Comparing the two alpha dog flagships from Apple and Samsung is a must-do exercise for any tech reviewer, because they're the two most widely available, mainstream phones in the world. But this year, the competition is perhaps more apt because both phones made similar changes to optics. Both the iPhone 15 Pro Max and Galaxy S24 Ultra gained a new 5X zoom lens, and both phones' software overhauled image processing, addressing prior complaints. They are certainly among the best camera phones (and best phones in general) on the market right now, so let's take a deeper dive with a good old-fashioned camera shootout.

• Apple iPhone 15 Pro Max

  SoC

  Apple A17 Pro

  Display

  6.7-inch OLED Super Retina XDR

  RAM

  8GB

  Storage

  256GB, 512GB, 1TB

  Battery

  4,422mAh

  Operating System

  iOS 17

  The iPhone 15 Pro Max introduces an all-new, customizable Action button, a titanium chassis with round edges, and a USB Type-C port. It exclusively offers up to 5x optical zoom, too, so it's slightly better than the regular iPhone 15 Pro model.

  Front camera

  12MP TrueDepth camera

  Rear camera

  Main: 48MP f/1.78; ultrawide: 12MP f/2.2; telephoto: 12MP f/2.8

  Connectivity

  USB 3.0, 5G, Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3, Thread

  Dimensions

  6.29 x 3.01 x 0.32 inches (159.9 x 76.7 x 8.25mm)

  Colors

  Natural Titanium, Blue Titanium, White Titanium, Black Titanium

  Weight

  7.8 ounces (221g)

  Charge speed

  20W wired, 15W MagSafe wireless

  IP Rating

  IP68

  Price

  $1,200

  Security

  Face ID

  $1200 at Best Buy $1200 at AT&T $1199 at Apple

• Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra

  SoC

  Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy

  Display

  6.8-inch Quad HD+ Dynamic AMOLED 2X, 120Hz refresh rate, 501 PPI, 2,600 nits peak brightness

  RAM

  12GB

  Storage

  256GB, 512GB, 1TB

  Battery

  5,000mAh

  Operating System

  Android 14, One UI 6.1

  The Galaxy S24 Ultra is Samsung's premium flagship phone for 2024, further refining everything Android enthusiasts love about this big, beautiful phone.

  Front camera

  12MP wide (f/2.2)

  Rear camera

  200MP main (f/1.7), 12MP ultrawide (f/2.2), 10MP telephoto (f/2.4), 50MP periscope telephoto (f/3.4)

  Connectivity

  5G, 4G LTE, Wi-Fi 6E/7, Bluetooth 5.3

  Dimensions

  6.39x3.11x0.34 inches (162.3x79x8.6mm)

  Colors

  Titanium Black, Titanium Gray, Titanium Violet, Titanium Yellow

  Weight

  8.22 ounces

  Charge speed

  45W wired, 15W wireless, 4.5W reverse wireless

  IP Rating

  IP68

  Price

  Starting at $1,299

  Security

  Ultrasonic fingerprint reader

  $1300 at Amazon $1300 at Best Buy $1300 at Samsung

iPhone 15 Pro Max vs S24 Ultra: Price, specs, availability

Both phones are widely available for purchase around the world, at every electronics retailer or mobile carrier. In the US, the iPhone 15 Pro Max starts at $1,200 while the S24 Ultra is a Benjamin more at $1,300. Both prices are for the base 256GB storage.

Camera hardware overview

The iPhone 15 Pro Max and S24 Ultra offer three and four cameras respectively. Samsung has an extra telephoto camera and a much higher megapixel main camera, but the iPhone's zoom lens has a much faster aperture. The sensor sizes for all the cameras are very close.

Both phones use 12MP front-facing cameras, but the iPhone's wrapped by a TrueDepth camera system with a bunch of real 3D facial scanning tech, which does come into play for selfie portraits. So, this is a case of Samsung having more impressive rear-facing hardware, but Apple taking the win in front-facing camera hardware. Let's see how these cameras perform.

Main camera

One of the first things I noticed when I tested the S24 Ultra was that Samsung has clearly changed its color science, opting for a more natural look. The iPhone, meanwhile, had gone the opposite direction starting with the 14 series, dialing up the punchiness of colors slightly. In other words, both phones sort of went in the other's direction from a few years ago. In the shot below, the S24 Ultra's "duller" tone is more accurate to the real life scene. It's worth mentioning that on the iPhone I shot in the default color profile. For reference, every side-by-side sample will have the iPhone image on the left, Samsung shot on the right.

One new thing Apple introduced with the 15 Pro phones is a new image processing pipeline that outputs 24MP photos from that 48MP camera. Essentially, Apple is combining a pixel-binned 12MP shot with a raw 48MP shot for that 24MP output. The S24 Ultra has a 200MP sensor that by default shoots at 16-in-1 binning for a 12MP shot, so this means if I zoom into actual size for pixel peeping, the default iPhone image is bigger than the S24 Ultra image. It's also slightly more detailed.

Below is another set of main camera photos, and a cropped version. I scaled the Samsung image to match the iPhone's larger size. Slight win in details for the iPhone.

One of the benefits of pixel binning is it allows the camera to capture more light than its otherwise small sensor could, and even with Samsung toning it down a bit compared to the S23 Ultra, the S24 Ultra's shots are generally brighter than the iPhone's. But I'm not sure if this is always a good thing. In the shot below, the iPhone's image has that contrast with deeper shadows that look much more visually striking.

If we pixel peep, we can see both shots producing very similar results in terms of detail. Both are relying a lot on digital oversharpening.

Both main cameras have nearly identical sensor sizes, but the S24 Ultra has a slightly faster aperture (which takes in more light) and the benefit of "more" pixel binning, so in low light situations, the S24 Ultra shot does edge the iPhone out. In the image below, we can see the iPhone's shot is noisier due to needing to dial up the ISO to compensate for lighting. Also, look at the drastic differences in color science. The cat is a ginger cat, but he looks more orange than usual in the iPhone image. I do think Samsung's shot does look a bit dull, however.

When you pixel-peep, you can see the noisiness of the iPhone's shot.

Both phones' main cameras can also shoot in portrait mode, with a slight digital crop, because the main camera's default 23mm focal length is too wide for portraits. This is about 35mm equivalent. A few interesting notes about the portrait shot below. When it comes to human skin, the iPhone will revert to more natural colors, while Samsung will still do that very Korean thing of lightening the skin a bit. The barista's skin color is more accurately represented in the iPhone shot.

Second, the iPhone intelligently knew to focus on the man's face as priority, while Samsung's shot sort of focuses more on the cup of ice and espresso (because it's closer to the camera). The difference is subtle, but when zooming into the face, the S24 Ultra's shot is slightly out of focus. But that cup of ice also looks absurdly oversharpened in the iPhone's shot. Still, given the intent of this shot, the iPhone made the right decision, prioritizing the face.

The iPhone "winning" Portrait mode will be a recurring trend when we test the zoom lenses too. In general, I think the iPhone's main camera edges out the S24 Ultra's slightly. It's more consistent across the board.

For low light, both phones use night mode liberally. Samsung used a full two second for the low light image below, while Apple kept it to about a second. As a result, we can see the S24 Ultra's shots are brighter. I suppose it looks better on social media, but if you're pixel peeping, details are about the same.

Zoom lenses

The iPhone 15 Pro Max and S24 Ultra both have a 5X zoom lens. Despite different naming schemes and slightly different implementations, the core fundamental tech of the two cameras is the same: they're lenses with longer-than-usual paths which allow image information to bounce through a series of magnifying glasses before reaching the image sensor. The S24 Ultra's method is the Periscope zoom lens, which has an L-shaped pathway placed sideways inside the phone's body, while Apple's method is called a "Prism," which sees the light path bounce in a zigzag pattern multiple times.

Of course, the S24 Ultra also has an extra 3X telephoto sensor, which gives it more versatility. With the iPhone, any zoom between 1.1X and 4.9X is technically digital zoom, although Apple claims its in-sensor crop 2X is "optical quality." We will first compare the 5X camera samples.

In this first set, of an iPhone 15 Pro ad, we can see Samsung's Periscope zoom lens, which has a higher pixel count and a longer pathway for light travel, is superior to the iPhone's Prism zoom. The Samsung shot is just cleaner, brighter, more vivid. Pay attention to the building behind the billboard and in front of the billboard. It's clearly very soft on details in the iPhone's shot.

And interestingly, when it comes to the zoom lens, the iPhone reverts back to slightly subdued colors while Samsung's shot has colors that pop more (remember, this was the reverse with the main camera).

Pixel peeping shows the expected results, with S24 Ultra's shot featuring a bit more details and less noise.

When it comes to 5X normal shots, the S24 Ultra is going to beat the iPhone 15 Pro Max every time. But when I turn to 5X Portrait shots, then the iPhone's superior Portrait mode will even the odds, and get a few wins. Generally speaking, Samsung's shutter speed is noticeably slower than the iPhone's, so if you're shooting moving subjects, the S24 Ultra shots may have more blurs or missed poses than the iPhone's image.

Ultra-wide camera

For the ultra-wide, it's pretty much neck and neck. Both lenses have the same megapixel count and aperture. The iPhone's ultra-wide tends to cool the shot more but has more noise and grainy details on the edges of the shot. Technically, the S24 Ultra's ultra-wide is slightly better by a hair, but it doesn't really matter as ultra-wide shots aren't meant to be pixel-peeped like that.

Selfie camera

Gone are the days when Samsung's selfies would try to apply beauty filters that make us look like a heavily airbrushed KPop artist. Samsung's selfies now proudly show my skin with all the blemishes and acne scars unfixed. Still, the S24 Ultra's representation of my skintone still isn't entirely accurate or natural looking.

Video performance

This is an area in which the iPhone used to win single-handedly, but now it's very close. The Galaxy S24 Ultra is probably the best overall video camera on Android, and it keeps up neck and neck with the iPhone 15 Pro Max in stabilization (even when walking with the 5X lens) and fluidity when zooming in and out.

Other camera extras

When it comes to extra camera related features, the S24 Ultra packs so much more into the software. You can, for example, shoot 8K video, which the iPhone cannot do (this is not a big deal at all to 99% of people). The S24 Ultra also has more shooting modes, like a dedicated Pro camera mode, or the ability to record a video with the front and back cameras at the same time. But other modes can be very gimmicky (like "food mode", which just dials up the contrast). However, the S24 Ultra does have very useful generative AI photo editing tools baked into the native photo gallery, which can be used to create AI editing to photos. The latter has been very fun to play with for me, but I concede it can still be considered gimmicky.

For the iPhone, you have a few Photographic Styles to choose from, and Apple's Live Photo remains the best in the industry in my opinion. The iPhone can also shoot videos in Apple ProRes, which is a video codec widely used across the industry.

iPhone 15 Pro Max vs S24 Ultra: Which camera is better?

Both camera performances are closer than ever before. In year past, Samsung would win easily in zoom, but Apple has improved its zoom lens significantly, and so now the gap has closed. The S24 Ultra is still the better camera for zooming, but it's no longer a night and day difference.

Meanwhile, Samsung's video capabilities have improved so much that the iPhone is no longer heads and shoulders better in the video area. I think both phone cameras are well-rounded and have similar philosophies.

I think the iPhone wins this comparison overall with a more consistent Portrait mode and selfies, but the S24 Ultra is more versatile overall. You can't go wrong with either camera if these two phones are your options.