Galaxy S21 Ultra vs iPhone 12 Pro Max Speed Test

We've got the 512 gigabyte version of 

the iphone 12 pro max on the left 

and the 512 gigabyte version of the galaxy s 21 ultra with the snapdragon processor on the right 

this is the fastest phone that apple has to offer against the fastest phone that samsung has to offer 

and we're gonna see which one is faster in this three part speed test 

as always i will have video time codes 

down in the description so you guys can 

quickly jump around to different parts 

of the test 

and if you guys appreciate video time 

codes let me know by dropping a like down below 

one last thing before we start the test 

i did a ton of things to make this as 

fair of a test as possible and i highly 

recommend that you guys check out the full list of everything because there's a lot all right with that out of the way let's go ahead and start the first test first things first we need to make sure there are no apps open in the background and there aren't so we are good to start the test right off the bat we had a close call while the iphone shows the emails first you can't actually open anything until the app fills the screen because of that the s21 ultra has time to catch up and if you watch closely you'll see that the iphone finishes expanding the page at the exact same time as the s21 ultra finishes loading the unread email counter because of that neither phone gets a point so as you can tell by now there's a counter at the top which keeps track of how many apps each phone opens faster i'll be watching the replay frame by frame to make sure this is as accurate of a test as possible if the phones open 

apps within about an eighth of a second  to each other 

then neither phone will get a point 

because that could just be the time difference between me pressing on one screen versus the other now it's time for the ram test we're just going to go backwards through the apps to see how many are still open 

there are tallies at the top again to 

keep track of how many reloads each 

phone has 

obviously the less reloads the better 

it looks like the zillow app does refresh the results on the s21 ultra but 

it's not a full reload so i'm not going 

to count it but let me know in the comments below if you think refreshes 

should or shouldn't count in these tests we get another refresh but still not a full reload with the s21 ultra on the spotify app again let me know in the comments below 

if you think refreshers should count as 

reloads 

looks like we get our first refresh on the iphone with the amazon app 

but again it's not a full reload so i'm 

not counting it and just as i say that  we get a full reload on the regal cinemas app let me know in the comments below if you

think the s21 ultra is gonna make it all 

the way 

oh so close for the s21 ultra but that's 

the first reload making it a tie so far 

for ram management 

and it looks like asphalt 9 was the 

tiebreaker adding one more reload for 

the s21 ultra 

we'll talk about the results of this 

test in a minute but first i want to 

talk about how these perform 

within applications for day-to-day use 

in terms of gaming 

i tried asphalt 9 at max graphic 

settings and 60 frames per second 

and couldn't tell any difference between 

the two phones in terms of frame rate or 

detail in the graphics 

both phones easily kept 60 frames per 

second and the details in the game 

looked amazing 

however in terms of color the s21 was 

very vibrant 

while the iphone 12 pro max looked a bit 

washed out 

this became more apparent with the 

second game pubg 

here's where things started to break 

down for the iphone i ran both phones at 

ultra hd graphics and set the frame rate 

to ultra 

the highest available settings as i look 

around the map the iphone is 

noticeably stuttering during slower 

movements this is hard to capture on 

video since i'm only filming at 30 

frames per second 

but it's very noticeable in person the 

s21 ultra 

never had any stutter and was able to 

keep a high frame rate as well as 

graphic detail 

and speaking of graphic detail the 

vibrance of the s21 ultra screen is 

very noticeable in the blues and greens 

without being too vibrant 

the iphone screen just remains dull by 

comparison 

heat management is something the iphone 

does do slightly better than the s21 

ultra 

after just one round of pubg the s21 

ultra was getting pretty hot in my hands 

almost to the point where it would be a 

bit uncomfortable for extended gaming sessions fortunately even after a 30 minute game 

the performance didn't seem to throttle 

in any way 

the iphone on the other hand remained 

just slightly cooler but was still 

approaching an uncomfortable level of 

heat 

and as i already mentioned the 

performance wasn't the best right from 

the start 

however it didn't get any worse after a b

full game and in case you're wondering 

i kept the s21 ultra at its max 

resolution of 3200 by 1440 

with 120 hertz mode turned on for all 

the tests in this video 

if you turned off 120hz mode you'd 

likely get even better performance over 

the iphone 

but who really wants to go back to 60hz 

after you've experienced 120. switching gears to video editing we get a completely different story 

i tried exporting the same 4k 30 frame 

per second video 

with the exact same color effect applied 

on both devices 

using adobe premiere rush and well the 

iphone completely decimated the s21 

ultra 

like it's almost twice as fast as the 

s21 ultra when rendering videos 

just to make sure it was a fair test the 

4k footage came straight from my 

panasonic gh5s 

but i also ran the test with native 

footage from both devices in 

60 4k 30 and even 1080p at 30fps 

and the results were exactly the same in 

every scenario the iphone was just 

much faster at rendering video so if you 

do a lot of video editing on your phone 

you may want to go with the iphone 

instead in terms of general app usage 

for things like twitter 

facebook node apps email etc there isn't 

much of a noticeable difference between 

the two for day-to-day use 

i feel like iphones historically reload 

applications a bit more often than 

samsung devices 

in real world usage but it's never 

anything over the top or frustrating.

so when we look at the results as a 

whole we've learned that the s21 ultra 

is considerably better at opening apps 

faster than the iphone 

but marginally worse with ram management 

that said 

the difference in app opening speeds 

wasn't dramatic and you'll be fully 

content with either phone for day to day 

use 

the deciding factor comes down to three 

things if your biggest priority is 

gaming then the s21 ultra will be the 

better buy it handles more graphically 

intense games with a high refresh rate 

noticeably better than the iphone and 

the ultra small bezels combined with a 

vibrant screen n

make the s21 ultra's gaming experience 

notably more enjoyable if your biggest priority is video 

editing then it's a no brainer the 

iphone will be the better pick for you 

because the render times will be 

dramatically faster and 

lastly if you're just going to use your 

phone for social media maybe some like 

gaming and other generic tasks 

then pick whichever phone has the

operating system you prefer.