Apple has just released a trio of flagship iPhones, making Samsung's latest Galaxy S10 device a defense. Two medium sized company choices, the 5.8 inch iPhone 11 Pro and the 6.1 inch Galaxy S10, may be the middle children of their respective families, but both have a lot to offer in terms of design, appearance, camera, performance and lifetime battery.
We have to put the iPhone 11 Pro through its steps to see how it piles up to the Galaxy S10 in the real world, but on paper, it's almost too close to be called. This is how the iPhone 11 Pro and Galaxy S10 stack up.
iPhone 11 Pro vs Galaxy S10: Design and size:
The iPhone 11 Pro, which measures 5.7 inches high and 2.8 inches wide, fits better in a tiny hand than the 5.9-inch Galaxy S10. Like other recent Apple phones, Pro also has a notch, making the 5.8 inch screen easier to navigate with one hand than the 6.1 inch S10 screen. (More about that look in a minute.)
Size is important, but when it comes to style, Apple and Samsung have taken a very different approach to smartphone design. Both flagships have an array of three cameras on the back, but Apple groups telephoto lenses, wide angles and very wide angles in triangular formations in square bumps. Its effects have polarized the internet, and even cause physical disgust in people with trypophobia. Samsung took a more conventional approach to the layout of the camera, focusing the lens in a horizontal arrangement.
The two cellphones also differ in color. The iPhone 11 Pro has a more matte finish than the very shiny Galaxy S10, which makes it more resistant to fingerprint stains. The iPhone's color range, which includes the new Midnight Green (for Apple) in addition to classic gold, space gray and silver, is tame than Samsung. Galaxy S10 comes in Flamingo Pink which is very bright, white and prismatic black, and bright blue. This is definitely the most striking of the two flagships.
iPhone 11 Pro vs Galaxy S10: Display:
Apple is changing the back of its newest iPhone, but from the front, it's business as usual. The screen of the iPhone 11 Pro looks identical to the iPhone X and iPhone XS: a 5.8-inch OLED panel with a notch down from above to disguise a front-facing camera. The screen resolution of 2436 x 1125 is also unchanged from the iPhone X, released in 2017.
Samsung has become bold with the Galaxy S10, designing what the company calls the Infinity-O screen: a large, beautiful, and very high-resolution screen (3040 x 1440), an almost bezel-free screen. Samsung's solution for the front-facing camera is the cut-out that is directly stamped on the OLED panel, which is not the most elegant solution, but leaves more space than the iPhone 11 Pro provides for video, photos, games and web browsing.
Rumor has it that Apple is eyeing the screen redesign for the iPhone 2020, but this year, the Samsung Galaxy S10 has a screen to beat, at least until we get a chance to see it side by side.
iPhone 11 Pro vs Galaxy S10: Performance:
Every year, Apple designs a more sophisticated processor for the iPhone. This year, this is the A13 Bionic, which according to the company provides CPU and GPU performance 20% faster.
That's bad news for Samsung. The A12 Bionic on the iPhone last year easily outperformed the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 chip in many Android flagships this year, including the Galaxy S10. In the Geekbench 4 test of overall system performance, the iPhone XS scored 11,420 to 10,813 S10. If A13 is 20% stronger than A12, S10 has no chance.
iPhone 11 Pro vs Galaxy S10: Camera:
Both the iPhone and Galaxy have a trio of rear-facing lenses: wide, ultra-wide and telephoto lenses for dynamic landscapes and portrait detail. On paper, the S10 lens sounds a little more advanced, because both wide and ultra wide angles have 16 megapixels. The iPhone 11 Pro's wide-angle and ultra-wide lens is 12-MP in comparison. The S10 main lens also has a variable aperture, shifting to a wider aperture when you need to allow more light to improve the shot.
But under the hood, the iPhone A13 processor powers a number of photographic features that can push it even in front of Google Pixel 3. The 11 Pro camera has an automatic Night Mode for better low-light shots, 4K video recording, and then this year will be able to make the best photo using machine learning, or what Apple calls Deep Fusion, by uniting nine images into one.
Galaxy S10 takes solid photos with a trio of lenses. The 10 MP front facing lens also requires a good selfie, even though the camera placement is a bit awkward. Samsung wants to make the camera cut-out unobtrusive by placing it on the top right of the screen, so you have to train yourself to look up and to the right instead of directly in the middle.
The 12-MP front-facing camera of the iPhone 11 Pro has a new trick: This camera records slow motion videos in front, or what Apple calls "slofies," which can turn into hoaxes or become Instagrammers' main goal.
If Deep Fusion and the iPhone Night Mode can produce photos that rival Google's AI-assisted images, then 11 Pro will be a far better camera phone than the S10.
iPhone 11 Pro vs Galaxy S10: Battery:
Apple said the iPhone 11 Pro lasted four hours longer than the iPhone XS last year, claiming it was based on the company's talk time and video playback tests. We will put the new iPhone through its steps with the Tom's Guide Battery Test, surfing the web constantly over LTE, to see if the best battery life of the iPhone XS, which lasts below an average of 9 hours and 41 minutes. In comparison, the Galaxy S10 3,400 mAh battery pack lasted 10:19 in our tests.
The Galaxy S10 has a battery feature that the iPhone 11 Pro doesn't have: reversing wireless charging, which allows S10 owners to charge other Qi compatible devices just by placing it behind their smartphone. The iPhone is rumored to be getting this feature this year, but that hasn't happened.
At least the iPhone now matches the Galaxy S10 in other areas, because the Pro model cellphone includes a fast charger in the box. Apple says an 18 watt charger can get an iPhone 11 Pro at a cost of 50% after 30 minutes.
iPhone 11 Pro vs Galaxy S10: Price:
It won't be difficult to find any cellphone, with the new iPhone and S10 widely available from operators and retailers. It is also easy to find the price difference between the two handsets.
The iPhone 11 Pro retains the price of the $ 999 iPhone XS. Samsung's flagship phone is $ 100 cheaper at $ 899. In fact, you can get a Galaxy S10 Plus, with a larger 6.4 inch screen, at the same price as the iPhone 11 Pro.