Samsung has finally rolled out One UI 9 to the Galaxy S24 Ultra, bringing several features previously found on the newer Galaxy S26 series. However, while the update gives the older flagship a welcome refresh, Samsung has left out some of its most useful additions.
The update, which began rolling out to the Galaxy S24 series in October, introduces features such as Call Brief, custom Now Brief cards and My FanCam. But several improvements available on the Galaxy S25 and S26 remain missing, including AI-powered notification summaries, enhanced camera controls and a feature that turns your phone into a webcam.
Perhaps the most noticeable omission is Notification Highlights, a Galaxy AI feature that automatically summarises incoming notifications and prioritises the important ones.
It’s particularly useful for anyone dealing with a constant stream of alerts, but Samsung hasn’t brought it to the S24 Ultra despite the phone already supporting similar AI-powered summaries for web pages, notes and voice recordings.
The camera is another area where the differences become more obvious. While the S24 Ultra retains Samsung’s familiar Super Steady video stabilisation, it misses out on Horizontal Lock, which keeps footage level even when the phone rotates through 360 degrees. The feature arrived on the S26 with One UI 9 and has also reached the S25 series, but there’s no sign of it on the older flagship.
Samsung has also left out a 24MP shooting option in the standard Camera app, even though the S24 Ultra can already capture images at that resolution through Expert RAW.
Meanwhile, Pro Video mode lacks the newer 25, 48, 50 and 100fps recording options, although the phone still supports 24, 30, 60 and 120fps. The updated vertical split-screen layout for Dual Recording is missing too, leaving users with the existing picture-in-picture arrangement.
Beyond photography, the S24 Ultra also misses out on USB webcam support, which allows compatible Galaxy phones to function as computer webcams through a wired connection. It’s a particularly curious omission considering Google’s older Pixel 6a has supported a similar feature since 2023.
What’s frustrating is that several of these features don’t appear to require significantly newer hardware. The S24 Ultra already handles demanding Galaxy AI tasks, supports advanced video recording and offers dual-camera capture, suggesting at least some of the missing functionality could be introduced through software.
Samsung hasn’t explained why these particular features were excluded, so it’s unclear whether they’ll arrive in a future update. For now, One UI 9 still brings worthwhile improvements to the Galaxy S24 Ultra, but owners hoping to get the full Galaxy S26 experience will find that Samsung has kept a few extras for its newer phones.
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