Comparison between iPhone 17 Pro and Galaxy S25 Ultra: I tested the Camera Kings

Today’s best phones come with high-performance specs across the board, including camera systems. With a great camera phone in hand, you can take stunning images that can help you on your path to Instagram stardom. Or whatever. THE iPhone 17 Pro and the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra are no exception. Both phones impressed us in their respective reviews, and both packs of camera setups offer stiff competition to companies like Google and Oppo. But how do they compare to each other?

To find out, I took them on several image-capturing missions around Edinburgh, testing them in various conditions and then scrutinizing the results.

With phones at this level, there often won’t be a “winner” in every test. Many results will depend on your personal preferences, as you will see here.

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As a professional photographer, I prefer a more realistic image, with natural tones and rich contrast, which provides me with a good baseline to apply my own edits if I wish.

I also don’t like over-processing, which can make an image look too digital and artificial. Some of you may disagree, instead preferring more vibrant images, with strong saturation and clarity, that can be shared directly on social media without any additional effort on your part. Both positions are good, but that’s why tests like these should be taken with a grain of salt.

With that said, let’s dive in and take a look at the images. All photos were taken in each phone’s standard camera app in JPEG (or HEIF for some iPhone images) format and were imported and resized in Adobe Lightroom, but without any additional editing or sharpening applied.

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iPhone 17 Pro vs. Galaxy S25 Ultra: Key camera tests

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Like any average day, this test starts with lots of bread and melted cheese. Both shots look great, with lots of detail and even exposure. The S25 Ultra’s colors are slightly richer, which I don’t mind here as it helps the food really pop.

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Outside in the fall light, I love the colors captured by both phones. The iPhone’s picture has richer contrast, with deeper black levels which I think are better, but otherwise there’s very little to choose between them.

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It’s the same when I approached this leaf. I think the iPhone’s bokeh (the blurred background) looks a little nicer, but I slightly prefer the S25 Ultra’s deeper tones. (This is true optical bokeh, not portrait-style processing.) Flip a coin and choose your favorite.

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There is, however, a much bigger difference here. Although the exposure is comparable, the S25 Ultra’s colors are noticeably more saturated than the iPhone’s – notice the blue hull of the boat and the reddish building to the right. Is it good? Well, it comes down to opinion again. To my eye, Samsung’s photo seems overly saturated to the point of looking quite fake. I much prefer the more muted, almost filmic tones of the iPhone.

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And it’s almost exactly the same story when I switched to the ultra-wide cameras on both phones. The S25 Ultra delivered a very saturated image while the iPhone’s is much more subtle.

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The Galaxy S25 Ultra did a better job here, color-wise, though, with warmer, more autumnal tones that suited the scene well. The iPhone photo looks a little cold in comparison.

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But just to confuse the result, even though the iPhone’s colors may not look as good, when I looked closely at the details around the edge, I noticed that the photo looked significantly better, while the S25 Ultra’s image lost a lot of detail. Will you ever notice this difference? Certainly not, especially if you only post on Instagram or send messages via WhatsApp. However, when both phones cost over $1,000, you better believe I’m going to nitpick harder than you ever thought possible.

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That said, I actually don’t have much to say between these two photos taken in a museum in Edinburgh. Both are well exposed, and while the iPhone leaned slightly toward a magenta white balance, I don’t really consider that a good or bad thing. Make your choice.

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However, I definitely prefer the iPhone’s photo when switching to the ultra-wide lens. The S25 Ultra has obviously tried to reduce reflections on the ground, leaving it a bit dark. The ground appears more in the iPhone photo, which adds better contrast to the scene as a whole.

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Here’s another example of the S25 Ultra’s more vibrant tones, with the iPhone looking more natural. I know which one I prefer (the iPhone, if you haven’t been paying attention), but there’s nothing wrong with the S25 Ultra’s photo either.

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And in this picture, looking at some golden leaves, I see almost no discernible difference. Cool stuff.

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The iPhone photo is noticeably brighter here, and it looks better. I don’t know why the S25 Ultra underexposed its image, but it made the scene look pretty dull.

iPhone 17 Pro vs Galaxy S25 Ultra: zoom in on photos

Both phones feature dedicated optical zoom lenses, with the iPhone going up to 8x (what Apple calls “optical quality”, which is a processed crop of the 48-megapixel sensor) and the S25 Ultra going slightly further to 10X. Both phones offer different preset zoom levels between the two.

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Starting at 8x on the iPhone and 10x on the Galaxy, this photo of golden leaves looks great on both, with vibrant tones and solid detail.

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Using the iPhone with 4x zoom and the S25 Ultra with 5x zoom, I again think both phones did a great job. The iPhone leaned slightly harder into warmer autumnal tones, with the greens of grass and leaves looking more vibrant and emerald in the S25 Ultra’s image.

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At 5x zoom, the Galaxy S25 Ultra’s image looks quite dull and underexposed, with a slight magenta shift in its colors. The iPhone photo with 4x zoom appears brighter, with more pleasing colors.

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And it’s pretty much the same at the full 8x and 10x zoom levels; the iPhone offers better contrast and colors.

I found that the Galaxy may struggle more with its colors when zooming than when using the main camera. Let’s take this as an example:

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At the main camera’s standard focal length, these images look almost identical, with nice warm tones captured by both phones.

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But zooming up to 2x really threw the Galaxy off balance. Its white balance is rather cold, with a more pronounced magenta bias, losing the beautiful golden light that is always present in the iPhone’s image.

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But I prefer the warmer color tones of the Galaxy’s 10x zoom in this example. The leaves on the trees appear noticeably warmer and richer.

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And again, with the iPhone’s 8x zoom and the S25 Ultra’s 10x zoom, there’s a significant color shift. The iPhone image appears more cyan overall – and I think it has slightly better contrast as well.

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At the same zoom lengths, I again see a more pronounced cyan shift in the white balance on the iPhone, as well as an overall brighter and more contrasty scene. For my taste, I prefer the iPhone, but the S25 Ultra remains technically solid.

It’s interesting to see how each phone performs better in different scenarios, there’s almost no rhyme or reason why I see why. In some zoomed-in images, the iPhone appears warmer and richer, while at other times the S25 does. It’s very difficult for me, as a technical writer, to consider one or the other a winner, though, because a lot of it depends on personal preference.

iPhone 17 Pro vs. Galaxy S25 Ultra: night mode

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Switching to night mode on the main camera makes the iPhone’s image noticeably brighter (especially on the cobbled street and in the sky), although that slight cyan shift is now present in the S25 Ultra’s image. The S25’s photo is also slightly sharper, but you really have to zoom in closely to see the difference.

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And it’s a similar story here. The iPhone’s photo is brighter in the sky and with noticeably less image noise, but building details are much clearer in the S25 Ultra’s image.

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If we zoom in closely on the details, it’s clear that the Galaxy S25 Ultra has the edge in clarity, but the iPhone’s image has more vibrant colors.

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The conclusion is also the same in ultra-wide mode, although both phones delivered a much darker photo. Ultrawide night mode still has a way to go, no matter which phone you choose.

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And with 8x and 10x zoom on the iPhone and Galaxy, respectively, the Galaxy wins again in terms of clarity, but the iPhone’s colors are much better.

iPhone 17 Pro vs Galaxy S25 Ultra: selfie test

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I couldn’t post that many photos without putting my own big stupid face on the page somewhere. And I have to say, the iPhone did a far superior job capturing this face. Exposure is brighter with better contrast, colors are warmer and more punchy, and details are better too. The S25 Ultra’s image looks really dull in comparison.

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And when I turned on each phone’s wide-angle selfie mode, the iPhone came out on top again. Exposure, contrast, and colors are still better, but it also offers a much wider view than the S25 Ultra can manage. This might be useful if you’re trying to squeeze a lot of your friends into the scene or, like me, good if you want to show lots of extra space around you where friends might be if you’d bothered to make some or talk to someone outside of the workplace.

iPhone 17 Pro vs. Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra: Which has the better camera?

After many test photos taken, miles traveled and millions of pixels observed on the screen, I can finally conclude that the best camera phone between the iPhone 17 Pro and the Galaxy S25 Ultra is… drum roll please…

You decide.

Is this the best I can do based on my 14 years of experience as a tech journalist and photographer? Honestly, yes. Both phones performed very well in these tests, and neither can objectively be considered significantly better than the other in any way.

The S25 Ultra, like almost all Samsung phones, tends to lean more towards highly saturated colors, while the iPhone keeps things a little more natural. At night, the Galaxy is sharper, but the iPhone has better colors. Sometimes the iPhone’s zoomed images looked richer, while other times the S25 Ultra’s zoomed images looked better. Either way, it’s better for me.

As I mentioned at the start of this review, I take a more subtle approach with my photos, preferring a natural base image that gives me more opportunity to apply my own edits in apps like Adobe Lightroom or Google’s Snapseed. The iPhone 17 Pro remains my favorite camera phone for this reason, but many of you will probably love the punchier look offered by the Galaxy phone.

The one area where the iPhone has definitely come out on top is the front camera, so if high-quality selfies are your thing, go for the iPhone.

Really, either phone is an absolute cracker when it comes to photography, and it really shouldn’t come down to camera performance if you’re having trouble deciding whether to use Android or iOS.

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