Introduction
The iPhone 16 Pro Max continues Apple’s history of premium Galaxy S24 Ultra flagship supremacy. Comprising the brand’s trademark strength, luxury, and creativity, this crown gem of the iPhone 16 series is now magnified with innovative updates.
This year’s model pushes limits even more: Apple’s next-generation 3nm processor redefines performance efficiency, while a substantial 6.9-inch display (upgraded from 6.7 inches) delivers immersive images. Still, the iPhone 16 Pro Max’s most significant improvement is its strategic leap to embrace powerful artificial intelligence capabilities, which sets it as a future-ready powerhouse.
The debut of the iPhone 16 Pro Max has changed the smartphone scene and questions the months-long rule of the Galaxy S24 Ultra. Driven by its unique Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy chipset and Galaxy AI, it provides industry-leading technologies, including real-time text authoring, AI image synthesis, live translation, and document summarizing.
Beyond its impressive 6.8-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X display and S Pen integration for precision control, the S24 Ultra excels with a pro-grade camera system and AI-enhanced photography features, confirming its reputation as the Android powerhouse to surpass in 2024.
Though the Galaxy S24 Ultra is passing the baton to another Galaxy S24 Ultra, it will not go anywhere very soon. It is still for sale; many consumers are not rushing to upgrade, as the S25 Ultra is a minor update. Still, among the best Galaxy phones available today is the Galaxy S24 Ultra.
Let’s review the specifics to see how the older Galaxy S24 Ultra stacks against the new iPhone 16 Pro Max.
iPhone 16 Pro Max vs Galaxy S24 Ultra Comparison:
| IPhone 16 Pro Max | Galaxy S24 Ultra |
| Second-gen 3nm Apple A18 Pro chip | Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 “For Galaxy” tuning |
| 48 MP main camera | 200 MP main camera |
| New, 6.9-inch display, OLED, 120 Hz | 6.8-inch, AMOLED screen, 120 Hz |
| New Camera Control Action Button | No special buttons |
| No stylus inside | Rocks an integrated S Pen |
| Apple’s AI incoming | Samsung AI with summary, transcripts, live translate, generative edit |
| 4,685 mAh battery | 5,000 mAh battery |
| 20 W wired charging | 45 W wired charging |
| 25 W MagSafe | Slower 15 W wireless charging |
Design and Size
The iPhone looks mostly the same as usual: it has a rectangular form with gentle corners, flat sides with a bevel, and yes, a Dynamic Island pill-shaped notch in the display, right where the selfie camera and Face ID sensors lie. Additionally, it has a narrower bezel and a 6.9-inch diagonal screen that becomes ever so slightly bigger than the Galaxy S24 Ultra’s 6.8-inch panel.
But it’s not only bezel magic; the iPhone 16 Pro Max’s measurements also vary significantly to 163mm x 77.6mm, while the Galaxy S24 Ultra is 162.3 x 79. Thus, the Galaxy is larger, facilitating S Pen writing.
Apple is also now all in on actual buttons. Apple is also now all in on actual buttons. Apple is also now all in on actual buttons. Apple is also now all in on actual buttons. Apple is also now all in on actual buttons. Apple is also now all in on actual buttons.
The Action Button makes a comeback first. Originally included with the iPhone 15 Pro versions, it substitutes the Mutetoggle and can be set to run other tasks. It can launch any Siri shortcut, activate a specific Focus mode, or open your favorite app.
Still, you have one brand-new button: the Camera Control. It is a capacitively surfaced physical key. As the name implies, it operates with Apple’s camera app, but believe it or not, it is also available for usage with third-party camera apps.
This is essentially the shutter key on a conventional camera; Apple adds a unique touch with that capacitive surface, so you may swipe on it to zoom in and out or manage other camera capabilities. It’s pretty extraordinary.
Regarding colors, Apple keeps its tones subdued for the Pro models. This year, your colors are as follows:
- White Titanium
- Black Titanium
- Natural Titanium (gray)
- Desert Titanium
Samsung provides a rather bigger range. Regularly, you may find the Galaxy S24 Ultra in:
- Titanium Violet
- Titanium Yellow
- Titanium Black
- Titanium Gray
If you order from Samsung.com, you can choose three additional exclusive colours: titanium blue, green, and orange.
Although Samsung has an S Pen buried at the bottom of the phone, it may not use additional hardware buttons outside the power and volume ones. Although some people enjoy it and others hardly utilize it, it is a unique characteristic of upscale cell phones.
For writing or sketching, Samsung’s stylus is entirely accurate and expensive; it is nothing to sneer at; it is the outcome of years of work and a relationship with Wacom.
Both devices have a USB-C port on the bottom, supporting USB 3 speeds.
Unlocking these two will be quite different. Although excellent, it still requires you to interact with the device’s screen since the Galayx S24 Ultra uses an ultrasonic fingerprint scanner beneath the screen. For years, Apple’s iPhones have used Face ID; the 16 Pro Max is not changing that.
Display Differences
With 6.9 inches, the iPhone 16 Pro Max boasts the biggest screen ever seen on an iPhone. Like the 15 Pro series, it has an Always-On capability that lowers the refresh rate to 1 Hz and maintains your wallpaper or custom image over the whole screen.
Made by Samsung, the galaxy S24 ultra features a handmade AMOLED panel with a 1Hz drop-down refresh rate. Though somewhat more conservative since the Galaxy cannot do the “all-screen wallpaper” while the phone is asleep, it, too, has Always On.
Reflectivity is where these two vary most from one another, though. The special anti-reflective coating of the Galaxy removes most reflections, thereby greatly enhancing the outside view of the screen. The iPhone lacks the capability. Thus, that is severely missed. Still, please be careful; the iPhone does have enough brightness to blast. Therefore, it is noticed beneath the intense sun.
Display Measurements
Regarding hues, both of these look fantastic. They are not perfect, of course; it is pretty challenging to achieve that pentile matrix exactly. The Galaxy S24 Ultra (samsung galaxy s24 ultra vs iphone 16 pro max) is a little teal-ish, and the iPhone’s display veers somewhat towards yellowish tones. But when you add blue light filters and adaptive color calibration—both phones have this—into the mix, this loses all value. They are ultimately exact, crisp, and lovely to look at.
This year, the iPhone boasts a new capability that minimizes brightness to a minimum of 1 nit, improving night vision. According to our measurements, it is even somewhat brighter than one nit, which is an improvement. Samsung’s screens likewise hover around this. Hence, they were already rather appropriate for evening use.
Samsung’s flagship has an exclusive Corning Gorilla Armour, a great glass with a fantastic anti-glare coating. Not only does it protect the screen quite well, but it also dramatically improves the viewing experience. We can also testify that, after months of daily use, the Gorilla Armour on our Galaxy S24 Ultra has no annoying micro scratches, which typically appear on phones out of nowhere. A new generation of Ceramic Shield front glass protects the front of the iPhone.
Performance and Software
The Apple A18 Pro chipset is behind the iPhone 16 Pro Max hood. Built on TSMC’s second-generation 3 nm process, it is cutting-edge and the first phone to use that process (albeit not the first 3 nm phone chip; that was the A17 Pro).
Apple’s earlier A17 Pro CPU was strong, but it had to throttle within a few minutes of intense work. And with improved efficiency and a fresh heat-dissipating solution, the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max seem to solve that.
Capable of competing toe-to-toe against Apple’s silicon, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 within the Galaxy S24 Ultra is likewise a great performer, particularly considering that making it throttle requires more stress.
Performance Benchmarks
Here are the benchmarks. In CPU score, the Apple A18 Pro is back on top, and by a considerable margin! However, with 3D graphics, it’s not that much of a clear winner. The Galaxy S24 Ultra got a higher peak score but throttled down lower.
But, in general, they are in the same ballpark. Of course, the next generation of Qualcomm chips — and the next Galaxies — are just a few months away, so we’ll see what they do to one-up Apple.
Another issue regarding 3D gaming is that Apple has been steadily invading the game industry. First of all, it’s the enhancements and upgrades with 3D performance and hardware ray tracing; however, it’s also collaborations with game developers bringing console titles to the iPhone and iPad—Resident Evil, Assassin’s Creed, Death Stranding, and who knows what is coming.
Having invested years in acquiring a portion of that handheld gaming industry, Samsung and other Android makers like Asus need to try to get some of that pull; Apple seems firmly rooted in it instead.
Of course, these days’ races are for AI features and performance. Starting in October, Apple’s new hardware contains the specialized NPU cores to handle “Apple Intelligence” features, which will trick into iOS occasionally.
But Galaxy S24 Ultra already features Galaxy AI — with note/website/recording summaries, live translating, generative picture editing, chat assist, which can construct intelligible sentences out of a few words, Google’s Circle to Search, and more tricks.
Apple’s artificial intelligence is released in a staggered pattern. iOS 18.1 and iOS 18.2 already arrived. The original one has all the text-based tools. This content reads as if it is human-written. Text rephrasing, summarised notifications and emails, smart search in photos.
Clean Up for Photos (like Magic Eraser, a generative image removal that forms a background after). We obtained a thorough ChatGPT connection with iOS 18.2 in December, which you may use to prompt ChatGPT via Siri, Notes, or the iMessage interface. And then more in March, with iOS 18.3,.1, which should make Siri even smarter, although we have heard that several times before.
Though under various titles, these have many identical artificial intelligence aspects. Apple has ChatGPT integration and notifications that summarise exclusives. Samsung uses Sketch to Image and Live Translation on calls.
Unlike Apple, Samsung doesn’t stagger its AI features; hence, its One UI 7 is not far behind. We hope more tools will become available once the Galaxy S25 series starts in January.
With the strength of Samsung’s Gauss LLM enhanced with Google’s Gemini, Bixby will likely become much more intelligent. Please wait for the new artificial intelligence capabilities to materialize so we can compare them again. Given Samsung’s commitment to long-term updates, they will arrive at the galaxy s24 ultra.
The iPhone 16 Pro Max enables 4X internet rates over the previously used Wi-Fi 6E and upgrades to Wi-Fi 7, which is already supported on the Galaxy S24 Ultra.
Regarding software, Apple’s iOS and Samsung’s One UI are two well-matured operating systems here. One could say that iOS is approaching Android more closely than ever this year—not only in a row—yes, in 2024.
Still, if your priorities are flexibility and customization, One UI—which offers a split screen, an app drawer on the side, infinite home screen customization, themes, and much more—still cannot match.
Consider that—but you may now place app icons anywhere you like on the home screen. To further personalize it, you can choose a color for every app icon you wish to paint.
Camera Comparison
Apple recently switched its sights to the ultra wide camera—the iPhone 16 Pro Max now comes with a 48 MP ultra-wide instead of 12 MP after upgrading the primary camera with the iPhone 13 Pro Max and the zoom camera with the iPhone 15 Pro Max. Underneath the 5x telephoto camera sits a 12MP sensor; the primary sensor is also 48 MP.
Apple also has a new lens coating to handle the lens flare that has become cliché over the previous 4 years; notably, night images were often peppered with little flares of light, recorded and bounced between the multi-layer lenses.
The Galaxy S24 Ultra boasts a 200 MP primary camera, a 10 MP 3x telephoto cpriceamera, another 50 MP zoom camera running 5x, and a 12 MP ultra-wide camera.
In smartphones, automatic post-processing plays a significant role in the final image; therefore, it’s not all about the megapixels and lenses. We must thus field test them.
Main Camera
Both phones manage colors and dynamics well; the resulting photographs are first-rate. We can grab variations, but oddly, the iPhone tends to oversharpen tiny details somewhat more. You can find jagged edges around unnatural-looking leaves.
That’s a strange reversal since Samsung was the one that tended to oversharpen just a few years ago. On the Samsung side, we still have problems with greens being somewhat distorted or excessively saturated away from reality.
On the S24 series, however, it’s not a concern; it only becomes apparent when you compare it straight to more “honest” colors, such as the iPhone here.
Both phones work overtime to reduce noise and sharpen when the light decreases. The outcomes are not entirely clear. Samsung images seem to be somewhat better, with more stunning colours and contrast, if there are more man-made light sources around.
However, the iPhone replicates more excellent colors and details as the light diminishes. See more samples in the “extra” gallery below for our discussion.
Generally, though, both cameras take excellent night pictures. When overdoing the noise reduction, both create an equal number of disappointing relics.
Zoom Quality
The Galaxy S24 Ultra oversharpens a little more when you zoom in, whereas the iPhone 16 Pro Max boldly allows some details to come out soft here—a bit of an Uno Reverse card. Ultimately, the iPhone picture appears slightly more realistic, with colours and details grounded at an acceptable 10x zoom.Â
The S24 Ultra images seem to be just slightly too processed. These phones now feature 5x telephoto lenses and do digital processing beyond that. While the Galaxy runs up to 100x, the iPhone still taps out at 25x zoom.
Ultra wide Camera
Ultra-wide cameras aim to match their corresponding primary cameras in colour calibration. In colour science, we have the same minor discrepancies. Perhaps somewhat warmer, the Galaxy is a bit more saturated. The iPhone grounds itself somewhat better.
Both ultra-wide cameras show apparent oversharpening in the post-processing and manage high dynamics rather effectively. We guess it’s all in the banner of a clear ultra-wide landscape view.
Selfies
These phones produce good selfies with their wide dynamic range and tons of detail. Still, the iPhone regularly catches greater brightness in the backdrop and better skin tone. With some yellow-greenish tints in the skin tones, the S24 Ultra selfies seem just a tad washed out. The gallery below shows more selfie samples.
Battery Life and Charging
Given that past phones were likewise long-lasting, the fact that the iPhone 16 Pro Max has the most extended battery life ever on an iPhone is remarkable. But what does that imply? Â
Teardowns show us that the 16 Pro Max battery is 4,685 mAh, the largest in an iPhone (the 15 Pro Max had 4,422 mAh). That runs counter to the Galaxy, which boasts a 5,000 mAh cell—the current golden standard for premium phones of colossal size.
Of course, we also include iOS and Android since their operating systems handle app operations and battery % trickle-out in rather different ways. iOS is excellent with standby, so iPhones typically do great even with smaller batteries.
Although Android is somewhat more liberal in allowing apps to perform background tasks, the larger batteries usually balance that.
For easier chores such as surfing, reloading, and scrolling webpages, the iPhone runs two hours longer than the Galaxy. Although that’s a 10% improvement, we still want to draw attention to the fact that, given battery life, 20 hours of screen-on time already sounds healthy.
The iPhone continues for two more hours for YouTube viewing, this time a 25% increase over the endurance of the Galaxy S24 Ultra. We wish to draw attention to the fact that, compared to similar Android phones, Samsung Galaxy phones are infamous for consistently scoring low on YouTube battery tests.
Then, with gaming, the Galaxy wins somewhat—almost 2 hours on top of the iPhone or nearly 15% more.
Regarding charging, Apple keeps with shockingly poor 20W wired rates on the 16 Pro Max. With 45W backing, the Galaxy charges faster.
MagSafe wireless charging is now remarkably faster on the 16 Pro Max with 25W speeds. You read correctly: wireless charging is faster than wired charging with this iPhone. We have never seen anything like this on any phone thus far.
While the Galaxy supports 15W wireless charging, it only achieves around 33% in the same time frame (and it has a bigger battery), this should give you a 50% charge in just 30 minutes.
Just remember that you would need the new MagSafe 25W charger and have to link it to a power brick capable of at least 30W of output.
Audio quality and Haptics
iPhones sound fantastic, particularly the Plus and Pro Max models, which have more excellent space for the sound to bounce in. With lots of sparkle in the highs and shockingly audible bass, the new iPhone 16 Pro Max carries a powerful and precise sound legacy.
The Galaxy S24 Ultra also sounds nice, though. The Galaxy has more mids, so the profile differs; the iPhone is more scooped. But it also generates plenty of bass somehow! In either case, the sound from either phone is not objectionable.
Regarding haptics, the iPhone Taptic engine has been fantastic since its first release. exact and beautiful clicks on every interface contact. However, Android has almost caught up lately, and Samsung’s vibration is practically as sound.
Summary
Although it may not be the earth-shattering, game-changing upgrade many had in mind, the iPhone 16 Pro Max features some noteworthy enhancements. This remains a top-tier premium smartphone that will define the benchmark for comparisons next year, even with iOS 18, providing a new layer of excitement.
The bigger screen size, smaller bezels, quicker chip with better cooling, new ultrawide camera, 4K120 video recording, and new Camera Control stand out. The most significant improvement is the extended battery life, which will undoubtedly affect daily users.
Not to be overlooked, though, is the Galaxy S24 Ultra—this behemoth has been a main rival since its January launch. Compared to the iPhone, it provides strong performance, a larger screen with S Pen compatibility, a more flexible zoom camera, and maybe more sophisticated artificial intelligence capabilities.
It also boasts exceptional capabilities like DeX, which the iPhone (or most other Android handsets) does not have. Not to be overlooked is the Galaxy S25 Ultra, which will probably arrive in early 2025 (maybe January). Should it expand on the solid foundation of the S24 Ultra, the wait may be well worth it.
The Galaxy S24 Ultra and the iPhone 16 Pro Max are great options if you’re currently shopping for a flagship smartphone and are torn between them. The choice essentially boils down to the larger environment that fits you best, iOS or Android.
Either Apple Watch or Galaxy Watch. Do you run a Windows/Samsung laptop or an Apple computer? Perhaps you are platform-agnostics instead. In such a situation, choose the one that appeals to you most!
