iPhone 15 Pro vs S24 Ultra Long Term: Don't Waste Your Money

this is the iPhone 15 Pro and this is the Samsung Galaxy s24 Ultra and while these two phones have quite a few differences they have more and common than you might think for the past month I've been using the s24 ultra as my primary phone and I've also been using the iPhone 15 Pro since launch and the lines between what makes one phone better than the other have blurred quite a bit depending on who you are there's definitely reasons as to why you might choose one of these over the other so today I want to get into what those reasons are new features you should pay attention to and which ones you can probably ignore so if you're looking at either of these phones or maybe you're considering switching from Android to iOS or vice versa stick around and let's get into [Music] it hey everyone Kyle Erikson here buying a phone these days isn't quite the same as it was even a few years ago we don't generally look at performance in the same way software is now packed with AI and machine learning features amongst other things and it can be tough to cut through all the marketing material and find what has real value both Samsung and Apple push out a lot of new features each year that sound good up front but I find you really have to use each phone for long enough to form some habits and let the hype or novelty wear off and usually what happens is you'll find that most of that new stuff isn't particularly useful but there's always a couple of Game Changers when it comes to the phones that I have here I've been using the s24 ultra for about a month and the iPhone 15 Pro for about four so so I'd say I've got a really good sense for how these work and how I use them they're both a flagship model for each brand and the 15 Pro Max would probably be more the direct competitor to the s24 ultra but I do think that this offers maybe a more fun unique comparison and because the pro Max is essentially just the same phone but bigger and with one different camera lens if that's something that you're interested in it should be pretty easy to determine what it would be like in place of the 15 Pro with a contrast in size these two obviously look a lot different from each other the iPhone 15 Pro is a 6.1 in device and the s24 ultra is 6.8 and I find the iPhone lend itself better to one headed use or the s24 ultra I'm often using too they both have a titanium housing this year and the colors that I have here are very similar as well the iPhone 15 Pro is natural Titanium or the s24 ultra is titanium gray but that's really where the resemblance ends the finish on the titanium sides is slightly different the iPhone has more of a brushed look to it where the s24 ultra is more speckled similar to the way that an aluminum finish looks on most phones if that makes sense and you have the square look on the s24 ultra versus the rounded corners on the 15 Pro I do prefer the look of the s24 ultra to the iPhone I just think that it looks more minimal and sleek and it makes more sense visually to have square edges on a screen when you're viewing content made for a rectangular viewport but that does come with some problems if we just toss out the fact that the ultra weighs considerably more than the 15 Pro which is fair considering that you've got a much larger screen and device the iPhone is much more comfortable to hold having rounded Corners where I find the Ultra can dig into my Palms at times because the bezels are so thin on the s24 ultra when it digs into your palm sometimes your skin can touch and produce inadvertent touches that can be especially annoying in apps that have a bottom nav bar it doesn't take much to hit the right or left side of the tab bar depending on what hand you're holding it in so while I do appreciate the design of the phone more visually between the two functionally the iPhone does make more sense in that regard speaking of the screen this is one area where Samsung has done a great job like I said the ultra has a 6.8 in AMOLED 2x display it's got 505 pixels per inch a variable refresh rate of 120 hertz and can go all the way up to 2600 in its peak brightness which is outstanding the iPhone 15 Pro on the other hand with its 6.1 in screen has 461 pixels per inch also has 120 HZ variable refresh rate and that goes to 2,000 nits which isn't quite as strong on paper but with actual use it's very hard to tell the difference outside of the size pixel density for the most part is indistinguishable and in most settings the iPhone actually measures brighter than the s24 ultra with a brightness cranked all the way up and both have great color in my opinion if you're watching content the s24 ultra is much nicer not only because the screen is a bit bigger but because there's only a pinhole cut out for the camera and the screen is squared it barely obstructs the content where with the iPhone you've got the dynamic Island and the rounded Corners to contend with even when your zoom level is pulled all the way back on the 15 Pro it still cuts off part of the picture on the edge and then when you zoom in to use up more of the screen the rounded Corners cut the edges of the screen off and the dynamic Island really obstructs a view so if you do watch a lot of content the s24 ultra is much better in that sense like anything with these phones though that does come with some tradeoffs the dynamic island is so big because it houses a bunch of sensors that the ultra doesn't have and that enables face ID which I much prefer over the Biometrics on the ultra the face unlock feature on the ultra works okay in low light it struggles and the fingerprint sensor works well enough but face ID on the iPhone works so good most of the time that you don't notice it's even doing anything which is how unlocking your device should work in my opinion the coatings on these displays are also quite different the iPhone 15 pro has ceramic Shield where the s24 ultra has the allnew gorilla glass armor that's supposed to be four times more scratch resistant and reduce Reflections by up to 75% over competitors I personally couldn't tell you which of these is better in terms of scratch protection but you can definitely notice the reduced glare on the ultra it makes it a lot easier to see in bright areas and outside side which when you combine it with a bright screen are much more usable say if you're using the camera where you can more accurately get a sense for what your photos are going to look like moving from the outside of these devices to the inside the iPhone 15 pro has the a17 pro chip while the s24 ultra has the Snapdragon 8 gen 3 I've been seeing higher single core and multi-core performance on the iPhone 15 Pro but GPU scores have been higher on the s24 ultra both these devices saw the introduction C of Hardware enabled rate tracing so if you look at the previous generation on both phones you see a pretty big jump in GPU performance and gaming is one area where you will notice that increase over last year and where you could potentially see a noticeable difference between these two I think that will likely change on a game by game basis and will probably depend on other factors like gaming engines and so on but if you're just comparing them to last year's versions it's a pretty big Leap Forward on each they both feel very similar to each other though the iPhone does have 8 gigs of RAM compared to 12 and the s24 ultra but they're utilized quite differently and really any Flag ship phone these days is going to run almost everything that you throw at it without any issues I'd say one area people don't often consider when we look at these chip bumps is with a camera it does take a lot of processing power to record high resolution video and even to produce high res high quality photos both of which these excel at the cameras themselves do offer quite different specs on the ultra you've got four cameras on the back a 200 megapix Main sensor that takes 12 megapixel images by default 12 megap ultrawide 10 mapel 3x telephoto and a 5x telephoto at 50 megapixels on the iPhone 15 Pro you've got a 48 megapixel main sensor that shoots 24 megapixel images by default 12 megapixel Ultra wide and a 12 megapixel 3x telephoto if you were to get the pro Max that has a 5x telephoto instead of the three but but I actually wanted 3x on my iPhone because I ended up using that focal length much more than I would 5x 3x is great if you're indoors more often and you want to get nicer portrait images and even outside it does give you a decent Zoom range but outside of that tele photo this is exactly the same as a pro Max images off the main camera are both fantastic and are quite similar I'd say the s24 ultra has a bit more saturation where the iPhone 15 Pro gets generally warmer and also shows detail and texture just a touch more with slightly better dynamic range on the ultra wide images are again a bit warmer on the iPhone there isn't a ton of difference otherwise and you do have the 3x and 5x dedicated lenses on the ultra the 3x on my iPhone is outstanding and I use that a lot I don't particularly like the 3x telephoto on the s24 ultra but the 5x is great I think either of these camera systems produce outstanding images and you're going to be happy with either if you want a more in-depth analysis on each of them I've got reviews for both phones that I dive into a little bit more but I say that photos in general are quite similar in quality for me when it comes to video on the other hand there's a clear distinction in feature set that are going to benefit different people in different ways if you're someone who films a lot more casually and when I say casually I mean you're not worried about color grading and some more advanced features but maybe you want some more easy access to bells and whistles the s24 ultra has a lot of great stuff built in you can record 4K slow motion at 120 frames per second which the iPhone 15 Pro and prax cannot do you can also use AI to slow down regular footage into slow motion and I think in general the settings in the camera app for both photo and video are a little more userfriendly you can record 8K video as well but I don't find that particularly useful on a sensor this small and in my opinion that's sort of where the advantages end and I I think of you're hoping to get footage that has a more professional look the iPhone produces much better video overall but you usually have to have some knowledge surrounding how to shoot video there's native support in the camera app for filming in 24 frames per second on the iPhone 15 Pro which isn't there on the s24 ultra that's what I film all my content in and new this year on the iPhone is the introduction of prores recording in Apple log recording in a log profile retains more detail in your videos for editing later and and there's no overprocess or oversharpening of the footage and it just gives you a much more natural picture I recorded a bunch of clips from my s24 Ultra review with the iPhone 15 Pro and because I can color grade that footage more effectively and I have more control over the image it fits in quite well with the rest of my content from my mirrorless camera the iPhone 15 Pro is also much better at transitioning between lenses and other features like cinematic mode make it the clear winner for anyone who wants to get high quality footage from their phone now I I haven't talked a whole lot about the AI features as it relates to the camera because I wanted to speak more about the images and the footage alone but Samsung is going to give you a lot more options with the s24 ultra that you're just not going to see on the iPhone 15 Pro which I think all have their place but are probably not going to be something that you're using every day all of this as it pertains to images is going to be done within the Samsung gallery app where I can click this gradient button and go into the generative AI screen in here you can alter and enhance your IM by moving stuff around erasing objects filling empty space and so on and this can be really useful at times if you're just trying to clean up the odd photo but it can also produce very weird results outside the generative AI stuff there's an option to erase Reflections which again sometimes works outstanding sometimes not and there's remaster and background blur effects which are similar to Auto portrait and auto adjust modes in iOS if you like those AI features the s24 ultra is going to have more than pretty much any other smartphone where the iPhone 15 Pro is probably going to be on the other end of the spectrum and Samsung didn't stop there you can summarize and transcribe voice notes both in your own language and in others there's actually a whole live translation feature set and I think all those things are kind of Niche that you're probably not going to use very often but one thing that I absolutely love this here is called Circle the search where you can hold down on your home bar and circle anything on this screen and it'll search via Google Lens I use this quite frequently to be honest to find things that I like or that I might want to buy and you can technically kind of do this if you have the Google app on your iPhone or you can crop screenshots and search with Google Lens but it's nowhere near as handy and it's a lot harder to use that being said the s24 ultra has its own issues with software I'm not a fan of the stock keyboard and I know I'm not the only one the swipe functionality just doesn't work quite as as good as iOS and a lot of folks that I know have been cursing out mistyping things on the s24 ultra it's not the end of the world but it can get annoying the clipboards I both like and dislike between each platform for different reasons on the s24 ultra you have a clipboard history so basically anything that you copy and paste you can look back on and see which the iPhone does not have but what I love about iOS is I can easily copy and paste images and I have Universal clipboard so I can copy and paste to and from my Mac or my iPad without having to set anything up granted Samsung is getting a lot better expanding its clipboard functionality but it's still not quite on the same level and there are some other things missing in the OS like live voicemail that I really like on iOS with the iPhone 15 Pro beyond that I've had issues with the YouTube app randomly crashing on Me on the s24 ultra and apps usually get features and updates a little quicker on iOS and work a little bit better uh this is one of the reasons why I originally switched to iOS after being on Android for a decade I don't want to go too far down the rabbit hole of Android versus iOS because that's not what this video is about and maybe that's a topic for another video but the one thing that I think is a pretty big factor in any mobile device is the battery life and how it charges this is again where size does come into play the battery in the s24 ultra is 5,000 milliamp hours where the iPhone 15 Pro is only 3274 so they're vast different iPhones have historically always had a touch smaller battery size and are better at optimizing it but where I usually have to charge my iPhone in the evening after a full day's use the ultra will still have plenty of life and I can get somewhere in the neighborhood of 12 to 13 hours of screen on time when I do charge it's almost always wirelessly where both of these offer the same 15w wireless charging spec but you don't get ch2 or magsafe on the ultra which is somewhat unfortunate I also notice that the ultra gets a lot warmer than the iPhone 15 Pro when charging wirelessly which is something that I'll be keeping my eye on when it comes to wired charging the s24 ultra can go all the way up to 45 Watts where the iPhone 15 Pro can unofficially go up to 27 and the actual charge times do feel very similar with a difference in battery sizes and both are sporing USBC connectors this year they can both run at USB 3.2 Gen 2 speeds and enable a bunch of different things like Samsung decks external display support and USB accessories but realistically I don't think a ton of folks are using things like that uh they'll both transfer files relatively quickly although I do find that process is kind of awkward or clunky on both and when it comes to most other things there's a reasonable amount of overlap between the two I think if you're choosing between these phones it really comes down to what your preferences are and how you're using your phone if you're already entrenched in the Apple ecosystem and you have a Macbook or an iPad you get a lot of added functionality and frankly just familiarity with the UI and how things work on the iPhone and it's probably worth checking out likewise if you're looking for a phone to record professional video from the iPhone is much better for that sort of thing but the s24 ultra I think is much better for viewing content there's the S Pen if you want to stylist for more Precision touches or to use as a remote it's got a ton of neat AI features and with Android being a much more open platform it just lends itself to more available customization which is important to a lot of people the iPhone 15 Pro comes in at $10.99 for the 256 gig model while the s24 ultra is $12.99 so it's not quite as much and if you do want to bump up the screen size and the battery life on the iPhone to match the ultra the pro Max is $100 more so it's still a touch cheaper I should also mention the s24 plus which starts at $9.99 for the same storage but it's made with different materials has an entirely different camera system different modems and depending on where you are might not even have the same chipset so it's not quite the same as the bump down from the pro Max iPhone to the pro but if you guys would like to see me review or compare that phone to any of these let me know in the comments down below that's all I got for you today I know I didn't get into everything with each of these phones in this video but I got to as much as I could that I hope provides the most value while also keeping my sanity while making this if you enjoyed this video or you found it useful feel free to hit that like button if you want to see more Tech rated content or set up a conference call with our pets to discuss the latest in squeaky toy technology Please Subscribe thank you so much for watching and I will see you in the next upload

Channel: Kyle Erickson

Views: 78,413

Keywords: iphone 15 pro, iphone 15 pro max, iphone 15 pro review, iphone 15 pro camera, samsung s24 ultra, samsung s24 ultra review, samsung s24 ultra vs iphone 15 pro max, galaxy s24 ultra, samsung s24 ultra vs iphone 15 pro, samsung galaxy s24 ultra, iphone 15 pro vs s24 ultra, s24 ultra, iphone 15 vs s24, iphone 15 pro vs samsung s24 ultra, apple vs samsung, samsung, apple

Id: oYTfHL-G88k

Length: 17min 49sec (1069 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 25 2024