I've just got my S24+ today to upgrade my trusty but ageing S10+ having not strayed from Samsung for almost 10 years. Naturally I was hoping it would be an upgrade in all departments but although on the whole it is, there's several annoying and unexpected downgrades that are making me seriously question whether it's actually worth spending quite a bit of money to change.
Firstly, the screen although pin sharp is really washed out. Even in vivid mode the colours are dull and the blacks are significantly more grey than the S10 screen, and even look washed out when put alongside my wife's budget spec A52! I've played around with brightness and colour tone etc but I can't dial it out, and my cousin who's got an S24 Ultra said exactly the same when comparing it against the S22 it's replacing.
Then there's some bizarre features missing from OneUI 6.1, the ones I've noticed so far are specifically in the Always On Display settings. I use AOD to display as a bedside clock, with my S10 and also in OneUI 6.0 / Android 14 on the A52 you can rotate the AOD to landscape orientation and control the brightness, you could even do the latter from the AOD lock screen by tapping twice on the clock to access the brightness slider. In OneUI 6.1 unless I'm missing something it seems all that functionality is missing, the brightness of the AOD is linked to the main screen brightness setting which is far too bright for overnight use, and you can't set it to landscape mode which I'd prefer when on it's horizontal night stand next to the bed. Why this functionality would be omitted I have no idea, but it's really annoying! Please someone enlighten me to some hidden menu somewhere that fixes all these issues?! š
What is going on with Samsung? I spent all this money on this phone, and the colors are dull and plain. There is no difference between vivid and natural when toggling between the two in the screen mode setting. This was not advertised. Samsung phones are suppose to have bright saturated screens. I'm very disappointed. I bought the 24 ultra after seeing my wife's 23 ultra. This should be embarrassing for Samsung as a company especially with the release of the iPhone 15. Samsung, please listen to your customers and fix this with a software update. I'm assuming you're going to do right by us.
From what I've heard, there's going to be an adjusting slider for 3 different vivid modes, the first setting will be what the S24 Ultra is now, the second setting is supposed to replicate the S22 / S23 series, and the third vivid mode is supposed to be extremely vivid, probably like the early versions of Samsung's display modes.
