Smartphones: Which of Apple’s iPhone 13 or Samsung’s Galaxy S22 will seduce you the most?

At the start of the year, if two series of smartphones are in the news, they are undoubtedly that of the iPhone 13, from Apple, and that of the Galaxy S22, from Samsung.

Although Samsung dominates the smartphone market, it remains to be seen whether its latest iteration of flagships will be able to take the best of Apple’s new iPhones, which are essential for a very wide audience.

So which of the iPhone 13 or the Galaxy S22 will be the next darling of the general public?

Apple or Samsung?

The following face-to-face is intended to help buyers who are still hesitant to make their choice by presenting the technical characteristics of the Samsung Galaxy S22 and Galaxy S22+ compared to their closest equivalent under iOS. Of course, differences in platform, hardware configuration, and even base priorities make direct and accurate comparisons difficult.

But our coverage of each device’s respective spec sheet and analysis of how they compare should be invaluable in your quest to decide which of Apple or Samsung is more worth your attention.

Apple iPhone 13 – Best prices:

Very tough competition on the screens

The resolution and pixel density of the new iPhones are clearly ahead, with the iPhone 13 edging out the Galaxy S22 and sharply beating the S22+, which packs the same number of pixels as its smaller sibling across a larger screen area. Sure, you could argue that all three screens have pixels so small that most users would need a magnifying glass to see them, but it’s still about the details that matter.

As far as the refresh rate is concerned, this time Samsung takes the best of the Apple brand. Apple’s decision to reserve its 120Hz ProMotion technology for the iPhone 13 Pro doesn’t help its more budget-friendly iPhone 13 fare well against competition from Samsung. The Korean giant has incorporated its own 120Hz screens into all three of its Galaxy S this year, including its base model. While this refresh rate allows for smooth images at 120Hz, it can also drop down to 10Hz to preserve battery life when on-screen imagery is mostly static.

Finally, Samsung’s new Galaxy S series smartphones can also double the touch sampling rate of the iPhone 13, which means they should be more responsive in more demanding use cases, like gaming. intense mobiles.

In the photo, benefit to Samsung

Going by the raw numbers alone, the Samsung duo seem to be the clear winner. The S22 and S22+ (which share identical camera arrays) both include an additional camera that the iPhone 13 doesn’t have: a telephoto lens with 3X optical zoom. Which, of course, puts them ahead of the iPhone 13 in terms of long-range photography. Additionally, the S22 and S22+’s newly enlarged “Nightography” sensors are designed to gather more light to improve low-light photography and capture sharper images in fast-moving situations.

Of course, anyone who has been familiar with smartphones for a few years knows that the technical characteristics of the camera are only part of the story. Much of the performance of smartphone cameras happens behind the scenes, when the camera software grabs the captured image. To that end, Samsung has introduced new artificial intelligence (AI)-based technology designed to improve digital blurring of its portrait mode for humans and pets, while allowing the photographer to automatically track up to 10 participants. in a group shot to improve framing and focus.

Apple’s post-processing technology is no slouch, however. Not only is its own digital portrait processing considered one of the best, if not the best, but one of the flagship additions of the 13^and generation of the iPhone is Apple’s new Cinematic mode, which allows the user to add burst focus to their videos, smoothly shifting depth of field from subject to subject. using software algorithms.

Draw on memory

Memory. A much easier category to compare…or so you might think. Of course, Samsung’s RAM is twice that of Apple’s. The Apple brand responds, however, by offering a high-end storage option that doubles that of Samsung for both devices. It would therefore seem that we are moving towards a 1-1 draw. While Apple’s iPhone 13 512GB is the clear winner when it comes to storage, the bottom line is a little murkier when it comes to RAM.

Samsung Galaxy S22 – Best prices:

Apple is king at making seemingly low-end hardware perform better than digitally superior offerings. Take its M1 chip, for example. This unit integrates processor, storage, and RAM into a single package. Thanks to this tight integration and the optimization of coordination it allows, a MacBook Air equipped with the M1 chip can beat many much more expensive systems, even if its base model contains only 8 GB of RAM while most of its competitors use 16 or more.

Apple’s “walled-garden” approach to its iOS platform and App Store also means that all apps running on the iPhone 13’s 4GB of RAM have been verified to be optimized for Apple hardware. Meanwhile, Samsung’s reliance on the much more diverse and far less controlled Android ecosystem means that 8GB may or may not be able to deliver twice the performance, once the relative lack optimization is taken into account. Consequence: it is difficult to determine which of Samsung or Apple offers the best experience in terms of memory on the respective new series of smartphones.

Samsung gets the best of the battery

As with the memory battle above, the competition for battery size isn’t as cut and dried as it first appears. Optimizing background app usage, standby power consumption, network management, the age of your device, and many other factors can have an impact. on battery longevity much more than a few extra mAh. However, all three of these devices should be able to last you through the day thanks to factors like Apple’s tight control over background app consumption and Samsung’s new, more efficient 4nm processor.

Things are a bit more varied on the charging front. Samsung seems to be the big winner in this area. Not only does the S22 support fast 25W wired charging, but its bigger cousin boosts that power to an impressive 45W to power its larger PSU.

The result is a little tighter when it comes to wireless charging, with Apple’s iPhone 13 matching the S22 siblings with 15W of maximum input. However, it should be noted that to achieve this speed, the wireless charger in question must be of the MagSafe type. MagSafe units are either manufactured by Apple or by third parties, with their approval. This usually comes at a premium over Qi units which can deliver the same 15W power to Samsung devices, but are limited to 7W on the iPhone 13.

Top connectivity at Apple

When it comes to Wi-Fi connectivity, the S22+ stands out with the addition of the brand new Wi-Fi 6E protocol. Of course, you’ll need to have a 6E Wi-Fi router or other device to take full advantage of it. While these devices are relatively rare at present, the S22+ is a bit more future-proof. Both Samsung devices have just moved ahead of Apple’s Bluetooth support, moving from version 5.0 to the all-new Bluetooth version 5.2.

Mobile connectivity is one of the areas where Samsung’s two offerings differ the most. While the S22+ can rival the iPhone 13 for its 5G coverage, the standard S22 skips ultra-wideband (UWB), just like its predecessor the Galaxy S21. While that’s not a big omission for the lucky few who live in dense urban markets where UWB coverage is available from Verizon Wireless or AT&T, it’s less significant for those who live in the majority of the country.

That’s even more true now that the C-band spectrum that all three devices support is starting to roll out, delivering speeds that can match all but the fastest UWB installations over a much wider service area. .

Samsung is back in the race for the best support

Obviously, there’s no point in comparing Android to iOS in the relatively short space we have here. However, it’s worth taking a look at the promised number of updates offered by each model.

iOS has pretty much been the gold standard when it comes to long-term OS updates. Its five-version promise means you’re guaranteed to be able to download the latest version of iOS for at least five years. The recent launch of iOS 15 has been supported since the iPhone 6S, launched in 2015. Sure, some newer features that require newer hardware to work might leave this model behind, but the same can be said for everything. smartphones.

For its part, Samsung promises a slightly shorter warranty of four versions. This is one less major update than iOS, and also a much less reliable proposition overall. While iOS updates are usually available for all compatible devices from day one, Android models often take much longer for a new update to proliferate through the sheer number of models that manufacturers make. different manufacturers and customized for different operators. The associated approval processes can often mean that a new version of Android released in the fall won’t even reach the latest generation of devices until the following spring.

Source: ZDNet.com