The Galaxy S24 Ultra runs on the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SOC. It’s the latest cutting-edge technology from Qualcomm and involves a mighty GPU capable of efficient Ray Tracing. The 8 Gen 3’s GPU surpasses Apple’s A17 Pro chip in synthetic benchmarks.
Samsung also has a new cooling system for the Galaxy S24 Ultra. According to advertisements from Samsung, the vapor cooling system for the S24 Ultra is 1.9X larger than the S23 Ultra. Despite this, the gaming experience is not great on the Galaxy S24 Ultra. The 8 Gen 3 gets hotter when stressed than the 8 Gen 2. The phone’s new cooling solution isn’t able to keep up. Samsung also artificially limits game performance via GOS to prioritize thermal performance over FPS.
To make matters worse, an unfixed bug on the S24 series still shows you the completely wrong FPS when playing games. If the actual FPS you’re getting is around 45, it sometimes shows 55 or even 60, which is inaccurate and misleading. It’s mostly a software bug, but it hasn’t been fixed yet, and this renders any tests involving the first-party frame rate calculator meaningless. We also have reports of many gaming issues on the S24 Ultra from the Samsung community forums.
Some claim it’s an optimization issue with the chipset and the current software. The user claims that no game runs properly on the S24 Ultra. Some people have varying experiences, with no issues whatsoever. Some of these may be game-specific, but it’s a widespread problem.
Games constantly crash, freeze, and don’t work for a few seconds. It sometimes entirely refuses to load. Games like Pokemon Go and Hustle Castle appear to be affected by this. Games like Dragon Ball Legends, Castle of Illusion, Hyper Evolution, Roblox, Paper.io 2, and more don’t run properly on the phone. Some others refuse to open.
However, Fornite, Wreckfest, Call of Duty, GTA, and others run fine on the S24 Ultra. Left to Survive doesn’t work properly; even Honkai Star Rail, Doomsday, and Chief Almighty occasionally crash on the S24 Ultra. Emoji Blitz and Raid: Shadow Legends are also affected by this, and many people are considering returning the phone because of such problems with gaming on a high-end chipset.
Since there are so many examples from completely varying developers, it’s becoming increasingly clear that it’s not a problem with one specific game. It’s a problem with the software on this phone. More specifically, it’s a firmware problem with the 8 Gen 3 chip and needs an update. Other 8 Gen 3 phones have similar issues.
Force-close and force-stop, restarting the phone, clearing app cache and data, a complete factory data reset, installing from the Galaxy Store instead of the Play Store, and installing and disabling the Game Booster- none of these methods seem to help with this situation. People on Reddit claim that it’s an issue with the Graphic Drivers of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3.
Qualcomm must update its drivers, and Samsung must release a fix. There are several apparent issues with the entire S24 lineup, and we hope Samsung addresses them soon with an update. This kind of gaming performance is rather disappointing for an Ultra flagship phone.
