Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra vs iPhone 16 Pro Max: Which flagship will win?

2025 is coming quickly, and with it will come the launch of the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra. But while we’re expecting great things from Samsung’s next flagship, it will still have to contend with Apple's biggest and best phone.

The iPhone 16 Pro Max is still pretty new, but it has already wowed us with an incredible range of hardware and software upgrades. The battery life is particularly impressive, and we’re already starting to get our first taste of what to expect from the Apple Intelligence AI suite. The S25 Ultra will probably be the closest Android has to a true Pro Max rival, and some of the rumors are actually rather exciting.

But which phone is likely to come out on top? While there are still things we don’t know about the S25 Ultra, we can speculate based on the many rumors we’ve heard up to this point. So let’s dig through it all and compare that to what we’ve learned thanks to our hands-on time with the iPhone 16 Pro Max.

iPhone 16 Pro Max vs Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra: Price & availability

We haven’t heard rumors about what the Galaxy S25 Ultra will launch, but it seems unlikely Samsung will deviate from its usual schedule. Recently, Galaxy S flagships have arrived in late January. With CES 2024 happening at the start of January, we don’t expect that timetable to change that much.

We haven’t heard anything about pricing, but considering the Galaxy S24 Ultra saw a $100 price hike, we’re hoping that Samsung at least keeps the same $1,299 starting price. Hopefully, despite some early claims, let’s hope the pricey Snapdragon 8 Elite doesn’t force Samsung’s hand.

The iPhone 16 Pro Max is available right now, with prices starting at $1,199 for a 256GB model. This $100 price difference would give Apple the edge on Samsung.

iPhone 16 Pro Max vs Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra: Design & display

We’re not expecting any major changes with the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra’s design, or its display. The look has been pretty static for a long time, with Samsung only making relatively minor changes such as tweaked camera lenses or the titanium frame we saw debut on the Galaxy S24 Ultra.

However, one rumor claims that there may be some marginal size increases across the whole Galaxy S25 range. The Ultra is supposedly growing to 6.9-inches, and while only slightly bigger than the 6.8-inch Galaxy S25 Ultra, it does mean the phone may match the size of the recently-supersized iPhone 16 Pro Max.

Sadly, despite recent rises in display brightness, word is that Smasung will not be improving the screen illumination this year— retaining the same M13 OLED panels as the S24 Ultra rather than the M14 panels utilized by iPhone 16 Pro Max. Our S24 Ultra testing found a peak brightness of 1,363 nits, which is far behind the 1,553 nits of the iPhone 16 Pro Max.

The good news is that the S25 Ultra will likely keep the flat-screen display of the S24 Ultra, but it’s claimed that we could see a slightly wider frame with much skinnier bezels. We should also see an even thinner design at 8.4mm. That’s not quite as thin as the iPhone 16 Pro Max, which measures just 8.1mm thick, but it will be interesting to see how those skinnier bezels might compare.

iPhone 16 Pro Max vs Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra: Cameras

We’re expecting big things from the Galaxy S25 Ultra’s cameras, considering Samsung regularly reaches the top free spots on our best camera phones list. We’re expecting to see the 200MP main lens make a return — absolutely dwarfing the iPhone 16 Pro Max’s 48MP shooter. One leaker has teased an unspecified upgrade, but details on this are non-existent. That same leaker also claims that the ultrawide lens will get an overdue upgrade from 12MP to 50MP.

The Galaxy S25 Ultra telephoto lens is also claimed to be getting “variable capabilities”. This is a rumor we heard about for S24 Ultra as well, and would allow two different levels of optical magnification in a single telephoto lens — negating the need for the second telephoto lens. Apparently, the phone may have fixed focal lengths between 4 and 5x zoom, with the option to rise to 6x and 7x zoom. But whether this upgrade actually comes to fruition is another matter.

In contrast, the iPhone 16 Pro Max has a triple-lens camera, offering 48MP main and ultrawide lenses, plus a 12MP telephoto lens with 5x optical magnification. But despite that seeming hardware disadvantage in the main lens, the combination of hardware and software still means Apple trumps Samsung in photo shootouts. It's not by that much, though, so it’ll be interesting to see how things shape up if the S25 Ultra does get these upgrades.

iPhone 16 Pro Max vs Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra: Performance

Performance is probably the one thing we know the most about for the Galaxy S25 Ultra, thanks to the reveal of the Snapdragon 8 Elite. The new flagship chip promises to offer a 45% boost to single and multi-core performance and a 40% improvement to graphical performance. Not to mention the fact that this is a 3nm chipset, and the smaller size affords improvements to both performance and energy efficiency.

Benchmarking a Snapdragon reference device produced scores well in excess of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for the Galaxy chip that powers the Galaxy S24 Ultra. Sadly, the single core score of 3,212 is slightly below the 3,386 score produced by the A18 Pro in the iPhone 16 Pro Max. That said the multi-core score was 10,318, which absolutely dwarfs the 8,306 produced by the iPhone.

Meanwhile, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 already outclassed the A18 Pro in graphics testing, with Apple hitting 107.5 fps on Wild Life Unlimited and 22.9 on Wild Life Unlimited Extreme — compared to S24 Ultra’s 121.8 fps and 29.8 fps. Needless to say, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Reference phone pushed those figures even higher, hitting 150.9 fps in Wild Life Unlimited and 41.7 fps in the Extreme testing.

There’s no guarantee that the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra will replicate this benchmarking performance exactly. But it is a very strong indicator that the next wave of Android flagships will be able to offer some incredible performance — S25 Ultra included.

iPhone 16 Pro Max vs Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra: Battery & charging

Don’t expect many changes in the battery department for the Galaxy S25 Ultra. Rumor has it that we could see the same 5,000 mAh battery and 45W charging speeds as previous generations — though battery life could improve thanks to better chip efficiency.

Whether the S25 Ultra will be able to reach the same heights as the iPhone 16 Pro Max, which lasted over 17 and a half hours in our testing, is another matter. The Galaxy S24 Ultra managed to last 16 hours and 45 minutes, so it’s not impossible to make some gains on Apple’s flagship. It will all depend on the phone’s power consumption and how much better the energy efficiency is this year.

iPhone 16 Pro Max vs Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra: Software & AI

Now that Android 15 is out in the world, Samsung no doubt has its own version of the OS on the way. While we don’t know when OneUI 7 will make an official appearance, we do know that it should be ready in time for the Galaxy S25 series to debut. This means the Galaxy S25 Ultra should experience the best Android and Samsung have to offer.

While we don’t know much about any Samsung-exclusive flourishes that will be added to OneUI 7, we are still expecting even more Galaxy AI features on the upcoming phones. Samsung has said as much, confirming that AI will be one of the S25 series’ focal points. Sadly, we don’t know anything about what the new AI features and upgrades might include — aside from the possibility of Bixby gaining generative AI capabilities.

As for the iPhone 16 Pro Max, we already have a pretty full roadmap of AI features that are both here and still incoming. The first wave of Apple Intelligence features landed as part of iOS 18.1, and some big additions should be arriving in December — including ChatGPT and the Visual Intelligence AI camera mode.

The one thing we definitely would like to see is satellite connectivity on Galaxy S25 Ultra. This functionality is available thanks to Android 15, assuming a phone has the right hardware, and rumor has it that Samsung could launch its own satellite-based communication service next year. Considering Apple has already had this feature for 2 years, with multiple upgrades since, it makes sense that Samsung would want to jump on that bandwagon.

iPhone 16 Pro Max vs Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra: Outlook

There’s still a lot we don’t know about the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, but we’re already starting to form a good picture of what this phone may have to offer when it arrives in January. Unsurprisingly, it sounds like we’re getting a phone that’s similar to the Galaxy S24 Ultra, albeit with some upgrades to the chip, design and cameras to help the new generation stand out.

How that compares to the iPhone 16 Pro Max is not something we can accurately gauge at this early stage. An accurate comparison can’t be done without hands-on time and testing data after all. But it certainly seems like next year’s Galaxy flagship will give Apple a run for its money — especially where performance and cameras are concerned.

We should find out more as we hear more about the Galaxy S25 Ultra, and once it makes its official debut at Samsung Galaxy Unpacked next year.