Everyone treats the Galaxy S24+ like the forgettable middle child. They shouldn’t — but Samsung also isn’t making it easy to care.
This year’s Plus model is the closest it’s been to an “almost Ultra” since the S20 series. You’re getting a sharper QHD panel back, 12GB of RAM across the board, a bigger battery, and seven years of updates. And yet, between the Exynos split, downgraded battery endurance, and a camera setup that’s stuck in neutral, the S24+ is still a tough sell for a thousand bucks.
Design and Display: Finally QHD, Finally LTPO
The Galaxy S24+ is essentially an oversized S24, which isn’t a bad starting point. You get flat panels, a flat, matte Armor Aluminum 2 frame, and IP68 water and dust resistance. It’s under 200g, still pocketable, and the reshaped, flatter frame actually helps grip instead of chasing “glass slab” aesthetics for the sake of it.
Samsung ditched Gorilla Glass Armor for the Ultra only, so the S24+ is stuck on Gorilla Glass Victus 2 front and back. That’s still flagship-grade, but it’s a deliberate tiering move, not a hardware limitation. Colors are typical Samsung: Onyx Black, Marble Grey, Cobalt Violet, and Amber Yellow in stores, with Sapphire Blue, Jade Green, and Sandstone Orange online. The Cobalt Violet and Amber Yellow look better in person than Samsung’s renders suggest.
The real headliner is the 6.7-inch Dynamic LTPO AMOLED 2X display at 1440 x 3120 (513ppi). This is a genuine upgrade: QHD is back after Samsung dumbed the Plus line down to 1080p for years. You also get 120Hz adaptive refresh, HDR10+, and claimed 2,600 nits peak brightness.
In testing, the screen hit 441 nits manually and 781 nits with the Extra brightness toggle. Auto brightness pushed to 1,452 nits on a 75% window, and over 2,000 nits on smaller highlights. Minimum brightness around 0.9 nits keeps late-night use comfortable. The LTPO system scales refresh from 120Hz across UI and apps down to 24Hz for static content, with intermediate steps like 80Hz, 70Hz, and 50Hz when needed. The Always-On Display idles at 24Hz. It’s a proper flagship panel, both on paper and in practice.
Performance, Exynos, and Thermals: Better, Not Great
The S24+ runs One UI 6.1 on Android 14 and ships with Galaxy AI features plus a massive seven-year OS and security support promise. That’s a real, concrete advantage over older Galaxies and even some current rivals.
Chipset is where the story splits. Outside the US/Canada/China, you get the Exynos 2400; those markets get Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. Samsung claims feature and performance parity, but doesn’t even list the chip clearly in some official specs, which tells you how confident they actually are.
The Exynos 2400 uses a 10-core CPU: 1x Cortex-X4 at up to 3.2GHz, 2x Cortex-A720 at 2.9GHz, 3x Cortex-A720 at 2.6GHz, and 4x efficiency Cortex-A720 at 1.95GHz. GPU is Xclipse 940 based on AMD’s RDNA 3, clocked at 1,109MHz and delivering around 3,407 GFLOPS FP32 — roughly in the ballpark of Snapdragon 8 Gen 3’s Adreno 750 and Dimensity 9300’s Immortalis-G720 MC12.
In CPU benchmarks like Geekbench, Exynos 2400 lands close to Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 in both single and multi-core, and clearly ahead of last year’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. There’s still no touching Apple’s A16 or A17 Pro in pure single-core, but that’s normal at this point. In more composite tests like AnTuTu V10, Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and Dimensity 9300 edge ahead, but not by a huge margin.
GPU-wise, the Exynos 2400 lags a bit behind Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and Dimensity 9300 in lighter 3DMark runs like Wild Life and Wild Life Extreme, but the gap shrinks in heavier Solar Bay ray tracing tests, where the two are essentially neck and neck. In real-world use, it’s fast enough for everything; the bigger issue is sustained performance.
Samsung expanded the vapor chamber in the S24+ compared to the vanilla S24, and the Plus does handle heat slightly better. But under heavy load, it still throttles down to around 64% CPU and 52% GPU performance. The drop is gradual rather than jarring, and the frame gets toasty but not untouchable. It’s fine, but last year’s S23+ actually held performance a bit better.
At least storage and memory are sorted: 12GB RAM is standard on both 256GB and 512GB models, all on UFS 4.0. No 8GB tier, no UFS 3.1 landmines.
Battery and Charging: Bigger Cell, Worse Endurance
On paper, the S24+ battery setup looks like a win. You get a 4,900mAh cell, 45W wired charging (Samsung’s “Fast Charging 2.0”), 15W wireless, and reverse wireless charging. There’s also a Battery Protection feature with Basic, Adaptive, and Maximum (80% cap) modes to slow long-term degradation.
In practice, the numbers don’t match the promise. In a mixed-use Active Use Score, the S24+ manages 12 hours and 30 minutes — 80 minutes less than the S23+. Video streaming sees slight gains, but calls and other tests are worse. That QHD panel and Exynos power profile clearly cost something.
Charging is fast enough but locked behind Samsung’s usual accessory nonsense. Officially the phone supports 45W via USB-PD PPS, but the bundled cable in the box is only rated for 3A (25W). If you want full 45W speeds, you need a proper 45W+ PD PPS charger and a higher-rated cable.
With a compatible 45W brick and 100W cable, the S24+ hits 41% in 15 minutes, 74% in 30 minutes, and 100% in 58 minutes. Using a 25W charger adds 10–15 minutes to a full charge and drops the 30-minute mark to around 60%. Not bad, but not exactly competitive with the quickest Android flagships either.
Cameras: Polished Software on Stagnant Hardware
Camera hardware is basically a rerun of the S23+ (and S24):
- 50MP main with OIS
- 10MP 3x telephoto
- 12MP ultrawide (fixed focus)
- 12MP selfie with autofocus and 4K video
No higher-res zoom, no AF on the ultrawide – both still kept as exclusive perks for the Ultra. On a ~$1,000 phone in 2024, the lack of ultrawide autofocus is just lazy.
The good news: Samsung’s processing has matured nicely. Daylight photos from the main camera are excellent. Colors are vibrant without cartoon saturation, white balance is on point, and dynamic range is wide without nuking contrast. Compared to S23+, sharpening is more restrained, detail looks more natural, and you get a fine luminance grain instead of over-scrubbed mush.
The 3x telephoto continues to perform well in daylight, with strong detail and only subtle upscaling artifacts. There’s an optional 2x zoom mode via the UI; those shots are usable, though noise creeps up and fine detail softens. The ultrawide sees the biggest tonal shift: Samsung has finally calmed the cyan-tinted skies, and color is now closer to natural. Noise handling is improved with finer grain and sharper detail versus the S23.
Selfies are top-tier again. The 12MP front camera delivers sharp, low-noise shots with convincing skin tones and 4K60 video support.
Low light is more mixed. The auto Night mode is relatively conservative, so Photo mode and dedicated Night mode can look different. Main-camera low-light shots are generally well exposed with balanced dynamic range and that same visible grain. Night mode cleans up highlights and lifts shadows, but trades some fine detail for smoother textures.
Telephoto at night is the weak link. Noise is obvious even at fit-to-screen, and while Night mode can significantly reduce it and restore highlights, white balance can be inconsistent between shots. The ultrawide follows a similar pattern: noisy in standard Photo mode, cleaner but with occasional WB weirdness in Night mode.
Video performance is strong. All cameras shoot up to 4K60, with the main rear camera capable of 8K30. 4K footage sits at 40Mbps (4K30) or 60Mbps (4K60) in h.265, with stereo audio at 256kbps. Daylight video from all lenses is sharp, color-matched, and well-exposed, and there’s no quality drop going from 30fps to 60fps.
Stabilization is excellent on the main, ultrawide, and selfie cameras, smoothing out walking and pans. Low-light video is understandably softer, but the main and ultrawide still deliver respectable detail and color; the telephoto is usable in a pinch, but that’s it.
Connectivity and Long-Term Value: Seven Years vs Better Deals
Connectivity is mostly flagship-grade with some artificial segmentation. Both S24 and S24+ support dual-SIM 5G (SA/NSA, Sub-6), with a mess of physical SIM/eSIM combinations depending on region, including some eSIM-only variants. There’s Wi-Fi 6E (tri-band with 6GHz), Bluetooth 5.3 with LE, NFC, and USB-C with USB 3.2 Gen 1 (5Gbps) plus DisplayPort 1.2 over Alt Mode.
No Wi-Fi 7 here — that’s Ultra-only, along with the fancier glass. No microSD slot, no satellite connectivity, and no IR blaster. Sensors are typical high-end fare, but Samsung persists with its “Samsung Palm Proximity Sensor V2” behavior, essentially making the hardware proximity sensor unavailable to third-party apps. It works for calls, but anything else needs workarounds.
Where the S24+ really stands out is software support: seven years of OS and security updates. That’s a huge jump from the S23 series’ four OS / five years security promise, and it should keep these phones relevant for a long time as long as users are willing to do a battery swap mid-life.
The pricing, though, is where things get awkward. In many regions, the S24+ costs around $1,000 / €1,150 / £1,000 for 12GB/256GB and about $1,120 / €1,270 / £1,100 for 12GB/512GB. The 8GB variant is gone, but so is the relative value.
With that budget, there are real alternatives. A Galaxy S23 Ultra can often be had for less, with an S Pen, more versatile cameras (extra telephoto, ultrawide with AF), and no Exynos split — you just lose seven-year support and Galaxy AI. The older S23+ itself will feel very similar in day-to-day use and is cheaper. On the Android side, devices like OnePlus 12 undercut the S24+ while offering a larger 5,400mAh battery, faster wired and wireless charging, AF ultrawide, and a big LTPO AMOLED that matches or exceeds Samsung’s in some metrics.
Verdict: Great Phone, Awkward Recommendation
On paper, the Galaxy S24+ finally looks like the Plus model Samsung fans have been asking for since the S20+: QHD LTPO screen, 12GB RAM standard, nearly Ultra-sized battery, and seven years of updates. In practice, it’s more complicated.
You’re trading last year’s better endurance for more pixels and an Exynos that runs hot under pressure. You’re paying close to Ultra money while still missing a better telephoto, an AF ultrawide, Wi-Fi 7, Gorilla Glass Armor, and S Pen support. The camera output is excellent, but largely iterative. The software support promise is huge, but only if you’re willing to stick with the same hardware for most of a decade.
If you buy a Galaxy S24+, you’re not getting a bad phone. Far from it. You’re getting a very good one that just happens to sit in a brutally competitive price bracket where Samsung itself, with discounted S23 Ultra and S23+, might be your biggest rival.
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