The best Samsung Galaxy S24 plans in Australia

The Galaxy S24 has officially been revealed and pre-orders are now live in Australia.

In this guide we dive into the Samsung Galaxy S24 and the Galaxy S24 Plus, their pricing, any new features, and the best plans for both handsets. 

Every Galaxy S24 phone is available on a plan through Telstra, Optus and Vodafone. Each of these providers offer plans in the exact same way; you’ll have two agreements with the provider - one to pay off the price of the phone, and the other for your mobile service. 

The price of the phone is divided by the number of months in your contract. A 24-month plan means you’ll pay the price of the phone, divided by 24, each month. 36-month plans are naturally a cheaper option, but you are locked in to the provider for an extra year. On top of that you’ll pick your SIM plan based on your budget, and how much data you need per month.

As predicted, the 2024 Galaxy lineup has a more expensive entry point but it's not necessarily more expensive in every way. Read our guide to Galaxy S24 pricing for a full explanation. 

Like everything, the Samsung Galaxy flagship is more expensive this year. The iPhone 15 family went up by between $50-$100 on average. 

However, Samsung is justifying the higher entry price for the Galaxy S24 handsets, in a way. In short, Samsung has ditched the 128GB model, so we're left with the 256GB model as our entry point. BUT Samsung has actually dropped the price of that variant this year to make up for it.

The 256GB Samsung Galaxy S24 starts at $1,399. That's more expensive than last year's 128GB model, but also cheaper than the S23 256GB model. With that said, the S24 Ultra is more expensive across the board. 

Here's a further breakdown of outright pricing at launch.

For reference, here's how much the Samsung Galaxy S23 cost outright at launch in Australia. 

Both the Samsung Galaxy S24 and the S24 Plus boast few major hardware upgrades. The screens are a bit bigger this year, and they pack updated processors but as far as camera tech and general aesthetics, they're much of a muchness. 

Where Samsung says the upgrade matters this year, is in it's AI features, which will be available in all three devices. 

It is important to know that the S24 and the S24 Plus are pretty much be the same phones just with different sized screens. If you want a big lad, go for the Plus, if you are a small handed fellow (like me) you'll probably be happier with the S24.

2024 is already the year of AI (if CES is anything to go by at least,) and the rumours around Galaxy AI proved to be true; Samsung went hard with the AI this year. It dominated the keynote.  

Samsung describes Galaxy AI as "a comprehensive mobile AI experience," and that's the impression we got in our hands-on preview of the Galaxy S24. AI isn't just a feature of the Galaxy S24, its woven through every part of the Galaxy smartphone experience. Photos, chat, search, you name it. Samsung has placed a little AI cherry on just about every feature of your modern smartphone this year.   

Here's a glimpse at just a few of the AI features Samsung is spruiking with the S24: 

• Live translate: Real-time voice and text translations in of phone calls in the phone app.
• Interpreter: Instantly translate real-world conversations via a split-screen review (and it doesn't require an internet connection.) 
• Chat Assist: Gives your shorthand text messaging a more natural, conversational feel. 
• Transcribe Assist: Uses AI-supported Speech-to-text technology to summarise conversations even with multiple speakers

The physical camera hardware of the S24 and S24 Plus haven't changed all that much year on year. The triple-lens array on both the S24 and S24 Plus will get you a  50MP wide main shooter, a 12MP telephoto lens for close-up shots and portraits and a 12MP ultrawide lens. Once again, however, Samsung is more focused on selling you on its AI-enabled camera improvements than the hardware itself. Here are a few of the AI photography highlights: 

• ProVisual Engine: The suite of AI features that assist with every step of the process, from framing the perfect shot to publishing the results.
• Galaxy AI editing: A range of AI editing features we've come to expect; shadow removal, composition tweaks and reflection editing. This is coupled with Edit Suggestion, which aims to take the guesswork out for you and automate the AI edit notes. And, of course, it wouldn't be an AI feature without Generative Edit, a feature that allows you to fill, remove, replace any person, object or thing in your photos with a simple request. 

It's a bit of a split this year. The Samsung Galaxy S24 and S24 Plus have been lumped with an Exynos 2400 processor while the Galaxy S24 Ultra will pack a Gen 3 Snapdragon 8 processor in Australia this year. Both powerful in their own right, but it doesn't take a genius to guess which one is more efficient (hint: it's the more expensive one.) 

Last year the Galaxy S23 was released in Australia with the Snapdragon Gen 8 chipset, with the S23 FE released later in the year with the Exynos 2200 chip. 

This year's standard lineup sees a slight upgrade on last year's FE model, which begs the question: what will the eventual Galaxy S24 FE look like?

Samsung has dived head first into a pastel painting the last few years and the Galaxy S24 and S24 colours do little to buck that trend. We've got a nice shade of Violet, a muted Yellow and the typical White and Black variants. 

Samsung is also doing that thing where it offers exclusive colours through its online store again but this year, they're kind of tempting.