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Intro
The iPhone 17 series is now available to purchase, and the iPhone 17 Pro Max is — as expected — the new top-tier phone from Apple. It comes with a new design and "camera plateau", improved cameras with better zoom and nighttime performance, and of course a faster processor.
It's the natural competitor is Samsung's Galaxy S25 Ultra, which has been out for about 8 months now. Samsung's camp offers not one but two zoom cameras, enhanced digital zoom with AI, a lot of Galaxy AI features and Gemini on board for a full-rounded package of smart. Plus, Samsung rocks a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite tuned for Galaxy, squeezing some more GHz out of an already powerful chip.
So, does the iPhone 17 Pro Max have enough upgrades and pizzazz to cut down on Samsung's momentum? Or is the Galaxy S25 Ultra the one flagship that will get loyal Apple fans to switch?
iPhone 17 Pro: $0.00/mo. at Verizon
$0
/mo
$30
55
$31 off (100%)
The powerful iPhone 17 Pro is finally here! You can now get the new Pro with an upgraded design and a brilliant display for as low as $0.00/mo. at Verizon. You must set up a new line on an Unlimited Ultimate plan and trade in a device to take advantage.
The impressive iPhone 17 Pro Max is available at Verizon. Right now, you can save up to $1,100 on the premium device when you activate a new line and trade in an eligible device. The promo is only available with an Unlimited Ultimate plan.
Get the mighty Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra for up to $700 off with the official Samsung Store. To get the discount, you must provide an eligible trade-in in good condition. Besides the trade-in discount, you can now get a $120 price cut with a free storage upgrade.
To find out the answer, we will be putting the two flagships through our gauntlet of battery, camera, performance, and display tests, plus a pinch of anecdotal experience. Let's go!
iPhone 17 Pro Max vs Galaxy S25 Ultra differences:
iPhone 17 Pro Max
Galaxy S25 Ultra
Design
Slightly heavier at 233 g
Still a hefty 218 g
8.75 mm thickness
8.2 mm thickness
Two-tone back with aluminum unibody and glass insert
Single matte glass panel on back, "floating" camera rings
Ceramic shield front and back
Gorilla Armor front and Victus 2 back
Display
6.9" OLED with 120Hz ProMotion and Always-on
6.9" AMOLED with 120 Hz and Always-on
3,000 nits peak brightness
2,600 nits peak brightness
Performance
A19 Pro chip
Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy chip
Hexa-core - two power cores, four efficiency cores
Octa-core - two power cores, six efficiency cores
Vapor chamber cooling
Vapor chamber cooling
12 GB RAM
12 GB RAM
Cameras
Triple rear cameras
Quadruple rear cameras
48MP wide
200MP wide
48MP ultrawide
50MP ultrawide
4X telephoto camera with 48MP sensor
3X telephoto camera with 10MP sensor 5X telephoto camera with 50MP sensor
18MP front camera with square sensor
12 MP front camera
ProRAW
Expert RAW mode
ProRES
Log 2 Video mode
4K120 video resolution
8K30 or 4K120 max video resolution
Battery
5,088 mAh (4,832 on SIM model)
5,000 mAh
Up to 39 h video playback
Up to 31 h video playback
Wired charging: 50% in ~20 min (40W adapter)
Wired charging: 50% in <25 min (45W adapter)
25W MagSafe
15W Qi
Models
$1,200 (256 GB base)
$1,300 (256 GB base)
2 TB max storage
1 TB max storage
Other
USB 3.2 port
USB 3.2 port
Four "studio-quality" mics
Three microphones
This year around, we have some extra confusion thrown into the mix, thanks to the US having eSIM-only iPhones, whereas the rest of the world still gets a nanoSIM tray. Apple finally decided to fill out that hollow space in the US models with extra battery. Which is why there are two different battery capacities, depending on where in the world you buy an iPhone 17. Kind of wild.
The iPhone 17 Pro Max was, surprisingly, redesigned. It's not wildly different but it does have a rather peculiar new camera bar on the bach. A camera plateau, Apple calls it. It's also now back to being made with aluminum. As a reminder, premium iPhones have been made with stainless steel since the iPhone X, then titanium for a couple of years — the 15 Pro and 16 Pro. And now we are back to aluminum. Presumably because it's better at dissipating the heat from the A19 Pro processor, and is lighter.
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 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.
On the front, the iPhone 17 Pro Max has the new Ceramic Shield 2 — Apple's new glass for displays, which the company says is 3x more scratch resistant compared to the OG Ceramic Shield that we've had since the iPhone 12 (it was slightly upgraded with iPhone 16, but didn't get a new gen numeral). It also has a new, 7-layer anti-glare coating, which does neuter reflections by a little bit. But only a little — the anti-glare of the Galaxy S25 Ultra and its Gorilla Armor 2 glass is still superior.
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.
On feel in the hand, the iPhone does have a whole new camera bar to get used to. However, you can quickly learn to rest it against your index finger, and its smooth sailing from then on. Otherwise, the beveled frame feels nice and soft against the palm. The Galaxy S25 Ultra itself had a bit of a redesign this year, now also delivering flat frames and slightly rounded corners, but its frame is not beveled. Some users like the sharp edges — they provide the feeling of better grip. Others have the harsher feel of it.
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Both phones also offer a 6.9-inch screen panel. The iPhone is slightly thicker, and a bit heavier:
Phone model
iPhone 17 Pro Max
Galaxy S25 Ultra
Thickness
8.75 mm
8.2 mm
Weight
233 g
218 g
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.
No surprises expected here — the iPhone 17 Pro Max has a 6.9-inch Super Retina XDR OLED display with dynamic 1-120 Hz ProMotion. This is rivaled by the Galaxy S25's 6.9-inch Dynamic AMOLED x2 1-120 Hz. These are very good screens and we expect we will have little to complain about.
The big news here is that Apple is using a new 7-layer anti-reflective coating. Samsung has been using something of the sort since the Galaxy S24 Ultra and I've been ranting and raving about how amazing it is and how it helps the AMOLED panel pop out even more. The iPhone 17 Pro Max does have slightly less glare, but the S25 Ultra still beats it
The CIE 1931 xy color gamut chart represents the set(area)of colors that a display can reproduce,with the sRGB colorspace(the highlighted triangle)serving as reference.The chart also provides a visual representation of a display's color accuracy. The small squares across the boundaries of the triangle are the reference points for the various colors, while the small dots are the actual measurements. Ideally, each dot should be positioned on top of its respective square. The 'x:CIE31' and 'y:CIE31' values in the table below the chart indicate the position of each measurement on the chart. 'Y' shows the luminance (in nits) of each measured color, while 'Target Y' is the desired luminance level for that color. Finally, 'ΔE 2000' is the Delta E value of the measured color. Delta E values of below 2 are ideal.
The Color accuracy chart gives an idea of how close a display's measured colors are to their referential values. The first line holds the measured (actual) colors, while the second line holds the reference (target) colors. The closer the actual colors are to the target ones, the better.
The Grayscale accuracy chart shows whether a display has a correct white balance(balance between red,green and blue)across different levels of grey(from dark to bright).The closer the Actual colors are to the Target ones,the better.
Both of these phones can hit excellent brightness numbers. Yes, the Samsung is a bit lower, but its anti-reflective coating being better gives it a leg up in real life use scenarios. But what's even cooler is that both display panels hit sub-1 nit measurements for minimum brightness. That'll make both excellent bedsude buddies. Plus, there's the blue-light filter and automatic whitepoint adjustment on both, so they are catered to being easy on the eyes.
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. But Apple's A17 Pro is an entirely new beast, and it now has the vapor cooling chamber to back it up for sustained performance. Results?
Wow, what a showdown! Both of them give respectable performance in the single-core test, but yes, the A19 Pro does pull ahead by quite a bit. However, for multi-core, they are neck-in-neck. If you've been making your decision based on benchmark numbers, this is going to be a tough nut to crack!
The Galaxy S25 Ultra does start off a bit higher than the iPhone 17 Pro Max. However it throttles down lower, and faster. To be clear — the 3DMark test is specifically designed to force phones to throttle. It's a question of how long it will take and how much they will slow down. The iPhones over the past couple of years took half a cycle to go way down. However, the upgraded vapor chamber seems to be doing wonders this year — the iPhone 17 Pro Max throttles slowly over 3 benchmar cycles and then settles at a "lowest" score that is still quite high!
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.
With iOS 26, we have a new aesthetic to enjoy. Apple calls the new design Liquid Glass, and it layers transparency, animations, and glass-like effects throughout the OS. You can go subtle or max it out with the new Clear Look mode, which really leans into the transparency vibe.
On the practical side, there’s a new dynamic wallpaper that shifts based on time of day and notifications. Music gets animated album artm, while the Camera app has been simplified — you swipe to access extra modes, making the interface cleaner and more minimalistic.
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.
The Galaxy S25 Ultra comes with One UI 7 and Android 15 on board, with the full Galaxy AI suite backed up by Google's Gemini on board. It's eligible to get One UI 8 and Android 16 — let's hope that comes soon. So, conversational assistant, text, voice, and call summaries, image generation, cross-app interactions, it's all here. From here on, it's about what will come to the Galaxy S25 Ultra via updates. It should keep getting those for 7 years, so up until 2032.
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.
PhoneArena Camera Score:
Photo
Video
Phone
Camera Score
Photo Score
Main (wide)
Ultra Wide
Selfie
Zoom
Apple iPhone 17 Pro Max
156
162
84
24
28
26
Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra
158
165
87
23
27
28
Phone
Camera Score
Video Score
Main (wide)
Ultra Wide
Selfie
Zoom
Apple iPhone 17 Pro Max
156
150
77
23
26
24
Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra
158
150
75
21
28
26
Find out more details about photo and video scores for all phones we have tested on our PhoneArena Camera Score page
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.
Samsung, of course, employs four different cameras to get actual zoom levels. And its longest lens is a 5x telephoto — the jumping off point for that 100x digital. In our benchmark, the Samsung scores a couple of points higher than the iPhone 17 Pro Max — it's a negligible difference. It basically tells us that these two cameras are of very similar quality, even if they sometimes decide on slightly different exposures or color grading.
Main Camera
< iPhone 17 Pro MaxGalaxy S25 Ultra >
A perfect example where the iPhone picture came out warmer and more vivid, while the Samsung photo is a bit more down to earth, colder and more contrasty. Either style can work for you and there's the added benefit that Apple does have the Photographic Styles that let you fine-tune said colors and vividness (we take our samples in the default Neutral).
< iPhone 17 Pro MaxGalaxy S25 Ultra >
Apple did promise better night performance and we can see it here. Surprisingly smooth balance between shadows and highlights, with a lot of detail pulled from both. A few months ago, the Galaxy S25 Ultra looked like it had excellent night photos. Now it looks a tiny step behind, with more jagged edges around the grass and slightly more washed out highlights.
Zoom Quality
< iPhone 17 Pro Max 10xGalaxy S25 Ultra 10x >
At 10x zoom, the Samsung wins with better details and less noise. Surprisingly, colors are about the same from both cameras.
Ultra-wide Camera
< iPhone 17 Pro MaxGalaxy S25 Ultra >
The ultra-wide camera of the Galaxy S25 Ultra, for some reason, gave us more saturated and vivid images, with skewed greens and blues. A total opposite of the main camera comparison here.
Selfies
< iPhone 17 Pro MaxGalaxy S25 Ultra >
The yellowish hues of the iPhone strike again. But details and dynamics from both are great.
Otherwise, the new selfie camera from Apple is entirely new tech — it now uses a square sensor, and allows you to take selfies however you like — horizontal or vertical.
More Camera Samples
Video Quality
Above, you can see a video sample comparing the quality of the two phones.
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.
However, one must get with the times. The Pro Max devices usually house big cells — and the iPhone 17 Pro Max pushed beyond that 5,000 mAh barrier! eSIM-only models (US) come wht 5,088 mAh. With iOS, that means 2-day battery life easily. The rest of the world has to make do with 4,832 mAh, which is still more than last year's model.
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.
The iPhone 17 Pro Max is a solid upgrade, especially in terms of hardware. It's sustained performance is a market leader right now, and Apple is poised to take more and more of that mobile gamer niche. The camera updates may be incremental but they are solid. And pro users will enjoy the new ProRes RAW for video for sure.
The comparison is a bit unfair, as the Galaxy S25 Ultra is now 8 months old. It's still a very, very solid phone, but the iPhone has us curious what the S26 Ultra will do in response. It's coming out in just 4 months, after all.
Bottom line, if you can find the S25 Ultra at a discount, it's still an awesome phone. If you go and buy the iPhone 17 Pro Max at full price instead, there's definitely good reason to do so.
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Preslav, a member of the PhoneArena team since 2014, is a mobile technology enthusiast with a penchant for integrating tech into his hobbies and work. Whether it's writing articles on an iPad Pro, recording band rehearsals with multiple phones, or exploring the potential of mobile gaming through services like GeForce Now and Steam Link, Preslav's approach is hands-on and innovative. His balanced perspective allows him to appreciate both Android and iOS ecosystems, focusing on performance, camera quality, and user experience over brand loyalty.
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