The Best Samsung Phones of 2024, Tested and Reviewed

The best part of being in the world of Android is choice of hardware. Want a phone with a headphone jack? Sure! Want a gaming phone with two USB-C ports? Why not. Want a phone that fast-charges in less than 30 minutes? It exists. So why stick with the stalwart Samsung?

In my experience and research, Samsung's smartphones have a track record of reliability, and because it's a major player, it has a wider network of authorized repair centers than competing Android manufacturers. Yes, I remember the Galaxy Note 7 fiasco and even the issues with the first-gen Galaxy Fold, but Samsung now has a customer satisfaction score equal to Apple, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index. That said, I haven't read great things about the company's US customer support team.

Still, with its flagship phones, you're often getting top-of-the-line specs and exceptional build quality with long software support. I primarily pick Pixel phones over Samsung because I prefer Google's software experience, but there are plenty of people who like Samsung's take on Android. As always, keep an open mind and consider all the other options available to you. Check out my Best Android Phones, Best Cheap Phones, and Best iPhones guides for other recommendations.

Sort of. Samsung has launched all of its phones for 2024 in the US, and that means you can expect some stellar discounts on its priciest smartphones. This time of year is great to pick up a discounted Galaxy S24 or a Galaxy Z Flip6. However, it's worth keeping the company's launch time frames in mind in case you only want the latest and greatest.

• The flagship Galaxy S series usually launches early in the year during Samsung's Galaxy Unpacked event, and the upcoming Galaxy S25 range will likely arrive in January or February 2025.
• The budget Galaxy A series typically arrives in the spring (April or May).
• The folding Galaxy Z series have always launched in the summer, roughly July or August, during Samsung's second and last Galaxy Unpacked event of the year.
• The midrange Galaxy FE series is the “Fan Edition,” but this is more or less a slightly cheaper variant of the Galaxy S series. It typically launches in the fall, around late September or October.

Keep these dates in mind as you shop, because you may want to hold off and wait for the new model, or it can help inform you on when to expect the best discounts.

Android phones used to have disastrously poor software support. Two years after you bought your $1,000 phone, it would no longer receive software updates. Welp. Thankfully, Google began promising longer software update cycles to its Pixel phones, which ended up pushing Samsung to match it.

The following Samsung phones will receive seven years of software updates from their release date, which includes Android operating system updates and monthly security patches. The latter keep your phone secure, and new OS versions can bring new features to your phone.

• Galaxy S24, Galaxy S24+, and Galaxy S24 Ultra
• Galaxy Z Fold6 and Galaxy Z Flip6
• Galaxy S24 FE

Most other Samsung phones, like some in the Galaxy A series or older flagships, will receive four years of OS updates and five years of security patches starting from the date of release. You'll find that budget devices are promised two OS updates and four years of security updates, which is still leagues better than what companies like Motorola offer. Some of this varies, as Samsung has kept changing its policy year over year, but there's a little more helpful information here.

To find if your Samsung phone has a pending update, go to Settings > Software update > Download and install. It should check for any updates and download them, then you'll see an option to install it. Make sure you back up your phone before installing any update. We have a guide here.

Most people buy phones directly from their carrier, but if you're reading this guide, I suggest you buy an unlocked smartphone. When you buy a carrier phone, it's “locked” to that network. That means if you want to switch carriers, like move from Verizon to T-Mobile, you'll have to ask your carrier to unlock the device, and this can be a huge headache. (Especially if you're traveling and want to use an international SIM card.) Asking a carrier to unlock a phone usually has a few requirements, like making sure your device is paid off, or waiting for a set period of time. Unlocked phones, on the other hand, don't have this problem. You're free to use whatever carrier you want, whenever.

Carriers also mask the true cost of a smartphone. AT&T may entice you with a $36 per month payment for a shiny new Samsung flagship, when in reality, that means you're paying $1,300 on a smartphone over 36 months. Did you really want to spend that much? Or will a cheaper phone suffice? Also, you're more likely to get software updates faster as they come directly from Samsung, and there's often far less preinstalled bloatware to deal with.

All to say, buy unlocked! You can buy unlocked Galaxy phones directly from Samsung and most third-party retailers like Amazon, Best Buy, and Walmart.

Samsung has an annoying habit of announcing a bunch of cool new features with its smartphones, then leaving them turned off by default. If you've never fiddled around with your phone's settings, there's a good chance there are a lot of fun and helpful features you're not using.

This can include things like changing the navigation from on-screen buttons to gesture navigation, adding the battery percentage icon next to the battery bar, or keeping the always-on display turned on instead of requiring a tap on the screen. Good news for you! As I routinely switch phones, I drummed up a list of the 21 most important settings to change when you get a Samsung phone. Read it here. Pro tip: I personally can't stand using Samsung's built-in keyboard, so I almost always change it to Google's Gboard instead.

A Samsung phone sold in the US is not the same as a Samsung phone sold in the UK. That's because Samsung's Galaxy S series flagship phones have long relied on two different processors. Devices sold in the US and select markets are powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon processors, whereas other regions have Samsung's homegrown Exynos chipsets.

The gap isn't as wide between these processors anymore, but there have been issues in the past. Exynos chips tended to overheat a few years ago, though they sometimes offer slightly better battery life than their Qualcomm counterparts. It even greatly impacted camera quality too as the chip handles the image processing. Again, none of this is as big of an issue as it used to be, but it's worth keeping in mind as you shop.

With the Galaxy S24 series, Samsung launched “Galaxy AI," a selection of artificial intelligence features, many of which are powered by Google's Gemini large language models. These enable smart features that may be helpful day to day, like real-time translations during phone calls, real-time transcriptions in Samsung's Voice Recorder app, the ability to summarize long paragraphs of text in the Samsung Notes app, or change a sentence's tone with the Samsung Keyboard. You can even make sketches over your photos and have AI generate an image off the sketch.

You can find many of these features by heading to Settings > Galaxy AI to toggle them on or off. The following phones have been updated to support Galaxy AI, though not all features are available on older models:

• Galaxy S24, Galaxy S23, Galaxy S22, and Galaxy S21 series
• Galaxy S24 FE, Galaxy S23 FE
• Galaxy Z Fold6, Galaxy Fold5, Galaxy Fold4, Galaxy Fold3
• Galaxy Flip6, Galaxy Flip5, Galaxy Flip4, Galaxy Flip3

Samsung's DeX (short for “desktop experience”) launched in 2017 and it's essentially a way to plug in your Samsung phone to an external monitor and trigger a desktop version of the Android OS, all completely powered by the phone. You can find a list of compatible Samsung phones here, and you'll need a monitor, mouse, and keyboard, plus a cable to connect the phone to the monitor. (You can also cast DeX to select screens wirelessly.)

When in DeX mode, you can resize Android apps, and have them all open in separate windows. It's a proper computing platform, though you probably won't want to use this as a permanent laptop replacement or anything of the sort. It's great if you're visiting another office, or working out of a coffee shop or airplane (if you have a portable display). We have a whole guide to setting up and using DeX here.

I've been reviewing smartphones for nearly a decade, but the very first smartphone I ever bought was a Samsung Galaxy Captivate, which I got for “free” from my carrier at the time. After working throughout college, I had finally saved up enough cash to buy a Galaxy S3, my first flagship. I've spent years using Samsung phones in my personal life, and then started reviewing them for work not too long after.

With each Samsung smartphone, I always put my personal SIM card inside and spend as long as I can (usually several weeks) using the phone as my own. I do camera testing and compare the results with similarly priced devices, I benchmark performance and play graphically demanding games to see how they fare, I try out all the new features, and even take calls to make sure that ol' function still works fine.