Apple has revealed its latest top-end smartphone in the form of the iPhone 18 Pro Max – but how does it compare to one of the most popular Android phones on the market, the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra?
While Apple’s latest top-end iPhone seems to focus on camera control, performance and battery life gains, Samsung’s Galaxy S26 Ultra looks to counter with a clever privacy-focused display, a high-resolution main camera and its typically flexible zoom setup.
So, how do the two compare on paper? We’ve broken down the key differences between the iPhone 18 Pro Max and Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra to help you work out which flagship looks best suited to you.
If you’re curious about what’s new with this year’s iPhone, take a look at iPhone 18 Pro vs iPhone 17 Pro.
Pricing and availability
The iPhone 18 Pro Max has increased in price by £100/$100 compared to last year’s alternative, now coming with a £/$1,299 price tag with 256GB of storage. It’s set to go up for pre-order on 12 September, with release on 18 September.
The Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra costs a similar amount of money at $1,299 in the US, though it’s slightly cheaper in the UK at £1,279, again with 256GB of storage. That said, the S26 Ultra is now close to six months old, so it can often be found at a discount if you know where to look.
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The Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra has a privacy-focused screen
The Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra’s screen is arguably one of the main reasons to go for it; it packs a 6.9-inch AMOLED display with a super-smooth 120Hz LTPO refresh rate, a pixel-packed WQHD+ resolution and a peak brightness of 2600nits. That alone makes it one of the better screens on the market, but the S26 Ultra has a secret up its sleeve; a built-in privacy screen.
Much like the third-party privacy screen protectors you can buy for most phones, the S26 Ultra can stop those around you from seeing what’s on your screen. The difference is that Samsung’s implementation is way smarter; it can be enabled on a per-pixel basis, meaning it can only block certain elements – like incoming notifications – rather than the whole screen.
It’s also automatically enabled when inputting your PIN, and you can turn it on when you’re in banking apps and the like. It’s also customisable, with two levels of privacy protection available.
The iPhone 18 Pro Max’s competing 6.9-inch, 120Hz OLED panel isn’t to be sniffed at, of course – Apple has a reputation for fantastic smartphone screens, and we’re not expecting any less this year, but it – nor any other phone on the market at the time of writing – can do what Samsung’s phone screen can.
So if that sounds like something you want, the S26 Ultra is the one to go for.
The iPhone 18 Pro Max has a variable-aperture camera
Apple’s biggest camera upgrade is undoubtedly its move to a mechanical variable aperture on the iPhone 18 Pro Max’s main 48MP fusion sensor – a first for iPhones.
Rather than relying entirely on software processing, the system uses laser-cut blades to physically adjust how much light enters the camera. In low light, it can open up to let in 50% more light, while Pro Controls should also allow users to adjust it manually.
That could give the iPhone a more natural advantage when it comes to depth of field, exposure and motion, helping create background blur or freeze fast-moving subjects at a hardware level rather than leaving everything to computational photography.
It’s something that Samsung has dabbled with in the past – all the way back to 2018’s Galaxy S9 – but it’s not something on offer from recent Samsung flagships, the S26 Ultra included.
… but the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra is better for zoom shots
That said, it’s not a straight argument as to whether the iPhone or Samsung has the best cameras, because the Galaxy S26 Ultra still has the upper hand when it comes to zoom flexibility.
Like recent Ultra models, the S26 Ultra sports not one but two dedicated zoom cameras alongside its 200MP main and 50MP ultrawide lenses, offering 3x and 5x optical options. That gives it more useful focal lengths than the iPhone 18 Pro Max’s single 4x telephoto camera, especially when shooting subjects that sit somewhere between standard and long-range framing.
Combined with Samsung’s software-assisted zoom, which reaches up to 100x, the S26 Ultra looks better suited to extreme close-ups. As ever, though, the strongest results are still likely to come from its true optical zoom ranges rather than the furthest digital settings.
The iPhone 18 Pro Max will likely be more powerful
The Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra is one of the most powerful phones around on the Android side of the market, sporting a custom version of Qualcomm’s already-top-end Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 that ekes a little bit more power out of the SoC. Paired with 12- or 16GB RAM, it’s safe to say that it’s a performance beast, making easy work of demanding games, on-the-go video rendering and more.
But that being said, the iPhone 18 Pro Max likely has more power under the hood – and it’s all down to a massive year-on-year jump in performance from the new Apple A20 Pro chipset powering the experience.
Apple claims that there’s up to a 40% gain in overall performance compared to the A19 Pro in the iPhone 17 Pro Max – and that chipset had already bested Samsung’s flagship in benchmark tests. The A20 Pro within the iPhone 18 Pro Max will only widen that gap further.
Of course, that’s just synthetic benchmarks – let’s not forget that these are both top-end flagship phones, and day-to-day performance will be rapid regardless of the model you go for. As is the way with modern flagships, the chipsets have way more power than most apps and games know what to do with.
That said, if you want the absolute best performance possible, it looks like Apple has this one in the bag.
The iPhone 18 Pro Max has a bigger battery
Apple doesn’t like to disclose the exact size of the batteries in its iPhones at launch events, instead relying on elements like video playback (and, new for this year, mixed usage) to showcase how long its smartphones can last.
But Apple was keen to point out during the iPhone 18 Pro Max reveal that it represents the biggest jump in battery life yet, with the big-screen model able to deliver up to 45 hours of video playback or 30 hours of mixed use.
Apple will have to eventually disclose the exact size of the battery in the EU, but even without that critical number at hand, it’s clear it’ll have a bigger battery than the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra.
Why? Because the iPhone 17 Pro Max already had a slightly bigger battery than the S26 Ultra’s 5000mAh cell – in its eSIM form anyway. Without a SIM tray taking up space, Apple fit a 5088mAh cell into last year’s top-end iPhone, and with the big jump in battery life, it’s safe to assume that this year’s cell is even bigger.
Whether that translates to better day-to-day longevity is yet to be seen, but given how Apple tends to do a lot with comparatively small cells, expectations are high this year.
Early thoughts
At this stage, this looks like a particularly interesting clash of priorities between Apple and Samsung’s latest top-end phones.
The iPhone 18 Pro Max seems to have the edge in areas like camera control, outright performance and, potentially, battery life, while the Galaxy S26 Ultra fights back with a more versatile zoom setup and genuinely useful display privacy tech that you simply won’t find on the iPhone.
That said, it’s far too early to say which is the better buy. Specs and launch claims only tell part of the story, particularly when it comes to camera performance, battery life and day-to-day usability. We’ll need to spend proper time with the iPhone 18 Pro Max before making any firm judgement.
