The Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra is due to officially go on sale tomorrow, but a note of panic has arisen from some customers who received their device early.
Usually, Samsung devices have separate color profiles that aim to allow users to see colors in different formats. The “natural” setting is more real to life and the “vivid” allows for more saturation. It appears the vivid setting is not working as it should on the Galaxy S24 Ultra with some users commenting that colors appear washed out —at least when compared to older phone models.
There have been complaints on Reddit from people who have received their Galaxy S24 Ultra and started to notice the issue. A user named “Doo-StealYour-HoChoi” claims the issue is down to a fault in the software not registering the toggle switch from natural to vivid, rather than an actual hardware issue. They have shared an image showing the difference between the two profiles on both the Galaxy S24 Ultra and the Galaxy S21 Ultra.
The original photo shows two sets of images from both the Galaxy S21 Ultra and the Galaxy S24 Ultra, with a photo using both the natural profile and the vivid profile. While there is a noticeable difference between the Galaxy S21 Ultra's profiles, this is not the case with the Galaxy S24 Ultra where the colors appear very similar.
We aimed to recreate this with our own Galaxy S24 Ultra and seemingly confirmed the lack of any real change in the color saturation between the vivid and natural profiles.
Samsung has not commented on the issue so far, but Tom's Guide has contacted the company's representatives and we will update this article if and when we receive a response.
One user in the Reddit thread was supposedly told that there would be a software update by a Samsung support worker. This would lend credibility to the claim this is a software issue over any real hardware fault.
Meanwhile, Android Authority has speculated that the issue is down to the One UI 6.1 update exclusive to the Galaxy S24 Ultra. It is possible, the site states, that the One UI 6.1 lacks any vivid color profile so there is no actual change when the option is selected. However, we do see some minor changes in our photos that would indicate it is more of an issue with the scale.
Currently, this issue seems to only be affecting the Galaxy S24 Ultra and there are no reports of a similar issue on the other Galaxy S24 models. We will not know for certain what the cause is, or the possible solutions until Samsung makes an official comment about the issue.
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