Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra vs iPhone 15 Pro Max - Which Should You Buy?

okay this is the big one right Galaxy s24 Ultra iPhone 15 Pro Max which is best which should you buy which would I buy and of course this is all just my opinion you are absolutely welcome to disagree and I want you to let me know which one you think wins this test which is the best phone in the comments below at the end of the video but just to be clear this video is not sponsored by anyone I do not have a big fat check from Samsung or Apple start on my desk unfortunately so if you are going to spend over ,000 of your hard-earned money and these two are pretty similarly priced which should you go for well let's talk money first and going by retail price in the UK and the US the iPhone is £50 or $100 cheaper and that gets you 256 gigs of storage on both now Samsung do offer more deals and bundles so actually might end up being cheaper overall although iPhones do hold their value longer and they'll give me more for a tradein Apple's offering £400 for my 13 Pro Max from a couple of years ago whereas Samsung will give me just 290 for my equally old S21 Ultra as always with pricing lots of variables it varies by country and currency and when you buy it and Deals and all those things but Baseline the iPhone is a touch cheaper I wouldn't say it's a deciding factor between them but after the price what's the most important thing to consider when buying a new phone that's right the color okay maybe not although Samsung do have more options available particularly with their exclusive online colors conveniently though I do have both phones in well basically the same color natural Titanium on the iPhone titanium gray on the s24 now it does kind of look like Samsung copied apple right titanium titanium but realistically the development Cycles are much longer than the sort of three or four months between these guys actually launching so I'm sure they've been working on that for a long time and titanium does offer advantages like well more durability and in the case of the iPhone it's significantly lighter than the stainless steel they were using previously so the 15 Pro Max is noticeably lighter and more comfortable to use than previous Pro Pro Maxes and it's actually lighter than the s24 ultra we're talking 221 G versus 232 although the s24 is a slightly bigger phone so it kind of works out feeling pretty similar in your hand you can see though I have dropped my iPhone I dropped it pretty early on actually and if you can get the light it's a little ding in the glass there that's not titanium only the frame is still glass back here with a ceramic shield glass at the front here both phones are ip68 water and dust resistant we have USBC ports on both finally Apple got there eventually although right now it is only the latest iPhone 15s that do have one both have fantastic stereo speakers though I found the s24 ultra does get a fair bit louder although at the highest volumes the sound does distort and get a little bit tiny at regular volumes I really can't choose between them I would say they're equally good to my untrained ears oh and remember in the US the iPhone 15 series is eim only there is no physical SIM cards tray but that is only in the US here in the UK Europe Europe and everywhere else we do have a physical SIM card tray and also eim support now front and center are these Big Bright Beautiful screens and this year both phones have slimmed down their bezels and you can see here the chin on the s24 ultra was pretty much hared over last year's s23 Ultra and like the iPhone all S4s now come with a flat rather than curved screen and I think most people agree that's a good decision you're not getting that slight darkening and Reflections on the edges and it does mean you can now use the S Pen right up to the edge of the screen and speaking of the S Pen this is probably the first main unique selling point of the s24 ultra because in all but name this is the s24 note now they have slightly reduced the size of the pen this year but not significantly and functionally it is the same as before we haven't really had many new features for the SP pen in a couple of years but for more precise handwritten notes for doodling for drawing for photo editing and also my personal favorite using as a remote shutter for the camera it is a nice extra to have and it does make the ultra stand out from the crowd sadly no S Pen on the iPhone although we do get the action button does that count as a feature I have it set to do not disturb so essentially still a mute switch for me but you can customize it to launch pretty much any app you can use it as a shutter button still in terms of design these are both very big phones you are going to feel them in your pocket although between the two the s24 is definitely bigger the ultra squared off corners and boxy design and the fact that it has A.1 in bigger screen while you are getting a little bit more usable screen space and of course a smaller ho punch selfie camera it is personal preference but I do find the iPhone more comfortable to hold and I absolutely love the dynamic Island I think we were all a bit skeptical at first of this because there wasn't a ton of use cases but over the last couple of years since they introduced this on the 14s last year the 14 Pros now it's on all iPhone 15s there are so many more apps that take advantage of it most of the time it's there is like a at a glance notification window for everything from your boarding time and gate number the ETA for your Uber timers calls music you do lose a bit of screen but it does have a functional use and I really like it so we have these lovely big screens 6.7 in 6.8 in on the ultra both with Dynamic 1 to 120 HZ refresh rates and while the s24 ultra is sharper if you switch to the Quad HD resolution I suspect most of us would leave it at the default full HD which does save some battery but then means the iPhone's a touch sharper although there's not much in it but there is something that's caught my eye can you guess what I'm talking about just look at the difference in Reflections the s24 is using new Gilla glass armor which is 75% less reflective and versus the ceramic glass we have on the iPhone and basically any other phone which is like a glossy mirror essentially is one of the most underrated features and upgrades of the s24 ultra the downside there is a slight compromise is the screen isn't quite as vibrant visually side by side with the s23 you can see the s24 is just a little bit less saturated but I don't think it's particularly significant and all day long I would take this anti-reflective screen over losing a few percent of vibrancy but what do you think is this a big deal for you and while both phones do get incredibly bright the s24 ultra Peaks at 2600 nits outdoor with its Vision booster versus a peak outdoor brightness of 2,000 nits on the iPhone so it's brighter it's less reflective and it also gets dimmer both phones on the home screen that is a difference in the minimum brightness I'm also happy to see that Samsung have actually doubled the pwm rate the pulse width modulation and it's now 492 htz which is a touch higher than the iPhone's 480 and should help reduce I stream particularly at lower brightnesses and finally while both screens obviously support HDR as usual for Samsung it misses out on Dolby Vision instead favoring their own HDR 10 plus format which just isn't as widely used whereas the iPhone gets regular HDR 10 and Doby Vision which you can also record in with the camera but whatever you're watching playing or scrolling through both are excellent screens although I am now a bit spoiled by these Reflections or lack of them so for me I'm going to give this just to the S4 ultra so that is the outside but as my mom always said it's what's on the inside that counts and we've got the a17 pro from Apple and the snap dragon 8 gen 3 for Galaxy from quom okay so if I was going to be really simplistic and reductive I would just a geekbench 6 Benchmark and tell you that the iPhone is a little bit faster but then in 3D Mark the more demanding Graphics test the s24 ultra actually wins but really as fun as it is to nerd out over benchmarks and see which one's a few per faster and opens an app a tenth of a second quicker than the other one it really doesn't matter these are both exceptionally fast phones and both chips will run every app every game from their respective app stores as flawlessly as possible Right now the real world difference is down to the software iOS versus Android how well apps are optimized for each I would probably say the s24 running Android 14 feels a touch quicker overall mostly down to the slightly faster animations and you can also speed these up even more in the settings and of course you can install different skins and you've got far more customization options on Android but I'll come back to the software in a minute what I have noticed though is that while the Snapdragon chip is pretty ubiquitous among Android flagships because of the lack of fragmentation with Apple devices you do tend to see slightly better optimization particularly for games on the iPhone for example Hong Kai star rail I'm sure if you play that it's like ginch and impact that has a 120 FPS mode on the iPhone tops out at 60 on all Android phones they both support rate tracing in games you can hook up Exel uh controllers like the bbone controller which I think is really neat but also the iPhone has started to offer us some more console level games we've had Resident Evil 4 Resident Evil Village death stranding it's just a handful for now but they are kind of like PS4 level full console games that you can play on your iPhone iPhone however the advantage with Android and the S3 Ultra is you can install game streaming apps you can sideload apps a lot of that stuff is all locked down on the iPhone although things are changing very soon uh with the latest update in Europe at least on the iPhone you will be able to install third party marketplaces so you'll have access to uh GeForce now and Xbox cloud gaming stuff that you could already do on the Android but it's now coming to iPhones so things are shifting around a little bit and I think in terms of gaming I'd call it a drawer but which one lasts longer well in terms of of the battery size the f24 ultra wins 5,000 Ms versus just under 4500 but we all know size isn't everything it's what you can do with it and apple generally is a lot more efficient with their battery because they make the chip they make the phone they make the software in my testing so far I found that they're pretty neck and neck I found that the Samsung does last longer if you're just playing back videos just watching videos all day long which maybe you are but in general sort of more or arounder use the iPhone lasts a little bit longer as well but in terms of non-stop screen on everyday use use you're getting between 10 and 11 hours on both I would probably say the Samsung just about takes the lead but it's not significant although it does charge faster up to 45 watts versus 25 watts still both appallingly slow compared to some of the competition but again the Samsung just edges out in front there and also not only do you get wireless charging but you also get reverse wireless charging so you can top up other devices like your headphones or other phones however we do have the pretty good mag safe ecosystem for wireless charging with the iPhone so again I don't think you could base your buying decision on the battery but let's move on to the big one the camera I think for most of us is like the next big deciding factor and on paper the Samsung seems like the better option we get four lenses versus three 200 megapixels with the main camera versus 48 we get 8K 30 or even 4K 120 video but we all know it's not as simple as that and also there's a lot of subjectivity you may just prefer how One camera looks how the photos on one look over the other now I am working on a full camera comparison video where I'll do a proper Deep dive into these but there are a few things you need to know for the iPhone the big upgrades this year include the five time zoom up from three times last year we now also get 24 megapixel photos from the main camera rather than 12 and with some clever cropping a near lossless two-time Zoom so photos are sharper we get better dynamic range and improved low light portraits and for video because we now have a USBC Port rather than lightning you canect external storage drives and now shoot prores at 4K 60 I also love the ability to shoot prores video in log which is definitely more of a pro feature but you can add different LS or color profiles and turn your ordinary iPhone looking video into something a lot more cinematic and professional but by far the biggest upgrade I think is how all photos are now taken with depth information included meaning you can turn any regular photo into a portrait and vice versa and even change the focal point and the blur intensity after the fact yes you can add background blur to Samsung photos but it's artificial blur and it doesn't always work after saying all that I don't know if the s24 Ultras camera upgrades are as impressive the headline is they've also switched up the zoom lens we still have the three times but they've dropped the 10x in favor of a 5x with a much higher 50 megapixel resolution bigger sensor and wider aperture than the old 10x so you actually end up with much better Zoom across the board from 3 to 10x and Beyond and while the iPhone's 5x does suddenly give this a run through his money I would still Crown the s24 ultra the zoom King especially at longer ranges but other than that the camera Hardware is identical to last year the main other difference is the addition of Samsung's Pro visual engine the software the algorithms behind the scenes and this does impact every camera the for the back and the selfie up front and from my testing we're now getting much faster shutter speed which I'm very pleased to see because this has been one of my biggest issues with Samsung cameras for years now it's also smoother switching between lenses particularly useful when shooting video and zooming in and out and I've also noticed that video is a lot more stable particularly at longer range zoom and if you record at 4K 60 you can now switch between all the lenses previously you were locked into the one you started with so lots of nice refinements but I would probably argue the iPhone does feel like a bigger upgrade year on year here which is the best camera between the two I think the Samsung is more versatile you have more options you have better longrange Zoom the iPhone though is still my favorite for video for stabilization for prr logs cinematic mode and I do also like the style of iPhone's photos and also the ability to turn any photo into a portrait okay let's have a little play with some video and uh this is actually my hometown this is wells in Somerset this is a big old moat around what they called The Bishop's Palace now I'm recording this on the s24 and the iPhone obviously uh in 4k 60 cuz that's genuinely how I shoot cuz I like to be able to slow it down in the edit afterwards and that's kind of like the extra smoothness but no video in Wells is complete without a mention of the swans so these are actually kind of famous especially if you've seen the movie Hot Fuzz they live here and there's a little bell over here if I jump up to the five time zoom and at their feeding time they will ring that Bell and then someone will give them some food so in fact this is a pretty good test of the zoom so these guys are swimming away this is the one times let go up to the five times on both keep walking alongside see which one's more stable one times three on the s24 two on the iPhone five on both and then 10 on both would you go for the iPhone or the S samung you also just have so many more options on the s34 you've got director's view where you can switch between the lenses while filming you've got a preview of all the cameras uh this is dual record so you can see what's in front of me and well my face as well which is pretty handy if you want to reaction to something just can't do any of this on the iPhone you can also pause your video you can flip the camera around with the main video to the selfie while recording at 4K 60 and then go back to the rear and change all the lenses as well you just have a lot more flexibility and AK video however I think where the iPhone definitely wins is with its cinematic mode we do have this portrait video on the Samsung but in my opinion they've just never been quite as good as the iPhone I love this cinematic mode I kind of wish there was a 4K 60 version I probably use that all the time but what do you think as I'm awkwardly holding the m in front of me which do you think looks more cinematic and higher quality from the two phones and do you actually use this mode and actually one of the upgrades with the Samsung this year is that third party apps like Instagram Tik Tok and snap can use more of the Native camera features like ois and the laser autofocus but they're both excellent camera systems and they do offer slightly different things I'm going to call it a draw but of course any comparison with the s24 ultra would not be complete without a mention of AI this is Galaxy Fit AI right but to its credit there are some very Nifty new features and the first one you saw there is this circle to search it's not exclusive to the Samsung it is now available on the latest pixel with the update uh but this is a quicker way of Google lensing what you've screenshotted or what you've drawn around on your screen so magic search with Google is pretty cool we also have new transcription assist I think this is pretty cool where you can do an audio recording it'll then transcribe your recording separate different speakers and then it can go and summarize the entire conversation putting in bullet points you've got live translations whether it's via text back and forth or even over the phone and a lot of this can all be done on device even if you don't have a internet connection but my favorite AI features have to do with the camera and I think the one that's the best to show off is instant slowmo you can take any video just press on the screen and give you a slow motion version of the clip which you can then go into the video erer afterwards save that slow motion part and Export a new clip you've also got a whole range of AI photo features and also a photoshop-esque AI gen fill where you can crop and rotate an image and it will fill in the background you can highlight subjects and then move or resize or just delete them completely and it will fill in the gaps to be fair a good amount of this you can also do on the Google pixel and thirdparty apps give you options but I like how seamless and baked in it is to the photo gallery on the s24 however what makes all that AI a little bit less special is that Samsung say pretty much all if not all features will also be coming to the s23 series last year's phones so it's clearly not an exclusive feature to the s24 but there you go and breathe okay let's wrap up and I think the answer is they are both equally good phones if I was going to go out and buy one I think it really comes down to what ecosystem you're in do you have a Macbook an air ODS or do you have a galaxy book or their buds Pro or their tabs Apple offer 6 years of iOS updates where Samsung are promising 7 years but I think really it comes down to the ecosystem and whether you prefer iOS or Android in terms of the actual phones I can tell you honestly that right now I do carry both of these with me because I think there are advantages to having both although I wouldn't suggest buying both because that's an awful lot of money most of the time though because I do prefer the camera the look of the camera and the video and I shoot a lot of videos content creator and I'm also pretty invested in the ecosystem because I use a MacBook Pro I'm more likely to go with the iPhone but what about you which one would you go for which do you think is the best phone let me know in the comments below if you got any questions between these two also drop a comment and if you did enjoy this video a cheeky little like And subscribe would be lovely I'll see you next time right here on the tech chat

Channel: The Tech Chap

Views: 201,178

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

Id: ChQl1u6YU7Q

Length: 18min 47sec (1127 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 06 2024