Samsung S24 Ultra review: Does AI mean a 'new era' of smartphones?

A sharp design, a titanium frame, a fast processor, a new camera and a large battery - the hardware specifications of S24 Ultra are as impressive as you might expect from Samsung's new top-of-the-range smartphone.

And yet this time the headline feature isn't an unrivalled camera zoom or unbeatable display quality (both of which the Ultra already has). No, this time, the buzz is about AI, in other words software, not hardware.

These smartphones are characterized by a whole range of AI-based features that mark nothing less than the start of "the era of AI," Samsung says. The question is: How much of this is PR and gimmicks?

A translation assistant for foreign-language calls

A look at live translation feature shows AI is more than just a marketing buzzword, but not always the revolution we hope it is.

Here's how it works: You call someone who speaks a foreign language, start the call assistant, set the language and the AI translates what the other person is saying - and vice versa.

Sounds a bit complicated? It is. After a somewhat fiddly setup, the AI finally starts translating, albeit with a noticeable delay and very artificial pronunciation.

In our tests, it's all a bit frustrating, especially since full sentences are often the only ones to be translated correctly. The translation is also sometimes completely wrong, and the problem is you won't know unless the other caller tells you.

Most users are likely to struggle to have anything more than a very slow and superficial conversation in a foreign language. And yet even this is still handy, for example when ordering a taxi, booking a table or understanding a customer service hotline when abroad.

You are better off announcing when the AI translation is switched on, otherwise the machine voice could easily confuse the caller. And even then the person at the other end of the line needs patience for this to work.

Transcribe a conversation to text, then get a summary

Samsung's new phones can now also convert voice recordings into text, a feature familiar to Google Pixel owners since 2018.

As on Google smartphones, voice-to-text conversion takes place purely on the phone, and no recordings are uploaded to company datacentres. Indeed, in our tests, Samsung was able to successfully transcribe with or without an internet connection.

When you finish a recording, Samsung transcribes the spoken words at the tap of a finger. Individual speakers are also recognised and noted in different colours.

The transcripts are mostly error-free for normal speakers. In noisy environments or with heavy accents, mistakes start to creep in.

Samsung's AI can also provide summaries of texts, for example of recording you just had transcribed. Or you can boil down a Wikipedia or news article to the most important facts.

Contrary to expectations, this works quite well, although the AI does not explain or make conclusions. Humans are still much better at this.

Using AI to correct photos

Say someone walked into your shot. Or there's some rubbish in the foreground. Or maybe a your subject would look better a tiny bit to the right.

With generative AI, this is no longer a problem, says Samsung. If you find the blue AI symbol in the gallery editing menu, you can move or delete objects and even people.

The AI even replaces missing parts of a railing in the background and fills the gap in the bush. The traffic lights hanging in front of a building, a small bollard in the car park or a lamppost jutting into the sky - you can make them all disappear without a trace.

However, this use of AI soon reaches its limits, and you're better off keeping it to less complex motifs. Once you want to delete a larger object, the AI struggles to imagine what might have been seen in its place.

When trying to remove a parking meter from in front of a car, the pole remains in place at first. At the second attempt, it is gone, but the AI creates a licence plate that looks more like a barcode.

When removing a toilet block at a junction, the AI quite cleverly extends the branches of nearby trees and realistically imagines how the building behind it might continue.

The software even understands that one half of a bus is missing, but the part of the vehicle it has created looks like it was smudged out of shape.

We also tried it on the Cosmopolitan Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, asking the AI to remove the rear tower from the image. The AI replaces the tower with - guess what - another tower. Why even bother?

In the next attempt, we tried to delete a person walking through a shot of an old fire station. Instead of imagining the building behind the person, the AI just adds a black column.

While occasionally helpful for minor photo tweaks, this feature does not appear quite ready for the market yet, and the image editor is at times fiddly and annoying.

Circle to Search: Get information on anything you see

Perhaps the most useful AI feature is one that doesn't actually come from Samsung - Google's Circle to Search feature, now also on the S24 phones.

Say you're in an app and you see some interesting bird or a product you like the look of. You press on the bottom of the screen and Circle to Search is started. You then draw a circle around the thing you want to know more about.

The handy thing is that it not only works in any app you're in, but it also works for anything your camera can see. Just point your camera at someone's shoes, circle them and in seconds you see where you can buy them online.

Pretty soon, circling and searching for random things becomes part of everyday routines and after a short time it is hard to imagine life without it.

Is this the big AI breakthrough?

Samsung wants to sell phones, which is why the Galaxy S24 is being advertised as an AI-powered smartphone. By all means, it does have some practical features.

But is AI the start of a new smartphone era? Radically new designs like Humane's AI Pin do promise an entirely different everyday smartphone experience - no screens, just speaking with a virtual assistant.

But for normal smartphones, the "AI era" largely just means a few extra software features, some of which are quite useful.

The generative AI in image processing produces some impressive results - in addition to a lot of rubbish. The call translator is handy in some scenarios and is a good start at the very least.

Transcribing recorded conversations into text - many Samsung users have wanted this for years. However, many of the features are already available elsewhere, as Google features or in other apps.

All in all, with the S24, Samsung is carefully improving on the Galaxy approach with a slightly new design, packing in newer hardware and focussing, above all, more on software features.

With seven years of promised updates for the operating system and security, there is still plenty of opportunity for improvements.