Galaxy S26 Ultra Beats iPhone 17 Pro Max in Detailed Speed Test

The Galaxy S26 Ultra has taken another win over the iPhone 17 Pro Max in a detailed speed test that focuses on real-world usage, not just app launches. YouTuber PhoneBuff put Galaxy S26 Ultra and iPhone 17 Pro Max against each other and ran a detailed speed test, including camera use, browsing, gaming, and on-device AI.

iPhone 17 Pro Max starts fast against Galaxy S26 Ultra but loses over time

The test kicked off with lighter tasks like QR scanning and burst photography, where the iPhone grabbed an early lead thanks to faster page loading. Both devices then recorded a one-minute 4K video clip to stress thermals, before moving into a browser test with six subtasks, including video playback, 3D rendering, and map interaction.

On paper, both are serious upgrades. Samsung is pushing a 4.74 GHz peak clock speed, faster GPU performance, higher memory bandwidth, and a larger vapor chamber. Under the hood, the Galaxy S26 Ultra comes with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, and the model in question has 12 GB of RAM.

On the other hand, Apple is relying on the A19 Pro chip with 12 GB of RAM and claims up to 40 percent better sustained performance with the iPhone 17 Pro Max. Early on, Apple’s tuning gave it a small but clear lead.

That changed during heavier workloads. Galaxy S26 Ultra caught up during gaming, then pulled ahead in the AI test, which involved running Google’s Gemma model locally for OCR and structured data output. This hit memory hard, and it finished about 9 seconds faster, taking the lead.

From there, Samsung extended the gap in video exporting and a 6 GB file unzip test, finishing the first lap in 3 minutes 59 seconds. iPhone 17 Pro Max improved in the second lap by keeping apps in memory more effectively, but it still finished the full run at 5 minutes 1 second, about 15 seconds behind the Galaxy S26 Ultra (review).