Introduction
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.
Design
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 S24 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.
Build Quality
iPhone: 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. S24: 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.
Display
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, whereas iPhone has 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 island 2X, whereas the iPhone has a Dynamic AMOLED 2X which is functional & useful.
But the S24 has a smaller punch hole display, so you get more screen realistict. But you get that functional Dynamic island in iPhone. 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 iPhone has a peak brightness of 2000 nits. 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. 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. If I talk about gaming specifically, the iPhone’s 60FPS is a bit restrictive as s24 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. If I compare it with the previous generation Exynos chipset, the Exynos 2400 definitely performs much better in terms of thermals.
Connectivity
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
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 iphone16 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
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.
Charging
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 S24 has 15W only.So in wireless, the iPhone is better. In wired, the S24 is better.
Camera
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.
Security
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.
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.
Camera
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, in S24 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.
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.
Price
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 256 variant, is generally available between Rs 57-62K. If I talk about the iPhone 16, then you get the 128 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.
Conclusion
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,
