Samsung S23 Ultra vs. iPhone 15 Pro Max – Which Should You Buy?
I’ve been using a Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra for well over the past 6 months, and now that the iPhone 15 Pro Max has been out for a few months, I’m going to take you through the standout features of each of these phones, the downsides, and then ultimately, which phone I think you should buy. First, let’s look at the S23 Ultra’s advantages. The first advantage the S23 Ultra has over the iPhone 15 Pro Max is the 10x telephoto camera. The 10x is surprisingly usable, and I’ve really enjoyed using it, especially on my trip to Hawaii this
year, taking close-ups of waterfalls and cute little geckos. The only thing I wish Samsung had done was also include a 5x. Oddly, when comparing it to the iPhone, I like the 5x a bit better compared to the 3x on the S23 Ultra. Overall, though, if you love taking photos of cool things in nature, you’ll love the 10x camera and camera system in general on the S23 Ultra. The next advantage of the S23 Ultra is the S Pen. The S23 Ultra is one of the only phones on the market today that comes with a stylus, and
you can do some pretty cool things with it, like writing on your phone screen when it’s off, converting handwritten notes to text, and using it
S23 Ultra to a Windows PC. By the way, to access your phone’s notifications, messages, and photos, plus, you can even mirror your phone screen to your PC. And because the S23 Ultra uses Android, that means it’s much more customizable than the iPhone. You can sideload apps on this phone, customize the font, the colors, even change the Android launcher to something less Samsung-looking and more iPhone-looking. Android just allows you to do kind of whatever you want, and Samsung really embraces being able to customize their OS. Samsung has an app called Good Lock that allows you to
customize many more things on the S23 Ultra, like creating a new lock screen and always-on display, changing the app tray to a list style, which fixes one of my biggest gripes with One UI’s default design. You can change the layout type of the task changer, changing it from a list to something that looks more like iOS with stack view. You can create new themes and finally adjust theme colors with Theme Pack. Download an even more capable routine experience with Routines Plus and improve the sound experience of your Galaxy with Sound Assist, which adds up to
150 volume levels, making volume adjustments much more precise than they are by default. One UI is a huge benefit of going with the S23 Ultra, and one of the surprising things with it is even when you have a ton of customizations applied, the operating system is still solid. I’ve yet to run into a significant bug with this operating system. Now, the next benefit of going with the S23 Ultra is the Samsung Galaxy ecosystem, which is a bit more flexible than Apple’s ecosystem. You have more flexibility sharing things to non-Samsung devices, like other Android devices or
a Windows PC, via the Phone Link app. And Samsung has many of the same devices you’ll find in the Apple ecosystem, like Samsung Smart Tags, earbuds, tablets, PCs, SmartWatches, and more. About the only thing they don’t have in their ecosystem at this point are over-the-ear headphones and desktop PCs, though they do have a lot more types of devices than Apple does, that expands to smart fridges, washing machines, and other appliances. Though I’m not sure there’s that much of a benefit by having a phone made by the same company that also makes your fridge and washing
machine. But if that’s been your experience, though, definitely let me know in the comments. Both the Samsung and Apple ecosystems allow you to do things like use other devices as second screens, wirelessly share files between devices, and you can track all of your devices’ locations. On the iPhone, you’ll use the Find My app, and the SmartThings app on the S23 Ultra, and both ecosystems support smart home accessories, with Samsung being more open to more devices with Samsung SmartThings versus Apple’s HomeKit. One other thing to consider about which phone to choose is if you have kids
and they use an iPhone. Family Sharing is a pretty important part of Apple’s ecosystem, and it’s easier to use and manage your kids’ devices if you also have an iPhone. With Family Sharing, you can track your kids’ iPhones in case of an emergency, set up their wallets so they can spend money via Apple Pay, as well as let you share subscriptions with them, like for Apple TV Plus, Apple Fitness Plus, Apple Arcade, and of course, Apple Music. Samsung uses Google’s Family Link service for parental controls, which you can manage as a parent from an Android
or from an iPhone. Overall, the S23 Ultra has great build quality, an excellent display, battery life, and One UI on it has been really, really good, and I’ve really enjoyed using it. But now, let’s look at the iPhone 15 Pro Max and its advantages. The first advantage is weight. The iPhone is slightly lighter than the S23 Ultra, at 221 g versus the 234 g the S23 Ultra weighs, which you can feel. But both phones could lose even more weight when you compare them to other phones on the market of similar size, like the Pixel 8
Pro and the Nothing Phone 2. The next benefit the iPhone 15 Pro Max has is the Apple ecosystem. Now, Samsung and Apple at this point have pretty similar devices in their ecosystem. However, the one big thing that differentiates the Apple ecosystem from Samsung’s is market-leading accessories like iPad, AirPods, and the Apple Watch, plus Apple services, which are pretty different and unique compared to Samsung. These include Apple Music, Apple Fitness Plus, Apple TV Plus, and Apple Arcade, all of which can be bundled together in an Apple One subscription. Now here in the US, the iPhone and
the Apple ecosystem also gets you iMessage, which is quite popular, and if you’re like me, and it seems like most of your friends and family nowadays just have an iPhone, it’s nice to have a mostly consistent and fun messaging experience, with full-res photo sharing. Photos that are shared with you will automatically appear in different apps like Photos, plus fun features like Apple’s new stickers, and everything syncs across all of your Apple devices. Though yes, I will concede, messaging itself should just be a standard, like email. You shouldn’t just be locked into one messaging service like
iMessage, and especially when you’re messaging somebody on an Android device from an iPhone, those messages should be encrypted, and you should be able to send full-resolution photos, which right now, you’re not able to because Apple does not support a standard called RCS. Though recently, like just the week we’re recording this, they announced they will finally be supporting this standard by late 2024. The last big Apple ecosystem feature I’ll point out is Continuity Camera. With it, you can turn your iPhone into not just a webcam but one of the best-looking webcams on the market with your
Mac, and this year you can now use it with your Apple TV and FaceTime calls, perfect for catching up with the family while sitting on your couch. The next benefit of the iPhone 15 Pro Max is the dedicated action button. This year, Apple added a new button to the Pro iPhones that you can customize to do different things. By default, you can customize the action button to trigger silent mode, Do Not Disturb, the camera, flashlight, voice memo, and importantly, a shortcut. Shortcuts are a powerful way to customize and automate certain actions on your iPhone, and
I covered shortcuts more in-depth in my “Top Six Tips for iPhone in 2023” video. So, if you want to learn more about them, I’d encourage you to pause this video, click the link here, go watch that, and then come back here. The Shortcuts app allowed me to write a shortcut where when I’m home, the shortcut button will toggle Do Not Disturb on and off, and when I’m not home, it’ll open the camera app. Though do note, you can get a similar effect on the S23 Ultra by using Samsung’s Good Lock app and customizing the action
when you hold down the power button. You can also customize the action of double pressing the power button, known as the side key, as well. The next advantage the iPhone 15 Pro Max has over the S23 Ultra is video quality. Apple continues to have the best video quality of any smartphone I’ve tested. Its color science and HDR processing are very good, and there’s little to no noise artifacts in most footage, even at night, which is impressive. And new this year, you can shoot in Apple ProRes, which gets you substantially better video footage out of a
smartphone and allows you to color grade footage to your liking, where you can really change the look to the point where it doesn’t even look like the footage was shot on an iPhone. And because this year’s iPhone finally has USB-C, you can easily record footage from it to an external SSD. Also, the iPhone can smoothly switch between lenses when shooting video. Another impressive feature of the iPhone 15 Pro Max is its ability to capture depth information in photos. This feature activates automatically whenever the camera detects a person or animal, or when you tap and hold
to focus on a specific subject. After taking a photo, you can effortlessly transform it into a portrait photo. This allows you not only to adjust the depth of field but also to refocus the image on a different subject. Alright, the last benefit of going with the iPhone 15 Pro Max is the iOS operating system. While it’s nowhere near as customizable as Samsung’s One UI, I’d argue it’s more aesthetically consistent and fluid, especially with features like widgets. iOS has more widgets that you can place on your lock screen versus One UI. Plus, smart stacks for widgets
on the home screen, where your phone will show you the correct widget based on a variety of factors. Another huge benefit of the iPhone 15 Pro Max and iOS is that if developers are not releasing their apps simultaneously on both operating systems, they will almost always release their apps first on iOS. A perfect example of this happened this year with the ChatGPT app, which came out for iOS in May and two months later on Android. Also, with the iPhone 15 Pro Max, you’ll get the next version of iOS on day one, which is not the
case for the S23 Ultra and Android. Samsung takes a few months before rolling out the new version of Android and a new version of One UI. So, those are the main advantages of each phone in my experience. But which one should you actually buy? Well, I think it really comes down to the Samsung and Apple ecosystems—shocker, I know. In general, the S23 Ultra with One UI can do a lot more than the iPhone and be customized a lot more, all while maintaining a pretty stable OS. Plus, with the S23 Ultra, you’re not locked into just
using Samsung accessory devices. The iPhone, however, offers a simplified user experience. The customizations you do have access to are intuitive and easy to use, and your phone will work really well with other Apple products, plus Apple Services. If you don’t need the level of customization that you get with the S23 Ultra and just need a phone that works and has solid performance, better privacy controls, is lighter, works great with other Apple devices, and you don’t need to download anything outside of Apple’s App Store, that’s where I’d go with an iPhone. So those are my thoughts
on these two phones. Let me know if you think I got it right or if you think I got something wrong in the comments below. I’ve left purchase links to both of these devices in the description, and make sure you’re signed up for our monthly newsletter, where I’ll post deal alerts when I notice these two phones go on a significant sale. Consider giving this video a thumbs up if you liked it, and subscribe for more. To see more videos on Apple and Samsung products, you can get to those by clicking on the videos above. For
‘6 Months Later,’ I’m Josh Teder. Thanks for watching.
