A Head-to-Head Comparison of the iPhone 15 Pro Max and Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra
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The rivalry between the Apple iPhone and the Samsung Galaxy S line dates back well over a decade. It started in earnest in June 2010, when Samsung launched the Galaxy S, and Apple launched the iPhone 4. With a 4-inch Super AMOLED display that looked ahead of its time, reviewers and consumers alike pitted the first Galaxy to rock the S moniker directly against the iPhone—BlackBerry and Nokia smartphones did exist at the time, but Apple and Samsung were head and shoulders ahead of the competition in design, hardware, and transparent desirability.
Fast forward to the mid-2020s, and you'll find Apple and Samsung are still the leading smartphone makers by a significant margin, featuring sprawling iPhone and Galaxy S products that cater to various budgets. For years, at the top of each lineup sat an iPhone with a Pro Max moniker and a Galaxy S with an Ultra alias. These phones pack a big screen, top-tier specs headlined by a powerful chip and a multi-camera setup, and a price tag to match.
Apple began this tradition with the iPhone 11 Pro Max in 2019, and Samsung followed suit a few months later by launching the Galaxy S20 Ultra. Today, we’ll compare the Apple iPhone 15 Pro Max and the S-Pen-toting Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra—the two manufacturers' best smartphones yet.
Both devices bring titanium frames and class-leading specs that include powerful processors, high-res displays, and multi-sensor cameras. Both come at a considerable price, too—at the time of writing, the entry-level iPhone 15 Pro Max with 256 GB of storage starts at $1,199, while the starter Galaxy S24 Ultra with 256 GB costs $1,299.
But which is best?
With the two devices' standout features mentioned above and the industry-altering rivalry between Apple and Samsung in mind, I spent the past month comparing the iPhone 15 Pro Max and the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra side by side. I juxtaposed the phones' design and durability, their everyday performance and battery life, and camera quality, as well as their platforms and device ecosystems. Here's how the two product category leaders stack up.
iPhone 15 Pro
apple.com
$1199.00
Galaxy S24 Ultra Android Smartphone
amazon.com
$1149.99
Design and Ergonomics
The iPhone 15 Pro Max and the Galaxy S24 Ultra both deliver high-end features and design, as expected from phones that cost north of $1,000. Both phones are built with a lightweight titanium frame, but each has a distinctive shape that distinguishes it as an Apple or a Samsung product: the iPhone 15 Pro Max has rounded corners like its predecessors. The Galaxy S24 Ultra's angular profile with a dedicated slot for its S Pen stylus is reminiscent of the Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra from the turn of this decade.
Due to its marginally larger screen and slightly flatter back, the Galaxy S24 Ultra is just a bit more unwieldy than the iPhone 15 Pro Max. The unique texture of its titanium frame also makes the Galaxy more slippery than its rival. This is nitpicking, but the few who carry their expensive phones without a case should consider the iPhone for its more ergonomic shape.
A Point for Samsung: The S Pen
The S Pen has been a defining feature of Samsung's premium smartphones since its debut alongside the Galaxy Note in 2011. The stylus makes the Galaxy S24 Ultra a powerhouse for countless creative and productive tasks, such as journaling, creating digital art, making intricate edits to photos, or unwinding with a coloring app.
I’ve used the S Pen to take notes during meetings and product briefings hundreds of times over the years. The Bluetooth-equipped S Pen also supports gesture controls, allowing you to control the S24 Ultra's camera, audio playback, and many apps.
The stylus sets the Galaxy S24 Ultra apart from the iPhone or any other rival. You can only get similar functionality in the Apple ecosystem with an iPad and an Apple Pencil.
A Point for Apple: The Action Button
Sitting above the volume controls of the iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max, the customizable Action Button is a first for an Apple-made smartphone. You can choose to do a few common interactions with the key, from activating silent mode to turning on the flashlight, all the way to kickstarting an app shortcut. My go-to choice for the button was to activate the camera app by long-pressing it and then snap a photo with a single click.
Durability
Both phones leave nothing to chance on the durability front, thanks to their titanium frames and tough glass. Neither the iPhone 15 Pro Max nor the Galaxy S24 Ultra will suffer major damage from a light drop, but I recommend you put either in a protective case to avoid scuffs, scratches, and potential screen replacements.
The Best Cases for iPhone 15 Pro Max
The Best Cases for Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra
Regarding water and dust resistance, the phones both have an IP68 rating, which is the industry's highest. This rating means the iPhone 15 Pro Max and the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra can both survive complete submersion underwater for up to 30 minutes, and they’re almost entirely airtight when it comes to small dust particles. The Apple device has been rated to a maximum depth of 20 feet—significantly more than the 5-foot rating of the Samsung phone.
Display
Individually, the iPhone 15 Pro Max and Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra screens are outstanding, as expected. Powered by millions of individually backlit pixels, the flat display panels have class-leading peak brightness, guaranteeing clear visuals even when you view them under direct sunlight.
And thanks to a maximum display refresh rate of 120 Hertz, both phones make common interactions like scrolling through emails, webpages, and social media feeds, as well as gameplay, smoother and more enjoyable.
Samsung's screen manages scenes with bright lighting a little better, courtesy of anti-reflective coating and higher peak brightness. The coating gives the screen an upper hand, particularly in indoor settings where the light is behind or above the screen. There's a lamp sitting behind my living room armchair, and I can vouch that the Galaxy S24 Ultra handled its reflection better than the iPhone 15 Pro Max.
That said, the screen of the iPhone 15 Pro Max supports all leading HDR formats, including Dolby Vision—the most commonly used setting for premium content. This makes the Apple device a better option for streaming video. Like Samsung's TVs, the Galaxy S24 Ultra screen only supports HDR 10 and HDR10+ content, and the latter isn’t as widely available as Dolby Vision.
Introduced alongside the iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max, Dynamic Island displays the music you’re playing and apps you’re running in the background. In addition to hiding the Face ID camera of the iPhone 15 Pro, the Dynamic Island is more useful than the selfie camera punch-hole on the Galaxy S24 Ultra’s screen. With Live Activities—from displaying sports scores to tracking the status of a flight or a food delivery—and shortcut controls to popular apps, it transforms the visual nuisance that screen notches and camera cutouts usually are into a bona fide highlight.
Performance
Comparing the real-life speed and performance of the iPhone 15 Pro Max and the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra is pointless. The phones are equipped with powerful chips and ample high-speed memory, so common interactions like opening apps and switching between a double-digit amount of open ones happen instantaneously on both devices. I couldn't find a way to slow either one down during my testing.
Designed in-house by Apple, the A17 Pro chip of the iPhone 15 Pro Max is the industry's first to utilize 3-nanometer architecture. The advanced technology is more sophisticated than the 4-nanometer process used in the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra. Packing more microscopic transistors into less space puts the latest iPhone a step ahead in power and energy efficiency.
Combined with an operating system that's tailor-made for it, the A17 Pro silicon makes the iPhone 15 Pro Max a more proficient gaming platform than its Samsung rival. Unlike the Galaxy S24 Ultra, the Apple device can run AAA games like Resident Evil 4, Resident Evil Village, and Death Stranding locally, with more titles set to arrive soon.
Having these games available on an iPhone is a feat that no Android rival has achieved. As a gamer with decades of experience, I'm still grinning at the thought of having access to full-blown, console-grade titles on my phone.
The above games and other Apple-exclusive titles aside, the Galaxy S24 Ultra treated me to a superb gaming experience also. But you’ll need a gaming console, a well-equipped gaming laptop or a cloud-based gaming service subscription, and a rock-solid, high-speed Wi-Fi network to access blockbuster games on your Android phone.
Battery Life
When using each as my primary phone, I consistently got a full day of mixed use from both the iPhone 15 Pro Max and the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra. My typical weekday usage pattern includes sending emails and Slack messages, occasionally texting family and friends, keeping tabs on social media for breaking news, streaming from Apple Music, or listening to a podcast for about an hour a day while commuting to work. I also squeezed in a 25-minute gaming session on workday evenings before charging the phone overnight.
The phones' massive batteries and energy-efficient hardware teamed up to save me from reaching for a battery pack or looking for a charging outlet during the day. I wasn't mindful of my screen brightness either, leaving it set to auto adjust mode, and I had enough charge to make it through a dinner outing without power anxiety on both accounts.
Despite having a battery pack that's about 10 percent smaller than its rival's, the iPhone 15 Pro Max had more battery left after a day of use in identical scenarios. This is another facet where the advanced architecture of the Apple chip puts the phone ahead of the competition.
The iPhone 15 Pro Max and the Galaxy S24 Ultra are neck-and-neck in charging speeds. Samsung's battery will charge slightly faster with a high-capacity adapter, but the advantage is insignificant. The iPhone will power up almost as fast with a USB-C charger.
Both phones support fast wireless charging with a maximum output of 15 watts. However, the iPhone 15 Pro Max takes the cake in this field, thanks to MagSafe and compatibility with the latest Qi2 wireless charging standard.
Each phone is capable of reverse charging, meaning it can juice up another phone or gadget like a portable battery pack, either wirelessly or with a cable. I prefer the wired USB-C setup of the iPhone 15 Pro Max over the wireless method that's been a longtime staple of Samsung Galaxy S phones. With the iPhone, I could power up my earbuds while using it, as opposed to placing the Galaxy with its screen down to access wireless charging.
Camera
Before delving into device-specific camera specs and features, you should know that the iPhone 15 Pro Max and the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra capture excellent photos, including in scenes with less-than-perfect lighting. Each device has a multi-camera setup with versatile optics and capable hardware for processing the millions of captured pixels into beautiful, detail-rich photos.
The Galaxy S24 Ultra has an edge over the iPhone 15 Pro Max in zoom range and camera resolution. Its additional sensor with a 10x optical zoom range is helpful for capturing wildlife and sporting events, and so is its 5x camera with a 50-megapixel sensor. The latter allowed me to get closer to objects without losing detail by cropping into photos. However, the iPhone's 12-megapixel camera with a 5x zoom periscope lens takes better photos than Samsung's default ones with the same resolution in low-light scenes.
Image Quality
For this head-to-head comparison, I zeroed in on the products' default picture quality. This is always the most important setting in my book because the majority of consumers fire up the camera app and press the capture button to save their memories. Photography buffs should rest easy knowing the iPhone 15 Pro Max and the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra can snap RAW image files for extensive post-capture editing.
After parsing through dozens of photos of identical scenes by both phones, I found the ones taken by the iPhone 15 Pro Max to have a more natural look with more lifelike colors, especially in low-light scenes. Daytime photos from each phone came out great, as expected. Samsung's phone tends to sharpen intricate image details and saturate colors a bit more in such scenarios, but the results are always shareable.
The iPhone 15 Pro Max wins in the selfie department not only for its true-to-life color processing but also for its superior portrait photography chops. The device's Face ID tech results in photos with levels of background blur that can imitate the bokeh created by a pro-grade camera lens—that’s the blur you can see in the background of professional photos.
Samsung's selfies, including portraits, are stellar, but not quite on the same level as Apple's. The iPhone captures more true-to-life selfies out of the box, as well as more dramatic portraits with various lighting effects and adjustable bokeh. It utilizes its elaborate Face ID hardware to capture additional depth info, as opposed to the Galaxy, which relies on its camera.
Video
The iPhone 15 Pro Max makes it easy to record stunning 4K video footage at a smooth 60 frames per second. The device's reliable video stabilization will allow even first-time users to record and share content with ease. In addition, the iPhone can record smooth footage even when you don't hold it steadily (e.g., while exercising, dancing, etc.) via the easy-to-access Action mode.
In a manner befitting its price tag, the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra is also a proficient video recording tool that, unlike the iPhone, can capture stunningly sharp 8K clips with four times as many pixels as 4K footage. However, four years after going mainstream on Samsung Galaxy S phones, this resolution is not usable in a practical way: Screens that support it natively are still scarce, and the video files take up considerably more memory.
ProRes HDR video is the feature that should make video enthusiasts choose the latest Pro Max iPhone over its Samsung Galaxy rival. As its name suggests, it allows the phone to record Dolby Vision-enhanced 4K content directly to external USB-C storage, effectively transforming it into a pro-grade rig.
OS and Device Ecosystem
Apple has been perfecting iOS, and Google has been doing the same with Android, for over a decade, so choosing one platform over the other for your next phone is a toss-up and a matter of personal preference. Choosing any iPhone is a no-brainer for those who rely on Apple-exclusive services like iCloud, iMessage, and FaceTime to go with platform-exclusive apps and games, among countless other things.
On the other hand, the Galaxy S24 Ultra stands out with AI-powered features developed in collaboration with Google. Circle to Search, Live Translate, and onboard generative AI are among the headline-grabbing Android features available exclusively on the latest Samsung Galaxy S24 phones and Google's own Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro.
Regardless of your choice, you'll get a phone that will deliver an up-to-date platform experience for more than half a decade after you order. Apple has an impeccable track record of multi-year iOS updates for the iPhone. Samsung will deliver Android and security updates to the Galaxy S24 Ultra for seven years — on par with the latest Google Pixel phones and longer than any Android competitor.
When it comes to more devices that synchronize with their phone, Apple and Samsung will overwhelm you with choice. The iPhone 15 Pro Max will link up with any Apple Watch, iPad, Mac, Apple TV, and HomePod that uses the same Apple ID, allowing you to sync your iMessages, seamlessly transfer FaceTime calls, access your iCloud-based files, and more. Of course, your phone and other Apple gear will also connect to your AirPods and Beats headphones or earbuds.
Things are similar with the Galaxy S24 Ultra and Samsung hardware. The Apple competitor has a stellar selection of Galaxy tablets, laptops, smartwatches, and wireless earbuds that will play nicely with its smartphones—all you need is a Samsung account.
The Android phone can also link to other tablets, smartwatches, and Chromebooks from the Google ecosystem. Windows PCs and cloud-based services are also nicely integrated, though the process of linking them needs more steps and logins than Apple's single-account magic.
iPhone 15 Pro Max Versus Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, Reviewed
The iPhone 15 Pro Max and the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra are the apex of the non-foldable smartphone form factor and the most popular options in their makers' product lineups despite their high price tags. Each device offers attractive and durable design, industry-leading hardware and performance, a feature-rich platform with longtime support, and a robust excellent ecosystem of products and accessories.
Metaphorically speaking, choosing an iPhone 15 Pro Max over a Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra is like deciding whether you want a similarly priced Lamborghini or Ferrari in your driveway. Knowing the nuanced differences between the two products, this is a personal decision that's anything but wrong.
The latest iPhone is a better tool for capturing memories and gaming, while the ultimate Galaxy S is in a league of its own in terms of productivity, thanks to the S Pen. That's one of the many reasons why, as a professional consumer tech nerd, I've been simultaneously carrying two phones for years.
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