We interrupt our ongoing coverage of the absolute flood of Black Friday 2023 deals currently happening at every major US retailer and carrier for a big and somewhat unexpected update on probably the most anticipated smartphone launch of (early ) 2024.
The Galaxy S24 Ultra, which is set to go official alongside its ‘vanilla’ and Plus siblings in less than two months after virtually all of its key details were repeatedly leaked by rock-solid sources, could be photographed In the flesh. for the very first time today.
The same but different
What
we look here are most certainly
not computer-generated renderings of the S24 Ultra’s potential design or dummy units intended to help case makers develop accessories for Samsung’s “next big thing” in advance. Instead, these are almost surely actual photographs of some sort of early prototype of the unreleased device, although, like anything that doesn’t come directly from the company before such a major product announcement, it still needs to be viewed with a fair degree of skepticism.
No one can say for sure that the photos are not faked in some way or, for example, that we are not looking at a (very convincing)
Galaxy S24 Ultra clone made by a completely different company. But assuming no such shadows are at play here, we have to admit that the phone looks pretty good…and predictable.
Just as too many insiders and tipsters to name here have predicted in recent months, it appears that even the minimal curves of the Galaxy S23 Ultra are all gone, giving way to a completely flat screen and back panel this time -this.
This is something that probably would have caused quite a bit of controversy just a few years ago, but now it seems natural and… expected given the way
Samsung has subtly overhauled the design of its last two flagships.
Apart from that, the
Galaxy S24 Ultra looks virtually identical to its predecessor at first glance, with the same rear
camera layout and positioning of the four imaging sensors and LED flash, an unchanged centered hole-punch on the front and nothing of note in the department either buttons and ports.
The pre-production unit photographed in the wild appears to be powered on and functional, but unfortunately these images don’t give us much in the way of a glimpse of the actual user interface. Hopefully that will come a little later…unless, of course, the person who made these photos public is already in a world of legal trouble.
What (else) do we know about the S24 Ultra?
Because “everything” would probably be a slightly exaggerated answer to this question, let’s go with… just about everything. For example, we don’t know if Samsung is preparing any price increase over the already expensive S23 Ultra.
This is our own S24 Ultra concept render… which looks eerily similar to the photographs above.
We sure hope that’s not the case given all the rumored similarities between the two super-flagships, ranging from a 5,000mAh battery to a 200MP rear-facing primary shooter to a 6.8-inch screen with the same “general” specifications. But then you have subtle but important upgrades, like a possible jump in maximum screen brightness from 1,750 nits to around 2,500 nits, an all-new 200 MP sensor, and storage options that can range from as little as 128GB to 2TB.
Meanwhile, the camera system on the back of the
Galaxy S24 Ultra is likely to be fundamentally different from that featured by the S23 Ultra, with the periscope telephoto lens planned to go from 10 to 50 megapixels but go down from 10x optical zoom to 5x. It remains to be seen exactly how Samsung will attempt to frame this latest potentially divisive change, and whether or not this means the S24 Ultra could
start at a lower price than the S23 Ultra.
