iphone 13 pro max vs galaxy S21

 

iPhone 13 Pro Max vs Galaxy S21 Ultra - Which Should You Buy?

Okay Which one is best  iphone 13 pro max  versus galaxy s21 ? although normally i'd actually be comparing the latest iphone with the samsung galaxy note because  there will be the sort of two brand spanking new flagship devices but of course we haven't had a new note this year which year which is a bit disappointing although we have had the fold three but that's not really in the same category and also a lot more expensive

 Let's kick off with pricing and actually the s21ultra wins and by wins i mean loses because it's a hundred pounds or a hundred dollars more expensive than the equivalent spec 13 pro max both of these are pretty eye-wateringly expensive and maybe that difference isn't particularly significant over the course of a you know two three-year contract but the iphone is a bit cheaper. so it points to gryffindor i mean apple on a side note though iphones do hold their value for longer so if you come to trade this in in sort of two three years then you will get more for your money but at the same time if you haven't bought either phone yet and you're thinking you know which one to get you might be able to find a better deal on the s21 ultra because it doesn't hold its value quite as well and also it has been out for a good six months .

After the price what's the next most important thing to consider when buying a new phone well i think it's pretty obvious color okay maybe not but still the iphone is definitely more eye-catching with its choice of four colors. I've got the fancy sierra blue one here whereas the s21 ultra comes in phantom black or phantom silver not the most exciting but if you're gonna put a case on it does it really matter and actually just quickly. I do have a couple of the 13 pro max cases here these are the 50-pound magsafe ones from apple. I would definitely recommend this kind of rubbery silicon version over this clear plastic it feels a lot nicer in this kind of case.

Okay so colors might not be that  important but the design is a big deal and straight away i can tell you for me  at least the s21 ultra is a lot more  comfortable to hold and use it's a little bit lighter but more importantly it's taller and narrower  than the iphone plus we have these rounded rather than flat edges. So the S21 just sits more comfortably in your hand but what do you reckon which do you think looks better they're both  dominated by these big camera modules on the back they're both matte glass. So  they don't really pick up fingerprints or smudges which is great although this  stainless steel frame around the edge of  the iphone is a bit of a smudge magnet .They're both durable with gorilla glass vectors and ip68 water resistance for the s21 and apple's ceramic shield on the iphone plus we also have ip68 but to a deeper six meters for half an hour versus 1.5 on the Samsung but more importantly and you guys are going to pick a side here not android or ios but hole punch or notch which do you think is the least worst option.

The iphone 13s do now have a 20 smaller notch compared to last year but that's only horizontally and the extra space isn't really used at all but in terms of how much screen is covered and also how well the area around it is used for me. I think the s21 ultra's hole punch is the slightly better option both phones also have stereo speakers which sound fantastic the s21 is a little bit bassier and it does get louder but the phones' a touch richer with clearer vocals not really a reason to pick one over the other though. I do appreciate you having this little guy though the alert toggle slider thing majig where you can quickly switch it between silence and ring mode uh which comes in handy if you go into bed. Just want to you know put it in silent mode only the one plus phones will offer something similar on android.

When it comes to unlocking the phones without a doubt the iphone's true depth face unlocking is the best it's extremely reliable even in low light a we have an air sensor but having said that the s21's face locking still does a decent job plus we do get an in-screen fingerprint reader so I guess what's more important having the best face unlocking or average face unlocking but also with an in-screen reader .Let's talk about these screens because they're both old and they're both massive they both support hdr 10 although only the iphone gives us dolby vision hdr which is definitely a nice bonus for netflix but more importantly they both also offer adaptive 120hz refresh rates apple has finally joined the 120 club and we get top panels on both which means they can dynamically adjust between 10 and 120 hertz so actually this can end up saving you battery as you don't always need 120 when you're maybe watching a video shot at 30fps on youtube the thing is though if i gave this to my mum and said hey look it's 120 hertz what do you think she would probably say what's 120 hertz and i can't see any difference to the average consumer . I don't know if it's that much of a selling point but to a more techy enthusiast person and someone who is actually accustomed to a high refresh on an android phone it does make a big  difference so they share the same refresh rate but the s21 ultra is sharper as it supports the higher res wqhd plus resolution which gives us 515 pixels per inch versus a mega 458 on the iphone in the real world unless you have them right up to your face it's not. Something you'd be able to notice  although it is nice to have the option to watch youtube at 1440p for example so it points to samsung there although the  iphone does offer true tone which adjusts the white balance of the screen based on the ambient lighting around you.

So you always have a kind of natural paper white whereas the s21 just has this eye comfort shield but that's not as smart and just gives you warmer colors although the s21 does give you more options to play with you can adjust the resolution and change the screen mode and white balance yourself manually there is a slight difference in brightness though the s21 gets a little bit darker than the iphone there's only a couple of nits in it although you can just see the difference although to its credit the 13 pro and pro max do get noticeably dimmer than the cheaper 13 and also the older 12 series. However at the other end of the spectrum according to my tests at least the iphone hits 1400 nits versus around 1200 on the s21 ultra and actually when playing hdr videos this can go up to 1600 and 1450 respectively so the iphone can get a touch brighter so both screens are fantastic although this does get a bit brighter we also have that dolby vision hdr support and also true tones a bit more intelligent whereas on this we have that high resolution if you want it although you can drop it down to full hd plus to save some battery and also it's a bit more customizable.

Okay so far so good but here's a question which is faster well this is always a tough one to call not least because ios and android are very different we're also comparing two or actually three completely different chips also six versus twelve gigs of ram and also iphones are generally better optimized between the hardware and the software but things get even trickier because there's two versions of this historically the exynos chip has always been a bit rubbish although this year they are very similar within a few percent of each other in terms of both performance and battery but let's kick off with a couple of benchmarks and taking the average score between the two samsung phones the iphone is just simply in another league 57 faster single core 40 faster multi-core and 72 percent faster graphics on paper the iphone is much faster but actually in everyday normal use i do find the s21 ultra a little bit more snappy the faster animations the fact that you can even go into the developer options and speed them up even further if you want to it's just a bit more instant but then there's games and i think generally ios games are a bit better optimized because there's far less fragmentation of hardware and also I think the apple arcade while a subscription does offer some really fun titles but right now there aren't really any games that support this new 120hz on the iphone but we should see developers updating their apps over the next few months so this will change. I  was actually going to test adobe premiere rush to see which phone exported a video project faster and while i can get it on the iphone for some reason right now it is not   supported on the s21 so uh well that was the end of that also just how smoothly the iphone can switch between lenses kind of makes the s21 and frankly all android phones feel really quite laggy and actually doe make a difference when you're transitioning between lenses when you're filming so in terms of raw performance the apple a15 and the iphone is faster i think because of the quicker animations and the fact that you can tweak things a little bit the s21 ultra feels just a bit nippier in actual practice in real
life but what do you think about in five years time which one of these will still be more capable my money will be on the  a15 there's so much untapped potential in this right now and also we do get generally better support over a longer period with apple's products unless they add a software update to slow them down like they did a few years ago but I  think this definitely will be more future proof now this could easily be a whole video by itself but which phone has the best camera while photography is so subjective but from a technical point of view the s20 ultra does offer more flexibility as we get four lenses including a 10 times periscope so we do get much better long range zoom even up to 30 times is usable but i wouldn't go much beyond that we also get 8k video and more pro photography options and subjectively you might prefer the more contrast.

Sometimes less vibrant look of the samsung it used to be the other way around where samsung was too oversaturated whereas the iphone now with bigger sensors and wider apertures across the board also gets a couple of nifty new features including photography styles and this is where you can almost mimic the style of other phones like samsung's stronger contrast or say the google pixel's slightly cooler tone and you can tinker and play around with each style so you can get some really unique looking shots. Although for the purpose of this comparison i have stuck with the iphone's default mode as that's probably still what most people will use then we have cinematic mode aka portrait video and it's genuinely very good the s21 ultra also offers something similar but this is by far the best implementation i've seen even if it Is limited to 1080p 30 and it's slightly awkward to edit as it's in hdr being able to adjust the focus and the bokeh before during and after shooting is just incredible and also the automatic focus racking based on scene and face detection works pretty well .Although i would suggest dialing down the bokeh a little bit to make it look a bit less artificial both phones also have a macro mode this
is new for the 13 pro this year and they  both use the ultra wide lens so you just simply get closer to your subject the iphone does have a closer focal range two versus four centimeters on the s21 but i would give samsung points for being a bit more detailed.

So looking at these camera samples i've taken there is definitely a pattern of the iphone giving us brighter more vibrant shots and pulling up the shadows a little bit although to a less aggressive extent than previous iphones bear in mind though that i am using the exynos version of the s21 for this test and there are subtle differences with the camera on the snapdragon version as a different is both phones shoot great quality video though this is at 4k30 although the s20 ultra does have the 8k option but I would say as a whole the iphone does come out on top in terms of quality and stabilization and also if you are a keen videographer then this will eventually support 4k pros and also you can shoot in double vision hdr so i think points to apple for video neither camera is flawless but between the two which one do you think came on top let me know in the comments below.

What about battery life which one of these lasts longer in my real world use test the iphone had 40 of its battery left by 11 pm versus 30 on the s21 ultra the iphone will last you an extra hour and a half both phones also support wireless charging but in favor of the s21 we do get this reverse charging so you can top up other devices albeit slowly but a bigger deal for me at least is the fact that we get usb c on here rather than lightning. Lightning just feels a bit prehistoric and actually only the iphones and the cheapest base ipad still have this port so i really do hope they switch to usbc at some point the thing is though everything we've talked about so far could be completely irrelevant because if your friends or family use imessage or you have all your files in icloud or maybe use an ipad or macbook and couldn't go without airdrop or you just want the best smartwatch.

The apple watch right now apple's ecosystem is probably the number one reason most people don't consider jumping ship to android to be fair samsung has their own versions of most of these including samsung cloud you've got the galaxy watch and also a few nifty extras like decks if you want to use your phone more like a laptop on a big screen also it is a bit unforgivable that on a phone as big as the 13 pro max that we still don't have decent split screen support for multitasking that's a big plus in my book for the galaxy as is all the customization you have on offer for the display options themes unlocking the dev menu custom launchers the list goes on oh and also don't forget that both this and the fold three are the only galaxy phones that support the s pen it's not as convenient as having it built in like the notes but for more precise drawing and designing the yes pen could be a real selling point.

So let's wrap up which one is best well i've been using the s21 ultra for the past six months or so since it launched as my everyday phone but i have properly switched my personal sim to this now and i am having a great time although there are a few things that I do miss about this there is some element that this is halfway through its life cycle now and we should have a s22 in like four months or something.

I know you're going to shout at me though but honestly i don't think one is better than the other for me as a package I think the iphone 13 pro max offers a bit more of what i want including better battery a slightly more consistent all-round camera and also as apps take advantage of that a15 and the 120 hertz screen we'll start to see some you know real gaming advantage to this so for me my pick right now will be the 13 pro max but you really can't go wrong with either and if you do fancy picking one up for yourself then i'll leave links to both in the description below but what do you reckon would you go apple or samsung or not on the above and maybe get a sony xperia 3 or a one plus 9 or something .

#iPhone13ProMax #GalaxyS21Ultra #Phones