Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra / Apple iPhone 14 Pro Max

The Samsung Newsroom release is dated 23 January Korea time; the event was 22 January in US time.

Samsung notes memory options may vary by market and usable storage is lower because of preloaded software. There is no card slot.

Samsung quotes 40% NPU, 37% CPU and 30% GPU gains over the previous generation. This version is tuned for Galaxy with higher clocks than the standard Snapdragon 8 Elite.

The vapor chamber spreads heat from the chip into the body, helping clocks hold longer in extended gaming.

The viewable area is smaller than the diagonal because of rounded corners and the camera hole. Refresh that drops to 1 Hz saves power on static content; Vision Booster adjusts tone mapping in bright light.

ProMotion rises to 120 Hz during motion and drops on static images, balancing smoothness and battery; this is what lets the lock screen stay always on. Dynamic Island uses the front-camera cutout as an area for notifications and activities.

Used on the front only. Corning says it survived drops of up to 2.2 m onto a concrete-like surface in internal lab tests; this is not a durability guarantee for any given phone.

Titanium is used only on the frame, excluding the volume and side keys.

Per Samsung, 3× and 5× are optical; 2× and 10× are “optical quality” zoom made by sensor cropping. OIS is optical image stabilisation.

The main camera also provides a 12 MP 2× telephoto image by using the center of the sensor; the total optical zoom range is 6×. LiDAR measures depth for night portraits and focusing. Apple ProRAW allows DNG capture.

Front-camera autofocus arrived with this generation.

Log records a flat profile for colour grading; results depend on the editing workflow. Audio Eraser can reduce layers such as voices, music, wind and crowd separately in videos.

Action mode stabilizes video shot while walking or running without a gimbal.

The 45 W adapter is sold separately. Samsung quotes up to 31 hours of video playback. Wireless PowerShare charges earbuds or a watch from the back of the phone.

No adapter is included in the box.

According to Android Central’s one-year report, the phone received One UI 8 (Android 16) ahead of schedule.

It is on the compatible-models list in Apple’s iOS 27.2 user guide.

5G/LTE availability depends on market and carrier.

Water resistance is not permanent and may diminish over time.

Colour availability varies by country and carrier.

On the 128 GB model ProRes video is limited to 1080p at 30 fps.

Emergency SOS via satellite works only in countries Apple supports and where there is no mobile or Wi‑Fi coverage.

Dual-frequency GPS improves location accuracy among tall buildings.