More on my new phone

Thank goodness getting to grips with an important item of new equipment happens only every few years! The arrival of Olivia, my Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra smartphone on the morning of Wednesday 24th January has ensured an extended period of disrupted routine, and a lot of lost sleep from staying up late. 

Once the microSIM card was taken out of my old phone and inserted into the new one, normality went out of the window. Everything - sleep included - had to take second place to getting the new device set up sufficiently to be usable. I have always customised my phones quite a bit, so that the lock and home screens, and the layout of the apps, is always very different to how it all appears when the phone first emerges from its box and powered on. 

At first I couldn't find my way around. Long-used screen gestures didn't work. I was coming from an S20+, and four years of development had made the way my S24 Ultra operated seem rather unfamiliar. I was out of my comfort zone. But after hiding unwanted apps, installing the ones I wanted, delving into Settings, installing my usual lock and home screen backgrounds, my usual ringtone, and my usual notification sound, it all started to look and feel better.

Despite setbacks (such as Samsung's Smart Switch failing - for some arcane reason, the connection between the old and new phones kept dropping) I got Olivia 80% functional by the end of the first day, and completely so by the end of the next day, except for installing a couple of minor utility apps. 

That still left a lot of work to do. There were a great many files to import - my music, and some 67,000 photos. 

The music went in without a hitch. Not so the photos. It's now the following Monday, five days after Olivia arrived, and I'm still loading up the the photos. I'm copying them from one of my external SSDs: I connect the SSD and Olivia to the two USB ports on on my laptop, and just copy-and-paste, controlling the process from the laptop screen windows. It works; but it's slow, as if there is an electronic bottleneck somewhere that chokes the rapid flow of data to my new phone. Never mind, the end is in sight, and another two days should do it.

I can't deny that setting up Olivia hasn't been without its frustrations. But the job is nearly done. And I can see that she is going to serve me exceptionally well.

So how did the delivery and unboxing go?

Olivia arrived when promised - full marks, DPD - and after slitting open the plastic envelope, I was contemplating a plain-looking black box.

This opened to reveal a box-within-a-box, and finally the pristine phone itself.

I was immediately impressed with the finish, solidity and heft of the S24 Ultra. She was a rectangular slab, it's true, but my new phone was good to curl my fingers around.

The general public would mostly see the mint-green back with the camera lenses. I'd already bought an A3-sized rectangle of leather for making a sleeve to slip Olivia into. Here she is on that leather:

The bare-metal edges were made from titanium, and therefore promised to be tough. And the screen was made of the latest armoured glass. Even so, I decided that in addition to carrying Olivia around inside the leather sleeve I'd make, she needed a proper protective plastic case. I'd already ordered one, from Tech21, and happily it turned up just a couple of hours after Olivia herself. 

There wasn't much else in the box. Samsung assumed you already had a charger and all the cable adapters you might need. So all they supplied was a USB-C cable, a quick start guide, and a tool to get access to the microSIM tray. 

Before commencing the setting-up process, I compared Prudence (my S20+) with Olivia (my S24 Ultra) to see what the size difference was. Both without a case.

As you can see, Olivia (left in all three shots) is a couple of millimetres taller, wider and thicker than Prudence. She isn't vastly bigger, but the size difference is clear. The fact that she has squared-off corners rather than rounded ones adds to the impression of significantly greater screen area. 

Weightwise, it's no surprise that Olivia is the heavier by some margin, mainly (I think) because of the larger battery (5,000mAh versus 4,000mAh).

The next step was to remove the EE microSIM card from Prudence, open the tray on Olivia with the tool, press the card into the tray, then push the tray in. 

No nanoSD card of course. None of the S24 phones use them, which I think is a pity, but it's probably an irreversable trend with smartphones. Instead there's a gigantic 1TB of internal data storage. 

Olivia came partially charged: 55%. But it was a good idea to charge up closer to 100% before going further. I'd considered buying a 45W fast charger, but found that the old 25W charger (from two phones back) was still good enough.

After setting Olivia up as a usable smartphone (as described at the start of this post) it was time to import all those photos:

In day-to-day operation, Olivia is excellent: fast, smooth, nice in the hand, and now that I've adjusted to the latest Samsung Settings menu (which they keep altering without achieving simplicity) I'm finding my new phone pretty easy to use. Olivia is definitely a more capable phone than Prudence, although I hasten to say that my old phone was slick and speedy also. It's just that the new one is more substantial, has more potential, and if Samsung live up to their promise of updates for seven years to come, will be future-proofed for a long haul.

And so far as looks go, Olivia is a very impressive phone. I've been thrilled and proud to use her in public, so far mainly to pay for things (using Google Wallet). I'm not one to ostentatiously flaunt a new device in order to wow other people, but I can't help being aware that, having ordered her online, I've been able to use my S24 Ultra a whole week before the phone can be bought at a High Street shop. An intense but of course very temporary pleasure. But in two days' time, anyone can stroll into a shop and come out with one. 

The S24 Ultra's major selling points are AI and the new camera array. I've dabbled with AI for searches, using the S-Pen to ring things onscreen, and then seeing whether AI can tell me what they are. It's astonishingly good for that. As for Olivia's photographic prowess, the main features of the pictures taken are clarity and nice colour. They have managed to give the results a little more subtlety than I had with Prudence. Here's a sequence of shots zooming in on Ditchling church, starting with no zoom, then 3x, 5x and finally 10x. (Tap on any to enlarge them, and scrutinise more carefully)

Here are some other shots I've taken with Olivia:

If you are a casual photographer, and all you want is a beautifully clear picture with pleasing colours, then why use anything else? Me, I'll be sticking to my Leica X Vario, during the daytime anyway, although Olivia will be better for night-time shots and any shot that needs a longer zoom than LXV can provide. It's horses for courses; I'll usually have both devices with me anyway.

I dare say I'll have more to say about the AI features, but for now that's it. Verdict: another winner!