Samsung S24 Ultra vs iPhone 15 Pro Max Camera Battle!

this is the Samsung Galaxy s24 Ultra this is the iPhone 15 Pro Max these phone cameras are about to go to battle and so am I last year we tested the iPhone 15 Pro Max against the Samsung Galaxy s23 Ultra and the iPhone 1 with 6.5 points to 3.5 so let's see if Samsung's AI powered 2024 Flagship can claim Redemption oh and the loser of this video gets shot by an actual tank so I want to start with slow-mo can you see the happy look on my face this is the look of a man who has been asking nay begging companies to show some love to the feature for about 5 years and finally finally the s24 ultra brings it the phone's capable of shooting 4K footage at 120 frames per second and I can confirm this is true 4K slow-mo with no strings attached will you notice the difference versus the iPhone when watching back on your phone screen probably not but can you tell when you blow it up onto a TV absolutely plus combine that with the fact that any video on the Samsung can now be instantly slowed down even further on the spot by just holding down on it and I think we can safely say that Samsung has once again become the slow King now because slow-mo itself is probably not important enough to be its own category we bundle it together into the overall category called special modes which also includes portrait mode video as well as Ultra close-up macro shots but since both of those features are very comparable between the two phones like this right here is portrait mode video and this is what both phones macr shots look like the iPhone can get closer which is really useful but Samsung's processing makes their shots look crispier I think it's time to hand the overall category of special modes to Samsung selfie wise well I mean Samsung's last phone beat the iPhone so its successor naturally wins too the way I see it is the iPhone is a very consistent 8 out of 10 for selfies never exceptional but always good the Samsung though swings between a nine most of the time with Samsung's best being definitely better than the iPhone's best and than the occasional six where it seems to either not quite capture in time leading to slightly softer than expected face details or just blurs the face of someone you've unwittingly pulled into your photo where the iPhone often still manages to keep it sharp but 85% of the time I think this takes better shots they're crispier they're more impressive they often look as good as rear camera photos and they make you look nice whereas often times when I take photos with the iPhone I just feel like I look so rough that I'm half tempted to run the photos through face tune before showing them to anyone now one of the biggest changes we've been told the s24 ultra is going to come with is improved noise reduction and I'm going to be honest with you if Samsung actually managers who fix their noise problem well that's bigger than slow-mo that's bigger than all of this AI stuff why because noisy videos are the single biggest weakness of Samsung's cameras by far and so if they're actually gone now that's like finally cutting off the weights and letting this thing fly allowing people to finally focus on all the awesome stuff these cameras can do without having to constantly caveat it with this annoying side effect that seems to follow Sam around like a shadow so is it better I would say it is faces are crisper than they were on the s23 ultra and it does get less noise in the videos you take and you know at times the s24 ultra shoots such good front camera video that looks so real it can make the iPhone's footage look fake and unnatural Samsung's done a lot of things right here but the main problem of the darker areas of your shot suffering from ugly amounts of noise that hasn't been solved especially when you move the camera it's 5% better than last year but like you know still 50% behind the iPhone I really want to give some the draw here because of how good I know it can be but in their current states if someone offered me one of these two cameras for the purposes of vlogging until Samsung fixes this and also improves the dynamic range to the iPhones level I would pick the iPhone so far though in this battle that is 2 points to one point so this camera comparison is already a very different story to the last one and we might just be shooting an iPhone today and what really starts to cement Samsung's lead here is the camera app itself which is actually one of the biggest changes compared to when the s23 is launched last year it looks better for starters with icons having been cleared up and animations updated but it's also functionally better it's smoother like navigating between the different modes and more surprisingly being able to zoom all the way in and out is now nearly as smooth as the iPhone I have no idea why it's taken this long to get here but let me tell you it feels pretty good to be here you can now just tap to change your photo resolution and changing your video properties makes way more sense too this right here is the kind of practical compact menu design that it would be really cool to see apple do too cuz I get that the iPhone's camera really tries to keep things simple but this is now pretty decluttered but also while being able to access all your different camera options without having to navigate to a completely separate part of the phone to change half of them and you actually just get way more options with the Samsung 2o you know those kind of ultra Niche things that you think only you care about and no one would actually make a setting for yeah Samsung gives you that level of control things like if you set the camera to 50 map or 200 map mode whether or not the camera should keep those as the default the next time you open the camera app or like whether you want to swipe down of your shutter button to either burst fire photos or create an instant GIF and the biggest thing with this s24 Ultra is that it's faster to take photos too now it's still not as fast as the iPhone but there's no longer a massive gap between them and I'd say the Samsung shoots fast enough now that it doesn't feel like a problem it doesn't stand out as a sluggish camera like it used to the only remaining weakness of this camera app is the fact that it's a little hard to use one-handed it's slightly the sharp boxy shape of the phone but mostly just the fact that many of the options are fixed at the top instead of how the iPhone can bring them all to your thumb with a single swipe so I came pretty close at this point to just calling this category a draw and moving on but the thing that's really tipped the scales for me is the screen brightness on the Samsung I did not expect to find it as useful as I have but if you allow Samsung's automatic brightness to take over it gets so bright that even though I've never felt like shooting Outdoors was an issue on the iPhone this screen is so clear that it makes it feel like an issue in comparison so yeah I think Samsung's done enough this generation to turn the camera app all the way from A Loss into a win and related to this I think Now's the Time to introduce a new category into our camera comparisons going forward editing features I've thought about doing this for a long time but the s24 feels like a very obvious place to start it feels like we're on the brink of a new era in which thanks to really powerful artificial intelligence it's no longer just about the photos and videos you can take but also about the photos and videos you can make or to put it another way a lot of the camera's capability now comes after the shot has been captured so who does that side of the experience better well in the iPhones Corner the editor is fairly simple it definitely leaves you wanting more like I really wish there was the ability to make a video that you've taken two times or three times speed I've needed that quite a bit but credit where credits due everything that is here is so fast you're never waiting for any action there's no loading bars making photo and video edits happens literally as smoothly as changing your volume and you want to crop something you don't even need to be in the editor you just zoom in while browsing and click the crop button but then in Samsung's corner you absolutely have more options like you just swipe up on a shot now and thanks to the new Pro visual engine that understands photos better you have a bunch of suggested edits like background effect which is actually pretty cool you can add the portrait mode background blower but also change the style of an existing portrait mode shot to make it look like you're having a particularly action-packed kind of day I love this feature there's a lot of options now there's remaster which is usually a general brightening and sharpening of a photo more often than not it does make a positive difference but it's more for older shots taken on much worse cameras than this it doesn't really do much to already good photos oh but also the ability to erase Reflections which if you like me find yourself on a London balcony with the most incredible view but a massive glass sheet in front of you can be a very powerful effect and I love that these features are mostly just a tap away it takes away that whole uh can I really be bothered to fully jump into an editor for this one specific spefic photo the phone takes away that load from you and I haven't even talked about the biggest change to Samsung's editing which is the new generative AI image editor which is pretty good if you're like I used to be and your current default for repairing photos is like the healing brush then this very much will be a revolutionary Step Up in being able to move subjects to extend your image and erase things you didn't want to be there it does need an internet connection and it's not super fast but the upside is that it's kind of like those really powerful AI websites without needing a monthly subscription like most of ask you for oh at least not yet Samsung's saying that these AI features will only be free till the end of 2025 which I mean it makes sense they do create a significant load on Samsung servers but that's all the more reason that we should be demanding AI features that run offline on your phone and don't require them but even with that caveat I have to say Samsung's editing Suite is way ahead of Apple's and the pressure is really on for the iPhone to start integrating AI in a more explicit way very soon right I think it's time we address the zoom zo situation ever since Samsung decided to go all in on this whole Space Zoom thing with the s20 ultra regardless of how important or unimportant you think Zoom is one thing you can say is they have consistently dominated the category but within the span of just a few years the iPhones have kind of under the radar gone from pretty bad to very good at Zoom 2 partly because the zoom lens magnifications have gone up from 2x to 3x to now 5x on the iPhone 15 Pro Max partly because of New Image processing techniques like photonic engine which can sharpen up photo has taken beyond that five times number and partly because the iPhone takes particularly clear noise-free zoomed in video or leading Apple to for the first time taking home the draw in last year's comparison now the reason for the entire backstory is so that you can also see how strange it is that while all of that is happening this time round Samsung has decided to scale back their Zoom the previous 10 time zoom lens and three time zoom lens combo has been swapped out for a five times and a three times and it brings me no joy to say this but as much as Samsung wants you to believe that this 5x lens is just as good because it's a higher resolution camera compared to the previous 10x your ability to zoom in far is actually slightly worse let me show you so this is a side by side of the s24 ultra versus last year's s23 Ultra and you'll see that as we start to zoom in beyond the phone's Optical ranges it looks okay the AI processing on the new phone is more sophisticated than it was so your photos don't look Ultra grainy like you might expect them to but at the same time you can absolutely tell that the new phone is seeing less that it understands what it's shooting less well and is having to use more processing to bring it back into line here's another example at 100 time zoom s24 Ultra again the actual core details less real more artificial and okay that's fine that's one thing but what I didn't expect to say today is what that translates to which is that actually now the iPhone is the better camera for zooming in long distances I was pretty shocked I tested it many times in many different lighting conditions and yet yes eight times out of 10 the phone that doesn't even technically let you go beyond the 25 times Zoom Ark in the camera app is actually capturing more information than the phone that's been letting you zoom in a 100 times for 4 years now Samsung is doing a lot more software processing than the iPhone when you zoom into things and it does sometimes work but it also sometimes looks so clearly oversharpened or almost like it's had to use its imagination to guess what the thing actually looks like that youd just rather it didn't you'd rather the phone just told you yeah I don't do 100 times as opposed to you having to take the shot first to realize one of the things that Samsung constantly advertises themselves as is the definitive way to record a concept from far away and that's kind of accurate it's something the iPhone is distinctly not good at with its reluctance to switch into its zoom camera paired with those absolutely heinous internal glass Reflections you get from bright light sources but Samsung does still have a noise problem enough of a noise problem that as soon as the lights start to fade or you start to shoot something even remotely not bright the iPhone video just starts to look way more comfortable at 5x magnification and also at 10x and Beyond the one thing that Samsung Zoom cameras do unarguably do better is zoom consistency while the iPhone starts to noticeably dip in quality when you get to three times or four times you know just before that five times zoom camera activates because Samsung also has this separate three times optical zoom camera it can make sure that your Zoom quality stays close to full quality anywhere between 0.5x and 5x leading to what I would say is an overall draw again in the zoom category where this extra three times lens really helped Samsung out though is in the next one the ability to take three times Zoom portrait mode shots as well as five time zoom portrait mode shots is an absolute godsend when Apple announced that the iPhone 15 Pro Max would have a five time zoom lens instead of the three times that the 14 pro Max had there was a very split reaction 50% of people loved the fact that you now had a higher magnification 50% of people relented it for being too much Zoom see because your zoom lens is also generally the best lens to take portraits now now that the phone only has a five times that's so much Zoom that you know when you're sitting opposite the table from someone and you want to take a portrait of them you are going to have to stand up and step back to fit them in but with the Samsung now you don't have to compromise you get both options at full Optical quality and that takes it from what was already a beastly camera for portraits with excellent Edge detection flattering image processing and one of the most natural DSLR style background blow effects to Elite here if I had to call something this phone's specialty I'd probably say it's this while the iPhone can shoot portrait mode shots in 24 megapixel compared to Samsung's 12 it can only do that when shooting portrait modes at one times magnification which I actually tend not to do much of because 1X isn't as pretty all right let's do some audio testing so right now you're hearing the microphones on the Samsung which do sound very good indeed as they do on the iPhone I mean not every company pays attention to the microphone quality of their phones these two do you can't really go wrong either way what's actually kind of crazy is that both microphones are so sensitive that you can even whisper and as long as you're in a quiet environment you can still pick up the sound clearly phones are crazy nowadays where they start to diverge though is when you get significant background noise you know like the sound of an active tank in the background Samsung doesn't actually make it sound so bad it's just that the quality of my voice is cut into as the phone aggressively tries to remove that background noise whereas with the iPhone you hear my voice pretty clearly but you also hear the tank pretty clearly now just before we bring this all together and shoot one of these guys we have to tackle the three big questions who takes better quality photos who takes better quality videos who handles nighttime better so for photos does the Galaxy s24 Ultra with its Hardware improvements its software improvements and its new Pro visual engine significantly improve upon the core photo quality of the s23 ultra well I do notice the contrast of shots looking better now it's very rare to have a washed out photo on the s24 and also color science it's refined although I was would definitely be clear to say not perfected you will still notice some funky Lighting in the background being enough to rock the phone's perception of an entire scene like I took some shots with some of you guys that I met while filming and you can see the lighting of the surrounding area very much bleeding onto our faces on the Samsung or for another example you know when you're zooming into something very often every one of the different Zoom magnifications has a slightly different color profile so my skin tone actually changes as you go but it isn't bad and it's not always one way there are also occasions where the iPhone goes too far with color and the Samsung gets it right dynamic range used to be a blanket Samsung win iPhones used to suck at being able to control the overexposure of the sky but that's not true either anymore there are cases where Samsung does it better still but also cases where the iPhone leads like Samsung might overexpose your face when Apple gets it right so they're about even on that front but the detail is what secures the iPhones win interestingly just like the new iPhones Samsung's s24 Ultra is now capable of shooting photos in in 24 map resolution instead of 12 sadly for Samsung though while Apple's now made 24 mapix the Default Resolution that just happens in auto mode without any compromise Samsung's 24 megapixel is restricted to the expert raw camera app they've not said it as a default I'm not exactly sure why maybe they decided that it makes the shutter time longer and they've just worked so hard to get it down whatever the reason the default in auto mode and therefore what Samsung recommends you use is their 12 map mode and that means detail does still lag behind the Apple sometimes you'll notice the difference Clarity a lot like you can zoom in a whole extra time on the iPhone and get the same level of clarity other times it's pretty negligible but the Gap exists of course this being a 200 megapix sensor means you do get options like the Samsung can shoot in 50 megapix mode although I still think the iPhone's High reses 48 megapix mode is a little better it retains the same quality image processing as your normal photos whereas for Samsung you actually notice the quality of processing go down you're kind of having to trade but then Samsung also has a fullon 200 100 megapix mode which even though it takes a long time to process the image is a cool idea I love the concept of sitting in front of a momentous landscape that I know will be a once in a lifetime View and deciding yeah this is where I go all in on maximum resolution but I still wouldn't necessarily say the 200 megapixel shots are better than the 50 megapix shots in the same way that you notice the level of processing go down as you go from 12 to 50 you notice it go down again as you go from 50 to 200 to the point where brighter parts of the image for example might just now end up Overexposed one of the new things for Samsung is that they now allow you to shoot photos in HDR where everything's ultra bright and contrasty you'll be able to see the preview in HDR while you're taking the shots and then post directly in HDR to social media like Instagram but me I mean I've kind of gone off the idea of HDR there's actually so many times where I'm purposefully trying to keep my brightness low so that I can properly sleep at night and in those times HDR is actually pretty annoying I turn it off whenever I can so it may be a factor for you but it's not personally ative for me so iPhone is going to take it for average photo quality the only exception to that is the ultra wide cameras which I would say both phones are pretty balanced with their well matched 12 megapix sensors the iPhones is a tiny bit wider and sometimes does come out with more balanced colors but also pretty often it feels like Samsung's image processing has cleaned up a scene better so that's one key question answered what about video Samsung made pretty big strides last year with the s23 Ultras video I remember taking that phone out for the very first time and nodding my head like a proud father as I noticed the significant strides in noise reduction the improved dynamic range and the ability to shoot 8K video without it sucking so where does the s20 force it well I would say it's a refinement it's a subtle neatening up an S 23.5 Ultra if you will the level of noise is a tiny bit further lowered the general day-to-day stabilization a tiny bit better thanks to the phone now using its gyro sensors to better understand how you're moving your phone and so what it isn't is more detailed than the iPhone when you're shooting really well-lit shots during the day you can look at both and think well they're basically the same and even in a standard night scene to be fair there's not a massive amount in it which is absolutely awesome to see but it's in the details when you're cropping in close to a certain part of a video or showing your family or favorite Clips on a big TV the iPhone has enough of a leading Clarity that you probably would notice and that is a key key factor and it's especially true when you've got really challenging mix lighting like this I like the fact that when things are dark Samsung keeps them dark but in these situations it's too much it's like there's a black hole under this tank that I've just disappeared into or like Watch What Happens as this tank passes in front of us you see how it goes really dark for a second yeah it's too much it makes it feel like a less balanced camera than the iPhone by the way yes that is actually me driving the tank shout out to Armageddon this place is absolutely mental as for what happens when you try and run after the tank as most same people do the stabilization during video is very much on car and very high tier on both considering how much motion there is but if you want to go all in on stabilization with the phone's respective super steady and action modes well then the iPhone just runs away with it literally I don't know what Apple did when designing this feature but from the moment they launched it no other phone has overtaken them for their sheer ability to take smooth and yet still high resolution action scenes the only final question on our minds then is night photos which based on Samsung's event is what they've paid particular attention to and these two phones are very good and very similar so much so that when you're using light mode it's in most situations as if you basically got the exact same photo but just processed it two different ways Samsung with a cooler tone and lots of sharpening applied apple with a warmer tone and much less sharpening and one is not really worse than the other I mean Samsung absolutely slays the iPhone at moon photos if that's your coverty the iPhone has no idea what to do or which camera to use but I also don't want to overweight that cuz it's not a reg regular thing you're going to be doing and then the iPhone is slightly better at night portraits just in the sense that it manages to make them feel like normal photos whereas the Samsung really makes it look like it's using a special mode and filter and also something that we've been seeing in other parts of the comparison too but that's particularly noticeable at night the iPhone is better able to deal with color like this shot of me on the bench we took it like 15 different times as the bench cycled through every single color and each time the iPhone just got it the exposure was better controlled and the colors much more realistic to what we were seeing so what does that leave us with well 6.5 to Samsung 4.5 to the iPhone Samsung has clawed back a lot this generation Less in terms of the actual output getting significantly better although there are improvements there too the biggest thing is the experience of taking photos the much smoother camera app the much faster shutter speed the highly Advanced new editing tools and so even though this doesn't mean that Samsung wins at everything cuz the iPhone does win some important categories well I can't believe we're actually doing this but a promisees a promise on you go oh and if you're enjoying this video then you sub to the channel would be wonderful right this tank is about to fire a 100 mph highly explosive paint grenade trust me you would not want to get hit by one of these and now we just shoot 3 2 1 did we kill it did we kill it did we no we didn't phone is completely alive and unmarked balls in your court for next time Apple

Channel: Mrwhosetheboss

Views: 5,288,006

Keywords: s24, s24 ultra, samsung, iphone, camera, camera test, comparison, Samsung vs iPhone

Id: btmeie5A4yE

Length: 22min 32sec (1352 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 22 2024