iPhone 16 Pro Max vs Samsung Galaxy S24 camera comparison – judge for yourself

An iPhone 16 Pro Max vs Samsung Galaxy S24 camera comparison concludes that it’s hard to pick an overall winner given the role played by personal preferences, but the range of sample shots provides a really good chance to judge for yourself.

The piece starts out by noting that Samsung wins the megapixel war, though we’ve frequently cautioned that squeezing ever more pixels into a tiny sensor can actually result in worse images …

CNET’s Abrar Al-Heeti also points to the Camera Control button, though isn’t a fan of using it for anything more than opening the Camera app.

She argues that a lot depends on personal tastes, and proves her point by praising aspects of both cameras which are often cited as flaws.

I’ve always admired the vibrancy of photos captured on Galaxy phones; the higher saturation and brightness can offer richer-looking images, especially out in nature and with photos of people. But I also admire the sharpness of photos and videos on the iPhone, and how images tend to appear more true to real-life colors.

Samsung has often been criticized for over-saturated photos, and Apple for over-sharpened ones.

The same personal preference can be seen in night shots, in which the iPhone produces a much more natural-looking shot but Al-Heeti prefers the more exaggerated sky in the Samsung image.

One of the areas in which I feel the iPhone has significantly improved over the years is with nighttime shots, and the iPhone 16 Pro Max did a great job with brightening up low-light images and making them pop. That said, I still prefer this nighttime shot taken on the Galaxy S24 Ultra, since the sky is a more vivid blue, but the colorful lighting is similarly punchy in both photos.

On the objective side, Samsung offers a maximum 10x telephoto lens against the 5x reach of the iPhone, though Al-Heeti praises the iPhone for the sharpness in a telephoto shot.

The S24 Ultra’s 10x zoom really is quite impressive, as it preserves the quality of the shot and its sharpness. The 5x zoom on the iPhone 16 Pro Max also showcases stunning detail and crispness. In these images of a skyscraper captured at a distance from Salesforce Park, the S24 Ultra again brightens up the overall shot, while the iPhone 16 Pro Max brings a sharpness that can best be seen by looking at the more defined windows of the building ahead. 

I don’t share her tastes, but do appreciate the wide range of comparison shots provided, so check out the piece for yourself to see how you rate them.

Photo: Apple