The iPhone 16 Pro Max has topped our best phone list for several months, and the iPhone 15 Pro Max had the title before that. But the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra is so good it is now our No. 1 phone overall.
As you'll see in my Galaxy S25 Ultra review, it surpasses Apple's flagship in a number of ways, including its AI capabilities. But there are other areas where Samsung outshines the iPhone, including its performance, camera versatility and special features.
Don't get me wrong. The iPhone 16 Pro Max beats Samsung in some ways, too. But here's where the Galaxy S25 Ultra comes out on top.
Smarter AI features
If you haven't heard of cross-app actions, it kind feels like magic when you try it out. Thanks to a partnership with Google Gemini, you can use the Galaxy S25 Ultra to accomplish multiple tasks at once using just your voice across multiple apps.
For example, I could press the side button on the phone and say "look up the date and time of the Oscars and add it to my calendar and then text the info to Mike." The S25 Ultra will find the information, create a Google calendar entry with it and then text my brother. All I have to do is confirm.
Or I could ask Gemini to look up the top five ice cream places near me and then turn it into a Samsung note, making sure to include the phone number and address.
The iPhone is supposed to get functionality like this with an upcoming update to Siri in iOS 18.4, but the the Galaxy S25 Ultra can do it now and do it well.
Another smart AI feature is AI select, which lets you quickly take action by selecting an item on your screen — such as transforming a YouTube video to a GIF.
Brighter display
It's one thing to compare our testing results. It's another to take these two flagship phones our in direct sunlight and see how they compare.
I fired up the "Superman" trailer on the Galaxy S25 Ultra and iPhone 16 Pro Max, and Samsung's display looked much brighter outdoors. Superman was definitely not benefitting from our yellow sun through the iPhone.
It was a similar story when I loaded Tom's Guide on both handsets. The Amazon logo and the white background are a lot more vibrant.
These results are backed up by our lab tests, in which the Galaxy S25 Ultra turned in 1,860 nits of screen brightness when viewing HDR content, compared to 1,553 for the iPhone 16 Pro Max.
More powerful zoom
The most notable camera upgrade for the Galaxy S25 Ultra is its 50MP ultrawide camera, which enables more detailed macro shots. But overall Samsung's biggest camera advantage over the iPhone remains its dual telephoto lenses.
While the iPhone 16 Pro Max makes do with a 5MP tetraprism zoom lens that goes up to 25x digital zoom, the Galaxy S25 Ultra packs 5x and 3x telephoto lenses with a max 100x zoom. And I generally found better results when I put these cameras head to head in a few zoom shots at different levels.
First up is the shot of a fish market sign at 25x taken across a highway. The Galaxy S25 Ultra delivers more detail in the sign in the foreground but also the Reserved Parking sign in the background. There's more noise in the iPhone's image.
Next, I took this 10x zoom photo of a tire, and at first glance the iPhone's pic looks more inviting because it's brighter but if you look closely the tire treads are more detailed through the Samsung.
Lastly, I took this 25x zoom photo indoors from across the room of a vase. The Samsung S25 Ultra's image is noticeably sharper as you make out more of the specks of paint and the threads of the curtain in the background.
Better graphics performance
The Galaxy S25 Ultra and iPhone 16 Pro Max split on the Geekbench benchmark, which measures CPU performance. Samsung's phone won on multi-core and the iPhone on single-core.
But it was not close on the 3DMark benchmark, which measure graphics performance.
| Row 0 - Cell 0 | Geekbench | 3DMark Solar Bay Unlimited |
| Galaxy S25 Ultra | 3,031 / 9,829 | 42.4 fps / 11,140 |
| iPhone 16 Pro Max | 3,386 / 8,306 | 28.1 fps / 7,396 |
Powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite chip, the Galaxy S25 Ultra, Samsung's phone delivered considerably higher frame rates in the 3DMark Solar Bay Unlimited test, hitting 42.4 fps.
By contrast, the iPhone 16 Pro Max mustered 28.1 fps on the same test. So the Samsung was more than 50% faster on this graphics test.
Audio Eraser gives you more control
The Galaxy S25 Ultra offers a new Audio Eraser feature that gives you more fine control over what you remove or minimize in your videos compared to the iPhone 16 Pro Max.
The iPhone lets you minimize background noise when you edit video with its Audio Mix feature, but the options are fairly limited with Standard, In-Frame, Studio and Cinematic.
Samsung's flagship goes a step further by letting you tweak the volume of voices, music, wind and crowd using handy slider controls. I prefer this approach.
Sketch to Image
While this is not a brand-new feature — it debuted on the Galaxy Z Fold 6 and Galaxy Z Flip 6) — Sketch to Image is a fun and creative way to enhance your photos.
For example, I used the S Pen to draw a very crude looking bee on top of a flower, and within seconds the Galaxy S25 Ultra transformed my stick figure into a realistic bee on hovering above the flower.
Faster charging
I'm bummed that the Galaxy S25 Ultra doesn't have MagSafe-like Qi2.0 charging built in. You need to spring for a case in order to get the necessary magnets to attach to compatible accessories.
But when it comes to regular wired charging the S25 Ultra is still in the lead versus the iPhone 16 Pro Max. With a 45W charger we got to 71% in 30 minutes. The iPhone 16 Pro Max got to just 55% in the same amount of time.
Bottom line
To be clear, the iPhone 16 Pro Max beats the Galaxy S25 Ultra in some ways. In our testing the iPhone lasted a bit longer on charge, though both handsets got over 17 hours. You also get MagSafe charging built in with the iPhone.
Then there's the iPhone 16 Pro Max's handy Camera Control and Action Buttons, as well as the overall gravitational pull of the Apple ecosystem. But if you're tempted to switch from iOS to Android, the Galaxy S25 Ultra is the phone to beat.
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