Do you want a small and compact flagship smartphone that is available worldwide yet has a long period of software support? Then consider the Galaxy S24. Small flagships like this have a special place in my heart. It’s a phone that I can use one-handed yet it packs great performance and good cameras that can rival some bigger phones.
Of course, because of its smaller size, there are going to be compromises.
Design
We’ll start with the design. The Galaxy S24 is basically an iterative upgrade over the Galaxy S23. It did get a bit of a facelift by having this familiar-looking shape and size. The one thing everyone told me when they saw the Galaxy S24 was “oh – an iPhone!” And yeah, I can see why many people say that. It does look like an iPhone but that’s mainly because iPhone did it first.
I mean, this rounded design makes this phone one of the most comfortable phones I’ve held in my hands ever. Because of how I grip small phones, it feels amazing.
I can even reach to the other end of the phone without shifting my grip – and that’s why I love these kinds of small phones.
Also, while many other brands have supremely big and thick camera bumps – the S24 has a very minimalist camera design. It’s also thin too – and I truly appreciate that.
Screen
The screen of this phone is ever so slightly bigger than last year’s, measuring 6.2-inch but still with a 2340×1080 pixel resolution and with 120Hz refresh rate. Our colorimeter reports 100% of sRGB color gamut coverage and about 87% of DCI-P3 color gamuts. Like what we mentioned for other phones within the Galaxy S24 series, the color doesn’t look as vivid as before too.
The ΔE number is also very low, even the maximum number is lower than 2.0.
Now, because this phone is so small, any bezel is immediately apparent. Thankfully, Samsung shrunk the bezels on all sides and made them symmetrical this time – and this is one of the best-looking small phone that we’ve got.
Performance
But despite being a small phone, the performance is no slouch. Most parts of the world – including my unit here – are getting the Exynos 2400. And I still can’t believe I’m saying this, the Exynos 2400 is actually very, very competitive. The performance is amazing and from our gaming test – we’ve shown the performance going to be great. We’re getting at least around 40fps in Genshin Impact at the highest graphical setting at an increased render resolution of 1755×810 pixels even while it is thermal throttling.
The thermal limit is somewhere around 47°C. It’ll feel warm to the touch and mildly uncomfortable, but still within the safety range.
Battery life
The battery capacity also got an increment to 4,000mAh and since it has the same screen resolution as the previous S23, we can compare the battery life efficiency of the Exynos 2400 and the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2.
We’ve compiled everything into these two graphs – and from what I’ve seen, yeah – the Exynos 2400 is definitely more efficient than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2.
Charging speed
But the charging speed though, didn’t get any improvements. The small S24 is only capable of receiving up to 25W of USB-PD PPS and it takes nearly 70 minutes to complete the charging cycle.
Software
And again – we won’t talk much about the software here since it is the same as the Galaxy S24+ and S24 Ultra. It’s running on One UI 6.1 and it’s pretty much just One UI 6 but with a few additional features and all the Galaxy AI features are the same between these 3 phones.
We’ll talk about Galaxy AI in another video since it’s such a big topic.
And I’m still surprised that Samsung is upping their software support policy to 7 generations of Android OS upgrades and 7 years of security patches. That means if the phone can physically survive years of usage, then you’ll get software updates until 2031.
Camera
As for the cameras, they’re using the same camera hardware as before – and since the firmware has not been updated on the S24 yet, the camera is a bit weird – especially in night shots that we’ll talk about later.
To take a look at all the pictures taken with the Galaxy S24, watch our video at the top of this review.
A few more things to mention
As always, a few more things to mention – the Galaxy S24 has a USB 3.0 at the bottom and has display output via that single port. It works the same as the S24+ and the Ultra, which is great.
Of course, it has Samsung DeX too.
It will also have the same double nano SIM card slot but no microSD storage expansion, no audio jack, and that’s about it. Still has IP68 as always, but we’ve come to expect that from the Galaxy S series already.
Conclusion
And to conclude this review – this is a great small phone. If you want a small flagship phone, then get this.
I know many people are seething over the fact that Exynos has returned and can’t accept that the Exynos 2400 has improved despite having so much evidence from not just me, but from other reviews too. It can compete with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 in some aspects – and it’s a fantastic chip.
As what I said in the S24+ review, time flows, and things change.
Overall, I think the new Galaxy S24 gets the least upgrades over its predecessors. There are a few small upgrades here and there, and that’s about it.
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Nice review, but nothing on the speakers?