Samsung S24 already set for major improvements

Whilst the Samsung Galaxy S23 line may have only come to market in February 2023, but that hasn’t stopped us looking ahead to what the Samsung Galaxy S24 might bring to the mobile table next year.

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Samsung’s latest flagships are three of the best phones money can buy right now (read our Samsung Galaxy S23 review, Samsung Galaxy S23 Plus review and Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra review to find out why), and early signs suggest that the next few entries in the brand’s popular S series will continue to push boundaries for mobile performance, photography, and battery life.

Naturally, we’re still a while away from the release of the Samsung Galaxy S24 and its siblings, but we’ve nonetheless put together this one-stop-shop guide to all the latest news and rumors about Samsung’s next Galaxy S phones.

Samsung Galaxy S24: Release datey

Given that Samsung only just lifted the lid on its Galaxy S23 line, we’re not expecting to see the brand’s Galaxy S24 smartphones released until 2024. That said, we can make an educated guess as to when these devices might appear.

Samsung debuted its Galaxy S23 phones at Galaxy Unpacked in February, with the Galaxy S23, S23 Plus and S23 Ultra all going on sale from February 17. The Samsung Galaxy S22 range was revealed around the same time a year prior, so we’d expect next year’s Galaxy Unpacked event – which will likely fall in either January or February – to play host to the launch of the Galaxy S24 line.

It’s worth noting that we don’t yet know whether Samsung will again release three Galaxy models in the S24 line – a vanilla S24, an S24 Plus and an S24 Ultra. The company has stuck with a three-pronged release strategy every year since 2020, but The Elec (opens in new tab) reports that Samsung may be preparing to ditch the Plus variant due to “polarization in the flagship product market” and the “stagnation of the entire smartphone market”.

Samsung Galaxy S24: Price

It goes without saying, but since we don’t even know which phones will definitely be arriving in the Samsung Galaxy S24 line, there’s been no word yet on Galaxy S24 pricing.

Using this year’s Galaxy S23 phones as a marker, though, we can safely assume that the vanilla S24, S24 Plus (which may not be arriving at all) and S24 Ultra will cost at least $799.99 / £849 / AU$1,349, $999.99/ £1,049 / AU$1,649, and $1,199.99 / £1,249 / AU$1,949, respectively.

Samsung Galaxy S24: News and specs

If The Elec’s aforementioned claims about the lack of a Galaxy S24 Plus are to be believed, then you’ll likely have to decide between the Galaxy S24’s 6.1-inch display and the Galaxy S24 Ultra’s 6.8-inch screen (that’s assuming these phones adopt the same display sizes as their respective predecessors).

Unless Samsung rocks the boat, we’d expect the vanilla model to stick with the S23’s 120Hz AMOLED display (2340 x 1080 pixels), with the S24 Ultra sporting the S23 Ultra’s glorious dynamic AMOLED 2X panel (1440 x 3088 pixels), as well as its dynamic refresh rate that can scale between 1Hz and 120Hz. That might top out at 144Hz this time around though.

Intriguingly, the actual look of both phones may be very different to what we’re used to. Samsung recently hired Hubert H. Lee (opens in new tab), a former design executive at Mercedes-Benz, to lead its smartphone and smartwatch design department from 2023 and beyond, so the S24 and S24 Ultra may veer away from recent Galaxy S models in terms of aesthetics.

Under the hood, both phones will almost certainly be running Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon chipset, which looks set to be the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 come 2024. Every model in the Galaxy S23 line runs on a bespoke version of Qualcomm’s already impressive Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor, so the Galaxy S24 and S24 Ultra are likely to be even more powerful handsets than their predecessors.

Indeed, a recent leak suggests that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 will be significantly faster than the 8 Gen 2, with the Galaxy-specific version of the chipset set to beat Apple’s upcoming A17 Bionic “on paper.” In other words, the Samsung Galaxy S24 and its larger siblings could be faster than the iPhone 15, iPhone 15 Pro and much-rumored iPhone 15 Ultra (although these speed gains are likely to be negligible).

Snapdragon gen 3 is indeed strong Bigger jump compared to last gen. Apparently the main contributor was arm itself, especially X4 & 1,4,3 configi think it’s almost confirmed that gen3 for galaxy will beat bionic 17 frequency”on paper”up to 3.7+ghz for mobile.

The standard Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 will boast a high-performance Cortex-X4 core clocked at 3.7GHz, four low-frequency performance cores and three efficiency-focused cores. For comparison, the standard Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 boasts a 3.2GHz clock speed, meaning its successor looks set to be 15% more powerful.

It’s currently unclear whether the Galaxy-specific version of Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 will be even faster, but 3.7GHz nonetheless marks a sizable increase over the S23’s 3.36GHz clock speed.

As for the phone’s cameras, tipster Ice Universe claims that Samsung will replace the S23 Ultra’s telephoto sensor with a “new solution” on the S24 Ultra, while the phone’s main camera “will remain the same.”

The Galaxy S24 Ultra is expected to replace the telephoto sensor and adopt a new solution. I think the main camera will remain the same or be slightly changed.

The S24 Ultra will adopt a “Gen4 optics” zoom camera design to “significantly improve” the phone’s zoom capabilities.

In practice, that could mean a wider 2.5-2.9 aperture and the possibility of 150x digital zoom on the S24 Ultra, which would offer better low-light performance than its predecessor and trump the latter’s already impressive 100x Space Zoom capabilities.

There’s been no word yet on the camera setup for the standard Samsung Galaxy S24, but the headline-grabbing photography tech is almost always reserved for the top-end handsets in Samsung’s Galaxy series.

Samsung Galaxy S23 FE tipped to arrive before the end of 2023

We didn’t get a Samsung Galaxy S22 FE last year, suggesting that Samsung had given up for good on the mid-range line – but there’s a growing body of evidence hinting that the Fan Edition series will make a return with the Samsung Galaxy S23 FE.

The latest twist in the story comes courtesy of SamMobile (opens in new tab). Its sources are saying that the Samsung Galaxy S23 FE is indeed going to appear, and that it’ll be powered exclusively by the Exynos 2200 processor.

That distinguishes it from the main Samsung Galaxy S23 line: all of those phones use the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip. The Exynos 2200 CPU was previously used for the Galaxy S22 phones from 2021 in certain parts of the world.

The Galaxy S23 FE is also going to come with a 50MP main camera lens on the back (matching the standard S23 model), and it’s set to be offered with either 128GB or 256GB of internal storage.

Rounding out the rumored specs, we’ve got 6GB or 8GB of RAM, as well as a 4,500mAh capacity battery. That’s the same battery size as the Samsung Galaxy S21 FE that launched right at the start of 2022, the most recent Fan Edition handset.

As for the release window, it’s said to be the fourth quarter of 2023 – October, November, or December. That would be close to two years after the last FE phone from Samsung, and it’s success (or lack of it) will likely determine whether or not we get any more.

It’s easy to see the appeal of the FE series, in theory: you get some of the best bits of the flagship phones, at a cheaper price. The best mid-range phones should always get you asking if you can really justify spending any more to get a top-end handset.

Of course there are compromises, but they can be carefully made. For example, as long as a camera module takes decent pictures and videos, most users aren’t going to care if it uses the very latest lenses and sensors on the market.

It’s an approach that works for phones such as the Google Pixel 6a: lots to like, a select number of trade-offs most people are going to be happy to make, and a price point that’s substantially less than what you’d pay for a flagship.

Samsung needs to make sure the Galaxy S23 FE hits the sweet spot between premium and budget, rather than falling between two stools. That’s going to mean a smarter set of decisions around specs than we saw with the Galaxy S21 FE.