Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra vs Galaxy S24 Ultra: Should you upgrade?

Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra vs Galaxy S24 Ultra: Specs

Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra vs Galaxy S24 Ultra: Price and availability

The S20 Ultra has long been discontinued, but you can find used models floating around at a substantial discount. The more important thing to note here is that whereas that device launched at $1,399, the S24 Ultra starts modestly cheaper at $1,299.99. It’s rare for new flagships to be cheaper than their predecessors. Samsung is presumably feeling the heat from Apple’s iPhone 15 Pro Max ($1,199), among other competitors.

There’s no reason for most people to invest in the 1TB model — certainly when we tend to use cloud streaming for music and video. You might be the exception if you shoot a lot of 4K clips, like caching movies and TV shows for travel, and/or plan to install multiple games with demanding 3D graphics.

The S24 is launching worldwide on January 31, 2024.

Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra vs Galaxy S24 Ultra: Should you upgrade?

The S24 Ultra should be a welcome upgrade if you’re in the market for one. The S24 Ultra’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor is going to be noticeably faster than the Snapdragon 865 found in US versions of the S20 Ultra, and certainly the Exynos 990 chip in international models.

You’re also getting improved camera tech, primarily in the form of a 200-megapixel main camera, wider apertures for better low-light shooting, and laser autofocus. Samsung has shrunk the front camera from 40 megapixels down to 12, but that’s an easy tradeoff for improvements elsewhere. Most people don’t need that level of detail for selfies.

You may have noticed that the S24 Ultra uses a slightly smaller 6.8-inch display. The resolution gap should be invisible however, and in return you get a 120Hz refresh rate across the board, with the ability to scale down to 1Hz to save power or support always-on display functions.

We do wish the S24 still had the S20 Ultra’s microSD slot, but that’s a much larger argument against Samsung and overall industry trends. You can’t upsell shoppers on internal storage if it’s easy to add another 256GB or more via a card, after all.

There are new Galaxy AI features in the S24 Ultra, but we need to spend more time with those ourselves, and it remains to be seen how many of them will carry backwards to older devices. They could make some tasks easier, such as web searches and locating settings.

In the end, the real decision is whether you should be looking at rival products or even upgrading at all. The S20 Ultra is old enough that you should consider it, but if it’s still keeping up with apps and shooting quality photos and video, upgrading to anything is purely a luxury. And $1,300 remains a lot to spend on any phone, particularly when you can get most of the same benefits from something like Google’s $1,000 Pixel 8 Pro. Mind that you’ll need to spend over $1,000 on a Pixel to match the S24 Ultra’s 256GB of entry storage.

However, we should mention that the S24 Ultra is slated to get seven years of Android updates, all the way up to Android 21. On the other hand, software support for the Galaxy S20 Ultra has ended with the Android 13 update, so that may be a good enough reason for some to upgrade.

Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra vs Galaxy S24 Ultra: FAQ