Google Pixel 8 Pro vs. iPhone 15 Pro Max, Galaxy S23 Ultra: Comparison of top-end phones

The Pixel 8 Pro is Google’s latest top-end phone, with a new processor, a brighter display, and a better camera than its predecessor. However, it faces stiff competition from two other devices that dominate the premium smartphone market: the iPhone 15 Pro Max and the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra. How do you actually compare?

Pixel 8 Pro runs on the new Tensor G3 chipset, the third generation of a silicon series designed by Google to power on-device AI processing. The Tensor chipset doesn’t seem to be as capable of boosting performance in benchmarks like Geekbench as the A17 Pro chip in the iPhone 15 Pro Max or the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip in the Galaxy S23 Ultra. We’ll have to wait until we can fully test the Pixel 8 Pro to see how it performs compared to others.

But the Tensor chipset also supports the Pixel family’s great media capabilities, including Magic Eraser for removing elements from photos, Audio Magic Eraser for reducing background noise, and Best Take for combining the best parts of burst photography. Allows for lots of editing tricks. These are the flashiest software advantages the Pixel 8 Pro has over its competitors, even though Magic Eraser is technically available on other phones through the Google Photos app.

Another big advantage of the Pixel 8 Pro is its 7-year warranty on the Android operating system and security updates. This far exceeds Samsung smartphones like the Galaxy S23 Ultra’s 4 years of OS updates and 5 years of security updates. Apple is also unclear on how long the phone will be supported. For example, the just-released iOS 17 update puts off his iPhone 8 and iPhone X, both of which were released in 2017, so his 5-year lower estimate is the OS update window. For new iPhones.

The Pixel 8 Pro’s rear camera hardware includes a 50-megapixel main shooter, a 48-megapixel ultra-wide camera, and a 48-megapixel telephoto camera with 5x optical zoom. In theory, these cameras could produce sharper photos than the iPhone 15 Pro Max’s 12-megapixel ultra-wide and 12-megapixel telephoto cameras, but the unique features in Apple’s zoom cameras Testing is required to compare with “Tetra Prism” technology. (The iPhone’s 48-megapixel main camera is likely to be roughly equivalent to the Pixel 8 Pro’s main shooter).

As far as the rear camera is concerned, the Pixel 8 Pro may face the biggest challenge from the Galaxy S23 Ultra, which has a 200 million pixel main camera. Samsung’s top-of-the-line model only has a 12-megapixel ultra-wide-angle camera, but it also has a 10-megapixel 3x optical zoom and a 10-megapixel 10x optical zoom with up to 100x digital zoom. It has two telephoto cameras. . But considering the phones have a starting price of $1,200, the Pixel 8 Pro’s $1,000 starting price and the iPhone 15 Pro Max’s $1,100 price, these enhanced camera specs make sense. That’s true.

All three phones have fairly similar selfie cameras. The Pixel 8 Pro has a 10.5-megapixel selfie camera, while the iPhone 15 Pro Max and Galaxy S23 Ultra both have 12-megapixel front-facing cameras.

In terms of design, the three phones look very different. The Pixel 8 Pro retains a wide horizontal camera block that spans the width of its predecessor phones. A metal strip wraps around the phone’s three rear cameras, and the right side has a flash and a new temperature sensor (for checking food and, pending FDA approval, your own skin). The rest of the back cover of the phone is matte glass with rounded sides.

The iPhone 15 Pro Max has the flat sides and square camera block of its predecessor, and the lens is larger and sticks out farther than previous iPhones. Although the Galaxy S23 Ultra is physically the largest of the bunch, its design tends towards minimalism, with just five cameras protruding from the unadorned back cover (i.e. no large camera block). ), it also has rounded sides.

The Pixel 8 Pro’s 6.7-inch OLED display (3,120×1,440 pixels) is the same size as its predecessor, but it’s brighter, with up to 2,400 nits at a refresh rate of 1-120Hz. It has a slightly sharper resolution than the iPhone 15 Pro Max’s 6.7-inch OLED (2,796x 1,290 pixels) screen and is on par with the Galaxy S23 Ultra’s 6.8-inch AMOLED (3,088×1,440 pixels) display (both made by Apple) and Samsung’s The phone has an adaptive refresh rate of 120Hz).

In terms of other hardware specifications, these phones are also quite similar. The Pixel 8 Pro comes with 12GB of RAM and 128GB to 1TB of storage. Apple never specifies how much memory its phones have, but GSM Arena says The iPhone 15 Pro Max has 8GB, and the phone comes with 256GB, 512GB, or 1TB of storage. The Galaxy S23 Ultra starts with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, but can also be configured with 12GB of RAM and 256GB, 512GB, or 1TB of storage. None of the three have slots for expandable storage, so you’ll need to store additional files in the cloud or connect an external SSD.

Similarly, Apple hasn’t revealed the battery capacity of its phone, only saying that it’s capable of up to 29 hours of video playback (in other words, it should last all day without needing to charge). The Pixel 8 Pro’s battery capacity is 5,050mAh, while the Galaxy S23’s battery capacity is 5,000mAh.

In a first for Apple, the iPhone 15 Pro Max features a USB-C port instead of a Lightning connector, allowing for 25 watts of wired charging and 15 watts of wireless charging. The Pixel 8 Pro has up to 30 watts of wired charging and 23 watts of wireless charging, while the Galaxy S23 Ultra is the fastest with 45 watts of wired charging and 15 watts of wireless charging.

To see how the Pixel 8 Pro compares to the iPhone 15 Pro Max and Galaxy S23 Ultra, we’ve placed each smartphone in the side-by-side comparison table below.