S23 Ultra VS iPhone 14 Pro Max! Don't make a mistake!

The Quality of Display: A Primary Concern for Flagship Phones

I've been saying it for years - when you go out and buy a TV, the quality of that screen is your primary concern. And it's even more relevant when your phone is basically all screen. How good that display is should be gigantic priority. Both these phones are rocking 120Hz OLED displays, and I'm glad to see it's become standard for premium models.

The Ultra's Display: Still a Benchmark

I'm sweating the ultra's display, which still has a 1750 nit brightness in there - actually the same as the S22 Ultra. And the iPhone 14 Pro display can go up to 1600 nits but push it to 2000 nits when it detects a really bright environment. Basing it on numbers, the iPhone edges out Samsung in terms of max brightness outdoors. However, like paper doesn't matter - real life is what matters. The S22 Ultra looks brighter to my eye outside, that's because the iPhone doesn't push the max 2000 nits all that often. But unless these phones are side by side, you really notice no difference whatsoever. They both get plenty bright, no matter which phone you've got - you're never gonna have a hard time seeing what's on the display outdoors.

Always-On Display: A Feature Becoming Mainstream

One of the big selling points for the iPhone 14 Pro was always-on display when Apple launched the phones. I was on display was just a less bright version of your home screen and that was a joke. We waited so many years, and Android has had this feature for years - now it's something that's becoming mainstream, especially across all sorts of Flagship smartphones. So, while the iPhone 14 Pro did pivot to its credit with always-on display, it's not like they're innovating - Samsung has been doing it for years.

Display Comparison: Similarities and Differences

The iPhone 14 Pro Ultra displays are really similar in the absolute best ways possible - color contrast, vibrancy, it's all there. Where they differ is still up front with the camera kind of so we got Dynamic Island on the iPhone 15 Pro which really to me seems like a gimmick at first. But I'm actually surprised how often I'm using it - my use case is really sports scores keeping up to date on Laker games as they're going and be able to look at the phone and see it's awesome to have you can mimic something similar on the Android side - you could have widget setup to do that. I love having it on the iPhone.

Design: A Tale of Two Phones

The iPhone is basically the same design that we've seen for a while, and you can love or hate it. That one is basically the same as previous years until you pick the sucker up, you're that Samsung has flattened out the edges of the phone ever so slightly - but that makes a gigantic difference when holding the phone.

Battery Life: The Same Argument

The rest of this phone is the exact same arguments that you always get between Samsung and the iPhone - do you want face ID? Do you want the best ultrasonic fingerprint sensor out there? Do you want a huge battery, fast charging, do you want MagSafe? A16 fam Dragon 8 Gen 2 everything here feels fast. The big question is probably due on iOS or Android - that's sort of what these always tend to come down to them at this point.

A Choice That Matters

You know the answer - both have their advantage and disadvantages, but they are what make these phones unique from each other. When it comes to these devices, at the peak of their respective game, there is no bad choice. But if I have both of these on a table and assuming you have no allegiance, I'm picking up the S23 Ultra this year - I think Samsung's done an absolutely incredible job with this phone. An alternate that's almost six months newer than the iPhone, that probably isn't a gigantic surprise but is an incredible phone. That packs pretty much everything you would want from Flagship device and sort of the things that were holding it back in previous years are no longer holding it back - Samsung Unchained, uh so to speak.

I love the phone if you pick one up I think you'll love it too

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enportion of this video is brought to you by Trend Micro what you doing John get some shots of the moon on the 23 Ultra while it's out during the day let me see if my 14 pro can do that I'm sure Dan I'm not seeing anything what does yours look like whoa what is that what Samsung Zoom might be a little uh let's say too good to be true but what the phone can do overall is not and we're gonna talk a lot about it the Samsung brings a ton to the table so does the iPhone this is one of my favorite times of the year we get to compare these two flagships now it's a bummer they don't come out the exact same time so it's Apples to Apples so to speak with the iPhone 15 does come out we'll update this and do a fresh comparison but for now let's compare the two heavyweights the flagship Kings the iPhone 14 pro slash Pro Max and the Galaxy s23 Ultra and as in past years I'm not gonna cop out there will be a winner so before everybody's bias comes into play blind camera test time is the best way to get an even playing field here we'll talk a lot about cameras they're a big part of these phones not the only part of these phones but look at a look at B look at both of these pictures here they're obviously really good and they're really good for a reason but look at things that matter the little details look at things like color temperature uh look how it's handling color representation but Caldo low lights are being shown look how the highlights are being shown the little things that add up to make a really good photograph on the portrait mode chat look how it handles cutouts how the bokeh effect is done these are obviously really good cameras but it might surprise you which one was which so let me know in the comments before I tell you if you got it right but a is the s23 ultra and B is the iPhone 14 pro so in the past these phones I think have been really neck and neck especially the past three years when it comes to photo quality typically with the iPhone edging out Samsung this year though it feels like Samsung took two steps gigantic forwards whereas the iPhone maybe just took one it's not that the iPhone photos look bad not at all but it wasn't as huge a step from the iPhone 13 Pro and promac in some scenarios it's arguably worse than last year's phone s23 Ultra made gigantic improvements to the processing like huge leaps and if you look at the s23 ultra versus the s22 ultra on paper there's not much to see not a gigantic difference when you start using these phones you can really see the steps that Samsung made below the surface Samsung's photos for example are bringing Shadows up to show details without muddying up press the exposure or colors you get the detail throughout the entire image as crisp it's sharp it's bright and typical Samsung fashion it's vibrant the iPhone again still taking great photos they feel a little bit more dull and flat in comparison to the s23s pictures and Apple's choice to process their photos slightly cooler the last few years I don't think it's been the best choice I really like the warmer take on photos they used to have uh Samsung has sort of stepped in and skewed their processing slightly warmer and they found a really nice balance between the two in all fairness obviously this is my opinion which film takes to better photos however there are a few things about these cameras that are objectively better and it comes down to camera Hardware so both phones are sporting sort of the usual cameras you've got a main lens telephoto Ultra wide lenses Apple's main camera has a huge jump actually to 48 megapixels which is more than enough to take incredible photos especially when you add in Apple's Pro raw mode to where I think this camera really shines if you're a person who edits photos this is a feature that you are going to want I think that's part of the reason Apple's photos tend to look a little flatter you can go in and bring out kind of whatever you want if you want to go through and do that work on the editing however 48 megapixels is nothing compared to Samsung's 200 megapixel main sensor and you can't quite see the effect and benefit of 200 megapixels until you start zooming in on a photo you've taken with it and see a difference between 48 megapixels and 200 megapixels is huge it's actually by my Keen math over four times while the iPhone maintains a good amount of detail and the image on the iPhone kind of falls apart a little faster than what Samsung does especially when you start to zoom in on the shots and there's a counter argument that the megapixels don't matter too much unless you're blowing up an image or doing a huge amount of Zoom if you're just looking at these pictures just straight out of the camera the four times difference or over four times certainly matters a little bit less so not only that it's 23 Ultra it has their signature 100 times Zoom where you can literally take a photo of the Moon and see details in the crater try to do the same thing with the iPhone 14 pro Max can get this photos are one thing but video is recently becoming a more and more important part of at least how I'm using my phone and maybe you guys too the iPhone has always been the video king when it came to any smartphone out there so the HDR video up to 4K 60fps it looks amazing uh there's detail where you want it and it looks good just right out of camera plus the 14 pro still has Progressive video support as well it's not a feature that I use that much because the file size is just gigantic but it is there if you want to use it and the quality of it prores is substantially better than last year and having that option is really nice if you want it no one not even Samsung is doing Raw on a phone uh better than Apple I think that is just an objective fact at this point Samsung's phones especially the past couple years video always came with a caveat it's the best on the Android side what's through the iPhone being a giant elephant in the room I think it's easy to argue that Samsung has now caught up to the iPhone and even surpassed it in some ways when it comes to video now that is not saying how video is going to look in your third-party social media apps so you know Tick Tock and Instagram a lot of that has to do with how those apps are processing video but just straight from the phone how the video looks Samsung has improved year over year and while Samsung wants you to believe all the credit should go to them I think the real people to thank for that is uh Qualcomm the new Snapdragon chipset inside is doing the heavy lifting on Photo uh and video and they've just let Qualcomm do their thing instead of Samsung trying to do their processing on their own that they have uh past few years if you haven't felt it already I'm clearly leaning towards Samsung as the winner on the camera side which is kind of a strange thing to say taking all biases out and all OS Allegiance is out um outside of pro raw seems like it's just done it better than Apple this year but there's a lot more to what makes up the smartphone experience than just their cameras the biggest versus I think for anybody out there is going to be it's going to be software it's gonna be whether you are iOS whether you are Android whichever side of the fence you are are sitting on if you are ensconced in the Apple ecosystem you need iMessage you need airdrop you need iCloud you probably already know where you're going to be Android if you want the openness customization you know where you are going to be as well but no matter which side you decide to go with you want to keep your software your OS secure and the best ways to do that is video sponsor Trend Micro so you've probably heard of Trend Micro the one of those trusted names in software security but the premium Security Suite gives you the best everything they offer from desktop to mobile and as somebody who's been doing a lot of traveling recently connecting to public Wi-Fi to Hotel Wi-Fi uh always makes me really nervous inside of trend micros premium Security Suite you've got their VPN called proxy one pro it's going to turn any public hotspot into a secure Wi-Fi connection give you peace of mind it was importantly keeping your data secure it's when all you're there it's also going to encrypt communication once connected to ensure privacy so anything you are doing is going to safe it's also going to protect you from yourself and block dangerous malicious websites but beyond that you're also going to get dark web monitoring you're going to get a password manager built in personal help desk to help you with any technical questions you might have and it's a full sort of Security Suite that you can be used on up to 10 devices each so no matter what side you're on if you're on iOS if you're an Android a Mac or PC Trend Micro is going to keep your devices and most importantly your information on those devices secure and with you if it sounds like something you want to check out and save 10 use the code john10 at checkout have all the information that you need down below cameras tend to be the leading Factor people are deciding which phone to get but I've been saying it for years it's the screen when you go out and buy a TV the quality of that screen is your primary concern when your phone is basically all screen how good that display is at least I think should be gigantic priority so both these phones are rocking 120 hertz OLED displays I'm glad to see it's become standard for these premium models I sweating the ultra's display still has a 1750 knit brightness in there actually same as s22 Ultra and the iPhone 14 pro display can go up to 1600 nits but push it to 2000s when it detects a really bright environment basing it on numbers the iPhone Edge out Samsung in Max brightness Outdoors but like paper doesn't matter real life is what matters there's 23 Ultra looks brighter to my eye outside that's because the iPhone doesn't push the max 2000 nits all that often but unless these phones are side by side you really notice no difference whatsoever they both get plenty bright no matter which phone you've got you're never gonna have really a hard time seeing what's on the display Outdoors one of the big selling points for the iPhone 14 pro was always on display when Apple launched the phones I was on display was just a less bright version of your home screen and that was a joke we waited so many years and always on display that just drained your battery and looked like your phone was still on the Apple pivoted to their credit we're now having always on display but if we're being honest certainly mimics what Android has had uh for years uh now I use the always on display on the Apple side I've always used it for years uh on the Samsung side just a small point and I see that become mainstream especially across all sort of Flagship smartphones so the brightness and the always-on display aside uh the iPhone that's 23 Ultra displays are really similar in the absolute best ways possible color contrast vibrancy it is all there where they differ though it's still up front uh with the camera kind of so we got Dynamic Island on the iPhone 15 Pro which really to me seems like a gimmick at first I'm actually surprised how often I'm using it my use case is really sports scores keeping up to date on Laker games as they're going and be able to look at the phone and see it uh it's awesome to have you can mimic something similar on the Android side you could have widget setup to do that I love having it on the iPhone on the camera cutouts on Samsung's I still have a hole punch it looks fine it's been the same sort of design there for years but 100 times uh I'll pick Dynamic Island over the hole punch not to mention the security that you get with face ID foreign shape is obviously the design these phones look different uh the iPhone is the same Hardware that we've seen for a while and you can love or hate it that one is basically the same iPhone design aside from the camera bump size uh it's 23 Ultra at least appears to be the same design as previous years until you pick the sucker up you're that Samsung has flattened out the edges of the phone ever so slightly but that makes a gigantic difference when holding the phone and I obviously just throw a case on any phone really none of this particularly matters at all but if you are one of the brave souls who's their phones caseless uh this will matter to you so the rest of this phone is the exact same arguments that you always get between Samsung and the iPhone do you want face ID you want the best ultrasonic fingerprint sensor out there do you want a huge battery fast charging do you want mag save a16 fam Dragon 8 Gen 2 everything here feels fast the big question is probably due on iOS or Android that's sort of what these always tend to come down to them at this point you know the answer you both have their advantage and disadvantages but they are what makes these phones unique from each other and listen we are comparing a Lamborghini and a Ferrari at this point these phones are very expensive and at the peak of their respective game there is no bad choice when it comes to these devices but if I have both of these on a table and if you have both these on a table and try to pick which ones to get and assuming you have no s Allegiance I'm picking up the s23 ultra this year I think Samsung's done an absolutely incredible job with this phone an alternate it's almost six months newer than the iPhone that's probably not a gigantic surprise but is an incredible phone that packs pretty much everything you would want from Flagship device and sort of the things that were holding it back in previous years are no longer holding it back Samsung Unchained uh so to speak I love the phone if you pick one up I think you'll love it tooportion of this video is brought to you by Trend Micro what you doing John get some shots of the moon on the 23 Ultra while it's out during the day let me see if my 14 pro can do that I'm sure Dan I'm not seeing anything what does yours look like whoa what is that what Samsung Zoom might be a little uh let's say too good to be true but what the phone can do overall is not and we're gonna talk a lot about it the Samsung brings a ton to the table so does the iPhone this is one of my favorite times of the year we get to compare these two flagships now it's a bummer they don't come out the exact same time so it's Apples to Apples so to speak with the iPhone 15 does come out we'll update this and do a fresh comparison but for now let's compare the two heavyweights the flagship Kings the iPhone 14 pro slash Pro Max and the Galaxy s23 Ultra and as in past years I'm not gonna cop out there will be a winner so before everybody's bias comes into play blind camera test time is the best way to get an even playing field here we'll talk a lot about cameras they're a big part of these phones not the only part of these phones but look at a look at B look at both of these pictures here they're obviously really good and they're really good for a reason but look at things that matter the little details look at things like color temperature uh look how it's handling color representation but Caldo low lights are being shown look how the highlights are being shown the little things that add up to make a really good photograph on the portrait mode chat look how it handles cutouts how the bokeh effect is done these are obviously really good cameras but it might surprise you which one was which so let me know in the comments before I tell you if you got it right but a is the s23 ultra and B is the iPhone 14 pro so in the past these phones I think have been really neck and neck especially the past three years when it comes to photo quality typically with the iPhone edging out Samsung this year though it feels like Samsung took two steps gigantic forwards whereas the iPhone maybe just took one it's not that the iPhone photos look bad not at all but it wasn't as huge a step from the iPhone 13 Pro and promac in some scenarios it's arguably worse than last year's phone s23 Ultra made gigantic improvements to the processing like huge leaps and if you look at the s23 ultra versus the s22 ultra on paper there's not much to see not a gigantic difference when you start using these phones you can really see the steps that Samsung made below the surface Samsung's photos for example are bringing Shadows up to show details without muddying up press the exposure or colors you get the detail throughout the entire image as crisp it's sharp it's bright and typical Samsung fashion it's vibrant the iPhone again still taking great photos they feel a little bit more dull and flat in comparison to the s23s pictures and Apple's choice to process their photos slightly cooler the last few years I don't think it's been the best choice I really like the warmer take on photos they used to have uh Samsung has sort of stepped in and skewed their processing slightly warmer and they found a really nice balance between the two in all fairness obviously this is my opinion which film takes to better photos however there are a few things about these cameras that are objectively better and it comes down to camera Hardware so both phones are sporting sort of the usual cameras you've got a main lens telephoto Ultra wide lenses Apple's main camera has a huge jump actually to 48 megapixels which is more than enough to take incredible photos especially when you add in Apple's Pro raw mode to where I think this camera really shines if you're a person who edits photos this is a feature that you are going to want I think that's part of the reason Apple's photos tend to look a little flatter you can go in and bring out kind of whatever you want if you want to go through and do that work on the editing however 48 megapixels is nothing compared to Samsung's 200 megapixel main sensor and you can't quite see the effect and benefit of 200 megapixels until you start zooming in on a photo you've taken with it and see a difference between 48 megapixels and 200 megapixels is huge it's actually by my Keen math over four times while the iPhone maintains a good amount of detail and the image on the iPhone kind of falls apart a little faster than what Samsung does especially when you start to zoom in on the shots and there's a counter argument that the megapixels don't matter too much unless you're blowing up an image or doing a huge amount of Zoom if you're just looking at these pictures just straight out of the camera the four times difference or over four times certainly matters a little bit less so not only that it's 23 Ultra it has their signature 100 times Zoom where you can literally take a photo of the Moon and see details in the crater try to do the same thing with the iPhone 14 pro Max can get this photos are one thing but video is recently becoming a more and more important part of at least how I'm using my phone and maybe you guys too the iPhone has always been the video king when it came to any smartphone out there so the HDR video up to 4K 60fps it looks amazing uh there's detail where you want it and it looks good just right out of camera plus the 14 pro still has Progressive video support as well it's not a feature that I use that much because the file size is just gigantic but it is there if you want to use it and the quality of it prores is substantially better than last year and having that option is really nice if you want it no one not even Samsung is doing Raw on a phone uh better than Apple I think that is just an objective fact at this point Samsung's phones especially the past couple years video always came with a caveat it's the best on the Android side what's through the iPhone being a giant elephant in the room I think it's easy to argue that Samsung has now caught up to the iPhone and even surpassed it in some ways when it comes to video now that is not saying how video is going to look in your third-party social media apps so you know Tick Tock and Instagram a lot of that has to do with how those apps are processing video but just straight from the phone how the video looks Samsung has improved year over year and while Samsung wants you to believe all the credit should go to them I think the real people to thank for that is uh Qualcomm the new Snapdragon chipset inside is doing the heavy lifting on Photo uh and video and they've just let Qualcomm do their thing instead of Samsung trying to do their processing on their own that they have uh past few years if you haven't felt it already I'm clearly leaning towards Samsung as the winner on the camera side which is kind of a strange thing to say taking all biases out and all OS Allegiance is out um outside of pro raw seems like it's just done it better than Apple this year but there's a lot more to what makes up the smartphone experience than just their cameras the biggest versus I think for anybody out there is going to be it's going to be software it's gonna be whether you are iOS whether you are Android whichever side of the fence you are are sitting on if you are ensconced in the Apple ecosystem you need iMessage you need airdrop you need iCloud you probably already know where you're going to be Android if you want the openness customization you know where you are going to be as well but no matter which side you decide to go with you want to keep your software your OS secure and the best ways to do that is video sponsor Trend Micro so you've probably heard of Trend Micro the one of those trusted names in software security but the premium Security Suite gives you the best everything they offer from desktop to mobile and as somebody who's been doing a lot of traveling recently connecting to public Wi-Fi to Hotel Wi-Fi uh always makes me really nervous inside of trend micros premium Security Suite you've got their VPN called proxy one pro it's going to turn any public hotspot into a secure Wi-Fi connection give you peace of mind it was importantly keeping your data secure it's when all you're there it's also going to encrypt communication once connected to ensure privacy so anything you are doing is going to safe it's also going to protect you from yourself and block dangerous malicious websites but beyond that you're also going to get dark web monitoring you're going to get a password manager built in personal help desk to help you with any technical questions you might have and it's a full sort of Security Suite that you can be used on up to 10 devices each so no matter what side you're on if you're on iOS if you're an Android a Mac or PC Trend Micro is going to keep your devices and most importantly your information on those devices secure and with you if it sounds like something you want to check out and save 10 use the code john10 at checkout have all the information that you need down below cameras tend to be the leading Factor people are deciding which phone to get but I've been saying it for years it's the screen when you go out and buy a TV the quality of that screen is your primary concern when your phone is basically all screen how good that display is at least I think should be gigantic priority so both these phones are rocking 120 hertz OLED displays I'm glad to see it's become standard for these premium models I sweating the ultra's display still has a 1750 knit brightness in there actually same as s22 Ultra and the iPhone 14 pro display can go up to 1600 nits but push it to 2000s when it detects a really bright environment basing it on numbers the iPhone Edge out Samsung in Max brightness Outdoors but like paper doesn't matter real life is what matters there's 23 Ultra looks brighter to my eye outside that's because the iPhone doesn't push the max 2000 nits all that often but unless these phones are side by side you really notice no difference whatsoever they both get plenty bright no matter which phone you've got you're never gonna have really a hard time seeing what's on the display Outdoors one of the big selling points for the iPhone 14 pro was always on display when Apple launched the phones I was on display was just a less bright version of your home screen and that was a joke we waited so many years and always on display that just drained your battery and looked like your phone was still on the Apple pivoted to their credit we're now having always on display but if we're being honest certainly mimics what Android has had uh for years uh now I use the always on display on the Apple side I've always used it for years uh on the Samsung side just a small point and I see that become mainstream especially across all sort of Flagship smartphones so the brightness and the always-on display aside uh the iPhone that's 23 Ultra displays are really similar in the absolute best ways possible color contrast vibrancy it is all there where they differ though it's still up front uh with the camera kind of so we got Dynamic Island on the iPhone 15 Pro which really to me seems like a gimmick at first I'm actually surprised how often I'm using it my use case is really sports scores keeping up to date on Laker games as they're going and be able to look at the phone and see it uh it's awesome to have you can mimic something similar on the Android side you could have widget setup to do that I love having it on the iPhone on the camera cutouts on Samsung's I still have a hole punch it looks fine it's been the same sort of design there for years but 100 times uh I'll pick Dynamic Island over the hole punch not to mention the security that you get with face ID foreign shape is obviously the design these phones look different uh the iPhone is the same Hardware that we've seen for a while and you can love or hate it that one is basically the same iPhone design aside from the camera bump size uh it's 23 Ultra at least appears to be the same design as previous years until you pick the sucker up you're that Samsung has flattened out the edges of the phone ever so slightly but that makes a gigantic difference when holding the phone and I obviously just throw a case on any phone really none of this particularly matters at all but if you are one of the brave souls who's their phones caseless uh this will matter to you so the rest of this phone is the exact same arguments that you always get between Samsung and the iPhone do you want face ID you want the best ultrasonic fingerprint sensor out there do you want a huge battery fast charging do you want mag save a16 fam Dragon 8 Gen 2 everything here feels fast the big question is probably due on iOS or Android that's sort of what these always tend to come down to them at this point you know the answer you both have their advantage and disadvantages but they are what makes these phones unique from each other and listen we are comparing a Lamborghini and a Ferrari at this point these phones are very expensive and at the peak of their respective game there is no bad choice when it comes to these devices but if I have both of these on a table and if you have both these on a table and try to pick which ones to get and assuming you have no s Allegiance I'm picking up the s23 ultra this year I think Samsung's done an absolutely incredible job with this phone an alternate it's almost six months newer than the iPhone that's probably not a gigantic surprise but is an incredible phone that packs pretty much everything you would want from Flagship device and sort of the things that were holding it back in previous years are no longer holding it back Samsung Unchained uh so to speak I love the phone if you pick one up I think you'll love it too\n"