iPhone 13 Pro Max vs Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra: Who will win? | digital trends (2023)

There is no doubt that theiPhone 13 Promaxis the most luxurious, souped-up Apple smartphone you can currently buy. With newly improved camera lenses, a staggering 120Hz refresh rate, an enlarged (and more efficient) battery, the new A15 Bionic chip, and the option to have a whopping 1TB of storage, it pretty much covers every single base a smartphone can throw at it can.

While it may be the best iOS phone, it's not necessarily the best smartphone with any operating system. Another prime candidate for such a title is theSamsung Galaxy S21 Ultra, which also improves on its predecessor in several important areas. As with the iPhone 13 Pro Max, it really puts most other smartphones to shame, although it's not for someone looking to save a little cash.

The question is which is the better phone overall: the iPhone 13 Pro Max or the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra? We answer that question by putting both phones through an extensive head-to-head test. Based on the specs, designs, displays, performance, cameras, and software, we should help you decide which is the best super flagship.

specifications

Design, display and durability

The iPhone 13 Pro Max will not win awards for design originality. As with the other devices in the iPhone 13 series, it replicates the flat design of the iPhone 12 series. The only noticeable difference is that it has a smaller notch. But when the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra offers a nearly frameless and uninterrupted edge-to-edge display with a discrete punch-hole selfie camera at the top center, such an improvement seems pretty trivial. When the S21 Ultra's newly introduced rear camera module is added, which elegantly slopes into the phone's shoulder, the Samsung phone looks even better.

It's also worth noting that the two devices weigh about the same (8 ounces for the S21 Ultra, almost 8.5 ounces for the iPhone 13 Pro Max) and have similar sized dimensions. In other words, you'll find them equally comfortable, and if you have smaller hands, that means you should probably trade uncomfortable for comfortable here.

The S21 Ultra is also ahead of the game when it comes to the display. Its impressive 6.9-inch Dynamic AMOLED screen has a resolution of 3200 x 1440 pixels, giving you 515 pixels per inch. The 6.7-inch Super Retina OLED display of the iPhone 13 Pro Max, on the other hand, contains 2778 x 1284 pixels, which is 458 pixels per inch. This makes the S21 Ultra slightly sharper than the iPhone 13 Pro Max, while also hitting a maximum brightness of 1,500 nits, compared to 1,200 on the Apple phone. Both devices support a very nice 120Hz refresh rate, but when the S21 Ultra also offers an AMOLED display (as opposed to OLED), you also get slightly deeper blacks and richer contrasts.

Both phones have received an official IP68 rating, indicating they can withstand submersion in up to 1.5 meters of water for up to 30 minutes. While this puts both devices on par, the S21 Ultra wins this round due to its more attractive design and slightly more impressive display.

Winner: Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra

Performance, battery life and charging

The Galaxy S21 Ultra comes with the (still relatively) new Snapdragon 888, which boasts a 5nm manufacturing process for its transistors, meaning more of them can be fitted into the same available space. Luckily, the iPhone 13 Pro Max also benefits from a 5nm chip, the A15 Bionic, which has just been released for the 13 series. While the A15 in the iPhone 13 Pro Max only has 6GB of RAM, this is more than enough as Apple phones use RAM a little differently than Android alternatives. Put another way, although the S21 Ultra comes with a whopping 12GB of RAM, you'll find similar performance on both devices.

Neither phone has a microSD card slot, but both offer ample internal storage. This is particularly the case with the iPhone 13 Pro Max, which can range from 128GB to a whopping 1TB of internal storage, provided you're willing to shell out an extra $500 for the privilege. The S21 Ultra can be bought in a version with 512GB of storage, which should be enough for most purposes.

The S21 Ultra comes with a larger 5,000mAh battery compared to the iPhone 13 Pro Max's 4,373mAh battery. This might seem like a big difference, but Apple says the 13 Pro Max gets 2.5 hours more offers maximum battery life than last year's 12 Pro Max, which could leave you with almost 50% of the battery power even after a fairly intense day. That's about the same amount of usage as the S21 Ultra, although we'd need to do a full review of the iPhone 13 Pro Max before we can tell if one has a slight advantage over the other. The 13 Pro Max may have it, but we're calling this round a tie for now.

Winner: Tie

Cameras

The iPhone 13 Pro Max features the same triple-lens rear camera setup as its predecessor, but its hardware is actually new. That means it increases its aperture values ​​to f/1.5 for the wide-angle lens and f/1.8 for the ultra-wide-angle lens, while adding a 77mm-equivalent telephoto camera with an f/2.8 aperture, which adds a 6- fold zoom range between the ultra wide angle and offers telephoto cameras. Since the iPhone 12 Pro Max was already a great camera phone, the iPhone 13 Pro Max gets seriously impressive.

Speaking of impressive, the S21 Ultra sports a quad-lens setup: a 108-megapixel wide-angle lens, a 10-megapixel periscope telephoto lens, a 10-megapixel telephoto lens, and a 12-megapixel ultra-wide-angle lens. The periscope telephoto lens in particular allows for a 10x optical zoom, giving the photographer some impressively detailed snaps. At the same time, Samsung has seriously upped its game in terms of overall usability, with standard shots offering a much more balanced than before without the oversaturation of before.

So in terms of which phone will offer a better camera overall, it's hard to say for sure at this point. Given the history, the iPhone can top things off, especially when the iPhone 12 Pro Max was such a great camera phone to begin with. iPhone 13 Pro Max also adds a new Cinematic mode for recording videos, allowing you to shift focus from foreground to background in an impressive way.

Still, it would be premature to conclude that the iPhone 13 Pro Max is better at taking photos at this early stage, so this round is another draw.

Winner: Tie

software and updates

The iPhone 13 Pro Max works withiOS 15, the latest version of Apple's mobile operating system. This adds new features like a more useful notification summary, the ability to share media via FaceTime and Messages, and a new focus mode to avoid distractions (from work, play, or sleep). The Galaxy S21 Ultra now runs on One UI 3.1, the skin from SamsungAndroid 11. This is a streamlined and extremely user-friendly mod of the basic Android template, but it also offers a high level of customization, making it a very good all-rounder.

Both systems have their pros and cons, so picking a winner between them would be unfair. However, the iPhone 13 Pro Max will almost certainly not only get faster updates, but more of them as well. Even now the six year oldiPhone 6Sgot iOS 15, so your phone will be supported well past the point where you get craving for a new phone. The same cannot be said for the S21 Ultra, which as a Samsung phone will have to wait a bit for Android updates from Google and won't be supported for quite as long.

Winner: iPhone 13 Pro Max

Special features

Needless to say, both phones are supported5G, and this covers the basic sub-6Hz frequency range as well as the faster mmWave band. They are also supported by all major airlines, so you will have no problem getting one5GSignal provided you are near a5GNetwork.

Apart from5G, the S21 Ultra also introduces a new feature for the Galaxy S range: it supports theS pen, which means you can draw, doodle, and take notes on the device. Unlike the Note 20 Ultra, it doesn't have a slot for the stylus, while lacking some of the advanced compatibility features you get with the Note 20 Ultra, such as: B. the Bluetooth-enabled remote shutter release for the camera app. Also, you have to pay extra to get it, which costs between $50 and $100.

The iPhone 13 Pro Max doesn't add anything significantly new. There's the Cinematic Mode feature mentioned above, while it also uses Ceramic Shield glass in its display, making it more durable. Aside from that, you mostly get pretty long-standing special features like Face ID and Memojis.

Winner: Tie

price and availability

Neither phone is cheap. The iPhone 13 Pro Max is available for pre-order from Apple and will be released on September 24th. It starts at $1,099 for the 128GB model but goes up to $1,599 for the 1TB version. As you'd expect, it's supported by all major airlines, while being sold far and wide by third-party providers.

The Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra5Gstarts at $1,200 for the 128GB model before rising to $1,250 for the 256GB model and $1,380 for the 512GB version. It is supported by all major airlines and can be purchased from most major online retailers.

Winner: Tie

overall winner:Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra

Yes, it's very tight, but theSamsung Galaxy S21 Ultra, narrowly cuts this head-to-head race. Its superior design and slightly more impressive screen put it at the topiPhone 13 Promax, even if the latter offers comparable performance and a similarly great camera. The compatibility with the S Pen also speaks for itself, even if not everyone will find such a feature useful.

However, since we haven't fully tested the iPhone 13 Pro Max yet, this result may change in a future update. It's possible that road tests will show Apple's phone to offer slightly longer battery life, as well as a more versatile and impressive camera. So watch this room.

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