Ever since I moved from Android to iPhone on the finish of 2021, I’ve struggled to discover a method again. Logic tells me that the perfect Android telephones have superior {hardware} to iPhones on the whole, having received to 120Hz shows before Apple’s telephones and providing larger batteries and extra cameras; taking a look at you, Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra.
I additionally discover iPhones to be terribly uninteresting; good however boring, particularly with their incremental upgrades and seemingly gradual strategy to adopting generative AI.
Yet regardless of this, and the way I usually carry round an Android cellphone as a backup, my principal cellphone has been an iPhone for a number of years. This is just all the way down to ease of compatibility with quite a few software program instruments and platforms and the nonetheless unbeatable ecosystem Apple gives.
However, that might change if a selected Samsung Galaxy S25 rumor has any weight behind it. A benchmark supposedly pertaining to the rumored Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra has indicated that it might include the ability to blow away the mighty iPhone 16 Pro Max; a tool I’m utilizing as my principal smartphone proper now.
Benchmarks are likely to imply naff all to me, as I’m extra taken with real-world efficiency. And in all my expertise utilizing quite a lot of telephones, I’ve by no means discovered an Android handset that’s been gradual. That being stated, I do discover the ability of the latest Pro iPhones, particularly the iPhone 15 Pro Max and aforementioned 16 Pro Max, with their Pro variants of the Apple’s A-series chips, to be very quick.
With the previous, you may really run correct console video games, like Death Standing and Assassin’s Creed Mirage, albeit with restricted body charges, however the energy of the A18 Pro within the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max brings extra gaming grunt to bear, a lot so we gave the iPhone 16 Pro Max the gaming cellphone award within the 2024 TechRadar Choice Awards. So, all that energy does imply Apple’s newest flagship cellphone has my consideration.
But if the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra might carry much more energy to the smartphone enviornment, it could possibly be the subsequent cellphone to try to tempt me away from the home that Steve Jobs constructed.
Go, go energy Samsung
In the present smartphone local weather, extra energy tends to translate to higher scope for working synthetic intelligence instruments and options on-device. But I’ve but to completely embrace this new wave of AI, so my curiosity is in cellular gaming.
Samsung’s Galaxy S-series has lengthy provided good efficiency for cellular video games, together with a few of the extra demanding ones. But regardless of this, I really feel Galaxy telephones, and different flagship Android telephones, haven’t had the scope to run correct console ports of Xbox or PlayStation video games.
But if the Galaxy S25 Ultra can supply A18 Pro-beating energy, that might change. Notably, I might see Samsung leaning on its earlier partnerships with Microsoft to carry Xbox video games that may run natively on next-generation Galaxy telephones.
You may scoff at that and level me to Xbox Cloud Gaming because the means to play the perfect Xbox Series X video games with no need {powerful} {hardware}. And whereas that’s true, and I’m an enormous advocate of cloud-powered gaming, the latency, reliability and lack of sturdy super-fast web connections within the UK – particularly in my pokey London residence – make cloud gaming a actuality that’s at the moment out of attain.
So, the thought of with the ability to run Xbox video games on a cellphone with out the necessity for an web connection is an concept I nonetheless discover very palatable. And one that might tear me away from an iPhone.
Of course, when you’ve been studying my cellphone ideas over the previous few years, I’ve lengthy held out for a super-powerful Samsung Galaxy, particularly when a partnership with AMD was touted, however my hopes have been continuously dashed. Equally, I nonetheless maintain out some hope that issues might change, and are available early 2025, Samsung could come out of the gate swinging at Apple and past, delivering a cellphone, or sequence of telephones, that see me consign my iPhone to the position of secondary smartphone.
