Samsung makes cheap to high-end phones. This article only considered pricey Galaxy phones during comparison. Because comparing an iPhone to a budget Samsung phone isn’t fair.
An iPhone is better than a Samsung Galaxy phone for numerous reasons. A few of them are superior processor performance, battery efficiency, optimized operating system, privacy and security, prolonged software support, no bloatware, and optimized hardware.
iPhone has superior processors:
Both Apple and Samsung design their mobile chip. For Apple, it’s the mobile A-series chips, and for Samsung, Exynos chips. However, there are core differences between the design and performance of these processors.
Samsung uses multiple types of processors in the same Galaxy phone line. It could be Qualcomm’s Snapdragon or Samsung’s Exynos, depending on regional location. For example, the Galaxy S22 uses Exynos 2200 processor for Europe and Qualcomm SM8450 Snapdragon for the North American region.
Numerous tests from renowned news outlets prove that Samsung’s Exynos processor is inferior to Apple’s A-series chip in performance and power consumption.
Therefore, Samsung intentionally sells some inferior flagship phones based on region. In contrast, Apple sells the same type of iPhone throughout the world. Irrespective of the geographic location, you will get Apple’s same superior hardware and software.
Samsung phone becomes hot:
Samsung has been making Android smartphones since 2010. Since then, one of the primary criticisms of those phones has been that Samsung phones become hot during minor processor-intensive work such as playing games, recording or watching videos, etc.
In comparison, Apple’s iPhone never gets hot with even extremely processor-intensive video games.
This phenomenon has two implications. The first one is that the Samsung phone consumes more energy than required. As a result, the battery charge will never last longer during a typical day. Secondly, undue heat on the processor will degrade it even faster than its competitor. It’s one of the primary reasons why after 36 to 48 months, the Samsung phone becomes painfully slow.
No long term software update for Samsung Phones:
Each year Samsung releases countless android phones with multiple variations ranging from low price to flagship. The critical drawback of this approach is that the software department can’t support all these phones over several years.
Generally, no low-end Samsung phones receive software updates after 12 months. This software update cycle hardly lasts up to 36 months for the Galaxy series. Therefore, after several years Samsung abandons their phones from any software support.
On the contrary, Apple provides regular software updates throughout the lifespan of all their ongoing iPhones, and sometimes it’s more than five years.
Software optimization:
Samsung inherently is a hardware company first, software company second. On the contrary, Apple is a software-first company.
Since the introduction of iOS in 2007, Apple has been modifying, updating, and polishing the iPhone OS. However, Samsung tried to make phone OS several times and failed — for example, the Bada and Tizen.
Since the failure, Samsung has been using Google’s Android. However, due to Samsung’s lack of software expertise, the OS is poorly optimized for their Galaxy phones. This poor optimization creates several issues in the long term.
For example, after several years, a Samsung phone performs sluggishly, whereas iPhone doesn’t. This problem is so prevalent that Samsung has a dedicated help page to address this issue. Here is the help page — Why is my phone slowing down and how can I speed it up?
However, none of the solutions above would work because the core problem lies in the lack of software and hardware optimization.
No tracking options:
During installing an app on the iPhone, a user can ask the app not to track. If the user doesn’t give permission, the app can’t follow a user across multiple platforms. Because of this specific feature, Facebook lost more than $10 billion in ads revenue in 2022.
— Apple broke Facebook’s ad machine. Who’s going to fix it? from Recode.
On an iPhone, a user has to download the Facebook app. However, on a Samsung phone, the Facebook and other apps are system pre-installed. It means not only are these apps uninstallable but also these apps have some system permission that other apps don’t have. As a result, the Facebook app on Samsung phones can do almost everything. It can even install apps without user permission. And for this privilege, Meta — Facebook’s parent company — pays Samsung billions of dollars each year.
Therefore, on a Samsung phone, a user has no privacy. Samsung isn’t looking after the user but for their profit.
Samsung Bloatware:
Every iPhone comes with only a few essential apps pre-installed. Even those apps can be removed from the phone.
On the contrary, Samsung is regularly criticized for their pre-installed bloatware and duplicate apps, which are unremovable from the phone.
For example, Facebook, Spotify, Netflix, Microsoft LinkedIn are pre-installed.
The followings are a few duplicate apps on Samsung Galaxy phones —
Storage:
- Google Drive
- Microsoft One Drive
- Samsung Drive
Browser:
- Samsung Webbrowser
- Google Chrome
App store:
- Samsung Galaxy Store
- Google Play
Email client:
- Gmail
- Samsung Email
Other Google Apps:
- YouTube
- Maps
- YouTube Music
- Google Play Movies & TV
- Duo
- Photos
Moreover, numerous services run in the background. A service and apps are almost the same. The only difference is that a service runs in the background without a user interface. Most of these pre-installed apps also operate a few background services.
The problem with these installed services is that they have some system permission that other 3rd party services or apps don’t have. As a result, these are privacy and battery drainage issues.
Battery efficiency:
Arun Maini, a YouTuber known as “Mrwhosetheboss” with 10 million subscribers, did a battery test between the latest high-end phones. Here is the video — Samsung S22 Ultra vs S21 / iPhone 13 Pro Max / Pixel 6 Pro / Xiaomi 12 Pro Battery Life Drain Test.
The test shows that even with a smaller battery, the iPhone lasted several extra hours compared to a Samsung Galaxy phone with the highest battery capacity.
This efficiency comes from a wide range from an Apple device. Tight software and hardware integration, software and hardware optimization, and efficient OS code.
On the contrary, Samsung takes the OS from Google, a processor from Qualcomm, and tries to integrate it in an R&D center in South Korea and India.
GPS data handling:
Though Samsung’s Galaxy and iPhones both have every type of global positioning chip in their phones, the way they handle the GPS data is entirely different.
For the iPhone, iOS automatically controls the GPS data. A user can’t manually turn on or off the GPS except for not allowing an app to use the positioning data.
In Samsung phones, a user can manually turn on or off the GPS. This on-off is system-global. Therefore, once turned on, every app that is registered to the GPS data stream will get the data.
It may seem that Samsung’s GPS implementation is superior to Apple’s from the outside. However, numerous real-world examples show that Apple’s implementation is superior regarding security and battery consumption. Another drawback of Samsung phones is that their OS — especially google apps — can use the GPS even without user knowledge.
Camera:
Both Samsung and Apple use Sony’s camera sensor. Like the GPS, the implementation and software are entirely different in their phones.
In movie-making, the entire film isn’t shot on a single type of camera. During post-production, colorists match every shot so that an audience can’t recognize the difference between different camera profiles.
Apple applies a similar technique to its camera software. Once a user takes a photo, no one can tell which camera has captured the shot. Every camera is perfectly color-matched even though they have different lenses.
Moreover, if you ask a professional photographer about a camera-megapixel, everyone would say that the megapixel is irrelevant regarding a better photo.
Therefore, the statement that a 50-megapixel camera would take a better photo than a 12-megapixel camera is inaccurate.
Numerous tests show that an iPhone always takes better or similar quality photos than a higher megapixel Samsung competitor.
A serious photographer would not rely on a phone to take photos, whereas, for regular images, any type of phone’s camera is more than enough.
Final Words:
If you have a budget and considering which phone to buy, an iPhone would not disappoint you. However, everyone has preferences. If you want an Android phone, it’s better to buy a Samsung Galaxy phone than a Chinese OnePlus or Xiaomi.