I can't believe how good the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra still is in 2026

It’s been more than two years since I got my Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, and although it hasn’t been my primary phone for most of that period, it’s still the one I pick up most often when I want to see the mobile world beyond my Pixel’s walled garden. And each time I unlock the phone, I am left a little in awe of what Samsung achieved, even with a phone that should technically be old and outdated now.

The Galaxy S24 Ultra does not feel old today. It feels just as snappy, just as nice, and just as good as it did on day one. It has its faults, sure, but it has aged gracefully thanks to its excellent design, powerful hardware, and Samsung’s software support.

The Galaxy S24 Ultra still looks and feels great

I was never a huge fan of the Galaxy S24 Ultra’s heft and square corners, and I still wouldn’t want to carry this brick in my hand or my jeans pocket all day, every day. However, I have to admit that it looks objectively great. It’s a very solid piece of hardware that feels substantial in the hand and carries an impression of robustness, seriousness, and business that few other phones I’ve tried in the past year have.

Let’s put it this way: If I wanted to hammer a nail and had no other tool in my hand, I’d pick the Galaxy S24 Ultra over any other phone to do that. Just today, anecdotally, mine fell from the top of the first-floor stairs and landed in the kitchen on the ground floor. No crack, no scratch, no blemish. It still looks pristine, just like it has over the past couple of years. This phone is indestructible. And the Gorilla Armor glass still holds its end of the bargain two years later.

The display also earns its place among today’s flagships. It’s gorgeous to look at, very clear, and bright enough for outdoor use. Even though my Pixel 10 Pro XL has a higher peak brightness (3,300 nits versus the Galaxy S24 Ultra’s 2,400 nits), the difference isn’t significant enough for me to consider the Galaxy S24 Ultra lagging behind. And given the newer Galaxy S26 Ultra’s display issues, the S24 Ultra almost feels like an upgrade compared to what Samsung is making now. This is essentially a phone that has survived more than two years without looking outdated or irrelevant.

These internals still hold up in 2026

Beyond the exterior, the Galaxy S24 Ultra’s internals are nothing to scoff at, even in 2026. Each time I pick up this phone, I am astonished by the fact that it’s two years old. It doesn’t feel like it. It’s fast and snappy; apps open quickly, swipes and gestures register instantly, and all my interactions feel instantaneous — at least as instantaneous as they are on my much newer Pixel 10 Pro XL.

I looked at our tests for both phones to see if it was an illusion or if the Galaxy S24 Ultra really was just as good as my Pixel. And what I found did and did not surprise me. Samsung’s older phone matches or even outpaces my Pixel in all benchmarks. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, despite being two generations behind the latest Qualcomm processors, goes toe to toe with the Tensor G5 on single-core CPU performance and is a bit better for multi-core processing and executing productivity-heavy tasks.

GPU performance is equally impressive. The Galaxy S24 Ultra always starts with a much higher score than the Pixel 10 Pro XL, and while the latter remains steady over several repetitive stress cycles, the Galaxy dips a bit. It does remain within a small margin of the Pixel both in terms of score and temperature. The S24 Ultra can’t just take a physical beating and remain pristine; it can also take a figurative task and performance beating and still hold its promise.

This excellent performance also holds true for the battery and charging. The 5,000mAh is nothing to scoff at today, despite the existence of silicon-carbon batteries, and the 45W charging speed is still decent. Sure, Xiaomi, HONOR, OnePlus, and other companies are blasting past these numbers today, but in terms of devices available on the US market, very few can claim to be better than the Galaxy S24 Ultra.

Our own Android Authority tests show this too, compared to the Pixel 10 Pro XL. The Galaxy S24 Ultra lasts much longer for video playback and is within a margin of error of the Pixel for video recording, camera use, web browsing, and Zoom video calls. And when the battery is dead, it takes 62 minutes to fill up, 15 minutes faster than the Pixel, while remaining a little cooler.

Really, the only aspect of the Galaxy S24 Ultra that I don’t like all that much is the camera. It’s always been fine and takes excellent photos in ideal situations, but it still suffers from the two issues I detailed when I first tested the phone: shutter lag and slow shutter speed.

As I showed in my extensive tests, whenever you take a photo, the phone snaps it half a second later than expected, which means I miss the moment on most of my candid shots. Also, terribly, when the light drops just a little bit, Samsung tends to keep the shutter open much longer than phones like the Pixel, which always results in blurry shots of pets, kids, and moving people. I don’t understand how Samsung hasn’t solved this yet. It’s been an issue for years, and it continues to be.

One UI 8.5 has made this feel like a new phone

The upgrades from One UI 6.1 to One UI 8.5 based on Android 16 have significantly helped keep the Galaxy S24 Ultra’s software experience as fresh as its hardware. Multitasking and its associated animations are much smoother now, especially with the 90:10 split-screen function that lets me open two apps and switch between them with a quick tap. I can finally make use of that big display without feeling like I’m using the crumpled versions of two apps.

Lock screen and Quick Settings customization is better than ever, and I wish Google would budge and allow these small but informative widgets on the default Pixel lock screen, as Samsung does. Or give me more clock font and sizing options, and wallpaper color styles.

Samsung has also managed to snag a bunch of (so far) Pixel-exclusive features for its phones, and the Galaxy S24 Ultra is already benefiting from them. AirDrop support in Quick Share helps me integrate this phone into my MacBook and iMac ecosystem just as well as my Pixel 10 Pro XL for the past few months. Call Screening means I no longer have to answer every spam call I get. And Audio Eraser works better than ever now.

All of these updates come on top of everything Samsung has already added to the phone in the last two years — PDF translation, Circle to Search upgrades, Call recording with transcripts and summaries, natural language searching in Settings, Now Brief, and so much more. These might seem like small changes on their own, but put them all together, and the Galaxy S24 Ultra’s software feels like it’s keeping up with the times just as well, despite being a phone from the early AI era.

I agree with my colleague Shimul, who called the S24 Ultra phone the last true Galaxy Ultra. There’s something very “Ultra,” very Note-like, and very “in your face” about the Galaxy S24 Ultra that its successors have sort of left behind. And it’s really awesome to see that it’s keeping up with the times, so fans who want to embrace that real Ultra experience can keep it going for much longer without feeling the need to upgrade.

Looking at Amazon, I can see that the 256GB refurbished Galaxy S24 Ultra costs around $586, with the 512GB version starting at $637. That feels a bit expensive for a two-year-old phone, but compared to any new phone on the market in the $600 price range? It’s almost a steal. Samsung hit it straight out of the park with the Galaxy S24 Ultra, and it’s sad to think that its successors are unlikely to be as popular or as iconic.