If the latest rumors are to be believed, we could hear official news of the Samsung Galaxy S25 series in January 2025. Naturally, I and many others are thinking about how the base model Galaxy S25 might fare against the iPhone 16, as Samsung and Apple continue their years-long rivalry.
Though there are a few tangible upgrades tipped to be coming to the Galaxy S25, it seems we could be looking at another incremental upgrade for Samsung’s vanilla flagship. That’ll be no issue for some users, as the Galaxy S24 already finds a place on our list of the best Samsung phones. Comparatively, the iPhone 16 feels like a major step up from its predecessor, the iPhone 15, and as our iPhone 16 review details the phone impressed us with its snappy performance, refreshed design, and new Camera Control button when it launched in September 2024.
We’ll have more detailed comparisons between the Galaxy S25 series and iPhone 16 lineup once we have some official information about Samsung’s new phones. But until then here are my thoughts on what the next round of this famous head-to-head might look like.
| Header Cell - Column 0 | Samsung Galaxy S25 rumored specs | iPhone 16 specs |
|---|---|---|
| Display: | 6.2-inch AMOLED | 6.1-inch AMOLED |
| Resolution: | 1080 x 2340 pixels | 1179 x 2556 pixels |
| Refresh rate: | 120Hz | 60Hz |
| Chipset: | Snapdragon 8 Elite | Apple A18 |
| Rear cameras: | 50MP wide, 12MP ultra-wide, 10MP telephoto (3x zoom) | 48MP wide, 12MP ultrawide |
| Front camera: | 12MP | 12MP |
| RAM: | 12GB | 8GB |
| Storage: | 128GB, 256GB, 512GB | 128GB, 256GB, 512GB |
| Battery: | 4,000mAh | 3,561mAh |
Samsung Galaxy S25 vs iPhone 16: latest rumors, key features, and major upgrades
Despite the (generally) good-natured rivalry between Apple and Samsung for the top spot in Western phone markets, it seems that we’ll be looking at two very similar handsets once the Samsung Galaxy S25 launches. The S25 is tipped to launch with “significant design changes”, but we don’t expect this to overhaul the design language established with the Galaxy S21. Chances are, we’ll see a phone with rounded corners, a 6.2-inch OLED display with smaller bezels, and a vertical triple-camera setup on the rear panel.
The iPhone 16 offers a similar design: rounded bezels, a 6.1-inch OLED display, and a vertical camera alignment (the iPhone only has two cameras, though). Honestly, if design is the main factor in picking a phone for you, it might come down to the colors on offer – the iPhone comes in fabulously vibrant pink, teal, and ultramarine alongside white and black, while the Galaxy S25 is rumored to launch in a bunch of new colors that mostly focus on the black, silver, and blue side of things, with a few potential surprises such as Pink Gold and Red Coral.
Looking at the phones’ cameras, we expect the base Galaxy S25 will carry forward the 50MP main camera, 12MP ultra-wide camera, and 10MP 3x telephoto camera from the S24 – it seems Samsung is saving camera upgrades for the Galaxy S25 Ultra this year. The 3x telephoto lens, if present, will offer the S25 an advantage over the iPhone 16, which sports a 48MP main camera and 12MP ultra-wide camera. Samsung’s camera tech is generally considered class-leading, and we expect the S25 to be a great camera phone – though, despite lacking optical zoom, the iPhone 16 is too, thanks in large part to its innovative Camera Control capacitive button. There’s been no word of the S25 sporting a shutter button.
The real differences between the two phones are likely to be internal. The Samsung Galaxy S25 is tipped to launch with the same Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset as the S25 Ultra, an absolute beast of a chipset that almost doubled the score of Apple’s A18 Pro when our US Mobiles Editor Philip Berne ran performance benchmarks. There’s been some word of Samsung using its own Exynos chipsets for the S25, though, so this is still an area to keep an eye on.
The iPhone 16 sports the base-model A18 chipset, but thanks to Apple’s great optimization and large performance gains on the previous generation A16, this still feels fast and responsive. It’s a similar story for RAM; while the S25 is tipped to launch with 12GB of RAM – 4GB more than the S24's 8GB – while the iPhone 16 gets along with 8GB, though Apple’s optimization helps this to go further than on other devices.
In terms of storage, at least one tipster has suggested the S25 will start with 256GB of storage, ditching the 128GB tier altogether, with the potential for a new 512GB option. Others suggest the 128GB and 256GB options will remain unchanged from the S24. The iPhone 16, for comparison, offers 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB storage tiers.
When it comes to software, we expect the Galaxy S25 will run the rumored One UI 7 Android wrapper at launch, and the iPhone 16 runs iOS 18. The iOS versus Android debate could take up its own article, but when it comes to AI, things feel a bit more up in the air. Apple is still rolling out Apple Intelligence features slowly, whereas the One UI 7 could bring a slew of improvements to the Galaxy AI toolset. These things are substantially harder to predict than hardware changes that can be gleaned from production line leaks and 3D renders.
As ever, there will be diehards who swear by the Galaxy or the iPhone, and for those people the choice is already obvious despite a lack of official information. For everyone else, this year’s face-off between the S25 and iPhone 16 could be made more difficult by advancing performance and design refreshes – luckily, we shouldn’t have to wait too long to find out.
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