When we compared the Samsung to last year’s iPhone Samsung won with 6.5 points to4.5 and so the question is can this new iPhone with its capture button faster and higher quality shooting improved Ultrawide camera and close-ups better microphones and a lot more.
Software features reemerge as the king of smartphone photography or has the Samsung with all of the updates since launch actually pulled even further ahead of the iPhone yeah! the phone that wins this test is the phone permanently switched to.
SOUND COMPARISON: lens formula
Sound of Samsung is magnificent. Both iPhones and Samsung’s have been pretty neck and neck when it comes to this for years now but this year that changes.
Apple has upgraded to four microphones instead of Samsung 3 they are apparently higher grade studio microphones whatever that means but also Apple has paid a particular attention to wind noise reduction and you can tell this is the best sounding audio that you will ever imagine on any phone.
With the additional option now of selecting whose audio the phone focuses on since the thing now records 360 degree Sound by default.
This time iPhone 16 Pro Max has better sound quality.
VIDEO QUALITY: lens formula
iPhone 15 Pro Max was already ahead of Samsung when it comes to video so now that’s been updated to the 16 Pro Max and it pretty much smokes the Samsung on all fronts.
In terms of Ultrawide camera the iPhone is both wider so it gets more in the shot while also having the same amount of detail when you get up close even though you have to punch in more to get to it.Â
It’s in terms of dynamic range the ability of the phone evenly expose your shot so you don’t have something that’s too bright or too dark.
Now let’s be very clear the iPhone isn’t always better there are few things that the iPhone was trying to make things too balanced but to do that it had to make the dark areas unnaturally bright.
Apple is also better when it comes to noise you could not believe the difference between two phones the biggest thing you will find is detail .
Both phones do also have an action mode for when things get really out of hand and they both make big strides in terms of smoothing out of the absolutely insane acrobatics.
iPhone is slightly higher resolution and a little bit cleaner the only exception you will see is 8k.The Galaxy s24 Ultra shoots 8k video and when you get the right conditions it’s actually really good and it definitely trumps the iPhone it’s just you have to get it right.
You have to work around Samsung’s other video shortcomings to properly take advantage of it.
SPECIAL MODES: lens formula
Things are changing when it comes to special modes and this is basically extras that your phone does that are fun but they’re not part of the core camera experience.
So that’s slow motion that’s close-up macro mode that’s any kind of cinematic video mode and earlier Samsung because of its ability to shoot slow motion in 4k was significantly better than Apple’s 1080p.
But now the Apple do 4k too and actually Apple’s slow-motion is like you’re taking normal videos just less noisy than Samsung’s it actually feels 100% on par with the quality that you get on your normal iPhone video mode and the iPhone has also had an upgrade to macro since the ultra wide camera on the phone has gone from 12 megapixels to now 48 megapixels and macro uses is Ultra Wide camera so now the iPhone does noticeably more detailed close-ups in Samsung.
SELFIE: lens formula
One thing that iPhone does is space your video to watch back on your Apple Vision Pro. What about selfies?Â
Well there’s couple of things to bear in mind first of all that both phones can either shoot narrow selfies for just you or wider capture a full scene and when you choose to go wide on the iPhone it is wider.
Both the phones have such a different style and interpretation of exactly the same scene and yet they both also kind of seem right when you take them.
iPhone does now have some new photographic styles that let you tweak the skin tone in your shots to exactly your preference and your skin tone is going to look different in every photo and if you really wanted to get the skin tone thing right you’d probably have to go through like every single photo ever taken of you and tweak each one individually .
SELFIE VIDEO: lens formula
Samsung is paying attention to the hardware in their front camera they are definitely being let down with the software processing. Samsung look more cinematic like being filmed with a proper rear camera as opposed to a tiny little selfie camera.
It feels more professional compared to iPhone’s more basic setup but there are caveats the iPhone camera look better for starters pretty consistently Samsung’s got a real gritty vibe to it you know kind of like you are filming the new Marvel’s movie.
The iPhone front camera is less grainy too. You will notice that Samsung is really struggling when you’re not in ideal lighting. But the biggest difference. Apple also has done a really good job optimizing the Instagram camera to retain most of the video and audio processing that happens in its normal camera app but even when you’re going straight onto Instagram .
Samsung not so much and at this point it’s less of a Samsung issue it’s more of an Android issue there’s just too many devices on Android for Instagram to optimize for every single one.
Both phones also shoot cinematic video on their front camera which is good thing.
CAMERA APP: lens formula
A good camera app is going to give you a ton of options it’s going to make shooting fun and most importantly it’s going to allow you to take what you want to take quickly and on that note the difference in shooting speed is now back to being large again Apple used to be far ahead and Samsung closed the Gap and now Apple is far ahead again.
Particularly when you’re shooting using both phones high resolution modes Apple’s 48 megapixels vs. Samsung’s 50 megapixels mode and it’s not just that it feels fast it has a tangible impact on your photos.
iPhone’s app is little prettier and a little more intuitive to use with one hand like pretty much everything you might need to use is always a swipe away as well as still being a little smoother and faster than Samsung’s.
On the other hand Samsung’s display is super bright and the reduced glare that it screen picks up actually makes the photo taking experience tangibly better. And Yes! you can control the entire Samsung camera using app using just the S Pen and some air gestures which is wildly cool. There is also new camera control on the iPhone.
EDITING: lens formula
You might have seen that Samsung has full generative edit capabilities so you can pick up objects you can move those objects you can resize them and the phone will fill in the blanks automatically .
Samsung has sketch to image you make a little Doodle and then the phone turns that doodle into a real object in your image which is often fiddly a little disappointing but every now and again jaw-droppingly impressive.
Apple has basically nothing this is where you feel the consequence of Apple being late to the A.I. party as of right now the only A.I. editing feature currently announced is cleanup which is not bad but it’s coming later in a software update and based on the beta it doesn’t feel as sophisticated yet as what other phones are.
This is where Samsung picks up a bit of steam. When it comes to zoom Samsung wins. Both phones have a five times optical zoom lens Samsung’s five times is higher resolution and it also feels like Samsung knows what to do with it better .
It feels like they’re not afraid to really dial up the software processing on images when you zoom in a lot which not everyone’s going to love but it’s what these images need we even tried of a concert environment.
Samsung also has a second zoom camera at three times which just helps to keep Zoom shots high quality throughout the entire Zoom range. Samsung just gets portrait mode.
Apple was the first company to do any kind of portrait mode well but you can just tell in the meantime Samsung has really invested energy into making sure that their portrait mode becomes something special it’s got that magic combination of realistic background blur that doesn’t feel like too much and gently gets more blurred as objects get further away with extremely good reliable Edge detection and colors that the key caveat is that these portraits were taken on the five time zoom cameras which favors Samsung because they have got a better one.
When you take portraits using the one times main camera then Apple does gain a big leg up because it can shoot 24 megapixels portraits instead of Samsung’s 12.
PHOTOS: lens formula
The main change to photo quality with the iPhone 16 Pro Max is the new 48 megapixels Ultrawide camera it was definitely the thing to change since this is the one area that was weaker than the Samsung.
On the first glance there’s not really a massive difference between the two unless you specifically use Apple’s high resolution 48 megapixel modes. But if you do use that Samsung just can’t keep up because its Ultra wide is only 12 at maximum.
Now, using the high-resolution photo mode with which Apple calls Heath Max is not without compromise it means that photos take a bit longer to capture it means you don’t get live photos anymore and high resolution photos take up more space but here’s where Apple’s done really well the photos still capture fast enough.
Apple’s heat file format is so efficient that a 48 megapixels shot on this takes up like half the storage of a 12 megapixel shot on Samsung. Apple made it convenient enough so the iPhone does become the much better Ultra wide camera .
Technically Samsung destroys Apple in terms of resolution. Samsung’s main camera i 200 megapixels and Apple is 48 but then when you really boil it down the best photo quality that Samsung can take without some sort of major compromise in terms of processing quality or capture time is 12 whereas Apple’s default is 24 you can take every normal photo on the iPhone in 24 megapixel without needing to change any settings or think about it or sacrifice anything.
You can if you want to take a 200 megapixel photo on Samsung but it’s kind of like the whole 8k video thing there are situations in which it will be amazing but only in absolutely ideal conditions more often the iPhone’s lower resolution shot will still look better.
There are absolutely times when Samsung has made someone’s face look better or has a nicer pop of color but if we’re going on averages then 70 to 80% of the shots the iPhone takes I think are better.
Pic Credit: Youtube
NIGHT MODE: lens formula
You probably have guessed that what happens when things get super dark like Samsung video becomes noisy that same thing you have noticed a little bit during the day gets exacerbated when the lighting becomes challenging like look how much grain there is in the smoke coming out of this fire.
Samsung also gets a little funky when it comes to color control like all of a sudden why does my sky look so deep blue that it’s like I’m sitting in front of a blue screen or like we tried to walking in area with lots of bright lights that weren’t white lights Samsung makes those colors so intense that you are actually losing detail on what those lights are shining onto but the night photos.
The difference between these two phones is hen things get dark Apple lets your images get a bit grainy . Samsung will smooth your image to get rid of grain and then add sharpening back into the photo to correct for that smoothness.
