AI Showdown: iPhone 16 Pro Max vs Samsung S25 Ultra – Unveiling the Superior Artificial Intelligence

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.