Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra Review: AI-Infused With All The Trimmings

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra Voice and Data

The Galaxy S24 Ultra does not disappoint when it comes to just being a phone. Our calls sounded excellent, and the other parties never had trouble hearing us. The device also holds a signal well, and it supports every 5G frequency you could want, with both sub-6GHz and millimeter wave support. 


We tested the Galaxy S24 Ultra on T-Mobile's 5G network, mostly in areas that have access to the carrier's "Ultra Capacity" mid-band network. The Galaxy S24 Ultra easily hits a few hundred megabits down and tens of megabits up. That's about the best T-Mobile can do right now without millimeter wave, but those networks are only available in select cities and the signals don't travel very far. We've seen up to 100mb upstream bandwidth from T-Mo in certain areas where the 5G buildout is stronger.

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra Performance Expectations

The Galaxy S24 family is one of just a few smartphones that have launched with the latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip. It sports eight CPU cores, but the arrangement is different. There's a single Cortex-X4 prime core, five high-power A720 cores at two different clock speeds, and a pair of A520 low-power cores. The GPU has also gotten an upgrade, boosting performance about 25%, according to Qualcomm. Most of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 benchmarks we've seen have been impressive, outperforming last year's chip by margins that roughly match Qualcomm's claims.

Keep in mind, Samsung has gone back to using Exynos in the international SKU of some phones. The S24 and S24+ will have Snapdragon only in the US, Canada, China, and Japan. Everyone else gets Exynos. The Galaxy S24 Ultra, however, is Snapdragon everywhere, though. It's also got 12GB of RAM everywhere, which is half as much as the ROG Phone 8 Pro. 12GB still seems like plenty of RAM in 2024, though. The phone keeps apps in memory reliably, even overnight and in the midst of multitasking.

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra Geekbench Results

Geekbench is a cross-platform benchmark that simulates real-world processing workloads in image processing and particle physics calculation scenarios. We tested all of the smartphones featured here with Geekbench's single and multi-core workloads.


Recently, the Geekbench test has been upgraded to version 6, which has new ways of testing multi-core configurations and uses higher-resolution diagnostic assets. Since this benchmark is still new, we don't have as many data points. The Galaxy S24 Ultra easily takes the top spot, beating even the ROG Phone 8 Pro in high-performance X-mode and the OnePlus 12. Samsung's exclusive version of the Gen 3 has been clocked slightly higher, so that's not a shock.

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra PCMark For Android Results

UL's PCMark for Android is an excellent suite of tests if you want to benchmark a wide range of tasks on a handset -- things like image and video editing, as well as lighter-duty, everyday workloads such as email and web browsing. When you see the test running live, it's clear the scripted application tests are carefully selected and tuned to make use of the mobile platform in a very controlled way.


The more real-world tests of PCMark are not quite as kind to the S24 Ultra. It still performs more than well enough, coming in just below the last ROG Phone (in X-mode). It bests most retail phones, including the Moto Edge+, Galaxy Z Fold 5, OnePlus 12, and more.

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra AnTuTu 8 Benchmarks

AnTuTu’s benchmark returns a number of metrics ranked with somewhat nebulous scores, rather than frame rates or time to complete. Here, we're running the latest version of AnTuTu across multiple Android devices. AnTuTu returns four top level performance results which are all included here: CPU, RAM, 3D, UX (or User Experience), along with a total score.


Samsung's new flagship falls between the standard and X-mode scores for the Asus ROG Phone 8 Pro, making it one of the top scores in this test. The gap between the S24 Ultra and S23 Ultra is a whopping 30-40%, which is in line with the improvement Qualcomm has claimed for the Snapdragon Gen 3 chip.

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra Graphics And Gaming Benchmarks Results

Now, let's take a look at how the S24 Ultra stacks up in GFXBench, which has been one of the standard mobile graphics/gaming performance benchmarks for years. To ensure that display refresh (v-sync) and resolution aren't limiting factors, we're comparing off-screen test results here. GFXBench tests OpenGL ES graphics workloads and we're specifically testing OpenGL ES 2.0 and 3.0, as well as Vulkan in the latest iterations.


The Galaxy S24 Ultra put up one of the top scores in every one of these benchmarks, but it didn't quite steal the top spot from the gaming-optimized ROG Phone 8 Pro. The OnePlus 12 also wins in a few tests. Galaxy S24 Ultra Performance was strongest in the Aztec test, which uses the newer Vulkan API.

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra 3DMark Slingshot Tests

UL's 3DMark Sling Shot is one of several modules in the 3DMark mobile suite. Unlike previous gen 3DMark mobile tests, Sling Shot is a much more advanced OpenGL ES 3.1 and Metal API-based benchmark that employs more advanced rendering techniques, like volumetric lighting, particle illumination, multiple render targets, instanced rendering, uniform buffers, and transform feedback. We're running this test in off-screen mode once again to remove display resolution differences from the equation. This allows us to compare cross-platform results more reliably.


Again, we see great performance from the Galaxy S24 in this benchmark, but Asus and OnePlus run slightly ahead. The ROG Phone 8 Pro remains slightly faster, even in normal mode. X-mode runs away with it, but the OnePlus 12 is only a little behind. Regardless, the S24 Ultra is faster than most phones in this test.

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra Wild Life Benchmark Tests

3DMark's Wild Life benchmark is newer and more demanding than Slingshot, and it allows powerful devices to shine.


Samsung's phone shows it mettle here, besting even the ROG Phone 8 and the OnePlus 12 by a healthy margin. The Galaxy S24 Ultra will destroy the latest and most demanding mobile games, currently.

The Wild Life stress test runs the above benchmark 20 times, tracking how a device slows down as it heats up. Most phones lose some speed as they approach their thermal limit, but the severity of the slowdown varies dramatically from one phone to the next.


This test shows that the Galaxy S24 Ultra falls from its winning benchmark score relatively quickly. By the end of the 20-minute test, it shed about 35% of its performance, though that is much less of a bleed than we saw from the also Snapdragon 8 Gen 3-powered OnePlus 12. However, compare that to the ROG Phone 8 Pro, which loses less than 10%, and the ROG Phone's beefier gaming chops ring true. That's an unusually good showing, though. Most high-end smartphones fall somewhere closer to what we see here from Samsung.