Motorola Edge 50 Ultra vs Galaxy S24 Ultra: Key differences

Motorola's Edge 50 Ultra is now out, and it's easily Motorola's best-spec'd phone released so far in 2024. This one relies on the basics: it sports the latest and greatest Qualcomm chipset, has a trio of very promising cameras at the rear, a superb OLED display, very fast charging, tons of storage, and a friendly design. Undoubtedly, one of the best flagships Motorola has ever released.

In the other corner, we have Samsung's offering for the first half of 2024––the Galaxy S24 Ultra. It's also a superb Android flagship with a superb design, an extremely versatile camera system, all the performance you might need, and Samsung's pledge to seven years of software support. 

Which one should you get? Are Galaxy users missing out on the latest Moto flagship or not?

With an aluminum frame and either a wooden or a vegan leather back, the Moto Edge 50 Ultra is a sleek phone with small bezels and Gorilla Glass Victus up front. In a world where most phones default to a glass back frame, Motorola makes a stand with an unusual selection of back platess, which might not necessarily suit just about anyone. For example, I absolutely love vegan leather on phones, while some of my colleagues barely tolerate it. In this case, we had the wooden one, and it feels fine in the hand, not as grippy as I hoped, but still perfectly fine. 

The Motorola Edge is not a small phone, but it's one that's surprisingly light. Weighing just 197gr, it's noticeably easier to hold than other flagships, like the Galaxy 24 Ultra, which weighs 232gr. You will certainly notice a difference. 

Meanwhile, the Galaxy S24 Ultra has a titanium frame, as well as Gorilla Glass Victus at the back and Gorilla Glass Armor at the front. It has a nearly flat design, with a completely flat display and only the side frame curved outward for a more comfortable grip. That said, the Motorola Edge 50 Ultra has a curved screen, just as the "edge" in its name suggests. 

Both phones are IP68-rated, meaning that you can dunk them in up to 1.5m of water for up to 30 minutes. The Galaxy S24 Ultra has the built-in S Pen stylus on deck, while the Moto Edge 50 Ultra doesn't have a wildcard feature of the same rank. 

Both phones have relatively thin bezels, but the Moto device leaves the impression of being more bezelless thanks to its curved display. The Galaxy S24 Ultra, on the other hand, has a completely flat display, which maximizes the screen real estate. That's great for heavy S Pen users.

A major difference between the two phones is the in-display fingerprint scanner. The Galaxy S24 Ultra has an ultrasonic one, while the Motorola Edge 50 Ultra boasts an optical one. Generally, ultrasonic fingerprint scanners are much faster and more accurate than optical ones, so the Galaxy S24 Ultra has the upper hand here.

The Motorola Edge 50 Ultra comes along with a 6.7-inch OLED display, with Corning Gorilla Victus on top. The display has a super-smooth 144Hz refresh rate, which means it's a tad smoother than your regular 120Hz-capable flagship. However, noticing the difference in your everyday life might be challenging, but rest assured both are extremely smooth, with the Moto phone having a slight upper hand. 

The Galaxy S24 Ultra, on the other hand, comes with a 6.8-inch OLED display, with a dynamic refresh rate that goes up to 120Hz. What's impressive on the Galaxy S24 Ultra is its super-high maximum brightness, which makes outdoor legibility an excellent experience. Even better, the Galaxy S24 Ultra comes with Gorilla Glass Armor, which has anti-reflective properties, thus doing away with those pesky reflections even better than most phones out there.

Display Measurements:

As per our display benchmark tests, it's the Motorola that achieves a higher maximum brightness, one that we measured at 1456 nits. The Galaxy S24 Ultra achieved "just" 1280 nits of max brightness, but you probably won't be able to notice a difference between these two retina-blinding metrics. The Galaxy S24 Ultra, however, can get dimmer than the Moto Edge 50 Ultra by nearly a full nit, but you'd only be able to notice that in pitch-black darkness.  

Coming in hot with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8s Gen 3, the Motorola Edge 50 Ultra is as powerful of a flagship as they come, but it's not much faster than the garden-variety Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 that powers the Galaxy S24 Ultra. In fact, the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 has a different octa-core combination and is slightly under-clocked in comparison with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3.

There's a difference in the GPU units as well: the newer but humbler Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 employs the Adreno 735 unit, while the Snapdragon boasts the Adreno 750 GPU. This means that if you're a gamer, the Galaxy S24 Ultra will provide a better experience. 

How does all of this translate to real performance, or more correctly said, synthetic benchmarks? According to the benchmarks we ran, the Galaxy S24 Ultra has a significant advantage over the Motorola phone in pretty much all tests we ran: Geekbench 6 single- and multi-core, as well as 3DMark Extreme. With that in mind, in real-life scenarios, both phones feel equally snappy, so you have to be a serious power user to notice a difference between the two. 

In terms of memory and storage, the entry-level Motorola Edge 50 Ultra comes with 12GB of RAM and 512GB storage, while the 1TB version comes with 16GB of RAM. Meanwhile, the Galaxy S24 Ultra comes with 12GB of RAM in all three storage variants: 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB variants. 

The Moto Edge 50 Ultra comes along with Android 14, with tons of AI sprinkled on top. Chief and most intriguing is the generative wallpaper feature, which not only creates wallpapers based off a prompt, but also allows you to create a wallpaper based on your clothing. With the Motorola phone, you get three years of major software updates and four years of security patches.

Meanwhile, there are tons of AI features on the Galaxy, living under the Galaxy AI name. The Samsung flagship also comes with Android 14, but will receive seven years of software updates and security patches, which is superb.

The Galaxy S24 Ultra is certainly the better-equipped and more versatile camera phone. It has two telephoto cameras, 3x and 5x ones, while the Motorola Edge 50 Ultra has a single 3x telephoto camera. 

Moving on to the main cameras of the two devices, the Motorola has a 50MP main camera with a 1/1.3" sensor and larger 1.2µm pixels, while the Galaxy S24 Ultra has a 200MP main camera with a similar 1/1.3" sensor but smaller 0.6µm pixels. 

The megapixel differences continue on to the telephoto cameras. The Motorola boasts a 64MP one with 3x optical zoom, while the Galaxy has a 50MP periscope with 5x optical zoom and a less impressive 10MP one with 3x optical zoom. 

The Edge 50 Ultra has a sharper 50MP ultra-wide camera, while the Galaxy S24 Ultra still relies on the tried-and-tested 12MP ultra-wide.

Now, how does all of this translate into image quality?

Main Camera

The main cameras of the two phones are pretty much even as far as quality goes. The Galaxy S24 Ultra has an edge when it comes to detail, but overall, we don't think you'd be disappointed with the Motorola, at least we weren't. 



At low-light, the Motorola does a decent job, and so does the Galaxy 24 Ultra. The latter has an edge, though, as it delivers crispier details and more pleasing colors, which is important at non-ideal lighting conditions. 

Zoom Quality

At the Motorola's native 3X zoom, it not only matches the Galaxy S24 Ultra's zoom capabilities, but even surpasses it slightly, especially when it comes to details. This is great, but remember that the Galaxy 24 Ultra has an extra telephoto camera with 5.0X optical zoom. 

Once you zoom past 5X on both phones, the Galaxy's optical prowess quickly shows, leaving the Motorola Edge 50 Ultra behind. 

Ultra-wide Camera

Both phones definitely give off a similar vibe, with decent details, similar color reproduction, and most importantly, little to no distortion. 

Selfies

Selfies taken with the Galaxy S24 Ultra definitely look livelier and more pleasing, while the Motorola Edge 50 Ultra gives off a more realistic and not that appealing. 

Motorola phones usually deliver great audio thanks to their stereo speakers, and we expect the same about the Motorola Edge 50 Ultra. Hopefully, the same applies to the haptic feedback.

The Galaxy S24 Ultra, on the other hand, is one of our favorite when it comes to loudspeaker quality. Its haptic feedback is also superb, with accurate vibrations. 

Some surprising battery life results! According to our tests, the Galaxy S24 Ultra beats the Motorola Edge 50 Ultra in our web browsing test, which aims to replicate a regular browsing experience, by nearly six hours, a big difference in favor of the Samsung phone. 

At the same time, in the PhoneArena video streaming test, which goes through a playlist of videos, the Motorola Edge 50 Ultra ekes out a victory by outlasting the S Pen-wielding monster by two hours. 

Finally, in our gaming test, which aims to replicate a regular gaming experience and is run at 60Hz, the Moto Edge 50 Ultra seriously bests the Galaxy S24 Ultra by nearly double, a rather big difference!

However, when it comes to charging, there's no denying that the Edge 50 Ultra is the much faster charging device. It supports up to 125W wired charging, which is spectacular, but what's also intriguing, the 50W wireless charging support! Finally, you can charge your Qi-enabled gadgets like earbuds and smartwatches with up to 10W of reverse-wireless charging.

Meanwhile, the situation is not that good on the Galaxy S24 Ultra: the 45W wired and 15W wireless, as well as up to 4.5W of reverse-wireless charging are much less exciting charging features. 

And the results from our charging test pretty much speak for themselves: 28 minutes from zero to a hundred for the Motorola! At the same time, the Galaxy S24 Ultra has merely hit 68%, which isn't bad at all, but diminished by the Edge 50 Ultra's achievement.