TECH

Battle of the Titans: does the iPhone 17 Pro beat the Galaxy S26 Ultra in camera performance?

The eternal war between Apple and Samsung has just gained another exciting chapter. If you're a fan of mobile photography and were expecting the brand-new Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra to completely crush the iPhone 17 Pro (which has been on the market since September 2025), you might have to moderate your expectations a bit. The renowned experts at DxOMark have just released their initial tests for the cameras of the new South Korean "monster," and the results are truly surprising.

Despite Samsung making gigantic and highly anticipated improvements to its hardware, Apple seems to continue holding the crown in terms of consistency and precision. Let's delve into the technical details to understand exactly what's happening.

On paper, when you look at the spec sheet, the Galaxy S26 Ultra even looks quite similar to its predecessor, the S25 Ultra. Samsung decided to play it safe in one part of the setup, keeping the exact same 50MP ultra-wide-angle camera (with the 1/2.52-inch sensor and f/1.9 aperture) and the same 10MP telephoto lens for its usual 3x zoom. But the real revolution, and where the Asian brand spent the bulk of its budget, was in the main and long-range zoom cameras.

The company's star attraction remains the 200MP main sensor, but now with a phenomenal trick up its sleeve: an incredibly bright f/1.4 aperture (replacing the old f/1.7). For you, in everyday use, this translates to something simple but vital: this lens lets in about 47% more light to the sensor. In theory and practice, this means that your night photos, or shots taken in very enclosed and dark environments, will have much more detail and much less of that annoying "grain" (digital noise) that usually ruins night photos.

Another drastic change occurred in the 5x periscope telephoto camera, which now has 50 MP and an aperture of f/2.9. Samsung introduced a more compact internal design called ALoP (Adaptive Lens on Prism). If you like taking photos with an artistically blurred background, you'll notice that the light points in the background (the famous bokeh effect) now appear much rounder, smoother, and more natural, losing that square and artificial look of previous models. The downside of this new lens is that the minimum focusing distance has increased to 52 centimeters. This means you'll have a little more difficulty if you want to take macro photos or focus on objects that are very close to the phone's lens.

Why does the iPhone 17 Pro continue to win? Exhaustive DxOMark tests confirm that these Samsung tweaks make a real difference. The S26 Ultra really captures cleaner night photos and presents much more natural and faithful skin tones than last year's model. Portraits are also more balanced and pleasing. So, why does the iPhone 17 Pro keep winning the tug-of-war? The secret lies in the surgical precision of Apple's software.

The DxOMark team noted that the Galaxy S26 Ultra's autofocus still stutters and occasionally struggles to detect moving faces. In addition, in portrait mode, Samsung still creates some artificial cutouts (so-called artifacts) around the subject, occasionally blending the person's hair with the blurred background. The iPhone 17 Pro continues to deliver slightly cleaner images without incident in the most extreme and challenging low-light conditions. When you take a portrait with the iPhone, the computational separation between the person and a complex background is virtually immaculate and instantaneous.

To conclude the analysis, what is clear to consumers is that Samsung has done a remarkable technical job in evolving its photographic system, delivering an undeniably luxurious piece of equipment for any photography enthusiast. However, Apple's relentless consistency, especially in how its software processes difficult images and focuses on faces without hesitation, continues to give it a small but decisive technical advantage in the coveted DxOMark tests. The final choice will always be yours, depending purely on whether you prefer the brutal zoom versatility offered by Samsung or the consistent "point and shoot" reliability of the iPhone.

by mundophone