Samsung announces new Galaxy S24 lineup with AI-powered photo editing, search features

Samsung announced its new flagship Galaxy S24 smartphone range Wednesday, earlier than expected, touting new artificial intelligence features as the company looks to kick off 2024 with a bang.

As is standard with Samsung's flagship range now, the S24 range comes in three versions: the S24, S24+, and S24 Ultra. The S24 Ultra starts at a price of $1,300, the S24+ will cost $1,000, and the S24 will retail at $800.

The South Korean electronics giant showed off the new gadgets at its Kings Cross offices in London earlier this week, prior to the announcement. At a briefing with reporters, Samsung talked up the phone's AI capabilities and showed how it's able to edit pictures and search for items by using AI.

For Samsung's top-tier S24 Ultra, which is the company's biggest of the three devices and comes with punchier specs and features, Samsung is using a version of Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon Series 8 Gen 3 optimized for Galaxy. The company is using a mix of Qualcomm systems-on-chips (SoCs) and its own Exynos chipset for its S24 and S24+ models.

"The Galaxy S24 series devices, together with Google's Pixel range, mark the dawn of the consumerisation of AI in smartphones," Ben Wood, chief analyst at CCS Insight, told CNBC. "This is a trend that will be echoed by all smartphone makers, including Apple, as they increasingly add a growing number of AI-powered capabilities to their new devices."

"This launch sees Samsung betting on features powered by artificial intelligence to reignite consumers' interest in smartphones at a time when incremental hardware updates have seen sales slow. Google has been the trailblazer with its Pixel devices and there is little question this is going to be a recurring theme going forward, not just for