Switching to Samsung: 6 Months with S24 Ultra

Pete, a former iPhone user, shares his positive 6-month experience with the S24 Ultra, praising its performance, design, and overall functionality.

### 6 Months with the Galaxy S24 Ultra: A Lifelong iPhone User's Review
* 📱 Pete, a longtime iPhone user, has been using the Galaxy S24 Ultra for 6 months and is **impressed by its performance and features**.
* 🔋 He highlights the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip's exceptional performance, noting it's "**the best of the best when it comes to performance and efficiency**".
* 📸 Pete praises the S24 Ultra's camera quality, performance, and battery life, although he mentions a **recent decline in battery performance** after software updates.
* 🤖 While Pete appreciates the phone, he finds some of the AI features, including Galaxy AI, **underwhelming and not widely useful**.
* 💼 He discusses the challenges of switching from the Apple ecosystem, noting that while some features are missed, **overall, the transition has been smooth**.
* ⌚ Pete has also switched from the Apple Watch to a Garmin watch, and has found **suitable replacements for other Apple ecosystem products**.
* 🔄 He highlights the **freedom of choice** in the Android ecosystem, allowing users to select the **best products for each category**, albeit with some **potential fragmentation**.
* 📱 Despite concerns about losing iMessage and Airdrop, Pete's experience with family and friends using a mix of devices has been positive, with messaging apps like **WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger** serving as **adequate alternatives**.

it's been a long day without you, my friend, and I'll tell you all about it when I see you again. We've come a long way from where we began. Oh, I'll tell you all about it when I see you again. When I see you again, it has been 6 months since switching to the S24 Ultra. Hey, my name is Pete, and I used to be a lifelong iPhone user. Now I love reviewing the latest tech. I love forcing myself out of my comfort zone to try new things. You know, I've been tiing my videos lifelong iPhone user switches to you Android phone for quite some time now. But for the first time in a very long time, I actually want to stick with this phone. You know, usually something always draws me back to Apple for some reason. And with so many good phone launches just around the corner, I want to sit down and just talk to you about how great the last 6 months have been with you. Because you know, coming from an iPhone, well, you know, I don't need to tell you.

of course, because everything has [Music] changed. So, if you followed my story closely, I have posted regular videos throughout my journey of switching from an iPhone to the S24 Ultra, and it hasn't been easy. Like, not to begin with, there's an awful lot to unwind when you are as deep in the Apple system as I was, from figuring out syncing all of my iCloud photos to replacing apps which can only be found on iOS, even down to something as silly as learning the sweet spot for the contactless payments on the phone. And then you've got the almost overwhelming number of choices to make: Google Pay or Samsung Pay, Google Fit or Samsung Health or Garmin Health, which launcher to use, which keyboard. And so, I have purposely shared these challenges throughout the last six months to hopefully paint an honest and a genuine picture of what it is like for most people who are making the switch. Now, one of the biggest things I was worried about when I first switched was the overall performance, like since iOS is a

very smooth operating system, with really slick animations, and just attention to detail that most people probably don't even notice. I just came back from Italy and decided to take my iPhone with me because we made a video about the iPad, and well, first thing, the battery died before like 5:00 p.m. on the first day, so there's that. And second, performance actually felt slow. I mean, I have tweaked the animation speed settings under developer mode on the S24, but however convenient Face ID is on the iPhone, it feels like I can get into apps and enter passwords from my password manager much faster on the S24 Ultra. The performance of this phone has been just incredible. Now, I've not once experienced any slowdowns or lag in performance at all whilst using this phone, and I think that's down mostly to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy chip. That honestly, these Snapdragon chips are like the best of the best when it comes to performance and efficiency. Now, I'm yet to actually come across a phone that's powered by

Snapdragon that performs poorly, and so anytime I see Snapdragon powering something, it's usually a sign that it will actually be a pretty good device. You know, being invited to Apple's WWDC iPhone launch is one of those like bucket list events that every Tech reviewer dreams of, but right now at the top of my bucket list of, you know, events this year is actually the Snapdragon Summit. It just looks like such a cool and just fun event to be part of. So, um, if everyone could just go and spam @Snapdragon in the comments down below this video, please. Maybe share this video on Twitter and tag Snapdragon. Maybe I'll get an invite to Snapdragon Summit. And, um, if I do, of course, you know I will share what the whole experience has been like. So, um, yeah, anyway, back to the [Music] video. So, after using the S24 Ultra for a while now, the only real issue I have with the design is that it is quite large and very square. And then when you add a case on top of it, it does make it

feel like a a bit of a weapon now. I did switch to the regular size s24 for a while to test, and I actually really enjoyed the size of it, even though it was the exos version we get here in the UK. But I like having the s24 Ultras camera system, so I've stuck with the ultra even though it is a large phone. But on the flip side, my case of choice that I've stuck with pretty much exclusively for well, literally the last few years or so. I love that on the s24 ultra, it gives it a totally flat back, and with a built-in magnets means I can literally stick this thing to anywhere, uh, anywhere that's metal at least, and it just sticks, unlike on the iPhone which has this like gigantic camera bump on it, and particularly on the pro Max, usually means some, uh, careful placement is required to avoid it slipping. So this year there are some exclusive features to the s24 series of phones. Now you've got the S Pen. Honestly, I've Barely Used.

it, but my kids absolutely love drawing on it. So, it's kind of been useful in a handful of situations where the kids need, you know, some entertainment to, uh, save our sanity. Samsung Dex, literally not once on my phone, on a tablet, yes, not on my phone, and Galaxy AI. Let's talk about Galaxy AI because this year, it is a huge thing for Samsung as we've seen with Galaxy Unpacked and the foldables events. There's even Galaxy AI in their earbuds now. But as far as the A for Ultra goes and the AI features, really, I barely use them. Like, yes, features like Circle to search have been really useful in a handful of situations like being able to zoom in and find the pair of shoes the singer was wearing at a gig and summarizing long meetings. Now, for context, I do use my phone like a lot. If you saw my recent video, I spend hours per day on this thing. Duolingo is really great at grabbing my attention, but not once when I'm replying to messages between friends do I think

need to tweak the wording and use AI to rewrite my messages. Although I did use ChatGPT to write a complaint email recently, I guess I could have used Galaxy AI to do that. Not once have I needed to move a person or erase objects in my photos. Now I think the feature I would most likely use would have been the smart replies like within Android Auto. But the smart replies it generates for me are pretty much just basic yes and okay type of responses. After seeing the latest Galaxy Unpacked Event, it does sound like Samsung is developing this feature to be more contextually aware to the conversation and give you actual genuinely useful replies. So we'll see if that actually plays out into anything or not. But none of this is to say that the S24 Ultra is a bad phone. I love this phone, and it is by far my favorite phone of 2024 so far. But I definitely think the implementation of these AI features so far is kind of underwhelming and not useful to most people.

fair that is not even exclusive to Samsung. Like practically every phone company is adding AI into their products this year. I think it's just been a case of let's just put AI everywhere and just see which features people use and then we go from there. It also baffles me why Samsung is still trying to force people to use Bixby when I genuinely don't know anybody who actually uses Bixby. Like Bixby users, if you are out there, please comment down below to say you're a Bixby user with your experience. And they won't even let you change the default behavior of the Sid key on your phone to launch Google Assistant unless you download good luck and register star like third-party tools, which is one of the things I do love about Android. Like if you want to do something with your phone, and stealing a line from Apple, there's probably an app for that. Now the thing I am waiting for is getting AI integrated within Google Assistant, which I will say is much better than Siri overall now.

I've started using Google Gemini recently, which is also, again, much better. But it's still very limited in what it can do and what it has access to. Like when on Android auto, it still triggers the basic Google assistant and not Gemini. And after seeing the recent updates to Siri or Apple intelligence as they're calling it, I am very interested to see how quickly Google respond with similar features. But as a happily married man with two kids, we know it's not about what I think. How has switching from iPhone changed things? Like what frustrates my wife and would my wife ever consider switching to Android? No. Now, as much as I tried, she wouldn't come on camera to talk about this. She's a little bit shy. But what she did say was she misses me easily being able to share photos with her, especially family ones with the kids, since it's a bit of a pain to open them on Google Photos and download them to her phone and then upload into Apple Photos. Find my was another one, being able to conveniently see where I was. But outside of that, no.

real complaints at all, and she even said that the Fold 6 or the Flip 6 that's just launched looked very, very nice, and she might actually be giving that a go. So we'll see how that goes. Now, as far as what I miss from Apple, really the only thing is being able to easily add photos again to the TV wallpaper. We have Apple TVs all around the house, and we're often adding photos into an album that then randomly brings up old memories, which is always quite fun. But again, outside of that, really I'm not missing anything at all. So am I happy with the S24 Ultra? 1,000% yes. I love the photos this camera takes, video quality is great, performance is great. I've only just about now figured out the sweet spot where the NFC is on the back of the phone so I can scan myself into the gym on the first try almost every time. I've even come to love Android Auto, which has its limitations, of course, with home automation and browsing content, but I love how Google

Maps just remembers places you visited and automatically suggests to navigate there without you having to, like, be navigated there before. Now, I've not had any issues with finding apps, including some very random products like my new, uh, robotic lawn mower, smart barbecue. Like, all of those have apps that work just great on Android, and I really love using modes and routines, similar to focus modes on iPhone. When I'm at the gym, it will change my wallpaper, give me direct access to my gym tracking app on the screen, and then have a routine at nighttime where it will turn on the air conditioning in our bedroom, set the temperature, turn off the others, kind of things around the house, and other things like switching off the always-on display, muting my phone, all that kind of stuff. I just love that level of automation. Now, the only bug that has still stuck around since, like, literally day one of S24 ownership for me has been in Instagram where I will open the app and it just doesn't respond.

to anything unless I swipe across or swipe down, and then the app unlocks. It's really minor since I can literally solve it in a split of seconds. And I would say that battery life is really the only other thing. Like, this phone started off with incredibly good battery life, and then since a couple of recent software updates, it's been getting really noticeably worse. And that's even when I've set the phone into the light performance profile and the screen set to full HD, and not the higher Quad HD setting. I've had to charge to get it through the rest of the day quite a few times now, but at least T is positive with the S24 Ultra. Charging is like way faster than charging an iPhone. You can throw this on the charger quickly before heading out for the evening and know that you'll still have enough battery to get you through to the early hours of the morning. But what about the rest of the experience outside of the phone? Because as anyone de into the Apple ecosystem knows, it's not just

the phone, it's everything else: the watch, the headphones. And I've actually settled on a few key products that I've stuck with throughout my whole switching experience. The Apple watch Ultra, that's gone, that has been replaced by this Garmin watch now. Yes, I don't get some of the, you know, smart features to wearing a, you know, a literal computer on your wrist gets you, but I've been loving the longer battery life and better health tracking features of the Gin now. I've been logging my workouts to Strava via the heavy app 2, both, both of those work on both iOS and Androids. Headphones, I've stuck with either my Beats Fit Pro at the gym and more recently Sonos Ace when traveling. And then, weirdly, I've also stuck with my Mac laptop, at least for now, although I did try the latest Snapdragon laptop recently, and you can watch a video of that on the channel soon. And one password has also made this whole process just so much easier switching between iPhone and Android.

mac and windows. Now, I know you can use built-in passle managers like Samsung Knox and Apple Keychain, and Google Chrome passwords. But if you use one of those to store everything, then the moment you pick up a different device, it just becomes impossible to, you know, seamlessly store and share your passwords. We even store and share other information like our passports between me and my team here, so that when we need to book flights, we can just copy and paste all of that data without having to keep asking each other for, you know, what's your passport number and your expiry date and all those kind of things. And so, as a longtime sponsor of the channel, there is a link down below where you can either get the personal or family subscription of one password for the lowest possible price. And genuinely, as a happy user of one password for like a decade, they are always an easy recommendation to make to anyone. But the whole point here is that with Android, you have way more freedom to find like your best fit product for each area now.

the only issues that this can cause at times is an ecosystem that can be kind of quite fragmented, depending on the decisions you make. And this means you can choose whichever watch, or tablet, or laptop, or desktop that you want, like you are free to choose, and you're not locked into the, you know, the small square one, the bigger Square One, or the biggest square one. Now I've had this thing called Vitality health insurance for like literally years now, and to the Americans watching, I'm about to blow your mind by saying that I pay less than $100 per month for health insurance. And to anyone in the UK watching, there is a link down below that gets you and me both £100 when you sign up. And by exercising, or walking, or, you know, whatever it is, I earn points which in turn give me things like free cinema tickets, free coffees. You can get cheap Apple watches, 40% discount on Garmin, 40% discount on food, 15% off at Samsung. It is just like, it is well worth it.

with Apple, that's fine. It, you know, it just works. With Android, it is fine as long as you're careful. Like Samsung watch, all good. Garmin watch, all good. But I tried using a OnePlus watch last week, and I actually really, really like that watch. It works well, it's fast, it looks good. I just like having the smart features back again, but it talks to its own app, which is, I think it's called O Health, and that then syncs to Google Fit. But Vitality refuses to accept any workout data from the OnePlus watch, like saying they need to have some agreement with OnePlus directly before they can use their data. I don't really get it, but it is really annoying because that's that one thing prevents me from exploring as many other products as I'd like to. Friends are he take it slow, wait for them to ask you who you know. Okay, but what about my Apple friends and family? No more Airdrop, no more iMessage, no more sharing workouts. Yeah, now I've not had a single

issue single complaint from anybody like literally anybody now. For context, I am a married guy with two kids, so there is that. I'm not some, you know, hip and young trendy youngster whose social life seemingly depends on what phone you're using, which seems to happen a lot in States now. My family all use iPhones. My friends use a mixture of iPhones, Samsung, Google pixels, and it has not caused any real problems for me whatsoever. Like, we simply switched to Whatsapp or Facebook messenger, and life goes on. Now, of course, the big question after 6 months of switching to the s24 ultra is, what's next? It's been a long, long day without you, my friend, and I'll tell you all about it when I see you again. We've come a long way from where we began. Oh, I'll tell you all about it when I see you again. When I see you again. [Music] Yeah. See. See. Uh-huh. [Applause] [Music] [Music] Know.

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra - LONG TERM REVIEW

Pete Matheson

Pete's 6-Month Journey Switching to the S24 Ultra

Pete, a lifelong iPhone user, has successfully transitioned to the S24 Ultra and is eager to share his positive experience.

He has faced challenges with syncing data and making new choices, but has been impressed by the overall performance and battery life of the S24 Ultra, especially in comparison to his iPhone.

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy chip has contributed to the phone's incredible performance, making it a standout choice for Pete.

The Snapdragon Summit is highly anticipated and desired by tech reviewers.

The S24 Ultra's design is criticized for being large and square, but its flat back with built-in magnets is praised.

The exclusive features of the S24 series, such as the S Pen and Galaxy AI, have received mixed reviews and usage.

Underwhelming AI Features and the Impact on Daily Life

Samsung's AI features, including smart replies, are currently basic and not very useful for most people.

The company is working on developing more contextually aware and genuinely helpful AI features, as seen in the latest Galaxy Unpacked Event.

The implementation of AI is not exclusive to Samsung, as many phone companies are incorporating AI into their products, but the current impact on users is limited.

The switch from iPhone to Android has brought some challenges, such as the inconvenience of sharing photos easily and the lack of seamless integration with Apple's Find My app.

The user is extremely satisfied with the Samsung S24 Ultra, praising its camera, performance, and NFC functionality.

They also appreciate the Android system, app availability, and the phone's fast charging capabilities.

However, they have experienced issues with Instagram responsiveness and a decline in battery life after recent software updates.

Personal Tech Preferences and Health Insurance Benefits

The speaker has switched from an Apple watch to a Garmin watch for better battery life and health tracking.

They use Beats Fit Pro for the gym and Sonos Ace for traveling, and have found One Password helpful for seamless device switching.

The flexibility of Android is highlighted, allowing the freedom to choose the best tech products for individual needs, while also mentioning the benefits of Vitality health insurance for earning rewards through exercise.

Mixed Feelings About Smart Watches and Phone Compatibility

The OnePlus watch is highly praised for its performance and design, but it faces compatibility issues with Vitality's workout data.

Switching from an iPhone to the S24 Ultra has not caused significant problems due to using alternative messaging apps.

The user's decision on what phone to use is not based on social trends, as they have a diverse circle of friends using different devices.