The Samsung Galaxy S24 won’t be as high-end or exciting as the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, but if Samsung gets this phone right, then it could offer a better combination of price and features for most people.
Still, to tempt people away from the already-excellent Samsung Galaxy S23, it’s going to need some significant upgrades. With that in mind we’ve come up with a list of five things that we want from the Samsung Galaxy S24, to make it a compelling high-end handset.
With these improvements, it could rank not just among the best Samsung phones, but the best phones period. However, some of our wishes are a lot more likely than others, as we’ll explain below.
Note, though, that we’re just considering the standard Samsung Galaxy S24 here. If you want to see our thoughts on the Galaxy S24 Ultra, check out the six things we want from the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra.
1. Upgraded cameras
The Samsung Galaxy S23 doesn’t have bad cameras, in fact in our Samsung Galaxy S23 review we praised them as a “great camera array backed by better image processing.” But they’re the same cameras as the Samsung Galaxy S22 has, so they’re due an upgrade.
We don’t expect the Galaxy S24 to inherit the 200MP main sensor or the 10x optical zoom of the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra, but how about the 108MP main sensor of the Galaxy S22 Ultra? Or simply some larger sensor sizes than the Galaxy S23 has currently.
Any of this would help the Samsung Galaxy S24 remain competitive against increasingly fierce camera phone competition. Sadly though, leaks suggest the Galaxy S24 will have the same camera hardware as its predecessor, and therefore its predecessor's predecessor too.
2. A bigger battery
The Samsung Galaxy S23 already has decent stamina, with our review finding that it had “all-day-and-more battery life”, but there’s always room for improvement, especially since the battery itself is quite small, at 3,900mAh.
Of course, the Samsung Galaxy S23 is also quite a small phone, so to make the battery substantially bigger, Samsung would likely have to increase the size of the phone itself – or sacrifice some other components. So there might be limits to what can be done here.
That all said, new battery technologies and designs might provide an answer, and indeed it’s been rumored that Samsung is working on an electric car-style stacked battery for smartphones, which could fit around 10% more capacity into the same space.
Whether this tech will be ready in time for the Galaxy S24 though, is less certain, with one report suggesting that the Samsung Galaxy S24 will have a 4,000mAh battery – that would be an increase in size, but by much less than 10%, and it’s a claim we’ve heard more than once.
3. Longer-term support
The Samsung Galaxy S23 is promised four years of major Android OS updates and five years of security patches. That isn’t bad, and it certainly has most companies beat, but Google has now raised the game by promising seven years of Android releases and security updates for both the Pixel 8 and the Pixel 8 Pro.
This is the sort of support we’ve been calling for, especially as Apple itself has long been delivering around five years of major updates for the best iPhones.
So as the biggest Android phone maker, we want to see Samsung match Google here. It doesn’t need to offer more than seven years, as we doubt many people would hold onto their phones beyond that anyway, but seven years of support would really help justify the sure-to-be-high price of the Samsung Galaxy S24.
4. A Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset everywhere
The Samsung Galaxy S24 will quite possibly have a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset. After all, the Samsung Galaxy S23 uses the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. Except, reports suggest that only some regions (likely the US) will get a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, with most of the rest of the world instead getting a version of the Galaxy S24 with an Exynos 2400 chipset.
Alternatively, some leaks suggest that Samsung will reserve the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra (and possibly the S24 Plus) with the standard model getting an Exynos chipset everywhere.
That chipset is created by Samsung itself, and based on past form probably won’t be as good as the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, which – depending on which leaks are right – could put the Samsung Galaxy S24 in the uncomfortable position of essentially being a different phone in different parts of the world, and would make it less powerful than much of the competition in the regions lumbered with Exynos silicon.
We don’t know for sure that this will happen, or that the Exynos chipset will be inferior, but we’d certainly prefer it if everywhere gets the Snapdragon. That’s appeared in a few phones already, so we already know it’s good.
5. Useful AI skills
The whole tech world is obsessed with AI currently, and with good reason, as the skills of things like ChatGPT can’t be overstated. We’re also seeing AI being used to good effect in some phones now, most notably the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro, which include some very clever AI camera capabilities; such as the ability to move or remove objects and people in scenes, and to boost the quality of videos.
Samsung’s phones already have some AI skills themselves, but so far not many. With the Samsung Galaxy S24, we hope that they’ll be a bigger part of the experience.
That’s looking likely to be the case too, with leaks suggesting Samsung is working on some similar AI capabilities to Google – among other things, and the company has even applied to trademark the term ‘AI phones’.
So it’s likely that the Samsung Galaxy S24 will be heavily infused with AI, we just hope it will be useful rather than gimmicky.
