With Samsung extending its software support pledge for its 2024 Galaxy S lineup, the question of whether you should get this year’s flagship or last year’s top-tier handset is more relevant than ever. That’s why many people might be looking into the cheaper Galaxy S23. The latter will most likely take them where they need to go, but isn’t it worth spending a little extra for the Galaxy S24?
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For a few generations now, Samsung has made rather subtle changes to its vanilla Galaxy S24 and the Plus variant, but this year, we have a bit more to cover.
The S24 brings small, but significant design changes, a slightly larger and brighter display, new camera processing and more battery. How do these changes relate to real-world experience, and do they make a big difference compared to the S23? We take a deeper dive below.
For starters, you can compare the complete specs sheets or directly continue with our editor’s assessment in the text further down below.
Size comparison
There isn’t much to discuss about dimensions and weight. Both handsets are almost identical, with the S24 being ever so slightly taller, albeit slimmer. That’s because it houses a 0.1-inch bigger display,
Samsung was able to trim the bezels even more this year, achieving practically the same footprint but with a larger screen. Still, the 0.1-inch increase isn’t that big of a deal, and the difference is rather negligible.
Design-wise, the S24 comes with a flat side frame, as opposed to the slightly rounded one on the S23. Whether you like the change or not, it’s up to personal preference, but it’s important to note that the S24 has an upgraded Aluminum Armor 2 frame – supposedly tougher than before.
Display comparison
The size difference in display size aside (6.2″ vs. 6.1″ in favor of the S24), the S24’s display poses a slight upgrade over its predecessor. The newer panel reaches around 1.400 nits in our tests, while a peak brightness boost during HDR playback can go beyond 2,000 nits. For comparison, the Galaxy S23 achieves 1,200 nits and 1,700 nits, respectively.
For the untrained eye, this probably won’t make much of a difference, but there are some potential benefits from the extra 200 nits on a bright sunny day outside.
Other core features such as HDR10+ support and 120Hz refresh rate remain, but the latter is now enhanced. The new LTPO panel supports more granular refresh rate control, potentially allowing for better energy efficiency. And the video playback score may attest to that, but more on that later.
Battery life
Even though the battery upgrade is quite modest, from 3,900 to 4,000 mAh, the Galaxy S23 earns a higher Active Use Score thanks to the longer video playback runtime. There’s a significant decline in the call time score, though.
Sure, the Galaxy S24’s overall score is higher, but some users may prefer the Galaxy S23 if they talk a lot on their phones on a daily basis. Others may choose the S24 over the S23 if multimedia is the main use case.
Charging speed
Unfortunately, there’s no upgrade in the charging speed, and as it has been for the last few generations, the vanilla Galaxy S24 supports 25W fast charging over the Power Delivery standard. Both devices charge equally slow, compared to some of their competitors – it takes about 1 hour and 15 minutes for a full charging cycle.
Speakers test
To our surprise, there’s a noticeable change in the speaker setup this year. The S24 is louder but misses the bass almost entirely. The Galaxy S23 has a fuller and warmer sound thanks to its bass.
Performance
No matter if you are getting the Exynos 2400-powered version or the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 variant, you will be rewarded with a nice bump in performance compared to the Galaxy S23.
The Exynos 2400 seems to outperform the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 in both single and multi-core scenarios by roughly 14 and 26%.
In combined workloads, the Galaxy S24 still outperforms the Galaxy S23 by about 16%, according to AnTuTu 10.
Samsung
Galaxy S24
AnTuTu 101,696,727
Geekbench 62,177 single-core
Geekbench 66,747 multi-core
Samsung
Galaxy S23
AnTuTu 101,464,257
Geekbench 62,028 single-core
Geekbench 65,327 multi-core
The memory options to choose from remain the same – 8GB/128GB for the base config going up to 8GB/512GB. The Galaxy S24 has one additional option – 12GB/256GB.
Camera comparison
The Galaxy S24 and S23 carry identical camera hardware, but the newer version promises better processing thanks to the improved ISP. And we must say there are a couple of key differences we noticed, although it’s hard to tell which approach is better.
The Galaxy S23, for instance, tends to go for brighter exposure, more vibrant colors and adds a touch of artificial sharpness, giving the sense of cleaner photos. The Galaxy S24, on the other hand, goes for a more natural and warmer look. We also noticed less noise on the 3x telephoto shots.
Samsung Galaxy S24 daylight samples: 0.6x • 1x • 3x
Samsung Galaxy S23 daylight samples: 0.6x • 1x • 3x
The same is true for the nighttime photos. In some scenes, the Galaxy S23 can even go overboard with the processing, and the added sharpness often brings out the noise, making some surfaces look grainy. On the other hand, the shadows hold more detail. The Galaxy S24’s strong suit is once again the more natural look, although one could argue the samples look soft.
Samsung Galaxy S24 low-light samples: 0.6x • 1x • 3x
Samsung Galaxy S23 low-light samples: 0.6x • 1x • 3x
Video recording quality
A similar trend can be observed in the video processing. The main camera on the S24 captures somewhat softer footage with a tad narrower dynamic range, but delivers a bit more saturated colors.
The S24’s ultrawide camera processing is nicer, though.
The telephoto cameras output almost identical videos, but the S24’s footage has some extra contrast.
Samsung Galaxy S24 video samples: 0.6x • 1x • 3x
Samsung Galaxy S23 video samples: 0.6x • 1x • 3x
Verdict
As you can see, it’s a rather close call between last year’s Galaxy S23 and this year’s S24. The changes are rather subtle and hard to justify given the €200 price difference. The Galaxy S24 may appeal to users liking the more natural look of the camera stills, the extra video playback hours, the slightly brighter display, the more powerful SoC and the louder speakers.
On the other hand, the S23’s sharper and more vibrant processing may appeal to a different subset of users as well as those who spend hours talking on the phone each day. The stereo speakers sound somewhat nicer too.
Nevertheless, Samsung’s extended software support gives peace of mind, while the modest upgrades the Galaxy S24 brings make the Galaxy S23 look like a better bang for the buck.
Get the Samsung Galaxy S24 for:
The slightly brighter display outdoors.
The slimmer bezels and slightly larger screen.
The longer video playback runtime.
The louder speakers.
The more natural camera rendition.
The faster chipset.
Get the Samsung Galaxy S23 for:
The longer call runtimes.
The better-tuned speakers.
The sharper and more vibrant camera output.
The considerably lower price.