Xiaomi 14 Ultra, the flagship of the Chinese camera, relying on strong hardware and a special and attractive design, is going to compete with Samsung’s best phone, the Galaxy S24 Ultra, and Apple’s best phone, the iPhone 15 Pro Max.
The competition between Xiaomi, Samsung and Apple in the mobile market has always been very attractive, and now in the new generation we are on the side with devices that have reached the least possible state. In a direct comparison, which one performs better?
Design and build quality
The immense similarity of Xiaomi 14 Ultra with the previous generation is the most important thing that attracts attention at first glance. The camera layout is largely similar to that of the Xiaomi 13 Ultra, and the brand has simply removed the sloping ridge on the back of the body around the cameras.
Xiaomi has used a new type of glass called Longjing to cover the front part of the body instead of Gorilla Glass Victus; But the material of the back part of the phone is the same leather used in the previous generation, which will probably have the same resistance as Xiaomi 13 Ultra against absorbing stains.
War in the Titanium Realm; When Samsung falls short against Xiaomi and Apple
The titanium frame of Xiaomi 14 Ultra has a higher resistance compared to the Galaxy S24 Ultra frame, thanks to the use of titanium grade 5, and it is similar to Apple’s flagships, iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max.
The design of the body in powerful competitors Xiaomi 14 Ultra has almost a similar story. As Samsung’s best phone in 2024, the Galaxy S24 Ultra was launched with the same appearance as the Galaxy S23 Ultra, but with major changes such as the use of a flat screen, a titanium frame, and less screen bezels.
In its new flagship, Samsung has used the same glass cover on the front and back of the body; But this time, thanks to the matting of the body and the use of Gorilla Armor instead of Gorilla Glass Victus 2, the absorption of smudges and fingerprints on the phone body is less.
For the iPhone 15 Pro Max, Apple used almost no creativity in the design and used the same formula for arranging the cameras along with the use of glass in the front and back of the body, and the important difference in appearance between this flagship and the iPhone 14 Pro Max is the frame. Titanium returns (of course, it should be noted that the mute slider has been removed and replaced with an action button).
Xiaomi 14 Ultra comes in black, gray, blue, and white colors and has a different color scheme than iPhone 15 Pro Max. On the other hand, Samsung has used much more variety of colors for the Galaxy S24 Ultra, and this Samsung phone is sold in black, gray, purple, yellow, green, orange, and purple colors.
The thickness of the body of Xiaomi 14 Ultra is slightly higher than the flagships of Samsung and Apple
The thickness of the body of Xiaomi 14 Ultra is slightly higher than the flagships of Samsung and Apple; But in terms of weight and body length and width, this Xiaomi phone model is placed at a level between the other two phones.
All three flagships of Xiaomi, Samsung and Apple support the IP68 certification and in addition to being resistant to dust particles, they can continue to work for 30 minutes up to a depth of 1.5 meters of water without any problems, which of course applies to the iPhone 15 Pro Max. declares the phone’s resistance up to 6 meters of water.
The Xiaomi 14 Ultra is equipped with a 6.73-inch Old AMOLED display with a variable refresh rate of 120 Hz and a resolution of 3,200 x 1,440 pixels, which supports Dolby Vision and HDR10+ standards. According to Xiaomi, this display can reach a maximum brightness of 3,000 nits.
In contrast, the Galaxy S24 Ultra uses a 6.8-inch Old Dynamic AMOLED 2X display with a resolution of 3,088 x 1,440 pixels, which, like Xiaomi’s new flagship, has a 120Hz refresh rate.
In the Zoomit review, the maximum brightness of the Galaxy S24 Ultra screen reached 2,635 nits, and the performance of this panel was evaluated as excellent compared to the previous generation, thanks to a 75% reduction in ambient light reflection. In this regard, the Galaxy S24 Ultra screen was significantly different from the flagships of other brands, including the iPhone 15 Pro Max.
The Apple representative uses the same display as its previous generation. The 6.7-inch screen of this phone displays images with a resolution of 2,796 x 1,290 pixels, and by reaching a maximum brightness of 1,950 in Zoomit reviews, it easily beat last year’s Samsung competitor; But compared to the Galaxy S23 Ultra, it was not enough.
On paper, for the time being, the representative of Xiaomi in the display department passes the barrier of its competitors; But according to the results of various tests in the review of the Galaxy S24 Ultra and the review of the iPhone 15 Pro Max and the withdrawal of the Xiaomi 13 Ultra in many scenarios, it is better to wait for the arrival of this phone in Iran and its review by Zoomit.
Being camera-oriented, Xiaomi 14 Ultra raises the expectations of this phone to a great extent. This flagship is equipped with four 50-megapixel cameras with 0.5x, 1x, 3.2x and 5x zoom in wide, ultra-wide, telephoto and periscopic telephoto configurations along with a depth detection sensor. The selfie camera of this phone has a 32 megapixel sensor and a wide lens and is exactly the same as the previous generation.
The rear camera set of Xiaomi 14 Ultra allows for 8K video recording, which is reduced to 4K resolution for the selfie camera. Considering the similar structure of Xiaomi’s new flagship cameras with the previous generation, we expect the photography performance of this phone to be at the same level as Xiaomi 13 Ultra or much better.
The Galaxy S24 Ultra uses 200-megapixel wide and 12-megapixel ultra-wide cameras along with two 10-megapixel telephoto and 50-megapixel periscope telephoto cameras and a 12-megapixel selfie camera.
According to the review of Zomit experts, overall the performance of the rear and selfie cameras of this phone in the day and low light (with and without activating the night mode) has relatively significant improvements compared to the previous generation and images with better details, natural coloring (not in all cameras) and records less noise.
The iPhone 15 Pro Max lacks a second telephoto camera and uses a 48-megapixel wide-angle camera, a 12-megapixel ultra-wide camera, and a 12-megapixel periscopic telephoto camera, along with a depth sensor as the rear cameras and a 12-megapixel selfie camera.
iPhone 15 Pro Max has a very good performance in the camera department, and if we ignore the warm colors of some images and the occasional weakness of the telephoto camera in recording details during 5x optical zoom and 10x digital zoom, we can capture eye-catching and accurate images with this phone. do.
Expectations from the power of photography and videography of Xiaomi 14 Ultra are very high
The rear cameras of the iPhone 15 Pro Max can record various videos with a maximum resolution of 4K; Meanwhile, Galaxy S24 Ultra and Xiaomi 14 Ultra have the ability to record videos with 8K resolution.
We still do not have access to the Xiaomi 14 Ultra, but according to the review by Zoomit experts comparing the camera of the Galaxy S24 Ultra with the iPhone 15 Pro Max and their almost equal comparison in implementing different scenarios and the relatively good performance of the previous generation of Xiaomi against each of these two flagships, we expect We believe that Xiaomi 14 Ultra will offer the same performance as these two phones or even beyond them.
Hardware and processor
Xiaomi 14 Ultra hosts Qualcomm’s latest processor, Snapdragon 8 generation 3; A processor that, in various benchmarks, shows its impressive performance in various sectors in front of competitors such as the A17 Pro processor used in the iPhone 15 Pro Max, and has more optimization than the Xiaomi 13 Ultra processor, i.e. Snapdragon 8 generation 2.
Thanks to the use of the overclocked version of Snapdragon 8 generation 3, Galaxy S24 Ultra has a very close competition with Apple’s A17 Pro, and in some areas, such as game play and functions based on heavy graphics power, it passes the barrier of this flagship with a significant difference.
Xiaomi 14 Ultra has the most powerful chip in the Android world in its heart
According to the benchmark results of all three processors and their performance in Samsung and Apple flagships by Zoomit, we expect that Xiaomi 14 Ultra will also appear strong in the hardware department and this Chinese technology giant has made good use of the maximum power of this processor on its new flagship. .
Xiaomi 14 Ultra is launched in three versions, including a combination of 256 GB of storage space and 12 GB of RAM, and two storage spaces of 512 GB and 1 TB with 16 GB of RAM.
On the other hand, both the Galaxy S24 Ultra and the iPhone 15 Pro Max have three versions with 256GB and 512GB and 1TB of storage and 12GB and 8GB of RAM, respectively. The representative of Xiaomi has a higher RAM variety.
Software and user interface
Xiaomi 14 Ultra comes with Android 14 and HyperOS user interface, which compared to MIUI, has significant improvements in various parts and makes working with the phone more pleasant. According to Xiaomi, this new flagship will get four years of Android updates and five years of security updates.
In the field of software support, Samsung has the best performance
On the other hand, iPhone 15 Pro Max and Galaxy S24 Ultra were launched with iOS 17 and One UI 6.1 user interface (with Android 14 operating system), respectively. Apple has a trump card compared to Xiaomi by providing more than 5 years of OS and security updates for its flagship.
Samsung left no stone unturned for the Galaxy S24 Ultra and by announcing the provision of 7 years of Android and security updates, once again proved its superiority over Xiaomi.
In the comparison between the three flagships in the software sector, the point that distinguishes Samsung from Xiaomi and Apple is the provision of various Galaxy AI artificial intelligence capabilities for the Galaxy S24 Ultra; A feature that Xiaomi 14 Ultra lacks and must compensate for this deficiency in other areas such as the camera in order to be a worthy competitor to Samsung’s flagship.
The global version of the Xiaomi 14 Ultra is equipped with a 5,000 mAh battery that can be charged with 90 W wired and 80 W wireless adapters. This phone uses a wireless adapter with higher power than the previous version, but in other battery specifications, it is similar to Xiaomi 13 Ultra.
According to Xiaomi, the 14 Ultra phone is fully charged in 33 and 46 minutes with wired and wireless adapters, respectively. The battery of this new Xiaomi flagship has the possibility of reverse charging with a power of 10 watts and supports Power Delivery 3 and Quick Charge 4 technologies.
In contrast, the iPhone 15 Pro Max uses a battery with a capacity of 4,441 mAh, which can be charged with two 15W MagSafe and 15W Qi2 wireless adapters. This battery also supports reverse charging with a power of 4.5 watts.
Like the Xiaomi 14 Ultra, the Samsung representative uses a 5,000 mAh battery that can be charged by two 45-watt wired and 15-watt wireless adapters.
Due to the higher power of the Xiaomi 14 Ultra battery, we expect that this phone will charge faster compared to the iPhone 15 Pro Max and Galaxy S24 Ultra, in accordance with Xiaomi’s claims, and on the other hand, due to the use of a more optimized processor, higher charging performance compared to have the previous generation.
Xiaomi 14 Ultra has a special and iconic design that will definitely be welcomed by fans of this brand. Design is completely a matter of taste, and this is a valid reason why we cannot consider this phone in a better position than the Galaxy S24 Ultra and iPhone 15 Pro Max, or this model compared to the other two flagships in the market, simply because of its special design. put lower
On the other hand, due to the interesting features of the Xiaomi 14 Ultra camera, we can put it in the list of the best phone in terms of camera; Where it probably has a very close distance with the Samsung and Apple flagships and may achieve much better results in practice.
In the software and user interface departments, the winning card is still in the hands of Samsung and Xiaomi does not have much chance; But in the hardware department, the Xiaomi 14 Ultra wins the competition thanks to the use of higher RAM diversity. This competition will probably end in favor of Xiaomi 14 Ultra due to its higher charging capacity and shorter charging time in the battery department.
The Xiaomi 14 Ultra starts at €1,500 (about $1,627) in Europe, which is higher than the Galaxy S24 Ultra ($1,299) and the iPhone 15 Pro Max ($1,200).
