It’s all about AI, Samsung launches new Galaxy S24 series ­− Video

The Samsung Galaxy new S24 series have a heavy focus on artificial intelligence (AI) with a plethora of features from live translations and image editing.

The South Korean company unveiled the S24, S24 Plus and S24 Ultra at its unpacked event in the San Jose in the US on Wednesday.

To anyone with one of last year’s S23 handsets, the S24 may not look like a massive upgrade aesthetically, it’s what the new smartphones pack under the hood that took centre stage during the launch.

The big upgrade to the external hardware is that it’s cased in titanium.

Galaxy AI

Justin Hume, vice president for mobile at Samsung Electronics in South Africa told The Citizen that 2024 is going to be a massively exciting year for the company.

“It’s new technology coming to the fore, but very practical human-led technology. By that I’m thinking of artificial intelligence, that will become pervasive through our products and platforms.”

Hume shared some of the features in the S24 series lineup that drew excitement among the South African contingent of journalists that attended the event in Johannesburg.

Justin Hume, vice president for mobile at Samsung Electronics in South Africa told The Citizen 2024 is going to be a massively exciting year for the company. #SamsungUnpacked @SamsungMobileSA @TheCitizen_News pic.twitter.com/LYg84NaiYj

— 𝙵𝚊𝚒𝚣𝚎𝚕 𝙿𝚊𝚝𝚎𝚕 ⚡️ (@FaizelPatel143) January 18, 2024

AI amplifies nearly every experience on Galaxy S24 series, from enabling barrier-free communication with intelligent text and call translations, to setting a new standard for search.

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Embracing AI

This years S24 series smartphones have fully embraced AI seen screen and battery upgrades and promises of seven years of security updates and generation of operating system (OS) upgrades.

Samsung has deepened its relationship with Google with some of the features powered by the search giant.  

One of the most notable features is Circle to Search allowing users to use their finger or an S Pen stylus to draw a circle around almost any on-screen item or object in order to get more information about it, or perhaps where to buy it. This will be useful if you see your favourite sports star, celebrity of influence with something that you might want.

Breaking language barriers

Samsung also showcased live transcription features with its latest smartphones which will be extremely useful.

The S24 series can facilitate Live Translate, Chat Assist, Transcript Assist, and Note Assist. The face-to-face interpreter allows Galaxy S24 users to converse in person in several languages.

When calling someone who’s speaking in Portuguese, for instance, a user can pull up a transcription that’s being fed through to them in real time. You can also record a conversation between two people and get it transcribed, while the AI assigns a label to each person speaking, similar to transcription products like Otter AI.

These features currently support 13 languages, including Spanish, Korean, Hindi, German, and Portuguese among others.

Photo and video edits

Another feature Samsung touted is the ability to use AI to edit photos and videos with the Galaxy AI capable of both automatically suggesting edits to an image in your camera roll including using Generative AI Edit to add or remove whole elements from an image

So users can edit reflections out of pictures they’ve taken. For instance if you took a picture of yourself in front of a reflective surface like a window. The feature also allows users to move a person from one side of the room to another by dragging them from left to right.

The Pro Visual Engine also on the S24 series also introduces Instant Slow Mo, a feature that lets users slow down the playback of a video, even if it wasn’t recorded on the Galaxy smartphone.

Other features

The Galaxy S24 Ultra sports a 6.8in dynamic LTPO AMOLED screen, similar to last year’s device.

It features a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor with 12GB of RAM and a choice of 256GB or 512GB of storage. However, only the 256GB will be available in South Africa.

If you love photography, the Galaxy S24 Ultra’s rear camera array remains largely unchanged from the S23 Ultra with a 200MP sensor. The 10MP periscope telephoto sensor has been upgraded to a 50MP, although the 10x optical zoom has been halved. It is also capable of 4K video recording at 120 frames per second.

The S24 has a 4 000 mAh battery (up 100 mAh from the S23) and the S24 Plus has 4 900 mAh (a 200mAh increase on the S23 Plus) with no change for the S24 Ultra.

Environment

The environmentally conscious will be glad to know that for the first time, Galaxy S24 features components made with recycled cobalt and rare earth elements. In Galaxy S24 Ultra, a minimum of 50% recycled cobalt was used in the battery and 100% recycled rare earth elements were incorporated into the speaker.

Additionally, every Galaxy S24 comes in a packaging box made from 100% recycled paper material.

Availability and pricing

The Galaxy S24 series come in several colours including Titanium Gray, Titanium Black, Titanium Violet and Titanium Yellow. On Galaxy S24+ and Galaxy S24 colours include: Onyx Black, Marble Gray, Cobalt Violet and Amber Yellow.

The Galaxy S24 retails for R22 500, the Galaxy S24+ R25 500 and R32 500 for the Galaxy S24 Ultra if you’re aiming for a cash purchase.

The device will be available in-store from 9 February.

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