When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Heres how it works.
Lying on the beach in Antigua, I stared up into the night sky, dazzled by the stars.
What I discovered surprised me, and it might surprise you, too.
To understand howSamsungandAppleapproach night photography, you have to start with how they handle smartphone photography in general.
Apple has its image processing pipeline, something it’s been refining for well over a decade.
Samsung’s ProVisual Engine does similar work during capture and before presenting the final image.
Apple doesn’t have a specific night photography mode.
Samsung has a dedicated Night mode (it’s hidden under ‘More’ in the Camera app).
In general, the iPhone 16 Pro Max does a better job with sky color and clarity.
This first set of images below is a good example.
There were reports of a hazy pattern on the images.
I contacted Samsung, and sent them some of these images for analysis.
I look forward to seeing if the update clears up this issue.
However, I also noticed a new, different issue in the S25 Ultra image.
My only criticism of the S25 Ultra here would be that it over-brightened the lit objects.
I was there, and the lighting was ambient, and not direct as suggested in this photo.
Neither phone could lower the exposure enough to make it discernible as a celestial object.
Where theGalaxy S25 Ultra excels is in hyperlapseastrophotography.
Even so, I wish the iPhone had a similar feature.
Here’s what I learned.
Apple’s image pipeline is still, at least for night photography, more refined than Samsung’s.
