iPhone 16 Pro Max vs S25 Ultra: An Obvious Conclusion

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Need-To-Knows

🌅 Both produce exceptional 4K footage

🍟 Powerful Snapdragon 8 Elite chip in S25

📸 Photo editing far better with Galaxy AI than with Apple Intelligence

💰 Standard RRP for S25 Ultra is £1,249 / $1,299 and the iPhone 16 Pro Max is £1,199/$1,199

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Let’s be honest, there are far more interesting smartphone comparisons. For instance, I’ve lost count of how many people have asked me to compare the OnePlus 13 to the S25 Ultra (I’m working on it – promise). There are also countless budget smartphone battles that are fascinating and which are far more beneficial to a wider proportion of the population.

But you clicked on this blog post because you wanted to know if Samsung has kicked Apple to the curb, didn’t you? And you do it every year, don’t you? Go on – admit it. It’s fine; we’re all in this together.

Every year, the same battle commences: iPhone flagship versus S-series flagship. This time, it’s the iPhone 16 Pro Max vs the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra and, contrary to what I said earlier, it’s an interesting one.

I gave the S25 Ultra a rare five stars on this website. The iPhone 16 Pro Max only managed four. Which is better? Which one should you buy? 

Let’s find out.

Pricing

At the time of writing (February 2025), these are the retail prices for the S25 Ultra and the iPhone 16 Pro Max:

S25 Ultra

• 256GB – £1,249/$1,299
• 512GB – £1,349/$1,419
• 1TB – £1,549/$1,659

iPhone 16 Pro Max

• 256GB – £1,199/$1,199
• 512GB – £1,399/$1,399
• 1TB – £1,599/$1,599

It’s the same deal as last year. At launch (and for a good while afterwards), Samsung usually beats Apple hands-down with a bunch of tempting trade-in offers and doubled-for-your-money storage.

Taken at face value, the retail pricing renders the iPhone the ‘cheapest’ if you go for the base model, but the more expensive if you opt for either 512GB or 1TB. Which you probably will.

Design

You’re spending a lot of money on either of these phones, which means you must get that ‘ooh, that’s lovely’ feeling when unearthing your chosen steed from its box. I’m happy to report that both deliver this in spades.

Both of these devices look and feel extremely premium. They’re made from titanium, too, which means they’re about as lightweight as you’d want them to be.

Two things separate them in terms of design. The first is the biggest and the most noticeable – the display. The S25 Ultra’s is slightly bigger and has, I think, marginally smaller bezels than the iPhone. More noticeably, the slightly rounded corners (one of the minor changes Samsung made this year on the Ultra) and tiny pinhole selfie camera make the S25 Ultra’s display far more impressive. Add in the improved anti-reflective coating, and it makes for quite a package.

Nothing can beat the S25 Ultra when it comes to the display. Did I mention it was brighter than the iPhone’s, too? However, even that becomes less of a concern when you factor in the anti-reflective coating; you just don’t need to crank the brightness on the S25 Ultra quite as much as you do on the iPhone.

The second point of separation is the button configuration or, more specifically, the number of buttons on each phone. The S25 Ultra has a total of two buttons. The iPhone 16 Pro Max has five. This is partly because it separates the volume up and down buttons (it’s a rocker switch on the S25 Ultra), but also because Apple is seemingly going against all of its principles by adding as many new buttons to its phones as possible. If the S25 Ultra does anything, it categorically confirms that we do not need an Action Button – and we definitely don’t need a bloody Camera Control button.

I should quickly mention the S-Pen, too, because that’s something else that the S25 Ultra has over the iPhone 16 Pro Max. It has, unfortunately, lost Bluetooth functionality this year, but that aside, if you want a stylus for… well, whatever you’re going to use it for, there’s only one choice.

Lastly, audio performance – something I rarely touch on during these reviews but which I know is important to a lot of you. The iPhone has the best speaker system, hands-down – it’s louder and clearer than the S25 Ultra’s, therefore if that’s something that matters to you, it’s definitely worth taking into account.

OS and ecosystem

I’ve thought a lot about this. I’ve been shouted at a lot about this. Many other people have weighed in with slightly more considerate thoughts. And I’ve come to a simple conclusion about the ecosystem side of the Apple vs Samsung thing.

It comes down to which laptop you use. I’m a MacBook guy, through and through. This will never change. As great as some Windows laptops are these days, I would still rather listen to Katie Melua on repeat than move to that platform.

This means I rely on my iPhone pretty comprehensively. I did without it for a huge swathe of 2024 when I switched to the S24 Ultra, and despite the latter being the best phone I’d ever used, I missed the ability to easily transfer stuff between my phone and laptop every day.

I’m aware of how nuts this sounds. Pathetic, even. And I don’t care.

You might be the same with your Windows laptop and the method by which you’ve got used to transferring stuff from your Android phone to it. Samsung phones sit firmly within that realm; if you want to obtain a seamless cross-platform experience with an S25 Ultra, you need a Windows laptop, and preferably a Samsung one.

The choice is yours. It really doesn’t matter. Neither option is ‘best’.

As for the operating system, I’m a big fan of One UI 7 on the S25 Ultra. I claimed it was better than iOS in my review, but having used both extensively side by side over the last few days, I’ve concluded that they are, essentially, the same. There’s the same home screen feel, the same interactions for accessing controls and notifications, and even the lock screen designer is pretty much identical.

These days, One UI and iOS are only separated by AI.

AI

I’m vastly bored of AI being pushed so heavily by every smartphone brand. Judging by a lot of the comments in my S25 Ultra YouTube review, I think that sentiment carries across a large proportion of the user base, too.

Artificial intelligence isn’t going anywhere, but I do think that smartphone manufacturers need to chill out a bit about it. We can manipulate photos, we can gain help with writing, we can point our phones at stuff and find out what that stuff is, and there’s a bunch of tools designed to make our lives easier when travelling. We get it. It’s impressive. No, really – we get it. We’re impressed. But it’s very boring.

The good news for Samsung in this particular battle is that Apple Intelligence is significantly behind the pack. The latter is in beta, whereas Galaxy AI is a far more polished and consumer-ready product. And, boy does it show.

Check out this example of object removal from a very simple photo. Guess which one was spat out by Apple Intelligence.

For the avoidance of doubt, it was the second one.

That’s just one example, I appreciate. So, I tried it again – this time with a coffee mug.

This is Galaxy AI’s effort:

I’m sure you’ll agree that’s extremely impressive.

This is what Apple Intelligence came up with:

If anyone can explain what on earth it has created above, please get involved in the comments.

If AI is really important to you, there’s no competition – just get the S25 Ultra.

Camera

I’d recommend checking out my video comparison between the S25 Ultra and the iPhone 16 Pro Max where I dig into the photographic performance of both phones in detail. I’ll drop some test shots for you below so you can see the differences, but my conclusion is that the S25 Ultra appears to produce slightly sharper and more vivid photos with better dynamic range than the iPhone 16 Pro Max.

Samsung’s flagship even managed to beat the iPhone in the ultimate test of taking a photo of my fast-moving two-year-old son. Although both phones struggled to grab a totally sharp frame of Harrison, the S25 Ultra did a better job overall.

The S25 Ultra can reach much further with its 100X zoom, but I’m not interested in that (the results are always weird). I go as far as 5X these days, which is plenty for most people and most use cases. Both phones look great at that focal length, and the presence of 5x optical zoom remains a premium feature in Apple and Samsung’s eyes.

When it comes to video, the iPhone still nudges it slightly, but the S25 Ultra isn’t far behind at all. They both produce superb 4K footage and if you want more than that, only the S25 Ultra goes up to a frankly ludicrous 8K.

Performance and battery

The S25 Ultra is powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite chip. The iPhone 16 Pro Max is powered by the A18 Pro. Both are monumentally capable chips in terms of CPU, GPU, and neural stuff.

I don’t do benchmarks, but if those meaningless numbers mean something to you, there are already, predictably, loads of tests out there to sift your way through.

If you’re not interested in those numbers, just know that both of these phones deliver oodles of performance and will last you a very long time. Because of course they will.

When it comes to battery performance, once again, I have zero interest in conducting lengthy tests (please turn to the excellent Ben from Lover of Tech for the only battery test results you’ll ever need). In my experience, they’re on par with each other, but I have a feeling the S25 Ultra just edges it – I seem to finish every day with at least 40% remaining, whereas the iPhone seems to need charging slightly more frequently. And, yes, they both have SIM cards inserted.

Conclusion

This is a much simpler conclusion than you might expect. My pick out of these two devices is the iPhone 16 Pro Max, but for one simple reason: the ecosystem.

As noted earlier, I’m wedded to my MacBook, and the best solution for a compatible smartphone is the iPhone. It might seem like a weak response, but having spent considerable time without an iPhone last year, I can confirm that it is a big deal for people like me.

However, if you’re not similarly ensconced (trapped) in the Apple ecosystem, I can confirm that the S25 Ultra is the better device overall. The design, display, battery life, AI features, and camera performance are all a notch above the iPhone. Again.

There are far more interesting things going on in the sub-£1K/$1K price range at the moment, but if you want a flagship and you’re not welded to Apple, Samsung has done it once again.