Samsung Galaxy S24+ review

Ever since Samsung managed to squeeze in a large-screen hybrid between tablets and phones with their Note series devices, it’s been a constant struggle between desirability and practicality. While the S24 Ultra tries to lure you with extra screen real estate, the S24’s compactness and affordability make it hard to resist, but with some serious compromises. The S24+, on the other hand, offers a middle ground with probably the most practical display size for a phone. At 196g, the phone is light for a device with a 6.7-inch display. 

As far as the design is concerned, the S24+ is simply a larger version of the S24 with flat faces and sideband, rounded corners, and slightly rounded rear edges, lending it the typical iPhone-ish look. The space-grade armour aluminium frame feels light and sturdy, offering a firm grip. The buttons and volume rocker line up at the right, with the SIM tray positioned at the bottom.

The phone is available in four colours—Cobalt Violet, Onyx Black, Sapphire Blue and Jade Green. The triple cameras line up at the top left corner on the rear, and the surface has a matte frosted glass finish. The phone offers IP68 dust and water resistance.

The 6.7-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X LTPO display offers QHD+ (3120 x 1440) resolution with a pixel density of 513 ppi, and Samsung says this is the brightest of their adaptive displays with a peak brightness of 2600 nits. The screen provides up to 120 Hz dynamic refresh rate along with HDR10+ support, making it optimal for gaming, entertainment and content creation.

Samsung offers a wide range of display customisation options including RGB control sliders and three resolution options. The S24+ features an always-on display with adaptive brightness. This display shows a static version of the wallpaper and is customisable with useful widgets. Though this is visually appealing, it drains the battery considerably.

The Galaxy S24+ is powered by Samsung‘s own Exynos 2400 chipset, which is nearly identical to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 that lends the decisive performance to the S24 Ultra. Both are fabricated with the 4-nanometre process, but the Samsung chip has two additional cores with slightly lesser CPU clock speeds, but better GPU frequency in theory. This won’t result in a perceptible difference in performance.

The S24+ offers 12GB of 12GB of RAM with 2546 and 512GB storage options, which is only bettered by the S24 Ultra’s 1TB storage variant. You get dual physical SIM slots along with support for eSIM. The device houses a 4900 mAh battery, almost the same capacity as its flagship sibling.

The phone uses Android 14 masked by Samsung’s One UI 6.1. The interface is smooth and intuitive with the familiar Samsung layout. The edge panel can accommodate a seemingly infinite number of apps for quick access. The S24-series offers a vast range of AI features and enhancements spreading across messaging, translation and camera with in-device processing. These are not perfect as yet, but more of an an extra feel-good feature to have.

Both the S24 and S24+ have the same set of cameras. While the S24 Ultra houses a quad-camera setup with a 200MP primary camera, the smaller Galaxies use a triple camera system including 50-megapixel primary camera, 12-megapixel wide-angle unit and 10-megapixel telephoto module providing 3x zoom. The front camera is the same 12MP unit that dons both the other S24 models. 

The cameras deliver great results with images tack sharp and colours true to the original. Images were clean without noise even under low light. However, the main and wide-angle cameras distorted images considerably at the edges when the subject is far away. Hence make sure that you place critical elements in your photo closer to the centre of the frame. Portraits and close-ups were rendered with natural-looking smooth bokeh.

Coming to AI enhancements, the device could do a reasonably good job of removing and replacing simple elements in an image. The native image editor has sliders for practically every essential adjustment. But tapping on the Auto button produced undesirable results most of the time with JPEG artefacts and altering the colours. These minor issues don’t take away the brilliance of the cameras, but much like Apple, when Samsung offers an advanced feature, we expect it to be flawless in all respects.

The capable Exynos SoC and 12GB of LPDDR5X RAM make the phone a capable phone with smooth and responsive performance similar to the Ultra. You won’t find any problems in multitasking or gaming. The 120 Hz display can provide maxed-out performance even with high graphics settings and you are not likely to face any issues in gaming without pushing it to ultra-high graphics. On the flip side, the device heats up considerably even in short gaming sessions.

The higher capacity battery results in better power efficiency, and we found the battery life to be good with normal usage. But with the always-on display active, the battery drains quite fast. Samsung doesn’t provide a charger in the box. Compared to some similar and lower-priced phones in the market, you may find Samsung’s 45W fast charging not fast enough. So the phone takes over two hours to fully charge even with a high-power adapter.

The S24 Ultra is the showstopper that everyone desires to flaunt. However, if you are not keen on spending over a lakh on a phone or consider the Ultra an overkill, the S24+ provides nearly the same performance with a saving of ₹30,000. The high-resolution AMOLED display adds to the experience with its pure imaging capabilities and 12GB RAM making it a strong contender to the likes of OnePlus 12 and Vivo X100 Pro, though the price could act as a deterrent.