Discover how the year’s top cameraphones stack up in our comprehensive comparison across multiple disciplines. With the recent global release of the Xiaomi.
With the recent global release of the Xiaomi 14 Ultra, those on a quest for the ultimate cameraphone are presented with another option. Coming from a lineage of camera excellence, the Xiaomi builds on it with seemingly minor but, in fact, tangible improvements in the telephoto capabilities.
Also in the zoom department is where the latest top-end Samsung made its most significant generational change. The Galaxy S24 Ultra replaced the old model’s 10x zoom unit with a larger-sensor 5x one, making a comparison with the Xiaomi all the more natural.
The Galaxy is quite possibly the most smartphone you can have to begin with, camera-centric or otherwise, so the Xiaomi will have to do more than just be an awesome picture-taking device in order to compete. Let’s see how it stacks up.Table of Contents:
For starters, you can compare the complete specs sheets or directly continue with our editor’s assessment in the following text.Size comparison
Both of these are very large phones, but they take different approaches to size, proportions, and styling. The Xiaomi has more fluid shapes – its corners are more rounded, the display has a slight curvature around its entire perimeter, and the frame flows into the back – overall, it does a lot to mask its size. There’s no masking that camera bump though – the huge circle may be there out of necessity to fit all the hardware, but Xiaomi’s embraced that and turned it into a stylistic element too.
The Galaxy, on the other hand, has about all the styling of a concrete tile. It’s large, yes, but it’s also flat on both sides and has sharp corners making you feel every bit of its size and weight. The relatively more modest camera hardware doesn’t need quite as much thickness and you get thinner separate lens rings.
Both handsets are IP68 rated for dust and water resistance, but neither goes beyond the IPX8’s standard requirement (1.5m, 30 minutes) – only iPhones offer more.
While the sealing should be as good on both, the materials used are different. Samsung has a titanium exposed frame (and an aluminum skeleton underneath), while Xiaomi uses just aluminum. There’s a titanium frame version of the 14 Ultra too, but that’s China-only.
Not all glass is created equal either. The Galaxy S24 Ultra uses Corning’s latest Gorilla Armor (so far exclusively) on both the display and the back panel. This exclusive glass has one more extra virtue other than its improved durability, but more on that in the next section.
The Xiaomi’s display is protected by a proprietary solution called Xiaomi Shield Glass, which they say offers 10 times better drop resistance than the Xiaomi 13 Pro (Gorilla Glass Victus).
Each of our Ultras has a unique accessory that sets it apart from the other one, but also from any other competing offerings. The Galaxy S24 Ultra, in true Galaxy Note fashion, comes with an S Pen inside that can be used for taking notes and as a remote shutter release. All S24 Ultras have that.
The Xiaomi Photography Kit, on the other hand, is an optional item that comes at an extra cost (€200). It adds a few physical controls, a hand grip, and some extra battery, and the whole ensemble looks and feels like an actual camera – at least as close as you can get to that with a smartphone.Display comparison
You wouldn’t expect anything other than greatness from these two displays and that’s what you’d be getting. Both offer a high resolution (1440p) and a high refresh rate (120Hz maximum, very adaptive), as well as brightness to spare. The Galaxy was brighter in our testing (1,447nits vs. 1,281nits in auto, 755 vs. 710 in manual), though it shouldn’t be a readily observable difference in the real world.
What’s fairly evident is the reduced reflectivity of the Galaxy S24 Ultra’s display glass. One of the two major developments ushered in by Gorilla Armor, the less reflective facade should help reduce the brightness needed to achieve the same perceived ‘readability’ and thus maybe contribute to better endurance.
The Galaxy’s display isn’t flawless though, and at very low brightness it exhibits a very fine graininess as the different colored subpixels can’t be made to light up uniformly at those very low levels. We would by no means call it a dealbreaker, but if you often use your phone in dark environments (and thus at low brightness levels) and you like to fixate on imperfections, you may find it hard to fully enjoy the S24 Ultra.Battery life
Both phones have 5,000mAh capacity batteries, and with the same chipset inside and similar display specs, you’d expect comparable battery life. The reality is different though, and the Xiaomi isn’t as efficient at converting capacity into longevity.
While the 14 Ultra lasted almost precisely as long as the S24 Ultra in our web browsing test, the Galaxy was notably better in the other three disciplines, with an almost 40% advantage in gaming and nearly 30% longer video runtime.
