Nothing wrong with a little friendly competition.
Samsung announced its latest line of Galaxy smartphones on Wednesday, officially called the Galaxy S23 (The event also rolled out the company's new Book3 laptops). Just like last year, there are three new phones, with the lineup bookended by the relatively affordable Galaxy S23 and the premium Galaxy S23 Ultra. The Galaxy S23 Plus is cool too, but it’s basically just a bigger version of the basic S23.
With all of that in mind, it’s time to figure out how these new phones compare to Apple’s latest handsets. Here’s how the Galaxy S23 and S23 Ultra stack up to the iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro Max, respectively.
Samsung Galaxy S23 vs. iPhone 14 specs and price
Let’s start with the two entry-level models, the Galaxy S23 and the iPhone 14. Both of them start at identical $800 price points, so right away, we’ve established some parity. They also both have 6.1-inch displays, though Samsung’s phone has a distinct advantage: Its refresh rate goes up to 120Hz, while the iPhone 14 is frustratingly still stuck at 60Hz.
Samsung also at least has a numeric advantage when it comes to the phones’ rear camera arrays. The S23 boasts a 50MP main sensor with a 12MP ultrawide lens and a 10MP zoom lens, with 30x zoom capabilities. The iPhone 14 only has a pair of 12MP lenses (one is an ultrawide sensor), though we can’t know for sure which camera is actually better without more testing.
That said, Samsung’s 30x zoom beats Apple’s 5x digital zoom any day.
Internally, the two phones are quite different in ways that aren’t entirely comparable. Every S23 phone rocks a brand new Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip that should keep the phones humming along quite nicely. Apple, meanwhile, uses its own in-house silicon for phones, with the iPhone 14 being powered by the slightly older A15 Bionic chip. Again, we’ll have to wait for direct performance testing, but both phones should be fast and smooth to use.
Apple wins on storage, going up to 512GB while the Galaxy S23 only goes up to 256GB. Samsung, however, packed a bigger 3,900mAh battery into the S23, compared to the iPhone 14’s 3,279mAh battery. The Galaxy S23 also has a mightily convenient USB-C charger, something iPhones won’t have until later this year.
Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra vs. iPhone 14 Pro Max specs and price
As for the premium models of each smartphone lineup, the differences are substantially more noticeable. Not in the sense that one phone is significantly better than the other, but they both offer different experiences.
To start, Apple’s iPhone 14 Pro Max starts at $1,100 while the Galaxy S23 Ultra starts at $1,200. There is a bit of a wrinkle to this: The $1,100 Pro Max only has 128GB of storage, while Samsung’s phone comes with a minimum of 256GB. Both phones go up to a maximum of 1TB, in case you were wondering.
Their display sizes are similar, with the Galaxy coming in at 6.8 inches and the iPhone at 6.7. They also both go up to 120Hz, so that disparity is gone here. However, in terms of display tech, things take an interesting turn. The iPhone 14 Pro Max comes with Apple’s unique “Dynamic Island” feature, which turns the housing for the selfie camera into a part of the phone’s interface. It changes size and shape to display notifications and give you more control over the phone. Samsung doesn’t really have anything equivalent to Dynamic Island yet.
Let's be fair, though. Samsung also includes an S-Pen stylus with a little slot built into the Galaxy S23 Ultra. There is no version of the iPhone that offers that, so stylus lovers really only have one direction to go here.
The two phones also differ quite a bit in camera specs. Apple went with a trio of lenses, measuring in at 48MP for the main sensor and 12MP for the ultrawide and telephoto lenses. Samsung did things differently this year, including a whopping 200MP main lens on the Galaxy S23 Ultra. It’s joined by a 12MP ultrawide lens and a pair of 10MP zoom lenses.
To better illustrate the difference, the Pro Max’s digital zoom only goes up to 15x, while the S23 Ultra can zoom up to 100x via its “Space Zoom” feature. To be clear, there’s so much software processing happening with photos on both of these phones that the difference in megapixels may not manifest in obvious ways. Both phones can almost certainly produce gorgeous photos, in other words.
Rounding out the comparison, let’s look inside each phone. The difference here is similar to what we saw with the baseline models. The Galaxy S23 Ultra comes with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip, while the Pro Max comes with Apple’s newest A16 Bionic chip. Again, it’ll take real testing to determine which is better, but there’s next to zero chance that either of these phones perform poorly. Oh, and Samsung packed a 5,000mAh battery into its phone while Apple only included one that measures in at 4,323mAh.
Put simply, you probably can’t go wrong with any of these phones. It really just depends on whether you prefer Android or iOS. Remember, some people in your life might judge you based on the color of your text messages. Fair or not, just keep that in mind.
