Samsung Galaxy S24 vs. Apple iPhone 15 Pro

Two small yet powerful smartphones. Two of the most popular handsets on the market. Two specimens from the world’s most famous mobile rivals. This is the Galaxy S24 versus the iPhone 15 Pro.

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The Galaxy S24 is easily recognizable as it has undergone minor changes over the last few years. It offers a clean no-nonsense design with two flat Gorilla Glass Victus 2 panels and a metal frame. It is IP68-rated for your usual dust and water resistance. What we like about the Galaxy S24 is its clean camera island, which consists of three simple rings.

On the other side, we have the iPhone 15 Pro, which is just as recognizable as well. However, it has a much lighter body this time thanks to the new titanium frame. Other than that, it looks as stylish as ever, you get Ceramic Shield glass front and back. It is IP68-rated, too. However, the super busy camera island will definitely not be everyone’s cup of tea – if you care for this sort of things.

For starters, you can compare the complete specs sheets or directly continue with our editor’s assessment in the text further down below.

Size comparison

There isn’t much to discuss about dimensions and weight. Both handsets are almost identical, with the iPhone 15 Pro being ever so slightly thicker. And we should applaud Samsung for fitting a slightly larger screen into the exact same body.

Even better, the Galaxy S24 is also the lighter phone, 20 whole grams to be specific, which is yet another great thing about the Samsung’s smartphone.

Then again, the Apple iPhone 15 Pro has a supposedly more premium and tougher titanium frame (instead of aluminum), and its IP68 rating has been expanded, so it can survive in up to 6m-deep water.

Overall, the design is a matter of personal choice, but both smartphones have equally impressive build quality. The iPhone’s might be more solid, though, but only time will tell.

Display comparison

The Galaxy S24 has the slightly larger display – 6.2″ vs. 6.1″ – but it is of the lower resolution – 416ppi vs 461ppi on the iPhone 15 Pro. The Apple screen has better-rated video support – it has both HDR10 and Dolby Vision capabilities.

The Galaxy S24 offers a much smaller cutout as the phone relies on a single front camera and under-display fingerprint scanner for biometric security.

The cutout on the iPhone is enormous as it incorporates Apple’s FaceID, which works for secure unlocking, and Apple has found a way to add some clever functionality around it with the Dynamic Island.

The iPhone 15 Pro has a brighter display – the 15 Pro panel offers 845nits of manual and 1786nits of auto brightness, while the S24 OLED has 785nits of manual and 1,401nits of auto brightness.

For the untrained eye, this probably won’t make much of a difference, but there are some potential benefits from the extra 400 nits on a bright sunny day outdoors.

While the two devices have great screens, the iPhone 15 Pro does offer a slightly better one. Its cutout, on the other hand, is quite large by today’s standards.

Battery life

The Galaxy S24 has a 4,000mAh battery, while the iPhone 15 Pro has a smaller 3,274mAh. Contrary to what these numbers might suggest, the iPhone has the longer battery life in our testing.

The Galaxy S24 scored an Active Use Rating of 12:06 h., while the iPhone 15 Pro – 12:58 h. The iPhone is better in all of our screen-on tests but uses to the Galaxy S24 in the call runtime. That’s nothing out of the ordinary, as we’ve often seen iPhones post average or below-average call times.

Charging speed

There has been no upgrade in the charging speed on either phone, so don’t expect fierce competition. The Galaxy S24 supports 25W fast charging over the Power Delivery standard, while the iPhone 15 Pro – 20W over USB-PD. This means both devices charge slowly compared to some of their competitors. At least they both support 15W fast wireless charging.

The Galaxy S24 also offers reversed wireless charging, something Apple could not figure out and eventually scrapped.

Samsung’s 25W charger takes the Galaxy S24 battery (4,000mAh) from 0% to 29% in 15mins, 59% in 30mins and up to 100% in 75mins.

Apple’s 20W Power Adapter recharges the dead iPhone 15 Pro battery (3,274mAh) from 0% to 32% in 15 mins, 57% in 30 mins, and it takes 93 minutes for the full charge to complete.

The Galaxy S24 recharges its larger battery a bit faster, and it also offers reverse wireless charging – that is why it scores a win here.

Speakers test

Both the Galaxy S24 and the iPhone 15 Pro have hybrid stereo speaker setups. The one on the Galaxy S24 is a bit louder.

But the iPhone 15 Pro speakers offer richer sound with deeper bass and better vocals. The high frequency range is not that great, though.

Performance

The Galaxy S24 is powered by the most recent Exynos 2400 chipset by Samsung, while the iPhone 15 Pro runs on the A17 Bionic. Apple’s chips have been leading the performance charts for quite some time, but their development have slowed down significantly lately and the competition not only caught up, it can even outperform them.

When it comes to raw CPU power, the Apple processor is a bit faster.

In the GPU tests the Galaxy S24 did better by 25% or higher margin.

Apple

iPhone 15 Pro

Geekbench 6
2,922 single-core

Geekbench 6
7,172 multi-core

3D Mark W.Life
10,012

The global Galaxy S24 is available in two memory configurations – 8GB RAM + 128GB and 8GB RAM + 256GB. The same options are available for the iPhone 15 Pro, but it can also be purchased with 512GB and 1TB storage.

As far as throttling is concerned – the iPhone 15 Pro throttles less – 85% CPU and 76% GPU stability versus 60% CPU and 50% GPU stability for the Galaxy S24.

Samsung promises 7 years of major OS updates for the S24, which certainly looks better than Apple’s unwritten policy of offering its phones 5-6 years of major iOS updates.

The more extended software support means better value preservation overall. However, the big question is how well the hardware in a 7-year Android phone would keep up with the software in terms of performance. Nobody needs an updated phone that may be borderline unusable due to lag, whereas iPhones have already proven to be quite usable for years after launch without colossal performance degradation. So, for now, we’ll call this one a tie.

However, Samsung has the upper hand in software thanks to Google’s latest mobile AI features. You can read more about those in our dedicated One UI 6.1 review but the list includes:

• Circle to search.
• Chat translations.
• Generative AI message creation.
• Webpage summarization.
• Language interpreting for live calls or in-person convos.
• Recorded speech transcribing and summarization.
• Generative AI wallpapers and edits in the Gallery, such as content-aware fill or object moving and removal.

Camera comparison

The Galaxy S24 has a 50MP OIS primary camera, a 10MP OIS 3x telephoto, a 12MP ultrawide camera (fixed focus), and a 12MP selfie camera with PDAF.

It’s the same camera hardware as the Galaxy S23, but the newer version promises better processing thanks to the improved ISP.

The iPhone 15 Pro offers a similar camera kit. It has three cameras on its back – a 48MP OIS primary, a 12MP OIS 3x telephoto and a 12MP ultrawide with PDAF and macro capabilities. The selfie camera on the iPhone is a 12MP OIS with PDAF.

The iPhone’s primary camera offers 2x lossless zoom, and it can even shoot at 24MP. We chose 12MP shots for this comparison. It has a higher-res telephoto and a better ultrawide camera that can do closeups, too.

The ultrawide cameras from both smartphones produce equally pleasing photos. They offer quite a wide field of view, a lot of resolved detail, low noise, wide dynamic range and good contrast. We can say that both UW cameras save a bit of over-processed photos, even if they are done in a different manner.

The iPhone’s camera offers more realistic colors, and it can also capture macro photos, though.

We can draw the same conclusions for the primary cameras. The two smartphones capture great, noise-free photos with solid detail and sharpness and a wide dynamic range. The Galaxy camera saves somewhat more natural photos, which are maybe not as processed as the iPhone’se. The iPhone offers a more natural color rendition, as usual.

The 2x lossless zoom is more advanced on the iPhone 15 Pro – its zoom samples are more detailed and more natural.

Finally, the iPhone also offers the higher resolution 3x camera (10MP vs. 12MP). The Galaxy S24 upscales its photos to 12MP, so it can match the output of the other cameras. Quite expectedly, the iPhone 15 Pro has the more impressive 3x zoomed photos – they are more detailed and sharper, with more realistic colors.

Galaxy S24: 0.6x • 1x • 2x • 3x

iPhone 15 Pro: 0.6x • 1x • 2x • 3x

Galaxy S24: 0.6x • 1x • 2x • 3x

iPhone 15 Pro: 0.6x • 1x • 2x • 3x

The Galaxy S24 and the iPhone 15 Pro capture equally great selfies.

Galaxy S24 • iPhone 15 Pro

The nighttime photos are solid across both devices. The ultrawide, main and zoom cameras on the iPhone have better noise reduction, while the Galaxy’s photos sometimes offer wider dynamic range and better sharpness.

Galaxy S24: 0.6x • 1x • 3x

iPhone 15 Pro: 0.6x • 1x • 3x

Video recording quality

The video capturing on both smartphones is great, with all sorts of options available.

The Galaxy S24 can do 8K videos, something the iPhone cannot.

However, Apple offers a better implementation of its Cinematic mode, which creates a blurred background behind your subject to mimick a professional camera.

The three rear cameras on the Galaxy S24 and the iPhone 15 Pro shoot top-notch videos – the quality is very good across the board – detail, noise reduction, contrast, and dynamic range. The colors are more realistic on the iPhone, and sometimes its videos look a tiny bit more natural.

Galaxy S24: 0.6x • 1x • 3x

iPhone 15 Pro: : 0.6x • 1x • 3x

Galaxy S24: 0.6x • 1x • 3x

iPhone 15 Pro: : 0.6x • 1x • 3x

Verdict

We doubt many people will be having the Galaxy S24 or iPhone 15 Pro dilemma. Those two are parallel devices of totally different universes – the open Android OS with powerful One UI on the Galaxy and the closed Apple iOS with all sorts of restrictions and limitations. But for those who may be interested in the outcome nonetheless, here is what we found.

The Apple’s iPhone 15 Pro is the tougher smartphone with a better display, more stable performance, longer battery life, better speakers and a somewhat more versatile camera experience.

The Galaxy S24 is the lighter phone of the two, with a larger screen and a smaller notch. It packs a more powerful graphics processor, recharges faster and can do 8K videos if you need that.

Finally, and probably most importantly, the Galaxy S24 is at least €300 cheaper than the iPhone 15 Pro in Europe and at least $200 cheaper in the US. Money is often the deciding say on a purchase, and we understand why many people would go for the Galaxy S24 instead of the iPhone 15 Pro.