Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra vs. Apple iPhone 15 Pro Max, Google Pixel 8 Pro, OnePlus 12: High-End Flagships Compared

The Galaxy S24 Ultra John Kim/CNET

Samsung’s $1,300 (£1,249, AU$2,199) Galaxy S24 Ultra is the highest-end and priciest phone in the company’s lineup. Its highlights include new AI features and tweaks to its cameras.

It’s also by far the most expensive non-folding flagship phone currently available, coming in at $100 more expensive than last year’s base $1,200 Galaxy S23 Ultra and the also-$1,200 iPhone 15 Pro Max from Apple.

You get a lot for your money, though, including the beefiest phone specs and a camera that’s likely to specialize in detailed zoom photos. The S24 Ultra has the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor and a large 6.8-inch AMOLED display. Its 200-megapixel main camera is now accompanied by a 50-megapixel telephoto camera.

While we’ll have to wait for CNET’s Galaxy S24 Ultra review to see how those specs work on a daily basis, we can compare those specs against the most expensive phones offered by other flagship phone makers.

In the below chart, we’ve outlined what’s inside the S24 Ultra and pit it against Apple’s iPhone 15 Pro Max, Google’s Pixel 8 Pro and the OnePlus 12.

Samsung’s Galaxy S24 Ultra Now Has a Titanium Design

The Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra launches for $1,300, which is $100 pricier than last year’s Galaxy S23 Ultra, on Jan. 31 alongside the cheaper Galaxy S24 Plus and Galaxy S24. With the Galaxy S24 series, you’ll be able to have the Notes app format or summarize notes for you, circle any image to launch a Google search for that item and rewrite your text messages in a different tone before sending them. Samsung groups all these tools (among others) together under the blanket moniker known as Galaxy AI, and it’s available on the Galaxy S24, S4 Plus and S24 Ultra.

Samsung’s new Chat Assist feature can translate messages and rewrite messages in a different tone before sending.

There’s a new Circle to Search feature. It’s kind of like Google Lens, except you can search for objects in existing photos just by circling them rather than snapping a new photo. Just open the picture, hold the home button, and circle the object you’d like to search for. I circled waffles in a brunch photo in the S24 Ultra’s photo gallery, and Google pulled up recommendations for restaurants that serve waffles nearby.

The Galaxy S24 Ultra has a brighter screen than its predecessor.

The biggest physical change on the Galaxy S24 Ultra is that the body in made of titanium.

The Galaxy S24 Ultra has a new 50-megapixel telephoto camera, which replaces one of the 10-megapixel zoom cameras on the Galaxy S23 Ultra. Otherwise, the S24 Ultra’s camera hardware is essentially the same as the Galaxy S23 Ultra’s, consisting of a 200-megapixel main camera, 10-megapixel telephoto camera with a 3x optical zoom (in addition to the 50-megapixel, 5x telephoto camera) and a 12-megapixel ultrawide camera.

That means the S24 Ultra offers a 5x optical zoom compared to the S23 Ultra’s 10x optical zoom, a decision that Samsung made after it found that many users preferred zooming at 5x rather than 10x. This should hopefully enable crisper zoomed shots, but I’ll be able to tell for sure when I’ve had more time with the device.

The new S24 Ultra keeps the S Pen which can be hand for using the new Circle to Search feature.

Among the new AI features, the S24 Ultra can summarize notes.

There is Chat Assist for changing the tone, translating or spell checking your text message before sending it.

Here’s the S24 Ultra’s camera app. Notice the new AI tool on the left side under the view finder.

The tool is called Generative Edit, which is a lot like Google’s Magic Eraser, makes it possible to move, erase and manipulate individual objects in photos.

Like the Pixel 8, the processing can take a few seconds or more, especially when filling in a background.

When I recently called a Korean restaurant to make a reservation, I had no issue communicating with the person on the other end even though she didn’t speak English. That’s because I was trying out the new Live Translate which can translate calls in 13 languages during a conversation.

Live Translate took a little getting used to, but I was impressed by how easy it was to carry out a conversation with a Korean language speaker once I got the hang of it.