Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra Vs iPhone 11 Pro Max: Which One is Better Option?

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Samsung’s new beast is out. There are three models but my eyes are set on the Galaxy S20 ultra model which is the direct competitor to the iPhone 11 pro max. So it’s time to do a full comparison and talk about which one is actually worth your money in 2020.

Samsung S20 Ultra	iPhone 11 Pro Max
BUY NOW	BUY NOW
PROS	PROS
Stunning 6.9-inch Quad HD+ display. Small Infinity-O hole punch in display. 5,000mAh battery. 5G built-in.	Night mode really shines. Lovely back. Reams of power.
CONS	CONS
Price is a new kind of ridiculous. You’re going to need a bigger hand.	Design isn’t updated. Lack of clear innovation beyond the camera. Most expensive iPhone out.

SPECIFICATIONS

DESIGN

Samsung S20 Ultra:

S20 Ultra have got these big cameras towards the left-hand side. I think it don’t look that good when compared to S10. But it feel normal and you will get used to it. There is no headphone jack. The phone is heavy, when it comes to the size and the weight. But it is slightly less heavier than the iPhone. It has premium materials such as glass and aluminum. It really do justice to it’s price. You’re gonna get the amazing premium feel.

iPhone 11 Pro Max:

The design won’t surprise anyone. The front and back are covered in Gorilla Glass. And there’s a stainless steel frame holding it all together which debuted on the iPhone 10. The new frosted rear glass gives a fresh look. It makes smudges and fingerprints a lot less noticeable and it’s more resistant to scratches. You have to strech your hands to use the 11 pro max but you do get the benefit of the larger display.

CAMERA

Samsung S20 Ultra:

The S20 Ultra has quite a large rectangular camera module, which is on the left-hand side.

The S20 Ultra goes a little bit insane, because you also have the ultra wide, a primary, a telephoto. In addition to that you have a time-of-flight sensor, which is going to help with depth information.

The ultra wide 12 megapixels, the primary camera is a 108 megapixel camera, yhat’s going to give you insane resolution, and by default, you are going to be shooting at around 12 megapixels but what this is going to mean is that you’re going to be able to combine 9 pixels into one and that’s going to let you get a lot more light captured on to that sensor. But if you do want to go full fledge and get the 108 megapixels resolution, you’re going to be able to do that as well.

The telephoto camera on the S20 Ultra has 48 megapixels for resolution, and use this Prism Technology. This is something that we saw last year on a few devices and it’s going to allow you to have up to 10 times hybrid optic zoom, and up to 100X super resolution zoom, which Samsung are calling “Space Zoom”.

The S20 Ultra also looks very promising and it can offer up to 8K video recording. Now this is the first mainstream smartphone that’s going to have 8K video recording.

iPhone 11 Pro Max:

One of the major upgrades on the new iPhone is a third camera. The new triple camera setup with an ultra-wide shooter on top of the main and telephoto cameras which both have OIS. All of the cameras are at 12 megapixels.

A new interesting feature is capture outside the frame. If you’re shooting with the main or telephoto camera, the phone can use information from the ultra wide to provide you with a wider shot, if you accidentally crop someone else.

For video, the iPhone 11 Pro Max 4K up to 60 frames a second on all cameras. The dynamic range, the colors are all really good.

DISPLAY

Samsung S20 Ultra:

It has a middle punch-hole with very minimal bezels. The display size is 6.9 inch for the S20 ultra which looks absolutely insane. The display is really high-resolution and samsung has dropped a 120-Hertz panel on the S20 ultra. So, you will have noticeably smooth transitions when moving around, everything will feel a lot smoother. This is the best display in the market.

iPhone 11 Pro Max:

The 11 pro max is a 6.5 inch OLED panel. The bezels have been slightly increased this year but it’s hard to notice. The panels has the pixel density at 458 PPI and it hasn’t changed from the last generation.

The display is incredibly bright. It’s 800 nits average brightness and then will peak out at 1200 nits, if you’re trying to watch an HDR movie. The display looks incredible, it’s nice and vibrant, it’s super color accurate, and it’s easy to see in sunlight.

There’s no always-on display either, so you have to wake up the phone to check what’s going on or program the LED flash to blink when you have a notification but it is on the back.

AUDIO

Samsung S20 Ultra:

S20 ultra has a very good speaker but unfortunately it dosen’t have a 3.5 mm jack. This is something that was kind of expected with the S20 Ultra. It seems like the S10’s from last year were the last Samsung Galaxy S devices with a 3.5 mm jack.

iPhone 11 Pro Max:

It has a stereo setup for audio but with the second loudspeaker acting as the earpiece. Their outputs are very balanced and loudness is very good with decent bass for smartphone speakers. As expected, there’s no 3.5 millimeter jack and no adapter in the box.

PERFORMANCE

Samsung S20 Ultra:

The S20 Ultra is going to come with either the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 chipset or the Samsung Exynos 990. Now which one you get is going to depend on your region. And you also do get more RAM on the S20 Ultra, but as you guys know when it comes to actual performance, the software plays a big part.

iPhone 11 Pro Max:

iPhone 11 pro max is packed the new 7 nanometre A13 chipset which brings a new GPU. And is supposed to be faster and more power efficient than last year’s A12. Along with this we get 4GB of ram.

In benchmarks, CPU performance scores are 20% higher than the last generations and better than any Android phone out there, even the Galaxy S20. Gaming performance is great. And I didn’t run into any issues at all.

SOFTWARE

Samsung S20 Ultra:

We’ve got Android 10 with One UI on top on the S20 Ultra. One of the new features that you’ve got on the S20 Ultra is Quick Share. Now as far as I understand this works similar to Airdrop. So, you’re going to be able to quickly share files between other Galaxy devices.

One of the advantages that you’re going to get with the S20 Ultra is that refresh rate as well as the higher responsive time for touch, which is 240 Hertz.

iPhone 11 Pro Max:

The new iPhone’s run the latest iOS 13 out of the box and it looks pretty familiar. The navigation gestures are the same as they were before and by now feel quite intuitive. But there are a few new features to explore, the removal of 3D touch means that now you don’t need to apply pressure to the screen to open contact sensitive actions. Just a long press will do and you get the same haptic feedback.

iOS 13 also brings the system-wide dark mode which will darken all of your white backgrounds. You can even set it on a schedule as it will save you some battery.

Now which one of these you prefer is going to come down to your personal preference.

STORAGE

Samsung S20 Ultra:

The S20 Ultra comes with the base of 128 gigabytes. You can get up to 512 gigabytes as well. Now this is UFS 3.0 storage. So, this is faster storage and with the S20 Ultra, you do get a micro SD card slot (up to 1TB) So, you can expand the storage above that already large storage version of 512 gigabytes.

iPhone 11 Pro Max:

The iPhone 11 Pro Max does come with either 64, 256, or 512 gigabyte options at different prices, of course.

SECURITY

Samsung S20 Ultra:

The S20 Ultra has the ultrasonic in-display fingerprint sensor. And this is similar to what we’ve seen last year on the S10 as well as the Note 10’s.

You do have the ability to use face recognition on the S20 Ultra, but this is not going to be as secure because it is just using the front-facing camera. So, I would recommend using the ultrasonic in-display fingerprint sensor.

iPhone 11 Pro Max:

Like on previous iPhone, you’ll have to use face unlock or a pin to unlock the device. There’s no fingerprint reader but the facial recognition is industry-leading and quite secure as well.

BATTERY

Samsung S20 Ultra:

The S20 Ultra does have a larger battery of 5000 mAh. It supports 45W fast charging. But you have to pay extra for the 45W charger. 

It also supports wireless charging. However, the S20 Ultra does have support for Wireless PowerShare. This is where you’re going to be able to use your S20 Ultra to charge other devices wirelessly. This is a technology that we saw introduced last year with the S10’s and the Note 10’s.

iPhone 11 Pro Max:

The iPhone 11 pro max have larger batteries than last year at about 4000 mAh. In our test, 11 pro max scored an excellent 102 hour endurance rating, the highest we’ve seen from an iPhone.

For the first time ever, Apple has bundled an 18 watt wired fast charger in the box. The iPhone 11 pro max was able to charge from 0% to 50% of its battery in 30 minutes. It also supports wireless charging.

WHICH ONE YOU SHOULD BUY?

The Galaxy S20 Ultra have more advantages like 120 Herts Refresh Rate, High-Resolution Cameras, and Increadible Zoom Level are the strongest points that will definitely will be the problem for iPhone 11 Pro Max. And I think spending extra 200$ on the S20 Ultra will satisfy your needs in the future also. However, if you are a IOS lover then iPhone 11 Pro Max is not also a bad choice.

Jaskaran Singh

Jaskaran, a tech enthusiast from childhood, inspired by his father, began his tech journey by rooting Android phones. He now writes on various tech topics, aiming to simplify complex ideas for a broad audience. His writing is direct, concise, and flows effortlessly, making tech topics accessible and engaging.