Next year’s Galaxy S24 Ultra will look different from Samsung’s recent Ultra flagships. This is primarily due to the shift from a curved display to a flat one. The new phone is also slightly wider, shorter, and thinner than the Galaxy S23 Ultra. It appears the 2024 model will have a redesigned bottom speaker grille as well.
Galaxy S24 Ultra to feature a new bottom speaker design
According to X tipster Ice Universe, the Galaxy S24 Ultra’s bottom speaker grille will be a long rectangular strip with rounded corners. The device won’t have multiple pill-shaped holes sitting closely at the bottom of the phone for sound output on current Samsung flagships. The tipster shared an illustration showing the new design (see image below).
This isn’t the first time Samsung has employed such a design for the speaker grille on its flagships. The Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ in 2018 featured this design. Those were the first Galaxy flagships with stereo speakers. Samsung changed from the hole-type speaker grille (the current design) found on the Galaxy S8 series and Galaxy Note 8 in 2017.
However, Samsung returned to the previous design with the Galaxy Note 9 in the second half of 2018. All subsequent Galaxy flagships have featured the hole-type speaker grille, with some five or six pill-shaped holes depending on the model. This suggested that the Korean behemoth doesn’t find a rectangular strip a better solution for the speaker grille.
In our opinion, the hole-type design does look more premium than a rectangular strip. However, it appears Samsung is still going back to the latter design for its next-gen flagship. While this shouldn’t affect the sound quality, some may not like this redesign. It shouldn’t be a dealbreaker to anyone, though. After all, we get used to these things after a few days.
That said, the leaked renders of the Galaxy S24 Ultra showed tiny circular holes for the speaker grille rather than a long strip. The Galaxy S24 and Galaxy S24+ were also shown with a similar design. So we will have to wait for more images to confirm whether this change is happening and if it’s for the entire lineup.
The new Samsung flagships are still three months away
Samsung is reportedly planning to unveil the Galaxy S24 series earlier than the Galaxy S23. It’s looking at a date in the third or fourth week of January 2024. This means we are still three months away from the launch. Ahead of that, you can expect plenty of leaks revealing more information about the new Samsung flagships. We should get a confirmation about the speaker grille redesign in the coming months.