Galaxy S24 Camera Guide: Weak Spots, Fixes and Best Settings

The Galaxy S24’s cameras do well during the day, but reviewers noted issues at night. Specifically, reviewers noted increased noise compared to the Galaxy S23 and a 3x telephoto camera that doesn’t perform well at night.

Luckily, both of these issues have workarounds. Read on to find out which settings help.

We can’t claim that we’ve tested the S24 ourselves. DXOMARK and GSMArena have tested the S24 cameras, and the diagnosis below comes from their results and Samsung’s own documentation.

Galaxy S24 camera specs

Camera specs are once again unchanged on the S25 (and according to GSMArena, the hardware seems to be unchanged from the S23 too). Processing power and support are the main differences between these three phones, with the S24 getting either the Exynos 2400 or the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 depending on where it was sold. GSMArena’s CPU benchmarking shows the Exynos 2400 to be very similar to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 (both with the same cameras too).

How the S24 did in published tests

GSMArena had few complaints about the quality of images shot during the day with the primary camera. Colours were vibrant but not overdone, white balance was accurate, and images benefited from less aggressive sharpening (compared to the S23), which left images with a bit of grain, but ultimately resulted in more natural-looking photos with good levels of detail.

Pictures taken with the 3x telephoto camera were also lauded for their detail during the day, while shots made with the ultrawide camera were sharper than those captured with the S23’s ultrawide camera. The reviewer also commended selfies shot with the front camera and video stabilisation.

Night mode images weren’t as well received. Night mode performed better than it used to in preserving highlight detail and lifting shadows, but fine detail suffered, GSMArena found, as textures looked flatter. Night mode with the telephoto camera resulted in a big improvement in noise reduction, but it didn’t always kick in when it should have, and white balance wasn’t always accurate either.

DXOMARK gave the Exynos variant of the S24 a camera score of 133 (using its v5 testing protocol) and found it produced more noise in photos than the S23. It also struggled at times with colour accuracy in low light, and autofocus was consistently unreliable in video mode.

Common S24 camera problems and how to fix them

Expert RAW images give you the most latitude for noise reduction without sacrificing detail, which is handy if you edit your photos aggressively. In low light, stick to the main camera, as it has the largest sensor and widest aperture of the S24’s cameras, so images will be cleaner than on the other cameras. Even cropping in on a 1x image usually yields better results than a noisy 3x image.

Video clips can suffer from focus issues, but you can mitigate this by focusing in on your subject before recording (and refocusing if the focus seems to be drifting). Focus and exposure for stills can be locked by touching and holding, as our AE/AF lock guide illustrates. You can find out more about why photos come out soft in our blurry camera fixes.

Best settings for the Galaxy S24

Our Galaxy S24 settings page covers more cases and provides starting points for more situations.

Galaxy AI, Expert RAW and One UI 9

According to SamMobile, stable One UI 9 began reaching the Galaxy S24 series in South Korea on 6 October 2026. Galaxy S24 users will have to make do with Expert RAW for shooting 24MP photos. Powered by Google’s Imagen 2 image generation model and processed on Google Cloud servers, Generative Edit debuted alongside Galaxy AI on the Galaxy S24 series in January 2024. Samsung notes that photos edited with AI features may be watermarked and/or have reduced image size, so it’s best to retain the original, full-resolution image. Galaxy S24 users started receiving One UI 8.5 with the revamped Photo Assist editing tool from 6 May 2026, according to Samsung.

One UI 9 brings My FanCam mode to the Gallery app. Notably missing from Galaxy S24, SamMobile’s comparison found, are some camera features the Galaxy S25 gets, including Super Steady with Horizontal Lock and new layouts for Dual Recording. See our One UI 9 camera guide for the full table of models.

Updates and who the S24 suits

GSMArena expects the S24 to get as many as seven major OS updates, and since it debuted with Android 14, that means One UI 9 based on Android 17 is the third, with updates that could last into the early 2030s. That’s the main reason to spring for the S24 rather than save a bit of cash and get last year’s S23.

If you’re after a compact phone with a proper 3x telephoto camera, RAW image support and access to Galaxy AI photo editing tools, and you mostly take pictures during the day, a discounted S24 is an excellent choice. If you place more importance on video capabilities, the S25 is worth the additional expense, though its photos are very similar.

• Our Galaxy S24 vs S25 camera comparison covers what the S25 series phones gain from a newer chip and processing.
• The Galaxy S23 offers the same cameras for less money, but likely won’t get as many updates (One UI 9 should be its last major update).
• The only phone here with a 5x telephoto camera is the Galaxy S24 Ultra, which also packs a 200MP main camera.
• The Galaxy S26 FE is a newer 3x option, but FE phones cannot use Expert RAW.