Samsung just dropped its baseline flagship for 2025: the Galaxy S25. With a slimmer profile, capable chipset, and a triple-camera setup, the smartphone gives direct competition to the base iPhone 16. Let’s find out how the two flagships compare.

Price and Availability

The baseline Galaxy S25, with 128GB of storage, costs $799.99. Pre-orders for the smartphone begin today on the company’s official website and other retail partners like Amazon and Best Buy. The Galaxy S25 will hit stores on February 7, 2025. The Apple iPhone 16 (128GB) also costs $799 at the company’s official website.

The Galaxy S25 Is Slimmer and Lighter Than iPhone 16

While both smartphones have a compact form factor, they differ in a few key aspects. The Galaxy S25 measures 146.9 x 70.5 x 7.2 mm, making it a tad shorter, narrower, and thinner than the iPhone 16, which measures 147.6 x 71.6 x 7.8 mm.

In addition, Samsung’s latest flagship weighs 162 grams, making it eight grams lighter than the iPhone 16 (170 grams). Some similarities between the handsets include an aluminum frame with rounded corners and an IP68 dust and water resistance rating.

While the Galaxy S25 features Corning’s Gorilla Glass Victus 2 on the front (and likely on the back as well), the iPhone 16 features the latest-generation Ceramic Shield on the front and a color-infused glass back.

Regarding colors, the Galaxy S25 is available in Icyblue, Navy, Mint, and Silver Shadow hues. The iPhone 16 is available in Ultramarine, Pink, Teal, White, and Black shades.

Galaxy S25 Offers a Brighter and Smoother Screen

On the vanilla Galaxy S25, you get a 6.2-inch FHD+ Dynamic AMOLED 2x screen that supports a Super Smooth refresh rate, which varies between 1 and 120Hz (I wish I could say the same about the iPhone 16). The screen is surrounded by thin bezels on all sides and a punch-hole notch at the top.

Since Samsung didn’t mention anything about the display brightness in the official spec sheet, we’re assuming that the S25 borrows the 2,600 nits of peak brightness from the vanilla S24. Underneath the AMOLED screen, the Galaxy S25 also features an ultrasonic fingerprint scanner.

The iPhone 16 sports a slightly smaller 6.1-inch Super Retina XDR screen stuck with a 60Hz refresh rate for ages. Nonetheless, the panel can reach a peak brightness of 2.000 nits under direct sunlight. There are symmetrical bezels all around the iPhone 16’s screen, but they are slightly thicker than those on the Galaxy S25.

To house the front camera and the Face ID sensors, the iPhone 16 comes with the Dynamic Island (a pill-shaped notch).

Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy vs. Apple’s A18 Chipset

Even though both the Galaxy S25 and the iPhone 16 feature top-tier processors based on TSMC’s 3nm fabrication technology, there are a few key differences between them.

Under its shiny exterior, the Galaxy S25 features the octa-core Snapdragon 8 Elite ‘for Galaxy’ variant, which offers advancements in four key areas: CPU, GPU, NPU, and thermal management. The chipset offers about 37% better CPU performance than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3.

With the help of the Vulkan Engine API and improved ray tracing, the Galaxy S25 generates more realistic lighting, shadows, and reflections in video games. The improved NPU now helps localize cloud-based Galaxy AI features, like Generative Edit, entirely on the device.

Finally, Samsung has included a new heat dissipation mechanism on the device, with a larger vapor chamber to maintain optimal temperature and performance.

Despite being a hexa-core chipset, Apple’s A18 offers exceptional performance on the iPhone 16. With a 30% faster CPU, a 40% GPU, and twice as fast NPU compared to the A16 Bionic chip, the A18 can handle everything from day-to-day tasks to demanding workflows like multitasking, running AAA video games (with hardware-accelerated ray tracing), and a variety of GenAI features available as Apple Intelligence.

Early GeekBench 6 listings suggest that the Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy scores 2,721/9,435 points in the single/multi-core performance test. In comparison, my iPhone 16 scored 3,194/7,738 points in the single/multi-core performance test. Based on the numbers, the Snapdragon 8 Elite should be slightly better at handling multi-threaded tasks.

While the Galaxy S25 offers support for 5G (sub-6 GHz and mmWave), Wi-Fi 7, and Bluetooth v5.4, the iPhone 16 also provides the same connectivity options, except it comes with Bluetooth v5.3.

Galaxy AI vs. Apple Intelligence

With the Galaxy S25 series, Samsung aims to integrate Galaxy AI into every aspect of One UI 7. The AI agents used on the smartphone (developed in collaboration with Google) offer better natural language and context awareness across interactions that include text, speech, images, or videos.

For instance, users can describe the appearance of a picture to Gemini and ask it to locate it in their gallery. The AI voice assistant has also gained access to Samsung and Google apps on the Galaxy S25, allowing you to give a sequential command that includes more than one app.

The Circle to Search feature can now recognize phone numbers, email IDs, and URLs on the screen. Although the idea of voice assistants taking over my smartphone’s screen scares me, that’s a discussion for some other time. Moreover, Galaxy AI can now leverage the on-screen awareness ability to offer contextually-aware suggestions and perform personalized actions.

And yes, the Galaxy S25 continues the seven-year Android and security upgrades policy.

On the other side of the fence, Apple’s iPhone 16 gets quite a lot of GenAI features, particularly with the new iOS 18.2 upgrade. While my favorite Apple Intelligence feature is Genmoji (and Visual Intelligence, to an extent), others like Image Playground, Writing Tools, ChatGPT integration in Siri (with more natural responses), and Webpage Summarization also work fine.

The Photos app on the iPhone 16 can now remove distractions from the background (using the Clean Up tool), while it also provides improved image searching abilities through text-based descriptions. Despite all these, Apple’s implementation of AI-based features isn’t as extensive and mature as that of Galaxy AI.

For instance, Siri doesn’t have on-screen awareness functionality yet. Most recently, Apple had to pause the Notification Summaries feature for entertainment and news apps due to inaccurate results. On the positive side, long-term software support has never been an issue for iPhones.

Released in 2024, the iPhone 16 should get at least four to five years of iOS updates, with new features added every now and then.

Telephoto Camera on the Galaxy S25 Adds Versatility

The Galaxy S25 features a triple-camera setup, including a 50MP (f/1.8) primary sensor with OIS, a 12MP (f/2.2, 120°) ultrawide camera, and a 10MP (f/2.4) tertiary camera with a 3x telephoto lens. With this setup, you can not only click excellent portraits but utilize the 30x Space Zoom feature for closing in on subjects that are far away. Further, you can also shoot 8K videos at 30 fps.

On the front, the Galaxy S25 features a 12MP (f/2.2) selfie shooter. While these specifications might sound familiar (as they’re borrowed from the vanilla Galaxy S24), the Galaxy S25 can now record better low-light videos with reduced noise, offers the Audio Eraser feature we’ve seen on the Pixel series, and virtually control the depth-of-field in the Expert RAW interface.

Besides, Samsung has upgraded the Portrait Studio, added new analog filters, and enabled 10-bit HDR video recording by default.

The iPhone 16 has a 48MP (f/1.6) primary camera with OIS and a 12MP (f/2.2) ultrawide camera. However, what isn’t immediately apparent is that the primary camera allows for 2x lossless zoom (with 12MP resolution), but the maximum you can zoom in is 10x. Further, the ultrawide sensor comes with autofocus, which enables macro photography. Like the Galaxy S25, the iPhone 16 also has a 12MP (f/1.9) selfie camera.

While the iPhone 16 maxes out at 4k Dolby Vision recording at 60 fps, it offers features like 4K Cinematic Mode, Action Mode, Spatial Video recording (relevant for Vision Pro users), and two of my favorite features: Wind Noise Reduction and Audio Mix. Photography features include Smart HDR 5, latest-generation Photographic Styles, Night Mode, and Spatial Photos.

Yes, the iPhone 16 comes with a new Camera Control button, but it’s only useful for people who click too many pictures or when someone wants to use Visual Intelligence.

Different Battery Capacities but Similar Performance

Fresh from the factory, the Galaxy S25 will feature a 4,000 mAh battery that supports fast wired charging up to 25W, Fast Wireless Charging 2.0 (compatible with WPC), and Wireless PowerShare.

In comparison, the iPhone 16 has a considerably smaller 3,562 mAh battery that supports wired charging up to 20W, MagSafe charging up to 25W (with 30W adapter), and Qi wireless charging up to 7.5W.

Last year, the Galaxy S24 outperformed the iPhone 16 in Tom’s Guide battery test, but only by a tiny margin. Given the vanilla S25 features a more powerful chipset (in its overclocked version), we expect it to last as long as the iPhone 16.

Which Is the Right Flagship for You?

At least on paper, the Galaxy S25 appears to be the better smartphone. If you like how the Galaxy S25 offers a smoother and brighter display, exceptional Galaxy AI integration, and an additional telephoto camera on the smartphone, you can’t go wrong with the Galaxy S25. I’ll also recommend the handset to anyone using a three or four-year-old Android smartphone or flagship.

However, if you’re accustomed to using iOS, like the new Apple Intelligence features, prefer wireless charging over wired charging, and have already set up an Apple ecosystem, go with the iPhone 16. I’ll also suggest the phone to someone using an iPhone 11 or the iPhone 12.