From the iPhone 15 Pro Max to Galaxy S24 Ultra: not looking back (too much)

Oh, and the homescreen — I still don't understand why, in 2024, an iPhone will put your apps in an ordered row, and not allow you any sort of custom arrangement. For example, my brain works vertically — I have my social apps in one column, my multimedia apps in another column, so on and so forth. And I want to fit a widget wherever there's a gap, right? On Android, that's super-easy. On iPhone, it's a pain to set it up. And, if you want to fit an app in your existing arrangement, it's a nightmare, because all the rows move over.



Using the S Pen to mark the Calendar is also a favorite feature of mine — just drawing huge boxes of dates when you are available or busy is such an organic way of referencing your schedule. Same goes for notes — jotting down ideas and daily agenda is still a better way of bringing order to chaos, compared to type text.

But it’s not all sunshine and rainbows — there are still things that can make you miss an iPhone.

The things that the Galaxy S24 Ultra does worse

The Gallery is a mess. I know, the iPhone has kind of a bad file system, right? Even if you do have a Files app, you barely have access to the actual files. And it still works in that archaic way where every app is its own “box” and needs to copy files over to its own folder in order to edit or work with them in some capacity.

But the Galaxy S24 Ultra's photo gallery — and that’s an Android thing overall — is annoying on the complete other end of the spectrum. Your downloads and your incoming photos seem to have a mind of their own and come in whatever folder they feel like today. The Gallery makes it easier by finding and showing you pretty much every picture you have on your phone.

But that means that you can have your meme downloads mixed up with your family photos, unless you make the conscious effort to manually go to “Albums -> Camera” every time. And sharing a picture from within a chat app is also a jumbled mess, since it has a hard time to chronologically arrange your photos — the order you see in the Gallery may not be the same order you see within the sharing screen in Messenger, for example.



There’s also no way around the fact that there’s no FaceTime and no iMessage. And I know that’s a huge deal in the US, since every friend group’s collective consciousness seems to insist on never trying WhatsApp.

Also, if your app interests are a bit more niche, you may not find the apps you need on the Play Store. To be fair — this has gotten much better over the years, and most developers now build apps in parallel for both ecosystems. Or they release for Android with a minor delay. However, most recently, I found myself in a real-life situation where I can’t download an app — an app that’s used to edit the settings and presets for a brand-new guitar effect that I had bought. It’s only for iPhone, for the time being.

To cap it off, the AirTag that’s currently hanging off my car keys is almost useless now — I do still have an iPad if I need to track it. Though, Samsung’s Smart Tag 2 looks like a very decent replacement. Having to switch that over is just a pain point of the entire ecosystem switch, but there is a solution none the less.

I still use a MacBook and an iPad, but I can’t say I am missing AirDrop too much — with apps like SendAnywhere, AirDash, Android File Transfer, or good old Drive and — you still have plenty of options.

Final word — is Galaxy S24 Ultra better than iPhone 15 Pro Max?

No, but it’s also not worse. They are extremely premium phones for slightly different users. Currently, I prefer the Galaxy for the design, multitasking workflow, S Pen. And I kind of like the camera a bit more, even if its HDR sometimes slips — I prefer that output.

That said, if you pry it out of my hands and chuck an iPhone my way, I’m not going to complain. It just goes to show that these devices have grown and matured so much. This year, Samsung also upgraded its software update policy — now promising 7 years of support. This does more than measure up to Apple’s typical 5 years of updates. And it means that, no matter what side of the fence you are on, you still win.