[REVIEW] The Galaxy S24 envisions a new multilingual future

Tech

Published: 15 Feb. 2024, 14:49 Updated: 11 Mar. 2024, 10:45

[REVIEW] The Galaxy S24 envisions a new multilingual future

A screenshot of the real-time translation function available on Galaxy S24 series. It mostly delivers the speaker's meaning well, but some translations are awkward. [SCREEN CAPTURE]

Samsung Electronics' Galaxy S24 series points to just how far a smartphone can leap with AI added to its wings — although the handset, itself, does not necessarily endorse all of those possibilities. While the line has been touted as Samsung's first “AI smartphone,” the AI-powered features are not as much of a breakthrough as many expected them to be.

For instance, instead of writing down an entire email by itself, the S24 Ultra — which carries a starting price of $1,299 — is more keen to translate or adjust the nuance of already written sentences. The real-time translation feature is a bit awkward due to its robotic voice and not-so-accurate translations.

The Korea JoongAng Daily spent a week testing the Ultra and found it to be a nascent form of an AI phone. But as Samsung's first players in the market, it has definitely raised the bar for the AI-powered smartphones that will come in the future.

Galaxy S24 [SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS]

Activating AI
Samsung's real-time call translation is believed to have been developed to suit situations where one has to make a restaurant reservation, book a hotel room or check the availability of a show in a foreign country.

This feature works fine in those situations, as Samsung has shown in many demonstrations.

But it would really change the game if the S24 could pull off a casual conversation between native speakers of different languages. However, it is not nearly as good at this. The feature can fairly deliver a user's original meaning while translating a call, but cannot quite convey their mood or the nuance of their intended words.

In the Korea JoongAng Daily's testing, the S24's consecutive way of translating forced speakers to pause for quite a long time between their lines. If someone paused for a while to think about what to say, the system would go ahead and begin translating their incomplete sentence — and would not translate the remaining words until the recipient responded, leading to complete chaos.

While Samsung was able to deliver the gist of what each speaker said, the translations were often a bit off.

For example, the S24 Ultra translated the English phrase “I've been working these days,” to the Korean phrase for “I'm just a worker.”

“I might been keen,” an English phrase indicating that a speaker is interested in something, was translated into the Korean words for “I'm an acute person.”

That said, the accessibility of the S24's on-device translation feature — it's available from the quick settings menu next to the icons for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth — was really convenient.

And quality aside, the fact that it can be accessed regardless of what the user is doing — whether sending messages, web browsing or playing games — was a plus. Checking one's internet connection, searching for the translation app, turning it on and waiting for it to load in urgent situations will be unnecessary with this Galaxy S24.

All in all, the new AI-powered handset brought down the language barrier significantly. A little bit of refinement along the way could pave the way for a new era where that barrier is obsolete.

The Circle to Search function available on the Galaxy S24 series

What turned out to be the most useful feature during this reporter's daily routine was Google's “Circle to Search” function, which allows users to search for what's on their screen simply by long-pressing the home button and circling any given element.

It is common to come across photos of a posh restaurant or a cute outfit without any information. One is required to open a different app and come up with all sorts of ways to correctly describe the photo if they want to find what's pictured.

With Circle to Search, that hassle was unnecessary.

Google queried photos not only of restaurants, but also of Airbnb accommodations with addresses, not names, listed.

Of course, it did occasionally list results that were completely irrelevant.

Galaxy S24 Ultra [SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS]

Hardware rocks

Software is the protagonist of the Galaxy S24, but upgrades to its hardware was also eye-catching.

The device got more beautiful; it now looks more like an iPhone, with a titanium finish and flat screen.

Prior iterations of the Galaxy Ultra deployed a curved screen, aiming for a more comfortable grip around the edges. But the flat screen is not only slick in design, but also offers a number of user benefits.

For one, the curved screen was inconvenient when the user wanted to jot down notes with the S Pen toward the end. The pen would slide off. The new design solves that problem.

Despite such updates, the handset has gotten thinner and lighter.

The S24 Ultra is thinner than its predecessor, the S23 Ultra, by 0.3 millimeters and lighter by 2 grams. Those numbers may seem trivial, but the difference is noticeable when the devices are held.

The Galaxy S24 which comes in its three usual variations — the base, Plus, and Ultra — is off to a good start, having broken presales records in Korea with 1.21 million units reserved in the first week.

Its customer satisfaction ratings have surpassed those of the iPhone 15 as well. According to data from product review site PerfectRec, 91 percent of S24 base model buyers rated their device the highest possible score of five points while 88 percent did the same for the Ultra.

For comparison, 76 percent of customers who bought the base iPhone 15 gave their device five points. Some 77 percent did the same for the Plus model as did 74 percent for the Pro.

BY JIN EUN-SOO [jin.eunsoo@joongang.co.kr]