Samsung S22 Ultra vs iPhone 13 Pro Max Camera Test

welcome to the camera test of the year we've got samsung's just released s22 ultra which is promising more detailed photos smoother video enhanced stabilization and a way more intelligent camera than the company has ever released before but that's up against the iphone 13 pro max which since the day it launched has been the most refined reliable camera system that you can get on a smartphone so we've got 12

short categories and through them

 we're going to find out if samsung's done enough to finally take the crown and dethrone the iphone and the first category before we dive into how capable each device is is the equally important question of which one is more fun to use and to give apple some credit they've made major strides with their iphone 13 pro they let you choose a photographic

style so you can add your own spin they made a new close-up macro mode for the first time and they added cinematic video which at the time the phone

launched was the most well-thought-out implementation of this type of dslr style recording but samsung's phone is really really fun and

it's a combination of things it's partly the fact that they've improved their

cinematic mode not quite at the iphone's level but close now it's partly the fact that the zoom on this phone is not just good but extreme it's partly the fact

that this new screen is so bright that it makes broad daylight feel like

child's play and it's partly the software features you've got things like

director's view which lets you see all of your camera feeds at one time

remaster which can take any old photo of anything and then use artificial

intelligence to just improve it watch what it does to this low res cube that i

downloaded here i was i was blown away by this and then also auto framing which is a new mode that can dynamically zoom

the camera in or out to accommodate more or less people i i want to like it the added movement it adds is nice but i would more or less disregard this

feature it uses the weaker ultrawide camera to start really far away and then uses digital zoom to get closer to people which is it's just a recipe for

grainy footage but one feature that i think is integrated beautifully on both phones is our second category macro you literally just bring your phone close to something and bam you have an almost microscopic

view of it i'd say that the s22s macros look a little crispier and the extra

processing that samsung does to shots it gives them quite a nice color pop but the iphone can get even closer which is also a big win in this category so on

balance we can give macro photography a draw do you know what's definitely not a draw though zoom because like on paper this samsung

might look really similar to last year's samsung with its almost identical setup of two telephoto cameras one capable of three time zoom the other capable of ten

times however thanks to the ability to now capture from multiple cameras at the same time and merge those shots for improved quality and the ability to use ai to drastically clean up images after they've been taken the s22 ultra doesn't

just beat it completely spanx the iphone single three-time zoom camera so here's an example going all the way from the ultrawide to the wide to three times ten times where you can see the iphone's

image starting to die a little here and then 30 times i am in awe that at 30

times magnification samsung still looks this put together like past samsung phones even though still impressive in this regard would pretty much look like water paintings at the point where you

hit 30 times and yet somehow this i almost want to say is a usable result

and if you want a good chuckle have a look at the difference as i start

zooming into the moon the iphone was practically having a seizure trying to figure out what to focus on and which lens to use so yeah this category goes

to the samsung with the slight caveat hat even though their camera app is

smoother to use than it has been in the past it's still not close to the silky

performance of apples okay on to category number four and as

you can probably tell at this point

samsung is killing the iphone and to be honest it gets better with portrait mode you see there was a time where iphone portraits were unbeatable apple was the

first to properly introduce this feature and for a good four years or so android phone makers have just been scurrying around unsuccessfully trying to recreate their formula i think samsung is now their closest competitor but mostly thanks to one key new thing impeccable edge detection you could have the most complex confusing background

and yet the s22 ultra and its new improved artificial intelligence still

seems to cut the foreground out so confidently and perfectly

that said because samsung's three-time zoom camera which is the default camera used for portraits it's just not as good quality as apple's three times zoom camera the iphone's portraits just

remain more detailed and also some sense portrait mode barely activates if you step more than three meters away so overall that phone only just escapes with a draw now there's a bit of a saying in the movie industry that sound is 50 of the experience and if that is true then the ability of each of these phones to pick up speech is paramount to how good the

camera systems are thankfully i've done a lot of testing in

a lot of different environments and these are pretty much the best two

phones for it i would say the iphone is slightly more natural in a little bit

more than fifty percent of the occasions but it's close enough that i think we can call this one a draw and also both phones have the not quite new anymore but still phenomenal audio zoom feature which means that as you zoom into things your microphones can isolate the sound coming from whatever you're zooming into but now we're on the subject of video

one of the other big improvements that

samsung talked about for this s22 ultra is stabilization so you know most

flagships use optical image stabilization right which means that if

i move the phone up the camera itself will actually move a little down to try and counteract that movement well what samsung is saying is that the s22 ultra's main camera has 58 more room to be able to move and that's pretty exciting given that samsung was already

the king of stability unlike me it's not a game-changing

difference in practice so if you're just leisurely walking around with these

phones they're both good and that's pretty much all you need to know even if you try a gentle jog which is probably the most you're going to be doing while

filming on your phone the iphone is still fine it's only when you're

absolutely lagging it and you're also using samsung super steady feature

that's when you can tell that this phone has the ability to convert even the most manic hand movements into something that's somewhat presentable so technically yes samsung can stabilize

better sort of because you could just as equally argue that in cases like these even with better stabilization are you really winning if it's coming at

the cost of resolution artifacting and just a generally artificial look would

you ever use this extreme stabilization and this brings me onto a bigger point the quality of the video itself year after year we see android companies take the stage to announce huge improvements

to video but it just it never quite materializes in the end product

the good news is that the s22 ultra is the most complete video experience that has ever graced a samsung device and

it's it's not just the steadiness it also now generally keeps up with the

iphone in terms of dynamic range its ability to prevent the bright areas

being too bright and the dark areas being too dark and the focusing is spot on 99 of the time you will get a pin sharp subject with nice smooth

transitions as the cameras shift between what they're focusing on

but it's still not better than the iphone the primary difference being that the

iphone's footage just looks clearer and my best guess is that this is the

consequence of apple having complete control over not just the phone hardware and the custom chip that's powering it but also the entire software that they've engineered from the ground up to squeeze the most data out of these cameras as possible and disadvantage also translates to low light mind you

samsung has noticeably neatened up their night performance but

you can see it right it's just missing that that layer of crispness and

confidence the only time that it does win a video is when you want to zoom in 10 times while recording which was not completely useless you know i could see that being useful at a sports game or a

show

it is a pretty niche scenario and this

brings me on to the other thing which

has been brewing on my mind over the

last few days and that's if i had to

crystallize what the difference is

between these two cameras in one word

that word would be

balance the iphone has an incredibly

balanced camera system like even though

you have three cameras on the back one

on the front it never really feels like

it the way that apple's managed to match

these cameras in terms of not just color

profile but also quality means that

you're never thinking oh which one's my

best lens i need to make sure i'm using

that for this shot it just feels like

one continuous camera even as you move

from ultra wide to main to zoom and this

is what samsung misses out on each

camera here feels like a separate

experience and it's it's not just the

slightly janky transitions between them

it's more that each has a different

color profile and each produces images

with slightly varying quality you know i

mentioned earlier that samsung's

portraits are let down a little by

lackluster three time zoom camera you

never get that feeling with the iphone

now it's not always a bad thing the

iphone's intense consistency does make

it a little boring by comparison and the

fact that samsung has more variability

in its performance means that when you

are in a best-case scenario when you are

consciously taking advantage of its

strengths like that ten time zoom you

can achieve something special it just it

lacks that effortlessness and if i was

picking one of these to give someone to

shoot say a holiday travel vlog with 95

percent of them would get a better end

result with the iphone it's pretty clear

where the majority of samsung's time

went though night mode photos

every flagship has night mode where you

hold your phone still for a few seconds

and you let it take multiple frames and

fuse them together for a brighter shot

but

something's got a few extra things going

for it this year for starters this phone

takes 25 more of those frames to fuse

together it manages to take those frames

within a shorter time period its camera

has bigger pixels to capture more

information and then finally more

intelligent processing of the final

output and you can tell or at least you

can tell if you know what you're looking

for samsung's night shots are very

bright and not just technically strong

but they also have a bit of character

and vibrance that i think the average

phone photographer is probably going to

appreciate and also if you line these

phones up on a tripod and point to the

sky it also pumps out crispier

astrophotography shots not the best i've

ever seen but good

however there is a weird important quirk

that i should probably mention for the

s22 ultra samsung has made all of the

cameras apart from the ultrawide camera

wider which

feels like a very odd decision because

like when you're taking a photo of a

person they will look better if you're

stood a little bit further away and

you're using some zoom but what samsung

have done is the opposite of that you

will actually have to step closer to

them and you might be thinking well if

the camera's wider then that's great

because i can fit more people in but

that's what the ultrawide camera is for

and that's the only camera that they

didn't make wider

the other reason i'm telling you this

though is that samsung's wider lens

makes it much harder to compare detail

between these phones because if i

enlarge these shots such that one object

is the same size on both then i've

actually zoomed in more on the samsung

because it was smaller to start with all

in all though these phones trade blows

sometimes i do think to myself oh

samsung why you gotta go around

brightening things that don't need

brightening and creating unnecessary

grain but then other times i'm like whoa

where did you come from and miraculously

given that samsung's flash module is

like half the size of apples it's

actually brighter it really does ward

away the darkness and bring back so much

texture into photos and hey if you want

to brighten my day then the sub to the

channel would be

flashy and this trend it also carries

through to the daytime i systematically

prefer samsung's look their cooler tones

their crunchier contrast the way they

slightly soften your skin imperfections

their vibrance and brightening power of

darker areas also seem stronger it's not

to the point of looking wrong or fake

just enough to give the photos some pop

the long-running caveat though with

samsung phones is that they take longer

to capture and it's tough to say whether

that's because they need more time to

process the immense amount of data from

their 108 megapixel sensor or if they're

just not as well optimized but the point

stands if you've got a fast object you

can expect some degree of motion blur

that's not so much of a problem when

you're taking still posed photos or if

you're more of a vegetative subject like

myself but it can come back to haunt you

in those semi-dim indoor lighting

environments because it introduces more

time for everything in frame to just

shift even a tiny bit i usually use the

sharpness of my beard as a pretty good

way to measure this shutter lag and you

can probably see the difference for

yourself

one thing that i will give to samsung

though is slo-mo

not that they've really innovated with

it it's more just that they tried really

hard with slo-mo like four years ago and

then those features have just been

carried forward onto each subsequent

model both phones can record at eight

times slo-mo for which i'd say they look

pretty similar quality wise but then

samsung can just go slower with bursts

of 32 times slow motion footage great to

have the option but i am honestly i am

surprised that samsung actually allows a

feature that looks this bad to exist on

their 2022 hero phone

okay two quick sections before we decide

who wins the first being something

that's really important to me

selfies

i am such a natural

in fact i've made it a habit to take a

selfie in front of every single video

backdrop we make and the reason that i

always use an iphone for it is that even

though the lights around me change

drastically it uses its understanding of

what's what in the photo to still keep

my face looking consistent samsung's

still not quite there on that front but

i'm actually starting to prefer it as a

selfie camera for other reasons it's

higher resolution so as long as you have

adequate lighting you can see all of

those little beard hairs just how i like

it and you can get really deep contrasty

shadows that almost look like how i

would actually edit my photos to be like

and then the other side of that coin is

selfie video but to be honest for the

same reasons that apple wins when it

comes to normal video they also take it

away here

to be fair it's very close battle given

that i think samsung's front camera on a

hardware level is better but they're

just let down by their software

processing

so let's have a look at the results

samsung's won 7.5 categories apple's

bagged 4.5 so i almost don't need to

tell you the s22 ultra is a solid

improvement over the s21 ultra it's

turned both portrait mode and night mode

from a loss into a draw and it's taken

the already huge lead and zoom and just

completely run away with it

however what it doesn't do is

significantly improve upon its

predecessor's key weaknesses namely

video quality and shutter lag and

that puts me in a dilemma i really enjoy

using this camera i love the punchiness

of its photos downloading random

pictures of the internet to try

remastering and casually zooming into

signs 100 meters away and realizing that

i can actually read them but for my uses

given that one of the things it does

lose in is video which is such a huge

category for a content creator

this phone would actually make my life

trickier the iphone is good enough that

we actually use it interchangeably with

our main camera every now and again i

wouldn't do that on the s22 so

all i can really say for this comparison

is that there is room for both of these

on the market to find out more about the

s22 ultra i did a pretty detailed first

look over here