The best Samsung phones in 2024, from foldables to flagships

The Galaxy S24 ultra is the best phone Samsung has ever made. The blisteringly powerful Android phone features a faster processor, a brighter screen, and a newly redesigned flat display.

The only mainstream phone to come with its own stylus, the Galaxy S24 ultra is a genuinely unique device among a sea of iPhone alikes and is designed to be a productivity powerhouse. The slim and lightweight S-Pen slips out of a neat little enclosure in the bottom of the device, letting you jot down notes, sketch, doodle, and trace circles around things you want to Google.

While the hardware specifications have received just the lightest of upgrades, this year’s flagship Galaxy phone is all about new software features. Like seemingly every other tech company, Samsung has been bitten by the artificial intelligence (AI) bug, incorporating machine-learning magic into its already powerful photography and text-editing tools.

Just like the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro before it, the Galaxy S24 ultra’s camera can now erase subjects and nuisances from pictures, move them around in the frame, change their size or replace them completely. You can also re-crop photos after taking them, letting the AI engine create new parts of the image from its imagination.

• From £44.99 per month – Mobiles.co.uk
• From £53.99 per month – Idmobile.co.uk

Read the full Samsung Galaxy S24 ultra review

Best known for producing flagship premium devices at the top end of the price spectrum, Samsung also makes some of the best budget and mid-range smartphones you can buy. Not only does the Samsung Galaxy A54 sport a stylish design, it is excellent value for money.

Crammed in here are high-spec features such as a great-looking AMOLED screen with a smooth 120Hz refresh rate and a camera array that runs rings around other phones at this price.

To keep the price low, however, the Galaxy A54 runs on a relatively slow processor with poor battery efficiency, so performance and battery life take a small hit, compared with pricier Galaxy phones. Overall, though, this is an attractive phone at an unbeatable price.

• From £21 per month – Affordablemobiles.co.uk

For more recommendations, read our review of the best budget smartphones

The Samsung Galaxy Z flip 5 is a pocket-friendly flip phone that folds down to about the size of a Post-It note. Upgraded for 2023 with a new gapless design and a larger outer screen, it’s the best folding phone you can buy right now.

The clamshell design opens vertically at any angle, which allows for some fun camera tricks. When shooting a picture or video with the phone unfolded, your subject can see themselves on the cover screen’s viewfinder. Prop the phone open on a table for a group selfie and you can use the cover screen to more easily get everyone into the frame. Software tricks such as raising your hand to trigger the shot round off a very polished camera experience.

The enlarged outer display makes the Galaxy Z flip 5 a whole lot more useful when closed, with more information available at a glance, and the redesigned hinge gives the phone a neater, more finished appearance.

• From £39 per month – Affordablemobiles.co.uk
• From £29.99 per month – Carphonewarehouse.com

If you want the latest Samsung Galaxy features but don’t want to shell out £1,249 for the all-singing S24 Ultra, we’d recommend the baseline S24 model. It features the same build quality and AI-powered tools in a device costing hundreds of pounds less.

Neither the S24 nor S24 plus is compatible with the S-Pen stylus but, make no mistake, this is still a premium Android phone on par with the iPhone 15 and Google Pixel 8. It features a bright and colourful AMOLED display and a dynamic refresh rate that reaches a butter-smooth 120Hz. The S24 has a camera that effectively matches the S24 Ultra when it comes to daytime and portrait photography too, albeit with a shorter-range telephoto lens with three times optical zoom.

• From £25.99 per month – Idmobile.co.uk

The very latest in Samsung’s A-series of budget-friendly phones, the Galaxy A25 launched in December 2023 and is easily one of the best cheap Android phones for less than £250.

A solid little performer, it packs in a 120Hz AMOLED display, 5G connectivity, a decent triple-lens camera, Samsung’s excellent One UI operating system and a long-lasting 5000mAh battery.

The 128GB capacity of the base model means on-device storage could be tight, particularly if you plan on shooting 4K video, but it’s a happy compromise to get the price this low. Plus, unlike even top-of-the-range phones, you can pop a microSD card into the Galaxy A25 for up to 1TB of extra storage.

• From £16.99 per month – Mobiles.co.uk

The S24 plus is roughly comparable to the baseline S24 when it comes to look and feel, except it has a larger 6.7in screen, more storage as standard, a bigger battery and more RAM.

As far as “ordinary” phones go, this is the best Samsung makes. It’s the obvious choice for anyone who doesn’t want to bother with – or thinks they would immediately lose – the S24 ultra’s nifty little S-Pen stylus.

You also miss out on the titanium finish and 5x optical zoom range of the more expensive phone, but for your £999 you’re getting essentially the same bright and vivid AMOLED display, the same software experience, and those exciting new AI-powered photo editing and writing tools.

• From £41.99 per month – Carphonewarehouse.com

Samsung pioneered the first mainstream folding phone, with the original Samsung Galaxy Z fold, in 2019. The first-generation iteration was predictably flawed, prone to damage and notorious for collecting debris between the flexible glass and the phone’s display. Four years and four phones later, Samsung has hit a comfortable stride with a foldable we can recommend to anyone interested in the form factor.

The 2023 model is the slimmest, lightest, brightest and fastest in the series, naturally enough. The Samsung Galaxy Z fold 5 is a powerful smartphone with a giant, impressive, unfolding screen. The opening and closing action feels sturdy, the camera is decent, the display looks amazing and is well-protected against dirt and damage.

• From £57 per month – Buymobiles.net