Hands-on: iPhone 16 Pro Max vs Samsung’s new S25 Ultra: Who did AI better?

I got an early, hands-on look at the new Samsung S25 lineup, most importantly the S25 Ultra. I was curious to see what the best of the best from Samsung was like compared to the Apple counterpart, the iPhone 16 Pro Max. What really stood out to me about these phones is that we have seemed to reach a peak when it comes to form factor. The rectangular, candy bar design breathes a lot of similarities across both devices and so do the internal specs. So the only thing left here to truly compare is going to be the software, user experience, and, of course, their AI. Let’s get into.

If you want to get a true hands-on look at the S25 Ultra and compare it to the iPhone 16 Pro Max, I highly recommend checking out the video below.

Design comparison

Again, from a design standpoint, you are going to see a ton of similarities between these two phones. Samsung made some changes to their new S25 Ultra compared to last year. They shrunk the bezels ever so slightly to go from 6.8in on the screen to 6.9in on the screen (sound familiar?). They also curved the side railings a bit to make it a bit less cumbersome to hold. Additionally, Samsung was able to reduce the weight of the device by about 15g, which is pretty noticeable.

Both phones use titanium materials for the chassis, have the highest-quality glass, have a triple camera array and feel exceptionally premium in the hand. The biggest visual difference is that the S25 Ultra has more squared-off corners while the iPhone is rounded off. So, it just comes down to visual preferences.

A18 Pro vs Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy

I just wanted to give a quick breakdown of the internal specs of each of these.

So, at a glance, you can see that these are going to be very similar. The single-core score goes to the iPhone, but the multicore score goes to S25 because it has 2 additional cores. Again, these are just numbers, but in reality, when it comes to day-to-day tasks, both of these phones will be able to do it all and do it super efficiently. In my video, I tested how fast apps open and how quickly you can mash the shutter button to take images, and both did great. Viewing content on these is going to be the best of the best. So still, this truly comes down to preference and familiarity. But what both of these chips enable is going to be all the AI features that are coming.

Some other specs to consider of the S25 Ultra:

• 3NM processor
• 40% NPU Increase
• 37% CPU increase 
• 30% GPU Increase
• 40% increase in ray tracing 
• 18% FPS increase

Galaxy AI vs Apple Intelligence

I want to caveat this section by saying that Apple Intelligence is still not out in its fullest form as of writing this. We are currently on iOS 18.2 with only a few of the Apple Intelligence features available. Many of the promised features from WWDC 2024 are still missing, most importantly, the ability to take action for you. And that is where Galaxy AI shines.

Cross-App actions

This is what I found the most exciting and where I think Apple could take a point or two. Galaxy AI allows for cross app actions to take place. There are a few examples they gave but the gist is that you can actually pull up the Galaxy AI assistance and tell it to do something for you even when it involves multiple applications.

• Ex: Looking for next football game “hey find when the next football game is, put it in my calendar, text it to my friends”

In this instance, it will take you all the way to the final step, which would be to send the text to friends. One thing to note is that it will not actually send the message without asking for permission or prompting you to do it but it will do everything else.

There are instances where it does go all the way in completing the entire task though. Here is another example.

• Ex: Looking at recipe video, Ask Galaxy AI agent to pull ingredients from the video and add it to the notes ap

This one is cool because you can pull up a recipe video and without even having to watch it you can ask Galaxy AI to extract all the information needed and put it in a note to view later. I can see a ton of use cases for this.

As of right now, this will work with all first-party Google and Samsung apps, and there is an APK for third-party developers to add this to their flow.

Similarities to Apple Intelligence

Both of these phones have the capability to use “for fun” features like creating images from a sketch or generating an emoji. Both are also better at conversational awareness, so even if you stumble over your words it will still be able to get the context and understand what you are trying to do.

• Samsung has Generative Edit; Apple has Image Playgrounds
• Samsung has Sketch to Image; Apple has Image Wand
• Samsung has Audio eraser; Apple has its own Audio editing

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Concluding thoughts on AI

As it stands today, I would give the edge to the S25 Ultra from an AI perspective. It can just do more, and you will feel more confident using it. I tested a few simple prompts, and Galaxy was usually faster and always gave the correct answers. It also seems more contextually aware and can use information from other apps to give you a more tailored answer. Apple is trying to slowly roll out all of its aspects of Apple Intelligence, which will allow Samsung and Google to be a step ahead. Also Google assistant has just always been a bit better than siri and this is no different.

Last tidbits

I wanted to include some other cool tidbits that Samsung introduced with their new S25 line.

• new 50MP Ultrawide with Macro mode
• 4k LOG video support
• Audio eraser
• Variable digital aperture
• Buy Now Pay Later for Samsung Pay
• Tap to pay across different devices (even Samsung to iPhone)

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Final take

As I mentioned in my intro, we are now at a time when internal and external hardware are all at a very high level. Material science and hardware capabilities have all been mostly commoditized. So it truly comes down to two things: software(AI) and ecosystem. As it stands today, I would give the leg up to Samsung and OneUI 7 when it comes to AI integrations and actually useful use cases and features. The Apple intelligence situation still has a ways to go in order to be as useful as I and even Apple want it to be. I am sure it will get there before the new iPhone 17 lineup comes out.

But if you asked me to switch to Samsung to use as my main device, I personally cannot do it because of my ecosystem investment. I have an iPhone, an iPad, an Apple Watch, a Mac mini, Homekit accessories, an Apple TV, a Homepod; the list goes on. All of these hardware devices are purpose-built to talk to each other seamlessly. Introducing a non-Apple phone to my ecosystem would probably make my experience worse. But if I was already in the Samsung ecosystem, then this S25 Ultra is something that would excite me.

The S25 Ultra is available for pre-order today starting at $1299

What do you think? Do you think Apple will eventually be able to compete from an AI perspective? Would you make the ecosystem switch? Let’s discuss this below!