OK, the new iPhones are out, there are four of them yet again, and the biggest, meanest one is the iPhone 17 Pro Max — yet again. It’ll be the one to beat, with the biggest camera, biggest display, and biggest battery. Of course, it’s the natural competitor to Samsung’s Galaxy S25 Ultra, which has been out for about 8 months now.
So, with everything that’s new in the iPhones — do they have what it takes to defend their position from the Galaxy S25? Well, here’s what we know now, but hang tight until we get to run the iPhone 17 Pro Max through our entire ringer of tests and benchmarks!
So here’s the real question — how will it stack up against Samsung’s flagship? And we’re talking the regular phone flagship, not the foldable insanity that is the Z Fold 7. Apple isn’t ready for that yet.
The Galaxy S25 Ultra still features a titanium-coated frame. It’d be interesting to see if Samsung drops it now that Apple has. And its cameras are still the “floating” style rings in the top left of the phone’s back, which does result in some uneven wobble. On the upside — they do look kind of sick.
The matte glass back on the iPhone is now the Ceramic Shield. 4x more durable against cracks, compared to whatever glass Apple was using before that. It’s also a much smaller subsection of the phone’s back — there’s a lot more aluminum back there now, with the matte glass pane being a small “pane” in the lover 2/3rds of the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max. That is where the MagSafe charging coil and its magnets live, and it needs to be not metal, so that the wireless charging can happen in the first place.
The Galaxy S25 Ultra has an all-glass back with a matte finish — it’s a Gorilla Glass Victus 2, which is well-known for its durability. The front is a Gorill Armor 2 panel, which is a marriage between Victus 2 and Samsung’s own anti-glare coating. It has been fantastic so far, let’s see if the Apple solution dethrones it!
On feel in the hand, we expect a similar experience with the new iPhone 17 Pro Max. After all, it still has a flat, metal frame all around. That camera bar (camera plateau, as Apple calls it) will either act as a natural finger rest or be constantly jabbing at your grip, we’ll have to see how the design works out. The Galaxy S25 Ultra itself had a bit of a redesign this year, now also delivering flat frames and slightly rounded corners.
Both phones also offer a 6.9-inch screen panel. The iPhone is slightly thicker, and a bit heavier:
The iPhone 17 Pro Max does have more buttons on its exterior — there’s the power button, the volume keys, then the muti-functional Camera Control button and programmable Action button. That’s a lot from a company who, just a few years ago, was venturing to remove all buttons from its phones. Samsung takes it easy here with just power, volume up, and volume down.
The new Pro iPhones come in a surprisingly limited selection of colors — Silver, Deep Blue, and Cosmic Orange. On one hand, I am happy that we at least have one quirky and fun color for the Pro line iPhones. On the other, it’s kind of shocking that the black or Space Gray are entirely gone right now.
The Galaxy S25 Ultra comes in Titanium Gray, Titanium Black, Titanium Whitesilver, and Titanium Silverblue. Further variants are exclusive to the Samsung.com store — Titanium Jadegreen, Titanium Jetblack, and Titanium Pinkgold.
Display Differences
| Phone model | iPhone 17 Pro Max | Galaxy S25 Ultra |
|---|---|---|
| Screen size | 6.9-inch | 6.9-inch |
| Peak brightness | 3,000 nits | 2,600 nits |
Despite rumors claiming that the Dynamic Island cutout might shrink — that’s a no-no. It’s still the same, love it or hate it. The Galaxy S25 Ultra has a tiny cutout for the selfie camera, too. But tiny.
Of course, the Dynamic Island houses the Face ID sensors — Apple’s face unlock is quite fast and solid. Samsung utilizes an ultrasonic fingerprint scanner, but does have face unlock via the selfie camera.
Performance and Software
Apple silicon vs the Samsung-Qualcomm partnership
Apple’s A-series chips have been at the top of the game for years. However, over the past couple of generations, silicon-slinger Qualcomm really caught up. Especially since it partnered with Samsung for design and manufacturing — that might be a coincidence, we really don’t know how much hand in the process Samsung had. After all, Sammy’s own Exynos chips are not amazing.
In any case, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Made for Galaxy inside the Galaxy S25 Ultra is an excellent performer. We do believe that the Apple A19 in the iPhone 17 Pro Max will be incrementally better — after all, it is newer tech — it remains to be seen how much better. Apple did need to adressthe heat and throttling concerns here, and it’s been talking up that new vapor chamber cooler. But it’ll be up to real life testing and benchmarks to determine if it actually does the job!
| iPhone model | iPhone 17 Pro Max | Galaxy S25 Ultra |
|---|---|---|
| Chip | Apple A19 Pro | Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite |
| Manufacturing process | 3 nm | 3 nm |
| Memory | 12 GB (assumed) | 12 GB |
It’s very possible that the iPhone 17 Pro Max has 12 GB of RAM this year. But Apple just doesn’t like to talk about RAM for some reason, so hang on until some 3rd party analysis is done. Given that Apple is supposedly ramping up on the AI front, it would make sense that it’s also preparing its phones for it.
Samsung’s Galaxies, being Android flagships and all, have had high amounts of RAM for years now. The S25 Ultra is not exception with its 12 GB RAM. In fact, power users are a bit bitter that they aren’t getting at least 16 GB RAM in 2025.
For storage, the iPhone 17 Pro Max repeats the previous tiers — 256 GB minimum, then 512 GB, 1 TB, and a new 2 TB upgrade. The Galaxy S25 Ultra comes with 256 GB, 512 GB, 1 TB.
The real productivity boosts, though, are in the Phone and Messages apps. Call Screening and Spam Filtering make their iOS debut, and Live Translate now works in real-time during calls — a long-awaited answer to Samsung’s equivalent features. What’s more, Messages adds chat backgrounds, typing indicators, and group polls.
Other tweaks include Smarter Apple Maps routing based on your habits, and a less cluttered Photos app that finally makes albums easier to reach.
Apple’s iPhones typically get 5 years of iOS support, but that might change, as Samsung and Google have really pushed the envelope on update commitments.
Camera
The eternal camera battles
Both of these phones are leaders in the camera field — both Apple and Samsung have been putting a lot of eggs in the camera basket and the result is that we have competing flagships that can take super high-res photos and videos with excellent stabilization and editing tools. Well, some editing tools are better than others.
| Phone model | iPhone 17 Pro Max | Galaxy S25 Ultra |
|---|---|---|
| Main camera | 48MP F1.8 | 200MP F1.7 |
| Ultrawide camera | 48MP F2.2 | 50MP F1.9 |
| Zoom camera | — | 10MP F2.4 3X |
| Telephoto camera | 48MP F2.8 4X | 50MP F3.4 5X |
| Front camera | 18MP | 12MP |
The iPhone 17 Pro gets a trio of 48 MP Fusion cameras on the back. Fusion is basically a fancy way of saying that Apple uses sensor crop-in magic to get “lossless” zoom levels and kind of simulate various focal lengths. In this spirit, it can go up to 8x and take 12 MP photos at what can be called “optical zoom”. From then on, it’s all digital, now upgraded to a 40x maximum — up from last year’s 25x, but still a far cry from Samsung’s 100x Space Zoom.
The selfie camera of the iPhone 17 series as a whole has also been upgraded to a new sensor. It’s a unique, almost square-shaped sensor, unlike the regular ones that will typically have an aspect ratio of 4:3. So, Apple uses that square shape and crops into it to simulate the feel of a slightly wider selfie that we are used to, but also add stabilization for video calls and vlogging. Leave Center Stage on when taking a selfie and the iPhone will intelligently zoom in on your face or zoom out when someone else joins for a group photo. Very Apple feature, indeed!
Battery Life and Charging
The power of 5,000
Apple typically doesn’t play the battery capacity games. iPhones historically have had smaller batteries than their contemporary competitors, but have made up for it with excellent software and hardware optimizations.
Samsung also doesn’t push the envelope too much. Ever since that Galaxy Note 7 snafu, the manufacturer slowed down its battery efforts significantly and now prefers to play it super-safe, just in case. The Galaxy S25 Ultra has 5,000 mAh and it’s pretty OK. It can last you like a day and a half with regular use, and won’t trigger your low-bat-phobia often.
| iPhone model | iPhone 17 Pro Max | Galaxy S25 Ultra |
|---|---|---|
| Battery size | 4,700-5,000 mAh | 5,000 mAh |
| Wired charging speed | 40W | 45W |
| Wireless charging speed | 25W | 15W |
At least we finally get a charging speed upgrade. The iPhone 17 Pro Max can now get up to 50% of charge in just 20 minutes on a 40 W power brick. Hooray!
Specs Comparison
| iPhone 17 Pro Max | Galaxy S25 Ultra |
|---|---|
| Size, weight 163.4 x 78.0 x 8.75 mm 233 g |
Size, weight 162.8 x 77.6 x 8.2 mm 218 g |
| Screen 6.9″ OLED 120Hz ProMotion 3,000 nits peak brightness |
Screen 6.9″ AMOLED 120Hz 2,600 nits peak brightness |
| Processor A19 Pro 3nm |
Processor Snapdragon 8 Elite 3nm |
| Versions: 12GB/256GB 12GB/512GB 12GB/1TB 12GB/1TB LPDDR5 |
Versions: 12GB/256GB 12GB/512GB 12GB/1TB LPDDR5X |
| Cameras: 48MP main 48MP ultra 48MP 4X 18MP front |
Cameras: 200MP main 50MP ultra 10MP 3X zoom 50MP 5X zoom 12MP front |
| Battery: 4,700+ mAh |
Battery: 5,000 mAh |
| Charging: USB-C 40W wired 25W MagSafe 2.0 |
Charging: USB-C 45W wired 15W Qi2 |
Summary
When the Galaxy S25 Ultra rolled out, it came with a pretty obvious redesign, but many feel it didn’t have a lot of improvements from the S24 Ultra. And plenty of S24 owners are still perfectly happy, not even itching to upgrade.
So, will the 2025 Apple flagship outclass Samsung’s 2025 flagship? The jury’s still out, but odds are they’ll be neck and neck — close enough to keep the fan debates raging for months. Because if nothing else, these two always give us something to argue about.
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