I feel like everyone on YouTube only talks about the massive Ultra phones with their stupid stylus pens and giant screens but nobody ever talks about the normal simple Galaxy S24 which is actually a very interesting device because it is one of the last few compact phones left in the entire world. When you first hold this thing in your hand it feels so incredibly refreshing because it is super light like around 167 grams and you can easily reach all four corners of the screen with just your thumb without doing some crazy hand gymnastics. The sides are completely flat aluminum and the back glass has this smooth matte finish that feels extremely clean and premium like a smooth stone from a river. If you are tired of carrying those heavy bricks that drag your pants down every time you walk or make your hands ache after a long scrolling session at midnight this design feels like an absolute dream come true. You can just slide it into any small pocket and you won’t even notice it’s there.
But let’s be completely honest about the biggest scam with this phone depending on where you live because if you are buying this simple S24 in regions like Europe or Asia or Pakistan you are not getting the premium Snapdragon chip at all. Samsung quietly slapped their own Exynos 2400 chip inside it and that changes a lot of things. In daily use like opening WhatsApp scrolling Instagram or reading emails it feels incredibly snappy and smooth because the 120Hz AMOLED screen is absolutely beautiful and gets bright enough that you can read any text under the blazing hot sun without squinting your eyes or looking for a tree’s shadow. But the moment you try to play a heavy game like PUBG or try to record a long 4K video outside on mobile data you can feel the back of the phone getting uncomfortably warm within ten minutes and then the software starts slowing things down to prevent overheating. It is so annoying that you pay the flagship price but get inferior thermal performance just because of your geographical location while someone in the US gets the better Snapdragon chip for the exact same money.
Now let’s talk about the absolute reality of gaming on this tiny machine because a lot of people think that a flagship chip means you can just game like a pro all day long. If you open PUBG Mobile or Call of Duty or Genshin Impact the game will automatically let you select the highest possible graphics and extreme frame rates which looks amazing for the first fifteen minutes. The screen looks beautiful and the character movements are sharp but because the body of this phone is so small and thin there is literally no space inside for a proper cooling setup or a big vapor chamber. Within twenty minutes of intensive gaming the back panel near the camera starts boiling and it feels like a literal heating pad in your hand. The moment the temperature hits a certain limit the Exynos chip panics and goes into protection mode which means the software automatically drops your frame rate from a smooth 60fps or 90fps straight down to a laggy 40fps just to cool the phone down. Suddenly you will see your screen start stuttering right in the middle of a close-range fight and your inputs will feel delayed which is absolutely infuriating if you are playing ranked matches. And because it runs so hot the battery percentage drains like water you can literally watch yourself lose 1% of battery for every two or three minutes of heavy gameplay.
And because the phone is so small the battery capacity is only 4000mAh which is a total joke for a flagship device in 2026. If you are a casual user who stays on home Wi-Fi all day with low brightness you will barely crawl to the end of the day with around 15% battery left but if you leave your house turn on 5G mobile data use GPS navigation for driving play a quick match during your break and take a few photos this battery will literally gash out by 5 or 6 PM in the evening. You constantly have to keep an eye on the percentage counter which gives you major low-battery anxiety and forces you to carry a heavy power bank everywhere which completely ruins the point of buying a light compact phone. And to make things worse Samsung still uses their ancient 25W charging speed on this normal model which takes almost an hour and twenty minutes to full charge and obviously you don’t even get the charging brick inside the box under the fake name of environment protection so you have to spend extra money to buy your own adapter separately.
The cameras on the back are actually quite decent because you get a proper triple setup with a 50-megapixel main lens a 10-megapixel 3x zoom and an ultra-wide lens. Daylight photos look typical Samsung style which means the colors pop like crazy making the trees look extra green and the sky look perfectly blue which looks very beautiful immediately without any editing or filters. The 3x zoom lens is great for taking portrait shots of your friends because it gives a nice natural background blur without looking fake or cutting their hair edges badly. But at night the camera struggles a bit because the smaller body means smaller sensors so if there is motion in the dark like someone waving their hand or a car passing by the photo comes out completely blurry and grainy and the processing takes a couple of seconds to save the shot. Also the video quality is good and stable but filming for more than five minutes drains the battery percentage like a countdown timer.
Samsung Galaxy S24 Specs and Price
Software wise it runs One UI with seven years of promised updates which is absolutely insane because the phone hardware and the physical battery will probably die before the software support ends. Samsung throws all their Galaxy AI features here too like circling something on your screen to search it on Google or translating voice calls in real time which is fun to show off to your cousins once when you buy the phone but you will probably never use it again in your daily routine. Also let’s talk about the small things like the vibration motor because it is quite tight and gives a nice clicky feedback when you type but because the phone is small the stereo speakers don’t have that deep bass like the bigger Ultra phones they get loud but sound a bit tinny if you crank the volume up to 100% while listening to music.
Now if you really think about using this phone for the long term you also have to consider how the internal storage behaves over time because the base model only comes with 128GB of storage and to make things worse it uses the older UFS 3.1 tech instead of the faster UFS 4.0 that you get on the 256GB version. This means if you buy the cheapest variant your phone will slowly start to feel a bit choked after a year when you fill it up with thousands of WhatsApp videos and heavy system files because the data transfer speed is literally half of what the more expensive version offers. It just feels like a very cheap move from a company like Samsung to cut corners on the base model when people are paying proper flagship money for it.
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Also the facial recognition on this thing is just basic camera-based security so if you are trying to unlock your phone in a dark room at night it will fail completely and force you to use the ultrasonic fingerprint scanner under the display. Thankfully that fingerprint scanner is actually quite fast and works even if your thumb is slightly wet or sweaty which is a lifesaver when you are in a rush. Another small issue is the lack of proper signal reception in weak coverage areas because this Exynos modem inside the phone struggles to hold onto a weak 4G or 5G signal compared to phones that use Qualcomm modems so you might experience random call drops or slow internet speed if you live in a basement or a crowded local market.
So what’s the real honest verdict? If you absolutely love small compact phones that fit perfectly in your palm and you don’t care about heavy gaming or crazy long battery life then the simple S24 is a very sweet and cute device with a stunning screen. But if you are a power user who travels a lot on mobile data hates charging their phone twice a day and wants a reliable device for long gaming sessions without frame drops this phone will constantly keep you frustrated and hunted for a wall plug because at this price point you can get way better battery charging and cooling from almost any other competitor in the market.
