compact by today's standards. It's the same size as the + model of Samsung's phones.

If you think it's too big then the S23 (non-plus) is significantly smaller.

https://www.phonearena.com/phones/size/OnePlus-7,Samsung-Galaxy-S24/phones/11090,12113

 

I think it's best to remain open-minded about the Exynos 2400 until it is released. Chances are it will not be the best SoC in the world, but it shouldn't be bad either.

 

 

10 minutes ago, Sauron said:

It's been used primarily for biometric authentication for at least a decade: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speaker_recognition

That's not the same thing either...

At this point I think you're deliberately misunderstanding so that you can keep having something to complain about.

And like I said, it doesn't really matter who did it first.

[IAmAndre]

6 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

The S24+ and OnePlus 7 are pretty much the same size.

That's my point, and I think the OnePlus 7 is too big. Never got used to the large size.

7 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

don't agree that the OnePlus 7 would be considered compact by today's standards

The Xiaomi 14 is 6.4". So with a more recent design and thinner bezels the OP7 would be considered as compact because you can fit a 6.7" phone today in this body.

 

9 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

think it's best to remain open-minded about the Exynos 2400 until it is released. Chances are it will not be the best SoC in the world, but it shouldn't be bad either.

I agree with that. I've seen that the chip itself doesn't support Wifi 7 so I'm wondering what else to expect. I'm just waiting for the reviews and decide whether to import a SD S24 or just get a huge OP12.

[LAwLz]

14 hours ago, RejZoR said:

As for all the Ai, I don't care if it takes 1 second or 15, if the feature is there for non real time operations. Like image processing. I don't particularly care about real time call translating, but I do about image processing. Some features are available already which makes me confused why Samsung was bragging about being new on S24 and questioning what will be with those that aren't available on S23...

You might not care, but other people might care if their phone locks up for several seconds.

It's not a good user experience.

 

Which features were available already that Samsung was "bragging" about?

Also, it is entirely possible that something exists in other phones but that are new to the Galaxy series. 

 

 

14 hours ago, RejZoR said:

So, yeah, most of changes and limitations are based on some bizarre arbitrary set of rules Samsung put out to sell S24.

Yeah, bizarre arbitrary rules like "doesn't lock the phone up for 10 seconds because it results in a bad user experience" or "can't do it in real-time in a scenario where real-time is absolutely necessary, like during a phone call". Very arbitrary and bizarre...

I think we should wait and see which features get ported and which don't before complaining about how it's an arbitrary limitation. I mean, you do realize that you are complaining and attacking them for locking features away without even knowing which features are being restricted, right? You're complaining before even knowing what you are complaining about.

 

 

13 hours ago, goodtofufriday said:

Any image that needs any zoom looks bad, and not great to terrible in low light situations. 

That's been true for my s10e, s21, and s22. 

My old Sony Xperia x compact looked better. 

 

The supposed bump in processing never made it look much better between all these phones. 

 

The pixel 8's telephoto lens was great for zooming in close on things. 

I find that VERY hard to believe.

 

Please note that the Xperia X Compact also had a significantly longer exposure time.

[RejZoR]

2 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

You might not care, but other people might care if their phone locks up for several seconds.

It's not a good user experience.

 

Which features were available already that Samsung was "bragging" about?

Also, it is entirely possible that something exists in other phones but that are new to the Galaxy series. 

 

 

Yeah, bizarre arbitrary rules like "doesn't lock the phone up for 10 seconds because it results in a bad user experience" or "can't do it in real-time in a scenario where real-time is absolutely necessary, like during a phone call". Very arbitrary and bizarre...

I think we should wait and see which features get ported and which don't before complaining about how it's an arbitrary limitation. I mean, you do realize that you are complaining and attacking them for locking features away without even knowing which features are being restricted, right? You're complaining before even knowing what you are complaining about.

 

 

I find that VERY hard to believe.

 

Please note that the Xperia X Compact also had a significantly longer exposure time.

Who said anything about locking up? You know things can be done without phone "locking up". So it's processing something, it takes 15 seconds and I can browse Reddit while I wait. That kind of waiting. I haven't had my phone physically lock up for operation in like 10 years or so. That only happened in the early days of Android phones when they were all garbage and Android was garbage too.

[LAwLz]

45 minutes ago, IAmAndre said:

The Xiaomi 14 is 6.4". So with a more recent design and thinner bezels the OP7 would be considered as compact because you can fit a 6.7" phone today in this body.

I, and I think people in general, consider things "company" or not based on the dimensions of the body, not the screen.

In the case of the OnePlus 7, its body is as big as the plus and almost Ultra size phones from Samsung. I think it's weird to say the OnePlus 7 would be considered compact today and then go "if they made it smaller". Of course it would could potentially be considered compact if it was smaller, but it isn't, so saying it would be considered compact by today's standard is weird and illogical to me.

 

But I don't think it would be considered compact even if you slimmed down the bezels. 

It would still be considerably larger than the S24 even if we completely removed the bezels, and the S24 isn't really that "compact" either.

The screen on the OP7 is just so big that it by itself isn't considered compact by today's standards. It's not an issue of "the body isn't modern enough".

 

 

 

45 minutes ago, IAmAndre said:

I agree with that. I've seen that the chip itself doesn't support Wifi 7 so I'm wondering what else to expect. I'm just waiting for the reviews and decide whether to import a SD S24 or just get a huge OP12.

That's a bummer. Realistically I don't think it will matter to people. Wi-Fi 7 is so new that barely anyone has it and I don't see that situation changing in the next 3-4 years or so. Wi-Fi 6 and 6E are already really good as well, so the benefit will most likely be really small on top of that. But it's still sad to see disparity like this.

 

 

22 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Who said anything about locking up? You know things can be done without phone "locking up". So it's processing something, it takes 15 seconds and I can browse Reddit while I wait. That kind of waiting. I haven't had my phone physically lock up for operation in like 10 years or so. That only happened in the early days of Android phones when they were all garbage and Android was garbage too.

Just because you might consider something acceptable does not mean the average user will think it is acceptable, and it's the average user that Samsung will base the decision on whether or not to spend the time and effort required to port the feature, if it's even possible.

Also, you missed quite a lot of my post, like how you're complaining without even knowing what you're complaining about.

It's a bad attitude to have.

[IAmAndre]

16 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

I, and I think people in general, consider things "company" or not based on the dimensions of the body, not the screen.

 

I do too. What I meant is that a 6.4" (not necessarily the OP7) in a modern design would be considered compact, like the Xiaomi 14.

19 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

But I don't think it would be considered compact even if you slimmed down the bezels. 

It would still be considerably larger than the S24 even if we completely removed the bezels, and the S24 isn't really that "compact" either.

 

It would still be on the smaller end, one of the smallest phones on the market. It's hard to find anything under 6.5" nowadays.

20 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

the S24 isn't really that "compact" either.

I agree but it's compact by today's standards. Again, it's one of the smallest phones on the market if not the smallest. I remember the Galaxy Note was considered a "phablet" not that long ago although it was just 5.5" even though it had a larger body. It's all about perspective.

[Quackers101]

can see it now on the pricing of storage, +100gb is enough for some but also very small if doing a lot of pictures/recordings.
when +5y old phones have the same amount of storage, no support but the price and lifetime might down a bit, even if one add more storage which is decades since something I have tried at least not sure how often people do it.

 

doesnt help with one of the good features you have to download 500mb per language to use the translate feature? as noted by Marques Brownlee

 

sharp edges not an fan, and do wonder about repairing on the different phone builds, hopefully its still able to be repaired without broken screens.

Edited January 19 by Quackers101

[RejZoR]

2 hours ago, LAwLz said:

I, and I think people in general, consider things "company" or not based on the dimensions of the body, not the screen.

In the case of the OnePlus 7, its body is as big as the plus and almost Ultra size phones from Samsung. I think it's weird to say the OnePlus 7 would be considered compact today and then go "if they made it smaller". Of course it would could potentially be considered compact if it was smaller, but it isn't, so saying it would be considered compact by today's standard is weird and illogical to me.

 

But I don't think it would be considered compact even if you slimmed down the bezels. 

It would still be considerably larger than the S24 even if we completely removed the bezels, and the S24 isn't really that "compact" either.

The screen on the OP7 is just so big that it by itself isn't considered compact by today's standards. It's not an issue of "the body isn't modern enough".

 

 

 

That's a bummer. Realistically I don't think it will matter to people. Wi-Fi 7 is so new that barely anyone has it and I don't see that situation changing in the next 3-4 years or so. Wi-Fi 6 and 6E are already really good as well, so the benefit will most likely be really small on top of that. But it's still sad to see disparity like this.

 

 

Just because you might consider something acceptable does not mean the average user will think it is acceptable, and it's the average user that Samsung will base the decision on whether or not to spend the time and effort required to port the feature, if it's even possible.

Also, you missed quite a lot of my post, like how you're complaining without even knowing what you're complaining about.

It's a bad attitude to have.

Between not having an option at all and having to wait few seconds, I'd say anyone would pick the later. We're talking non essential specific functions. That's not the same as waiting for app drawer to load for 2 seconds every single time.

[IAmAndre]

19 hours ago, LAwLz said:

I think the most important and interesting thing to look for is energy efficiency.

Samsung's node has been quite a bit worse than TSMC's and as a result the last few Exynos chip has gotten good performance but bad efficiency numbers. Their implementation of the various cores also seem to have been weaker in terms of efficiency than Qualcomms. Let's hope both of these things have improved.

This gives me hope:

[Fasterthannothing]

.

[TVwazhere]

On 1/18/2024 at 2:46 AM, Origami Cactus said:

The 5x camera on the S24 ultra is 50Mp, pixel size 0.7µm, F3.4, 115mm eq (real focal length 18.6mm), sensor size 1/2.52 (sony IMX854, 5.75 x 4.32 mm).

The 10x camera on the S23 ultra is 10mp, pixel size 1.12µm, F4.9, 230mm equiv (real focal length 27.2mm), sensor size is 1/3.52 (Sony IMX754, 4.3mm x 3.22mm)

 

The new S24 ultra at 10x will be 5.75 x 4.32 mm / 2 = 2.8mm x 2.16mm.

So the sensor area is about 2x smaller, 13.8cm2 vs 6cm2. But it will be 50/2/2 = 12.5mpix vs 10mpix on the old sensor.

 

The new lens is exactly 1 EV brighter, F3.4 vs F4.9....

Me trying to understand all this

[Origami Cactus]

48 minutes ago, TVwazhere said:

Me trying to understand all this

I can put it in simpler terms or answer some questions about it lol. I mainly made the math in my own curiosity, but thought it can also be interesting to other photography nerds.

Simply put: Lens lets in 2x more light, but sensor area at 10x zoom is also about 2x smaller. Quality at 10x at higher should be a little better on the s24u thanks to 12.5mpix vs 10mpix, while the sensor area vs lens brightness cancel each other out basically.