This is the comparison between this year’s best compact flagships S24 & iPhone 16. It’s been 8-9 months since the launch of the S24 & 3-4 months since the launch of the iPhone 16. And we’re doing this comparison after such a long time because most of the people are going to buy it in 2025. 1 year old & 1 generation old people buy it, whether it’s an iPhone or S series phones. So it’s going to be interesting. And many people asked which is going to be this year’s best compact flagship.
First, let’s talk about the design of both the phones. You can’t really make out the difference. Both have a great in-hand feel. The only difference is that the frame of the iPhone is matte. This is also matte, but it needs to be a little shiny for fingerprints etc. There aren’t that many. It has a glass & aluminium sandwich design. Like I said, you can’t really make out the in-hand feel. The only advantage is that the iPhone has a 2.0 USB port, whereas the S24 has a 3.2 USB port. That’s why the data transfers in the S24 are much faster. And because it’s a flagship, both have IP68 certification. Let’s talk about the durability of the display. It has a ceramic shield,
which the iPhone claims is 50% stronger. But it’s tensile strength has increased. It’s tougher now. It’s hardness has reduced & that’s why there are more scratches on the iPhone. Whereas, I’ve been using it for 8-9 months & there are minimal scratches because it has Gorilla Glass Victus 2. So, I’ll prefer the S24 for the display durability. Let’s talk about the display size & specs. The iPhone 16 has a 6.1” display,
whereas the S24 has a 6.2” display. But the advantage is that the iPhone 16 has a 60Hz display, whereas the S24 has a 120Hz display. It has a Dynamic AMOLED 2X display, Retina XDR OLED display. If you look at the display of both the phones, they’re quite good. There’s 1 thing for sure, the Samsung bezels are thin. So yeah, that’s what it is. It’s slightly bigger, but there’s not much of a difference. The S24 doesn’t have a Dynamic AMOLED 2X, whereas the S24 has a Dynamic AMOLED 2X which is functional & useful. But the S24 has a smaller punch hole display, so you get more screen real estate. But you get that functional Dynamic AMOLED 2X. When it first came, I thought it wasn’t that useful. But gradually, I’m warming up to it. But in terms of display brightness, the S24 has a peak brightness of 2600 nits & the S24 has a peak brightness of 2000 nits. So yeah, it has a slightly brighter display on the S24. Performance The iPhone 16’s A18 chipset definitely beats the S24’s Exynos 2400 in terms of performance.
There are 1-2 things that I’d like to talk about. But yes, definitely the A18 is a more powerful chipset. You’ll see the synthetic scores like Geekbench, Geekbench AI. In all of them, we tested that the iPhone A18 is better. And we also tested the 3DMark Extreme Wildlife stress test. There too, the A18 trumps the S24. It’s GPU & CPU are more stable in comparison to the Exynos 2400. You can easily play AAA rated games on the iPhone. You can play them at higher FPS. If I talk about gaming specifically, the iPhone’s 60FPS is a bit restrictive as it has 120FPS. You can play at higher settings, but you won’t be able to play at AAA settings. But yes, the smoothness is more on the S24. We played Genshin Impact & we got 58.9 FPS on the iPhone & 47 FPS on the S24.
The A18 is definitely a more powerful chipset as it has a better CPU & GPU. But in some cases, like I said, you see more smoothness in 120Hz gaming. In terms of performance, the A18 & Exynos 2400 is a much improved chipset. So here, the iPhone 16 is the winner. Now there’s a question about the thermals of the Exynos. If I compare it with the previous generation Exynos chipset, the Exynos 2400 definitely performs much better in terms of thermals. In terms of connectivity, I’d say the iPhone 16 has an edge as it has Wi-Fi 7 support. Whereas in the S24, you get Wi-Fi 6E. Yes, it has 5G bands support, but that’s not a problem, it’s similar. You get Bluetooth 5.3 support in both, so that’s ok. So I’d say the iPhone has an edge in connectivity.
And it’s my personal opinion that I’d prefer the Face ID on the iPhone 16 over the S24’s ultrasonic fingerprint sensor. Face ID sometimes doesn’t work properly at night due to darkness, not with the ultrasonic fingerprint sensor. The ultrasonic fingerprint sensor always works quite well, so I’d prefer the S24’s fingerprint sensor. Multimedia is interesting, I’d say it’s a tie. The video viewing experience is good as the display is bigger & brighter. So I liked the S24’s video viewing experience more. But in terms of audio quality & overall quality, the S24’s speakers are better. So for audio, I’d say the iPhone 16 & for video, the S24. And at one place, I’d say the iPhone has an edge & that’s the battery. If I talk about the battery, we got a screen-on battery life of 7 hours on the iPhone 16. And I’ll tell you what, there’s a reason why. The 3Nm processor on the A18 is much more power efficient.
And the Exynos 2400 has 4Nm, so it’s slightly less power efficient. But there’s a caveat here, it’s 60Hz & the difference between 120Hz & 60Hz is that 120Hz eats up more battery. So if I keep it at 60Hz on the S24, which obviously we didn’t do, but if we keep it at 60Hz, then the battery will definitely increase. As far as overall battery life goes, I’ll give it to the iPhone 16. But what about charging? In wired charging, the S24 charges with 25W, whereas in wired charging, it charges with 20W. So there’s a slight edge for Samsung.
MagSafe charging gives you 25W in the iPhone 16, whereas this one has 15W only. So in wireless, the iPhone is better. In wired, the S24 is better. I’m going to talk about the camera & other things, but definitely wait for value for money. We Indians look for value for money, which phone gives us more bang for the buck. And I’m going to talk about that as there’s a lot of price difference. But yes, there’s a form factor & a lot of people choose between these 2, that’s why we compared. But there’s quite a difference between both the prices, so wait for that. Let’s talk about OS & UI. And maybe you won’t agree with me, but the OneUI 6.1 that you get on the S24, I think that’s better. And with the features of Galaxy AI, some of them are very useful. We’ve been talking about Apple Intelligence for so many days, they’re slowly rolling out. And according to me, the features that have come out are a bit underwhelming. You can transcribe the Galaxy AI’s notes, you can format the notes, you have to summarize a big white paper,
it does it very well & we’ve tried it & it works well. There’s circle to search, translation, but again that interpreter mode. It’s for specific situations, especially when you travel a lot & you have to translate the language. In India, you go to a lot of different states & you want to convert these languages. In such situations, I’d definitely say that you’ll prefer the S24. There are some features of Apple Intelligence, like clean up, updated Siri, Siri has integrated chat GPT, call recording, transcribe, writing tools, Genmoji, so there are a lot of things & they work well. But I think Galaxy AI is slightly better. And overall, if I talk about the UI, I prefer it.
And like I said at the start, you might differ, it’s up to you. In terms of security, we generally see that people prefer iOS. I basically played around a lot with the object eraser, object mover & instant slow motion. Even if you didn’t shoot on higher FPS, you can still do slow motion. So yeah, like I said, AI features on Galaxy AI are better than iOS. Now let’s talk about updates. I’d say that Samsung is promising 7 years of updates. And iPhone has always been good, but they generally have 5-6 years. But 7 years is really good, so neck to neck there & slightly better on Samsung. So as a winner, I’d say that in my personal opinion, One UI is better than iOS. At least that’s what I’ll say. Now let’s talk about the camera. The S24 camera gives you 3x telephoto, i.e. 3x optical zoom. Which the iPhone 16 doesn’t give. But the iPhone 16’s camera has some advantages.
Now if I talk about the specs, you get a 50MP, 12MP, 10MP camera, 12MP ultrawide, 10MP telephoto. Whereas in the iPhone 16, you get 48MP plus 12MP ultrawide, so there’s no telephoto. But when you get the default 24MP output from the iPhone, if you talk about clarity, sharpness & overall photo, then the iPhone 16 is better as compared to the S24. And yes, there’s no telephoto, but the Fusion technology & the 2x photos you take on the iPhone, they seriously look very close to optical. So there’s a good thing about the iPhone 16. But if you go beyond 2x, then the S24 beats it. The 3x optical zoom definitely beats the S24.
The photos you take, or the portraits you take from the 3x, they come out better on the S24. And if I talk about the colours specifically, then you get the punchy colours in the S24. In this, you get more neutral colours. But yes, there are photography styles & filters that you can choose from. You have a lot of customization options, you can click the way you want. There are different photography styles in S24 too, so if you want a neutral look & not too punchy, you can do that too. By the way, the default photos of the iPhone are slightly warm at times. But yes, you can use their photography styles to get a more neutral look. And yes, you get a camera control button in the new iPhone 16. Now personally, when I was using the iPhone 16, & I’m still using it as a 2nd hand. I’ll tell you, I don’t use it much. It’s like a muscle memory, where you click on the camera to take photos.
So you need to get used to it. There are a lot of people like Arnav in our office. They liked it after using it, so it depends on you. Now the ultrawide, I was talking about the primary sensor. Now if I talk about the ultrawide, you get more details & clarity in the photos. Overall, if you look at the photos, it’s better than the iPhone 16. And I’m saying, whether the ultrawide is in low light or in good lighting conditions, both are good on the iPhone. Another advantage of the iPhone 16 ultrawide camera is that it can take macro shots too. Because of the autofocus, you can shoot macro shots too, so that’s an advantage. But because of the 3x optical zoom, you can get much closer to the subject. So that’s an advantage of the S24 camera. Overall, if I say portrait shots,
I personally prefer the S24 camera for 2x & 3x portraits. Interestingly, if we talk about the videography, you can shoot both at 4K 60FPS. But with the 4K 60FPS primary sensor, the S24 videos that we’ve seen & tested, I’ll tell you, it has really come a long way & they’ve improved quite a lot. I really liked the S24, obviously the iPhone videos are always great, but the S24 is no slouch. So the videography is neck to neck in 4K 60FPS & that’s a big win actually. The audio quality of the S24 is good, but with the audio mix, this is far superior. This is being recorded at 4K 60FPS on the Galaxy S24. So this is currently being shot at 4K 60FPS on the iPhone 16. At the same time, I’d like to say that these are normal conditions. Videography, especially if you shoot in low light, then the iPhone 16 beats the S24. But yes, I found the Samsung videos slightly better in the selfie videos. Even if I talk about the output, you can shoot 8K videos in the S24, which you can’t do in the iPhone. Also, I have to say that you can shoot cinematic videos in the iPhone, whereas in the S24, you can shoot portrait videos. And it’s a compact phone, but the S24 comes with DeX mode,
which means you can seamlessly put something on the big screen. You can do that, there’s a tap to play feature, so that’s good. One more thing, which we don’t talk much about, but the spare parts are more affordable as compared to iPhones. Finally, price & value for money. The base variant of the S24, the A256 variant, is generally available between Rs 57-62K. If I talk about the iPhone 16, then you get the A128 variant for Rs 79-900. If you want to buy it for sale, then the price differential is between Rs 15-20K, which is quite a lot. Yes, there are some issues in the S24, like in photography or performance, it’s slightly lesser. But it definitely covers everything in terms of price. If you’re going to pay Rs 20K more for the iPhone, then there shouldn’t be so many things in the iPhone. And for me, the deal breaker is 60Hz vs 120Hz. Meaning, when you swipe, touch or interact with the screen on 120Hz, you immediately come to know. Especially when you’ve used it a lot on 120Hz & then you go on 60Hz, it becomes very difficult.
So that’s the deal breaker for me & because of the price differential, there’s a Rs 20K difference. So I’d say, overall, the S24 is edges ahead of the iPhone 16. We’ve tried to keep this as neutral as possible. We’ve tested everything & we’ve told you about the positives & negatives. And obviously, I have the brand new iPhone, which I haven’t included in this comparison. If you buy that, then there’s no question & there’s no need to do a comparison. Because everything else fades away. That’s all for this video. If you enjoyed the video, then do hit LIKE & SHARE it with your friends. Especially if you’re thinking of buying either the iPhone 16 or the S24.
Comparison of the Best Compact Flagships: Samsung Galaxy S24 vs. iPhone 16
Introduction
In the ever-evolving world of smartphones, the Samsung Galaxy S24 and iPhone 16 stand out as two of the best compact flagships available today. With the S24 launched approximately 8-9 months ago and the iPhone 16 released 3-4 months ago, this comparison aims to help potential buyers make informed decisions as they consider purchasing these devices in 2025. This detailed analysis will cover various aspects, including design, display, performance, battery life, camera capabilities, and overall value for money.
Design and Build Quality
Both the S24 and iPhone 16 exhibit premium designs that feel great in hand. Here are some key points regarding their design:
- Material: Both phones feature a glass and aluminum sandwich design.
- Frame Finish: The iPhone has a matte finish, while the S24’s frame is slightly shinier, which may attract fingerprints.
- Ports: The iPhone 16 uses a USB 2.0 port, while the S24 boasts a USB 3.2 port, allowing for faster data transfers.
- Durability:
- iPhone 16: Features a ceramic shield, claimed to be 50% stronger but more prone to scratches.
- S24: Utilizes Gorilla Glass Victus 2, resulting in fewer scratches over time.
| Feature | iPhone 16 | Samsung Galaxy S24 |
|---|---|---|
| Frame Finish | Matte | Slightly Shiny |
| USB Port | USB 2.0 | USB 3.2 |
| Durability Material | Ceramic Shield | Gorilla Glass Victus 2 |
Display
The display is a crucial aspect of any smartphone, and both devices offer impressive screens:
- Size:
- iPhone 16: 6.1 inches
- S24: 6.2 inches
- Refresh Rate:
- iPhone 16: 60Hz
- S24: 120Hz (Dynamic AMOLED 2X)
- Brightness:
- S24: 2600 nits peak brightness
- iPhone 16: 2000 nits peak brightness
The S24’s display is not only larger but also offers a higher refresh rate, providing a smoother experience during interactions.
Performance
Performance is a significant factor for users, especially gamers:
- Chipset:
- iPhone 16: A18 Chipset (superior performance)
- S24: Exynos 2400
- Gaming Performance:
- iPhone 16: Higher FPS in AAA games.
- S24: Offers smoother gameplay at 120Hz.
| Benchmark Test | iPhone 16 (A18) | Samsung Galaxy S24 (Exynos 2400) |
|---|---|---|
| Geekbench Score | Higher | Lower |
| 3DMark Extreme Wildlife | Better | Less Stable |
The A18 chipset outperforms the Exynos 2400 in synthetic benchmarks and gaming scenarios, making the iPhone 16 the clear winner in performance.
Battery Life and Charging
Battery life is essential for daily use, and both devices have their strengths:
- Screen-On Time:
- iPhone 16: 7 hours
- S24: Varies based on refresh rate (higher refresh rate consumes more battery).
- Charging Speed:
- S24: 25W wired charging
- iPhone 16: 20W wired charging
- Wireless Charging: iPhone 16 supports 25W MagSafe, while S24 supports 15W.
The iPhone 16 benefits from a more power-efficient A18 processor, leading to better overall battery life.
Camera Capabilities
Camera performance is often a deciding factor for many users:
- iPhone 16:
- 48MP main camera
- 12MP ultrawide
- No telephoto lens
- S24:
- 50MP main camera
- 12MP ultrawide
- 10MP telephoto (3x optical zoom)
| Feature | iPhone 16 | Samsung Galaxy S24 |
|---|---|---|
| Main Camera | 48MP | 50MP |
| Ultrawide Camera | 12MP | 12MP |
| Telephoto Camera | None | 10MP (3x optical) |
- Photo Quality: The iPhone 16 excels in clarity and sharpness, while the S24 offers vibrant colors and better zoom capabilities.
- Videography: Both can shoot 4K at 60FPS, but the S24 also supports 8K video, giving it an edge in video recording versatility.
Software and User Experience
The user interface can significantly impact the overall experience:
- Operating System:
- iPhone 16: iOS with Apple Intelligence features.
- S24: One UI 6.1 with Galaxy AI features.
Key Features:
- Updates: Samsung promises 7 years of updates, while Apple typically offers 5-6 years.
- User Interface Preference: The reviewer prefers One UI for its features and usability.
Value for Money
Price is a critical consideration for many buyers:
- Samsung Galaxy S24: Priced between Rs 57,000 – 62,000.
- iPhone 16: Starts at Rs 79,000 – 90,000.
The S24 offers a better value proposition, especially considering the price difference of Rs 15,000 – 20,000. The 120Hz refresh rate on the S24 is a significant advantage for users accustomed to smoother interactions.
Conclusion
In conclusion, both the Samsung Galaxy S24 and iPhone 16 have their unique strengths and weaknesses. The S24 excels in display technology, battery life, and value for money, while the iPhone 16 leads in performance, camera quality, and software experience. Ultimately, the choice between these two flagship devices will depend on individual preferences and priorities. If you’re looking for a more affordable option with excellent features, the S24 is a compelling choice. However, if performance and camera capabilities are your top priorities, the iPhone 16 may be worth the extra investment.
