Samsung has officially unveiled its latest line of S Series phones, including the Galaxy S25, S25+ and S25 Ultra.
If you’re wondering how the Ultra compares to Apple’s current flagship iPhone, you’ve come to the right place.
Keep reading to discover how the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra and iPhone 16 Pro compare when it comes to all the key areas, including pricing, design, cameras, performance and battery life.
Price
The Galaxy S25 Ultra is available to buy from Feburary 7 2025 with preorders open now. Prices start at £1249 for 256GB and go up to £1349 for 512GB or £1549 for 1TB.
The iPhone 16 Pro launched in September 2024, four months ahead of the S25 Ultra. Prices for the 16 Pro start at £999 for 128GB. Other configurations available include £1099 for 256GB, £1299 for 512GB and £1499 for 1TB of storage.
The iPhone 16 Pro features the Dynamic Island
When it comes to their displays, the Galaxy S25 Ultra has a larger 6.9-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X screen with a QHD+ (3200 x 1800) resolution, 120Hz refresh rate and 2600 nits of brightness. If you want a more pocket-sized S25 Series phone, you’ll need to downgrade to the regular S25.
The iPhone 16 Pro, on the other hand, has a 6.3-inch Super Retina XDR display with a 120Hz refresh rate, 2622 x 1206 resolution and 2000 nits at peak brightness. If you want a larger 6.9-inch display, you need to pay more for the iPhone 16 Pro Max.
One more unique feature on the iPhone 16 Pro is its Dynamic Island. This is an Apple-exclusive feature that repurposes the previously obstructive notch into an interactive box for notifications and alerts. The Galaxy S25 sticks with a standard holepunch notch.
The Galaxy S25 Ultra has a 200MP main camera
The Galaxy S25 Ultra takes advantage of a quad camera setup, consisting of a large 200-megapixel main sensor, 50-megapixel ultra-wide sensor and two telephoto cameras – one 50-megapixel and the other 10-megapixel. This allows the phone to reach up to 5x optical zoom.
The iPhone 16 Pro, meanwhile, features a 48-megapixel main camera, 48-megapixel ultra-wide camera and a 12-megapixel telephoto camera with 5x optical zoom – the same zoom range found on the S25 Ultra.
With such similar specs, the best way to compare these two cameras is to compare the images they produce. For this, you’ll need to wait for us to share our full review of the S25 Ultra.
The Galaxy S25 Ultra is powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite
The Galaxy S25 Ultra is powered by Qualcomm’s latest flagship chipset, the Snapdragon 8 Elite. More specifically, this is a version custom-made for Samsung, which the company claims can offer a 37% boost in CPS performance, a 30% uptick in GPU performance and a 40% improvement in NPU performance compared to its predecessor. The latter means improved AI performance, with more tasks being completed on-device as opposed to in the cloud.
The iPhone 16 Pro, meanwhile, runs on Apple’s own A18 Pro chipset. This is another hugely powerful custom-designed flagship chipset. In the past, Apple has blazed past the competition, but the Snapdragon 8 Elite has given it some real competition with the second-gen Oryon CPU architecture helping it to outperform the A18 Pro in benchmark tests.
However, you’ll have to wait for us to benchmark the Snapdragon 8 Elite in the S25 Ultra to see how these two phones compare in terms of real-world performance.
The iPhone 16 Pro supports MagSafe charging
Finally, the Galaxy S25 Ultra packs a large 5000 mAh battery that is quite a bit bigger than the 3582 mAh one in the iPhone 16 Pro.
The actual endurance of the battery depends heavily on other factors such as the display and chipset, however, so you’ll need to wait for our full review of the S25 Ultra to learn how these two compare in terms of battery life.
One major perk to buying an iPhone is its MagSafe charging capability. While the S25 Ultra does support Qi wireless charging, there’s no MagSafe onboard for that added convenience.
Early verdict
The Galaxy S25 Ultra and iPhone 16 Pro are two very powerful flagship phones with similar camera capabilities and chipsets. However, you’ll need to wait for our full review of the S25 Ultra to learn exactly how these phones compare in all areas, including the battery life and photos they produce.
