Build & Design
So initially looking at the build and Design, both of these are using titanium. The Apple iPhone 15 Pro Max introduced titanium a few months ago when it was released, and Samsung also now has the titanium frame. Now the iPhone 15 Pro Max is the smaller device overall. It also weighs a few grams lighter. And we have these curved edges compared to these more flat and sharper edges of the S24 Ultra. And for those reasons, I would say that the iPhone 15 Pro Max is the more comfortable device to use overall.
Color
The iPhone 15 Pro Max is available in four colors, a Black Titanium, White Titanium, Blue Titanium, as well as a Natural Titanium. Yes, they’re calling each of the colors titanium. And guess what? Samsung are also calling all of the colors titanium, but they flipped it. So they’re called Titanium Gray, Titanium Black, Titanium Violet, and Titanium Yellow. So they’ve switched to having titanium at the front rather than at the end. But anyway, there are three additional colors available of the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, which are available exclusively from samsung’s official website.They are a Titanium Blue, Orange, as well as a Green.
Resistant Rating
Both gadgets have an IP68 water and dust resistance certification. However, the iPhone 15 Pro Max can be submerged deeper in water than the S24 Ultra. I’m not sure how essential that will be to you.
Now, in terms of device design, I believe both are progressive. The iPhone 15 Pro Max has had a similar look for several years. And with the S24 Ultra, I mean, it looks a lot like the S23 Ultra, which looked a lot like the S22 Ultra. Nonetheless, I believe both devices look great.
Display
Now let’s turn these devices around and take a look at the displays. So the first thing to note is that the S24 Ultra now does have a flat display. Previous generations have had some curves along the sides. The iPhone 15 Pro Max has always had a flat display. Now this is going to come down to your personal preference. I do think curve displays look better, but flat displays are more practical and easier to apply screen protectors to.
Ceramic Shields
We’ve got Ceramic Shields on the iPhone 15 Pro Max. We also have Gorilla Armor on the S24 Ultra. Now Gorilla Armor is exclusive to the S24 Ultra. It’s supposed to reduce reflections by around 75%. It’s four times more scratch-resistant compared to the previous generation, and it also uses 25% recycled materials. Ceramic Shield’s Apple claim is tougher than any smartphone glass. in my experience, both of these are very premium and also very durable.
Technology
I have noticed that the S24 Ultra is less reflective than the iPhone 15 Pro Max. Now, these displays are lovely. They’re some of the best displays that you’re going to find out there. We’ve got a slightly larger display on the S24 Ultra. Both are using AMOLED technology, and they both have up to a 120-hertz refresh rate, making things very smooth, but they can also go down to one hertz, making them more efficient.
Brightness
The S24 Ultra does get some advantages for its display. Firstly, it does have a slightly high resolution, which means that things will be a little bit sharper, and it also has a higher peak brightness of 2,600 nits versus 2,000 nits on the iPhone 15 Pro Max. So the iPhone 15 Pro Max is already very bright, but the S24 Ultra is just brighter, and it’s going to help in outdoor situations, especially if you wear sunglasses. The S24 Ultra does have a higher screen-to-body ratio. This is smaller compared to what we had in the previous generation.
Cameras
Now let’s talk about the cameras. Both have excellent cameras, some of the best cameras that you’re going to get in any smartphone. Both have a 12-megapixel selfie camera, and both take excellent selfies. And for the rear-facing camera, the iPhone 15 Pro Max has three rear-facing cameras, an ultra-wide, a primary, as well as a five times telephoto. The S24 Ultra has four rear-facing cameras, an ultra-wide, a primary, a three times telephoto, as well as a five times periscope zoom camera. Now in my testing, both are good in all situations.
Features
It’s also better in low light, and the video quality is generally superior, particularly in cinematic mode. The S24 Ultra does, however, contain a dedicated three-times telephoto camera. So, zoom ranges of 3 to 4.9 will be better on the S24 Ultra. Furthermore, the S24 Ultra has greater extended zoom, which is due to Samsung’s extensive experience with extended zoom. And it offers fantastic video quality, some of the finest on any Android smartphone, with the ability to capture 8K and 4K footage at up to 120 frames per second. The iPhone 15 Pro Max lacks these two features.
AI Photo Editing
The S24 Ultra also has several AI tools for picture editing. So you may eliminate reflections and shadows, choose objects, move them about, modify their size, and, my favorite, straighten an image without cropping in. It can really fill in the spaces outside so that you don’t lose anything from your image, which works great.
And, sure, the S24 is just out, so there will undoubtedly be additional software upgrades that will enhance the cameras.
Performance
The A17 Pro processor powers the iPhone 15 Pro Max. This is a three-nanometer chipset. The S24 Ultra is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy. So this has a faster clock speed than the previous Snapdragon 8 Gen 3s, and it’s a four-nanometer chipset.
In terms of performance, the iPhone 15 Pro Max performs better in benchmarks. However, as far as a daily performance, these are among the quickest and smoothest gadgets available. Whatever you throw at them, they work well. They’re also ideal for gaming.
We now have more RAM on the S24 Ultra than the iPhone 15 Pro Max. However, because we’re using separate operating systems, they handle RAM differently.
In my experience, the S24 Ultra allows me to leave tasks running in the background more often than the iPhone 15 Pro Max does. The 15 Pro Max is really aggressive. Previously, if you tried to publish a story on Instagram and then switched to another app, it would not finish uploading in the background. Now it does. However, if you’re uploading anything like a reel, it will actually advise you to leave the app open until it finishes downloading. On the S24 Ultra, I can just leave anything uploading, move on to something else, and it will complete uploading in the background.
Face ID & Fingerprint Sensor
On the iPhone 15 Pro Max, we have that dynamic island, which does take more space. Now there’s a reason for that dynamic island. We do have sensors for face ID and Face ID works great. It’s really fast and effective and secure. With the S24 Ultra, although you can use facial unlock, it’s not as secure as face ID, but it has the gen two Qualcomm 3D Sonic fingerprint sensor. Now this is pretty much the same as what we’ve had for the previous two generations, but it’s one of the best fingerprint scanners out there. I find it so quick and convenient. Now whether you prefer face ID or a fingerprint scanner is going to come down to the way you use your phone. For me personally, I do prefer a fingerprint scanner.
Software
The iPhone 15 Pro Max comes with iOS 17.2.1 currently at this time . The S24 Ultra will be coming with Android 14 and One UI 6.1 on top. One new thing to note with the S24 Ultra is the fact that Samsung are now promising seven generations of Android OS updates. This is super impressive. Now whether or not they’re going to keep up with the promise of those updates, we’re going to have to wait and see.But the iPhone 15 Pro Max, Apple has been known to support their devices for a long time. Usually it’s around five years. It might be longer with the iPhone 15 Pro Max, but I don’t have a set time for it.
Now, Samsung has worked with Instagram and Snapchat and TikTok to optimize the cameras for use within those apps, but apps are generally always more optimized on iPhone compared to Android. I can give you a few examples. TikTok, we still don’t have a dark mode on Android. We’ve had it for years on the iPhone if you try to post a story on Instagram on your S24 Ultra and you want to use hashtags, you can generally only use one. If you try to do others, they just simply won’t work. Whereas You will not face this problem on the iPhone. And YouTube actually gets a lot of updates on the iPhone first before Android, and YouTube’s an app from Google, and Google makes Android, but it just shows you how much easier it is to get some updates onto iOS compared to Android.
AI
Now the S24 Ultra does have some new AI features, which are some key selling points of The first option is live translation. Imagine you’re on vacation overseas and want to reserve a seat at a restaurant. You do not speak the local language. Well, the S24 Ultra will be able to assist with that. It will be able to take what you’re saying and translate it to the person on the other end, and then translate their response back to you. Now, it is not instant; there is a slight wait, but the person on the other end will be informed that this is being translated, which should assist. We also have the interpreter feature, which works pretty well.
Browsing assistance is extremely beneficial. You may summarize web pages and highlight significant points. And I believe my favorite AI function thus far is circle to search. So you can simply press and hold the home button or the navigation bar, then circle whatever is on your screen, and it will go to the Google search engine and find it for you.
Now one thing to keep in mind is that Samsung has said in the small print that these Galaxy AI features will be provided for free until the end of 2025. So there may be a monthly charge after that. And at this time, we have no idea how much that might be.
Additional Features
S Pen
Let’s now discuss some of the extra features available on both smartphones. So, with the S24 Ultra, we got the S Pen. Now, I don’t utilize this as often. But when I do need it, it’s fantastic to have, whether it’s to take fast notes that can now be smoothed out using AI, alter some photographs, or even sign on a document. It also has Bluetooth, so you can use it as a clicker or a trigger for your shutter button as the camera. And although the S Pen hasn’t changed too much over the past few years, it’s still very, very useful.
LiDAR Scanner
The iPhone 15 Pro Max also has some unique features of its own. It’s got a LiDAR scanner, which can measure depth information. This is really useful if you want to use AR. And we now have the action button. This is a customizable button And you can really customize this. You can make it open any shortcut. You can make it open an app. You can also use it to open a particular instance within an app. So for instance, whenever you use the camera, if you always shoot video, you can have it to open video as soon as you press it.
With the S24 Ultra, you can double press the power button to launch the camera and you can also customize it to open a particular app, but you don’t have the level of customization that you have on the action button.
Wi-Fi
The S24 Ultra now supports Wi-Fi 7, so if you have a compatible router, you will be able to get some really high speeds.
The S24 Ultra also supports DeX, which means you can wirelessly connect it to a television and have a desktop experience. You can also attach a mouse and keyboard to it, which will be really helpful if you travel frequently.
Speaker
We can see that both smartphones feature stereo speakers, one in the earpiece and one at the bottom. Both of these sound fantastic to me. We previously found that the iPhone was richer than the S23 Ultra, but Samsung has enhanced the speakers on the S24 Ultra.
USB
Now one new thing that we had on the iPhone this year is USB-C. It was a long time coming, but it’s finally here. The S24 Ultra also has USB-C, so you can charge both devices with the same cable. Speaking of cables, the iPhone 15 Pro Max does come with a very nice braided cable out of the box. The S24 Ultra still comes with a very standard USB-C cable.
Sim Card
In select locations, the S24 Ultra has twin physical SIM card slots, in addition to eSIM capability. With the iPhone 15 Pro Max, in the UK, you do have a physical sim as well as an eSIM. However, there is no SIM tray in the United States, which I understand is problematic for many people.
Battery
We have a larger physical battery on the S24 Ultra. But it’s not just about the size of the battery, it is about how you use it. We’re running different operating systems, so they do manage the batteries differently. And in my experience, both of these have excellent battery life. I think they are very, very similar.
But the S24 Ultra does have faster wired charging. You’ve got up to 45 watts, whereas you’ve only got 20 watts on the iPhone 15 Pro Max. So that’s going to give you around 50% in 35 minutes on the iPhone. On the S24 Ultra, if you do get a 45-watt charger, it’s going to give you around 50% in 20 minutes. The S24 Ultra also supports 15 watts of key wireless charging. You’ve got 7.5 watts on the iPhone 15 Pro Max. The S24 Ultra also supports wireless power share, so that’s reverse wireless charging. You can charge some earbuds at the back of the S24 Ultra if you’d like. With the iPhone 15 Pro Max, you can plug in a USB cable into another device to be able to charge it, but you can’t do this wirelessly.
I believe both of these smartphones are outstanding flagships. Both clearly have advantages and downsides. With the iPhone 15 Pro Max, you get a consistent experience, incredible cameras, and a stunning display. The S24 Ultra offers a superior overall display. You have the S Pen, all of the latest AI capabilities, and still have excellent cameras. Which flagship phone do you think is better? Leave me a comment below. Please let me know your opinions. I am hoping to see you in the next articles.
This device is not waterproof but water resisresistant. S24 Ultra is IP68-rated. Under laboratory test circumstances, the device withstood immersion in 1.5 meters of fresh water for up to 30 minutes.
The iPhone 15 Pro Max is water-resistant. NOT waterproof. They are specifically certified for 6 meters of water resistance.
