iPhone 17 Pro Max Vs Samsung S25 Ultra: Which One is Best?

Intro:

The iPhone 17 Pro Max is here. It’s the best we have from Apple. How does it compare to the best from Samsung? The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra? Well, let’s put these head-to-head SuperSaf style and find out.

Build:

The iPhone is slightly larger compared to the S25 Ultra. It also weighs a little bit more, but the corners are more rounded off, and we have these contoured edges at the back versus the completely flat sides and sharper edges on the S25 Ultra. So personally, we do find that the iPhone 17 Pro Max is just a little bit more comfortable to hold. We have way more color options on the S25 Ultra. The iPhone 17 Pro Max only comes in three colors, although they are quite striking, ng like this cosmic orange.

There’s also a deep blue as well as a pretty plain silver. The S25 Ultra has a titanium silver blue, a titanium white silver, a titanium gray, and a titanium black, and there are three exclusive colors available from samsung.com. A titanium pink gold, a titanium jade green, and a titanium jet black. That’s a lot of titanium. Now the reason for aluminium on the iPhone 17 Pro Max is because of thermals, which we’ll talk about a little bit later, but if you’re looking at which has the more premium metal, al then it is the S25 Ultra. Now, in terms of the design, we think both of them look very, very nice. We would say, arguably, the iPhone 17 Pro Max has the bigger glow-up and the bigger refresh.
If we compare it to last year’s iPhone 16 Pro Max, although the S25 Ultra has also had a refresh, it’s not as much as what we’ve got on the iPhone 17 Pro Max. But once again, you might hate the design of one of these compared to the other. We think it’s really going to come down to your personal taste. Both devices do have an IP68 water and dust resistant rating, although you can submerge the iPhone deeper into water compared to the S25 Ultra.

Display:

Now at the front, we have Gorilla Armor 2 on the S25 Ultra. We’ve got Ceramic Shield 2 on the front of the iPhone 17 Pro Max. N,o,w according to Apple, Ceramic Shield 2 has three times better scratch resistance compared to its predecessor,r and according to Samsung, Gorilla Armor 2 is 60% less likely to need screen damage repair, and it’s also 29% more resistant to fractures. Now, one of the biggest advantages of Gorilla Armor 2 is its anti-reflective properties. The iPhone also has an anti-reflective coating, but comparing these side by side, the S25 Ultra is definitely less reflective compared to the iPhone,e and that’s something that we really do like about the S25 Ultra’s display. Both of these have beautiful displays, both are 6.9 inches, both use OLED technology, and have a 120 hertz refresh rate.
We have a slightly higher resolution on the S25 Ultra, but the iPhone can get slightly brighter for outdoor situations. Overall,l we would say both are amazing displays. Yes, you get a slightly brighter display on the iPhone 17 Pro Max, but the S25 Ultra is less reflective. It’s also got a higher screen-to-body ratio because we’ve only got this small punch-out for the front-facing camera, whereas we’ve got the large dynamic island on the iPhone 17 Pro Max.

Now granted, we do have more within that dynamic island,d and one of those things is Face ID. Face ID works great, it’s fast, it’s accurate. The S25 Ultra has the Gen 2 Qualcomm 3D Sonic sensor, which is also fast, accurate, and one of the best in-display fingerprint scanners out there.

Camera:

iPhone 17 pro max there’s a main camera, an ultra-wide camera, and a four times telephoto camera. The S25 Ultra,  on the other hand, has four rear-facing cameras: a primary, an ultra-wide, and two telephoto cameras, one at 3x and the other at 5x. We have a 12 megapixel selfie camera on the S25 Ultra and a new 18 megapixel center stage selfie camera on the iPhone 17 Pro Max. Now this is very impressive. Unlike regular selfie cameras, it uses a square sensor, which means that you can take both portrait and landscape photos from the selfie camera without rotating your phone. It also gives you wider selfies as well as better stabilization from the front-facing camera.

Although both of these have excellent video quality we did find that the iphone 17 pro max had better dynamic range overall it also performed better in low light overall for photos as well as video we really do like the photographic styles that you have on the iphone which really lets you dial in the colors of your pictures after you’ve taken them although you can edit your images on the s25 ultra it’s nowhere near the same as what you’ve got with photographic styles on the iphone the s25 ultra on the other hand with this additional telephoto camera gives you a better zoom at three times and it also gives you better extended zoom in good light.

We also prefer the ultra-wide camera on the S25 Ultra, ultra-wide Ultra. especially in low light, and the S25 Ultra can also film at 8K from three of the rear-facing cameras. This is something that you don’t have on any of the cameras of the iPhone 17 Pro Max. Now, overall, both of these have excellent cameras. They’re some of the best that you’re going to find out there. Once again, if you really want to see the detailed differences, then check out that SuperSaf style camera comparison.

Performance:

Right now, we’re moving on to performance. So the S25 Ultra has the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy. This is a 3nm chipset. The iPhone 17 Pro Max has the A19 P,ro which is also a 3nm chipset. Now, both devices have vapor chambers. So the S25 Ultra actually has a 40% larger vapor chamber compared to the S24 Ultr,  and this is the first time an iPhone has had a vapor chamber. This is supposed to give you around 40% higher sustained performance compared to what you had on the iPhone 16 Pro Max.

So what is the difference? Well, you’ll be pleased to know that both of these perform absolutely great. If you look at benchmarks on Geekbench, the iPhone does score higher, both the multi and single core performance, but quite a bit higher for single core performance. But generally speaking,g on your day-to-day, both of these are going to be absolutely fine. We guess that on gaming, one of the advantages that you get on the iPhone 17 Pro Max is that you have the ability to play console-level games. So you’ve got titles like Resident Evil and Assassin’s Creed.

These are options that would technically be possible on the S25 Ultra, but are not available.

Ram:

Now both devices have 12 gigabytes of RAM. So we’ve actually got an increase in RAM on the iPhone 17 Pro Max compared to what we had on the iPhone 16 Pro Max. And although both perform really well in terms of multitasking, we do find that the iPhone still aggressively kills things in the background.

Now Samsung has promised seven generations of Android OS updates and seven years of security updates as well, which is the leading amount of updates that you’re going to find on any Android device. Apple is known to also support its devices for a long time. How long exactly? They don’t specify, but you can expect this to be running for a long time. Now, which one of these is better? Well, we really think it’s come to a point where whether you use iOS or Android, it really doesn’t matter because both of them do things very well.

AI:

Now let’s talk a little bit about AI. Apple Intelligence Bet,, a as well as Galaxy AI, over the past fnd a few months, is that Galaxy AI, along with Gemini and Bixby, is way more complete compared to what we have on Apple Intelligence at the time of this video. Now, having said that, there are certain things that we do like about Apple Intelligence. We like priority notifications and notification summaries. These are super useful.

Bonus Features:

Now let’s talk about some of the bonus features that both devices offer. So we have two extra dedicated buttons on the iPhone 17 Pro Max. One of them is the action button, and you can assign this to pretty much anything. Now granted, you can customize the power button somewhat. And if you do download the Good Lock app and go into routines you can customize it further but you have two extra physical buttons on the iPhone 17 Pro Max so there you go the iPhone 17 Pro Max also has emergency SOS via satellite as well as emergency SOS live video apparently there is some form of SOS built into the S25 Ultra, but this is going to very much depend on your carrier.

We also have roadside assistance via satellite on the iPhone 17 Pro Max, as well as crash detection. And we also have a dedicated LiDAR scanner on the iPhone 17 Pro Max. The S25 Ultra, however, has something that an iPhone has never had.

Speakers:

Now, for speakers, both of these have very good-sounding stereo speakers. Both speakers are good, but honestly iphone 17 Pro Max speakers are way louder than S25 Ultra.

Connectivity:

Now moving on to connectivity, although we’ve got USB Type-C ports on both devices, we do have faster transfer speeds on the iPhone 17 Pro Max compared to the S25 Ultra. You also get a nicer braided USB-C cable with the iPhone 17 Pro Max compared to the pretty standard USB Type-C cable that you get on the S25 Ultra.

We have Wi-Fi 7 on both devices, but the iPhone 17 Pro Max has Bluetooth 6, whereas we’ve got Bluetooth 5.4 on the S25 Ultra. What does that mean? Well, Bluetooth 6 has higher security levels, it’s also got faster transmission speeds, and it’s got larger data bandwidth, so it’s going to be faster for file transfers and smoother for media streaming too. The S25 Ultra has a physical SIM card slot.

Now, one interesting thing about the iPhone 17 Pro Max is that theeSIM-onlyy version has a slightly larger battery compared to the version with a physical SIM card.

Battery:

For the first time, we actually had a larger physical battery on the iPhone compared to the Samsung. We do get a slightly larger physical battery on the iPhone compared to the S25 Ultra. However, that’s only the eSIM version. Well, as we know, battery size is not everything. A lot of it comes down to the software optimization. And in our experience, both of these have excellent battery life. However, the iPhone does have better battery life in our experience compared to the S25 Ultra. This is always very difficult to quantify, but we would say you’re going to get around 5% to 10% better battery life on the iPhone 17 Pro Max compared to the S25 Ultra. While charging speed is roughly about the same, you’re going to get 50% n 20 minutes.

The S25 Ultra supports a45-wattt charger. The iPhone 17 Pro Max supports a 40-watt charger, but again, you’re going to get roughly the same charging speeds. However, you do get faster wireless charging speeds on the iPhone 17 Pro Max. It supports up to 25 watts with Qi 2 wireless charging and MagSafe wireless charging as well is up to 25 watts. The S25 Ultra has 15 watts of wireless charging, and it does not have Qi 2 wireless charging built in. The only way you can have Qi 2 wireless charging is if you have a compatible case that has magnets within it. There are no magnets within the S25 Ultra. And with that, you will still only get 15 watts of charging speeds, not the 25 watts.

However, on the S25 Ultra, you do have wireless power share, so you’ll be able to wirelessly charge devices on the back of the S25 Ultra. You can’t do this wirelessly on the iPhone 17 Pro Max, but you can charge the devices with a USB Type-C cable. Now, as always, and for the past many, many years, chargers are not included out of the box with either of these. There are lots of people who may not have upgraded their smartphones for a long time and are still new to this concept. But hey, if you don’t know, now you know. Chargers do not come included with either of these.
No we’rew finally, storage and pricing. So we have 256, 512, and 1TB versions for both devices, but the iPhone 17 Pro Max has a Max version of 256.

Conclusion:

So to conclude, both of these are amazing devices, and they are truly worthy flagships. With the S25 Ultra, you get the titanium build, you get the S Pen, you get a less reflective display, you get an additional three times optical zoom camera, and you get the complete AI package with Galaxy AI. With the iPhone 17 Pro Max, you get the A19 Pro with console-level games, you get a better selfie camera, you get amazing rear-facing cameras, with some of the best video, and you also get better battery life with MagSafe built in. And that is the SuperSaf style comparison of the iPhone 17 Pro Max and the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra. Which one of these would be your pick? There’s going to be lots more content with the iPhone and upcoming Samsungs on the website.