Samsung has revealed its new Galaxy flagship phone, the S24 Ultra, and as always, it’s designed to take on the iPhone 15 Pro Max. But even though you hear many of the same marketing pitches, when you dive into the AI buzzword-laden spec sheet, something about the Galaxy S24 Ultra seems… off. Here are four similarities between the Galaxy S24 Ultra and the iPhone 15 Pro Max that have us scratching our heads:
It’s made of titanium, but still heavy
Like the iPhone 15 Pro Max, the Galaxy S24 Ultra is its maker’s largest phone, measuring 6.8 inches, just a bit larger than the 6.7-inch iPhone. This year’s model ditches the curved edges for flatter ones, although the square silhouette is still undeniably Galaxy. The big change this year is the use of titanium, but unlike the iPhone 15 Pro, the reason isn’t as clear. While the use of titanium over stainless steel makes the iPhone 15 Pro Max significantly lighter than the iPhone 14 Pro Max (221 grams versus 240 grams), the Galaxy S24 Ultra is only one gram lighter than the S23 Ultra (233 grams versus 234 grams). – and significantly heavier than its iPhone counterpart.
So why use titanium? Samsung claims it’s for durability, but since most of the phone is still glass, we’re not so sure. Rather, it seems that Samsung simply wants to match the iPhone’s main selling point, right down to the color assortment, which are extremely similar to Apple’s offerings.
Zoom camera has been decommissioned
The Galaxy Ultra has had a superior telephoto zoom camera than the iPhone for years. Apple may have significantly closed the gap with the iPhone 15 Pro Max’s 5X telephoto lens, but it still lags behind the S23 Ultra, which has a 10X optical zoom. But Samsung has tweaked the hardware with the S24, replacing the S23 Ultra’s 10MP 10x camera with a 50MP 5x lens. Samsung says the higher resolution allows it to achieve the same focal length through lossless crop zoom, but optical zoom degradation remains a headache. Fear not, though, the useless and gimmicky 100X Space Zoom remains.
Its price is higher than that of the iPhone 15 Pro Max
Apple raised a few eyebrows when it raised the price of the iPhone 15 Pro Max from $1,099 to $1,199, but it cushioned the blow by increasing the storage to 256GB at the same time. This meant it was priced the same as the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra, which also started at $1,199 with 256GB of storage. However, instead of continuing with it for a few generations or even lowering the price to undercut the iPhone’s price, Samsung inexplicably increased the price of the S24 Ultra to $1,299 with the same 256GB of storage, giving Apple an easy victory.
It doesn’t have Qi2 charging
This is the most confusing of all: the Galaxy S24 Ultra does not support the new Qi2 standard for the new batch of magnetic chargers and holders that were just announced at CES. Samsung is usually pretty quick to adopt new technologies – and isn’t shy about chasing popular iPhone features – but unfortunately, Galaxy S24 Ultra users are going to have to place their phone precariously on an old Qi charger and hope that they are correctly aligned.
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