The Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G and the iPhone 12 Pro Max are two competing flagship phones for Samsung and Apple around the same generation. The S21 Ultra is slightly more recent, having been released in January 2021, just 3 months after the 12 Pro Max was released in October 2020. Read more to find out how these 2 phones stack up.

Camera

Starting from the camera, we’ll find both phones are well-balanced and very similar. The Galaxy S21 Ultra features 4 rear cameras (main, ultra-wide and two telephoto lenses), but the 12 Pro Max only has 3 since it only features one telephoto lens only capable of 2.5x zoom. The main camera is also slightly better on the S21 Ultra, which has an impressive 108MP compared to only 12MP on the 12 Pro Max. This gives you more versatility in keeping photo quality consistent against different scales and while zooming. While both are great, the only real standout feature is the better zoom capabilities on the Galaxy S21 Ultra, which allows you to maintain photo quality better than the 12 Pro Max when zoomed.

Battery

Samsung also takes a step ahead of Apple when it comes to battery life. The Galaxy S21 Ultra has a whopping 5,000 mAh battery size compared to the 12 Pro Max’s 3,678 mAh battery. Both have the ability to give you all day battery life, but you might find up to an hour more of usage on the S21 Ultra.

Display

Both phones have about the same display size: 6.8 inches for the S21 Ultra and 6.7 inches for the 12 Pro Max, but we’ll find different resolutions on each. Samsung has 1440 x 3200 px, which will give you sharper quality than the 1284 x 2778 px screen offered on the 12 Pro Max. 

Storage Options

Once again, we find the Samsung S21 Ultra pulling ahead of the iPhone 12 Pro Max in terms of storage. The S21 Ultra has an impressive up to 16 GB of RAM, which is a significant leap over the 6 GB offered on the 12 Pro Max. However, both models offer the same storage options between 128GB, 256GB and 512GB.

Processor

Both the iPhone 12 Pro Max and the Galaxy S21 offer strong processing capabilities, but use different chipsets. Apple has its proprietary A14 Bionic chip and Samsung uses the Snapdragon 888 chip. Both are great options for any user, although the Apple chipset has come out slightly ahead in terms of performance benchmark scores. 

Overall, the Galaxy S21 Ultra might offer some improved specs on paper, but in terms of usability for the average person, we don’t see either model coming out leagues ahead of the other. This will likely come down to your preference between Apple and Samsung operating systems, since all in all, you probably won’t see a big difference between camera, battery, or processing performance. You might find better value with Samsung products, however, since Apple tends to have a higher resale value.