The Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra is here. It's one of the best phones you can buy, offering great performance, great photos, and phenomenal battery life.

It offers some things that even the iPhone 15 Pro Max can't deliver, including the included S Pen and its AI tricks. However, there are a few areas that are likely to get a lot of attention when Apple's next big device arrives in September.

Here are five ways the iPhone 16 Pro Max could beat Samsung's Galaxy S24 Ultra if Apple plays its cards right.

For years, Apple's A-series chips, coupled with the company's production of both hardware and software, have made the iPhone a comfortable, fastest device.

With the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 in the S24 Ultra, Qualcomm made things interesting: in the Geekbench 6 benchmark, the S24 Ultra scored 2,300 points on single-core and 7,249 on multi-core. For comparison, the iPhone 15 Pro Max scored 2,783 and 6,945, respectively. [One leaker said the A18 Pro chipset was powerful enough to outperform the M1 MacBook with scores of 3,500 and 8,200.

The Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra is many things, but lightness is not one of them; the 6.8-inch body weighs in at 8.22 ounces.

The iPhone 15 Pro Max, on the other hand, is 7.8 ounces. And even though the iPhone 16 Pro Max is expected to be closer to 6.9 inches, it would be very surprising if it weighed more than Samsung's latest model.

Actual camera performance is an unknown, but Apple will reportedly give the iPhone 16 series a major upgrade with regard to ease of use.

Various reports mention the introduction of a dedicated capture button, with Bloomberg's Mark Gurman claiming it is primarily for quick video capture. zoom, and a light touch will make it flexible enough to focus.

This doesn't sound like much of a change, but it is the kind of usability innovation that could make a big difference for budding filmmakers.

Galaxy AI has been quite well received. As noted in our review of the Samsung Galaxy S24 Plus, the usefulness of the feature varies, but it is generally well implemented and an exciting glimpse into the future.

With iOS 18, Apple is said to be bringing artificial intelligence to the iPhone.

Whether these will be better than Samsung's efforts remains to be seen (the fact that Apple is reportedly reaching out to publishers with multi-million dollar offers for training data is encouraging), but the iPhone 16 eliminates AI as a paid feature This could give Samsung a step ahead of the competition. This is something Samsung has clearly failed to do, having only promised to make AI free until 2025 (although there is reason to doubt this will ever happen).

And as for the money...

Thanks to a $100 price hike, the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra now starts at $1299.99 and goes up to $1659 if you need 1TB of storage.

It seems odd to consider an Apple product a value option, but here we are: the iPhone 15 Pro Max starts at $1,199.99 and is still cheaper if you need 1TB of storage, up to $1,599.

Now, in all likelihood, Apple will match Samsung on price and add $100 to the iPhone 16 Pro Max price.