this video is sponsored by Squarespace [Music] on one hand we had the latest Samsung Galaxy s23 Ultra and on the other hand the iPhone 14 pro Max both incredible pieces of tech right but if you've been considering a switch from Apple to Android is this a good time to do that in this video I'll cover the reasons why I believe that a switch will be good for some people and why in some cases it's probably better to wait I'm Alex and I do Down to Earth Tech videos and no this is not your typical I'm switching sort of video by the way but more of a realistic view of what's making me put the iPhone to one side and frankly enjoy what the s230 has to offer and as someone who's been using Android devices and Apple devices together for a long time I struggle with this on a daily basis but I do find that there are ways of easily transitioning from Apple to Android if you want to or even having them both coexist so hopefully this video can help you as well when it comes to the design both the devices only had a minor change this year to the point that I had to call them both out for being too Sami but deep down as a customer you always think that what they haven't delivered in design maybe they'll come up with the goods right in other areas well Samsung absolutely did that foreign look straight off the bat I don't be around the bush in this channel I've been quite vocal about this and I really think the iPhone 14 pro Max for me was overall a disappointment and it kind of annoyed me a little bit that not many people call them Alfred I used to Salty that I haven't sent you any free products or invited you to Cooper Cena well that kind of explains it right where there are so many positive reviews on the iPhone I'm not saying the iPhone 14 pro Max is a bad phone and please do take my view with a massive pinch of salt because I'm really not a typical customer most customers won't be upgrading every year I know that and the iPhones do last a long time to be fair so if you're coming from an iPhone that's older than three four years then the 14 pro Max is actually an awesome upgrade and I actually Envy you or maybe this is your first iPhone you're actually jumping the other way right from Android to iPhone and if that's you again I'd be really excited for it because when you look at it in isolation the iPhone 14 pro max if you ignore everything else is an incredible device but when like me you realize that the previous iPhone the 13 Pro Max was an excellent phone already you start to think hang on the 14 pro Max doesn't really have much to show and actually I said this in my review if you can find a decent deal for the 13 Pro Max that's actually a better value for money when it comes to the iPhone conversely when I look at the s23 ultra this story is very different and I think it comes down to where the bass line was right the iPhone had an excellent Baseline in the 13 Pro Max and kind of went downhill from there the s23 ultra had the s22 ultra to start with which in my opinion was not a very good phone you know I've had the excellent version here so bear that in mind too but I just never enjoyed using it as a creative I do use my phone for videos a lot so the iPhone has been very much present in my day-to-day because of that and because the s23 ultra has improved so much on video it makes it an absolute Beast now ergonomically as well the s23 ultra is just much better to hold as I said in my previous video it feels much more refined despite the design changes being so small and I really appreciate how comfy it is to use now despite it being such a big phone foreign I've been alternating between default 4 and the pixel 7 Pro as well for media consumption and you know relaxing in the evenings as well the iPhone even before I got the s23 ultra had already been demoted to my nine-to-five phone you know that I use for work emails and sync it with my Apple watch and that's because it was just too heavy and too awkward to use in the evenings just for basic entertainment things like gaming browsing Twitter and Instagram and doing something that I really enjoy which is replying to your lovely comments in the evenings I really love using speech to text for that and let's just say that Siri doesn't really understand me I know I have a dodgy accent as well but Google Assistant just gets me you know Bixby isn't that great either but I feel like using Google services in the gboard for typing on the s23 ultra is a much better combo a much smoother experience I do really enjoy the look of the iPhone you know it's a beautiful device when you when you look at it but the s23 ultra just feels much better to use now I'll cover some of the quality of life upgrades that we've had on both devices to be fair and the point about Android apps versus iOS apps I've got something to say about that as well but let's talk about performance now because I know this is quite an important aspect for you actually before we talk about performance I really can't help myself I have to vent I just watched a video earlier today that that really got my blood going a little bit you know this here is probably one of the best smartphones ever released and some of the long-standing huge YouTube channels out there decided to actually ignore this and kind of just cover it you know superficially and I'm actually talking a lot about apple right now come on guys you know you've clearly made enough money from Apple already and just let it rest a little bit and recognize what something you've done here I really respect that content and I actually enjoy a lot of their videos but I'm not hating on them it just makes my blood boil a little bit because not someone who makes Tech videos as well but as a consumer myself it's just too disingenuous for me you know hi okay I feel better now going back to Performance and I'm sorry if you're expecting to see benchmarks that's not what I do here if I ever use Benchmark data and I have done it will be to pinpoint something quite specific I just think it's more useful to show you what these devices can do and give you an idea of how I use them so ignoring iOS 16 for the moment which has been pretty patchy for me one thing that I do appreciate is how memory and performance in general is managed on the iPhone I'm talking it will be weeks and weeks before I realize that I haven't rebooted the iPhone or closed any of the apps which is insane I've had bugs and crashes but that's an issue for another video it's only days on the s23 ultra but it's looking very very solid on that performance front as well when it comes to running things that really push the processing power I just think the s23 ultra is able to do a lot more but not because of the new Snapdragon 8 chip that they've got here which does feel amazing coming from an exynos user here but simply because with Android I feel like you can multitask better well you can multitask period and you can run things like Samsung Dex which is just amazing and still use the display while starts running for something else which is just yeah incredible that truly is a superpower when you're trying to get work done and I wish more people would talk about this because yeah it's just out of this world here we've got the S Pen as well so overall I think the s23 ultra is a more complete device in terms of what you can do and there are many pointless tests that I could run here but there is one thing that has fried my iPhone I think was the 12th Remax before which was a game called gentian impact so I always like to go back to that game on full settings for over an hour and see what happens and as you can see here no problem there either both phones were able to do this without any job frames or display dimming or anything like that which I did experience on the 12 Pro Max sure both phones got really really warm after about 40 minutes of playing that game but I don't know is this too hot the iPhone as you can see here went up to 110 Fahrenheit which is about 40 Celsius and not too dissimilar on the s23 ultra by the way this was done without a case on so I'd assume that if you've got a case on while you're running this game you'll get even warmer depending on the case of course now when we talk about the display I did find something that really surprised me here on the s23 Ultra but before I get into that both of these phones have an adaptive display as you know so they're meant to adapt the refresh rate of the screen depending on the type of content as I said you probably knew this already on the iPhone as expected there aren't that many settings to play with and there isn't an easy way to check whether we are getting 120hz refresh rate and when we're not which brings me to or surprise me about the s23 ultra on Android you can turn on developer mode and see what the refresh rate actually is which is really cool for testing purposes with the S21 Ultra and the s22 ultra previously and the pixels too for that matter I do remember seeing these vary between 60 and 120 sometimes it goes down to 30 as well what I noticed on the s23 ultra though is that they're dropping the refresh rate to 24 Hertz but you can see there on the top left of the screen is showing 24.
If I touch the screen or just something it goes up to 120 which you can expect but it goes back to 24 when you're not using it which does make a lot of sense when you're watching content that was recorded at 24 frames per second but when it's idle this is something new that I hadn't noticed on any Android device before so it made me wonder if that is how they're achieving such good battery life now everyone is going on and on about how the s23 ultra has an amazing battery life but I haven't heard anyone say where this performance is coming from as we all know the display uses a lot of battery but I can be guessing here right let me know in the comments if you notice that too I'm learning as well so even better if you know the reason behind this I do feel like using the displays outside is marginally better on the s23 ultra but listen it's so close to me Samsung does have the edge here on contrast and in some scenes I think you can see a little bit more detail in some of the darker areas by the way for this entire video I've used the s23 ultra set to Vivid and the resolution to wqhd plus because why not I also prefer the colors on the Samsung a bit better using true tone on the iPhone didn't make much of a difference and if anything it made the colors look a bit duller and less vibrant of course the display itself on the s23 ultra is a little larger and has less distraction too but this AMOLED display just makes everything a tiny bit sharper for me none of these are deal breakers for me not one since I got the iPhone did I feel like I was getting an inferior display that just died or can be a deal breaker is this Monkey Island there was a lot of promise from Apple at launched and many fun boys out there will tell you or have you believed that the artwork or some fancy animations is amazing on this honestly I just think it's a gimmick well yes but let's get rid of this and talk about the cameras [Music] foreign [Music] the iPhone has been a great all-around camera phone for many many years and when we talk about video specifically the iPhone has been unbeatable for me it still does awesome 4K videos I can't really afford it for that these days though let's face it it's hard to find a flagship phone that takes bad photos or makes bad videos it actually makes me laugh when I see some of the comparisons online where there are so many variables at play that you know could make the photo look slightly different on one way or another I'm sure you hear a few photos that I took just as a reference in more than anything like I said there are way too many things here between the two shots that you know there's camera shaking though there's different lighting in different angles basically at this point I think it's a question of personal preference realistically if you want the best shot from a smartphone you would shoot it in raw and edit it later in something like Lightroom at the end of the day for most people these phones are way more than they will ever need from a current perspective just for taking standard travel family photos and their pets but Samsung have done something amazing here the shots I've been able to take with this phone and the quality of video that is coming out of this oh it really took me by surprise you know I was way too busy moaning about the design you know I did say it looked boring and I completely neglected the camera aspect because every year has been the same story but this time I can't stop being amazed at how good this is now makes me a bit annoyed actually that there are a lot of channels out there kind of down playing this you know if this was Apple people would be going mad you know on YouTube people will be going crazy Apple have just destroyed every phone you know the camera is like I've used iPhones since the first one and I have no problem saying this what Samsung have done here is next level I don't really have the skills to take amazing shots but you point this thing at anything and you will deliver I'll leave a link for you at the end of this AK video that I did and I'll also share the original files from both devices so you can have a proper look at these photos and videos yourself if you want to I can finally say that I can use an Android device now for videos professionally in some shots you can see here at 4K 30 the iPhone is still super sharp you know not knocking it but the lens Reflections are really quite distracting for me I like to see that in shots it makes them more human and maybe we got used to them by now right but the reflections on the s23 ultra are just a little bit more subtle I don't really know what it is but I really prefer it now not to mention astrophotography you know talking about not having the skills here I've seen some amazing astrophotography shots online so rather than trying to do this myself and fail take a look at what my fellow creators were able to do here I don't think you can do this on the iPhone without third-party software and a lot of editing but to be able to do this on a smartphone these days is just amazing right the stabilization on both phones now is fantastic and that's been the case on the iPhones anyway for a long time I do love what Apple did here with action mode actually I thought it was going to be another gimmick from Apple but it's probably the most underrated camera feature for me the iPhone camera app has always been quite basic and quite boring and I think action mode is a nice change you know making a little bit more fun to use super steady on the s23 ultra looks great too I've only tested it a couple of times so I haven't really been able to fully test it side by side yet but don't worry I'll definitely do that in my next one the selfie camera as you can see is nothing to write home about but here's a quick comparison for you to see and this YouTube thing is really hard you know so if you're enjoying this video give it a thumbs up it really helps me show this video to more people out there you might not think it but it really helps the channel it helps YouTube show this video to other people and that's how the channel grows and that's how I'll be able to make more videos for you and after this video take a look at the channel and if you like my stuff it'll be awesome if you subscribe I'm here at least once a week with a new down tourist Tech video for you did you notice how much the audio quality has improved on the s23 ultra when I was editing this in my last review I honestly couldn't believe it the microphone quality here is just insanely good now for vlogging and things like that so if you were thinking about switching and you weren't sure about how good this is for vlogging rest assured this is superb now these are phones at the end of the day right and something that I always find hilarious is how people like me on YouTube forget to test the call Quality yeah let me call you back I'm not making this up it this happens all the time excuse me for my birthday we were flying to Hungary at the end of March yeah that'll be nice let me call you back on my other phone I was like wow this was and it was like 200 000 people watching did you see that I don't know no I don't know which one it was yeah I don't know I need to find it calming so it's not there really entertaining yeah all right mate thank you and I'll see you soon so that was interesting right that was an 11 minute call and no hiccups on the s23 ultra something else that I really care about is audio quality not just in terms of the speakers itself but also when it comes to recording audio but first I brought an old friend here to test the speaker quality with us you may recognize him from previous videos hey man can we use some music to test the speakers sure we can do that let's try some talking audio first and then we'll go into music and while we're here testing the American speakers for talking audio let's talk about Squarespace remember what I said about sharing my music on my website I really want to test this out okay how about this I'll show you how easy it is to add music to your website and that way we test the speakers and we let people know about Squarespace you're sponsoring today's video and I thought we could make this a little bit more fun you know all right let's do it and you told me before right that he wants to create a new website and promote your business yes I really want to do this but I have no experience in web design and I have no idea how to start well let me show you how easy it is Squarespace have these really cool templates to get started so it really doesn't matter what industry you're in Squarespace will have a template for you you know other words you know starting from a blank page that's so cool and I can see that you added some really cool features to your website as well and you can add member areas too you must have done this before right well let me tell you a little secret I have zero experience in web design no way that's right animation music as well right yeah I really want to share my art and my music on my website let's say I want to create a new page on the website like a blog post with some pictures and some audio check this out it's so easy to do a few clicks and I have an entire new page created with audio embedded oh fantastic that was really quick so we can use this audio now to test the speakers exactly and how do I sound by the way on the 14 pro Max sounding really good actually I'm gonna let the viewers decide but you don't sound so bad on the s23 ultra and you know what else sounds great nah Squarespace is making it super easy for anyone to start the website awesome but how just go to squarespace.com for a free trial and when you're ready to commit go to squarespace.com forward slash Alex geertek to get 10 of your purchase over website or a new domain thanks again Squarespace for sponsoring this video he stole my line okay great so let's hear what these bad boys sound like when listening to music I know I uploaded this to my website but I'll play this via Spotify so you know it's coming from a more common app that everyone knows and the settings are set exactly the same way in both phones overhead headache [Applause] [Music] [Applause] I don't know if you've been able to tell the difference here but here's what I think the iPhone and this test of just playing Spotify is noticeably better the s23 option does sound great as well but the iPhone 14 pro Max actually has a bit more punch you know a bit more bass it's really impressive what Apple's done with his speakers you know I was expecting the s230 to be better but honestly it's not close either you know there's quite a gap between the two and it's not just in music but I noticed that when watching content as well with the 14 pro Max depending on the content you can actually notice the sound coming from different places giving you that sense of surround sound don't really know how to explain it but that's the best way I can explain it with the s23 ultra the audio is excellent but it's not as clean it does feel like it's all coming from one place the iPhone like I said there's more of a surround us back to it when you pair the devices with earbuds or headphones they sound exactly the same absolutely amazing so if the speakers are something that you really care about then the iPhone is much better I couldn't find anything that made the iPhone sound inferior to the s23 ultra including gaming but if the speakers are not that important to you and you wear headphones a lot for example then either option will be just as good right let's talk about battery for a bit like I said in my last video I totally downplayed the battery on this because both will last you all day and go beyond it and that to me is more than what you can ask for when it comes to a flagship phone if you're really constantly away from a charger traveling a lot maybe then the s23 ultra has a big Advantage here without doubt I'm not gonna bother with those unrealistic tests of just draining the battery on them and seeing which one kind of dies first but like I've done before I'll take them both out for a full day do some proper testing using the phone you know working on them taking photos taking videos to give you more realistic view but even then I'd still maintain that if it's giving you a full day's battery then all you got to do is plug it in overnight right it's not it's not a big deal the battery will kind of manage itself these days you know this device has got really quite smart now about how they manage that charging too there's so much more to cover here but without making this video like half an hour long here's a quick fire of what I consider quality of life features in a bit of a fun way my s23 ultra has USBC charging so what I've got this I've got me and fast charging too fast charging what is that got an S10 as well I can use my fingers I can use it as a computer with Samsung Dex customization video wallpapers even developer mode if I want to developer mode why I've got Monkey Island the iPhone has crashed the text well your emergency satellite you are a car crash come on physical mute button and better apps whoa okay that's that's below the belt oh Mr Monkey Island we're done here all right my expectations were really low for both phones to be completely honest but I appreciate that you may be coming from an older iPhone and I do have to Tamper my 100 bias towards the Samsung right now but that's because Samsung have just been better you know they smashed it with a full four recently and possibly just released the best smartphone I've ever used look if you've been looking for an opportunity to change sites from Apple to Android I can say with confidence now that there's never been a better time speaking from experience when you choose the Google pixel there are some compromises the fold 4 I appreciate is not for everyone but this the S3 three Ultra is the ultimate iPhone replacement for me will the iPhone 15 change things here possibly but it's going to take a Monumental effort from Apple I think if Apple just do what they've been doing the last couple of years I'm pretty sure they'll be left behind I just think that as customers this is actually a great time for Tech products you know we're really quite spoiled for choice now talking of which check out these two beauties over here or if you prefer this one here and subscribe for more content like this dead like that
