Inside the race to be India’s top smartphone in 2025

Prices of the Apple iPhone 17 Pro Max starts at ₹1.5 lakh, going all the way up to ₹2.3 lakh for a 2TB storage variant. Samsung’s Galaxy S25 is priced between ₹1.23 lakh and ₹1.6 lakh across three storage variants. Google, meanwhile, offers a solitary 256GB variant of its Pixel 10 Pro XL in India, priced at ₹1.25 lakh.

Each of the phones take a different approach to what they offer, including a unique processor powering each device. Yet, they’re similar—each of the three flagships are big, bulky devices weighing at least 220 grams each, and with 6.8-inch displays on the Galaxy S25 Ultra and Pixel 10 Pro XL, and 6.9-inch on the iPhone 17 Pro Max. The latter two also have three-camera setups with a multitude of software-driven fortification, and Samsung even goes one step further to offer four cameras at the back.

As a result, it only made sense that these three go-anywhere, do-anything smartphones be viewed with a parallel lens—not just from a technical standpoint, but from an everyday lifestyle factor as well. After all, they are all excellent smartphones in their own right—and one may well suit a certain type of user more than the other.

At work

On a daily basis, we spend most of our days at work, and the foremost expectation of an outright flagship at work is smoothness and efficiency. While AI has already trickled in to our lives, we leave our verdict on AI integration for the conclusion of this comparison.

The iPhone 17 Pro Max, on this note, delivers very well. The company’s custom A19 Pro processor delivers the most well-optimized performance of the lot. Thanks to Apple custom-integrating its hardware and software, everyday applications that are necessary for work load super-fast. These include email apps such as Gmail and Outlook, workplace suites such as Slack and Teams, web browsers with multiple tabs open, messaging apps such as WhatsApp, navigation, note-taking, music streaming and at least two social media applications—all open and being actively switched at the same time.

To be sure, both the Galaxy S25 Ultra and the Pixel 10 Pro XL also deliver near-equivalent smoothness of performance for everyday tasks. When it comes to switching applications actively, the Galaxy S25 Ultra sifts through open applications and tabs at blazing-fast speeds. While the Pixel 10 Pro XL is fast too, the interface design is such that it feels sluggish in comparison with the other two.

Still, fans of the ‘clean’ Android experience, sans any custom interfaces on top, will love what Google has on offer. To this end, the Pixel 10 Pro XL is a hands-down winner for those looking for a native Android smartphone experience. Samsung feels the fastest at multitasking, and benchmark results for its Snapdragon 8 Elite processor also reveal the same—marginally eking out the iPhone 17 Pro Max for pure smoothness and speed of switching applications.

The biggest factor at work, however, is longevity. The iPhone 17 Pro Max lasts an intense 16-hour day of work and ancillary travel, complete with two hours of video streaming—and still comes out with over 20% power left. The Galaxy S25 Ultra ranks second here, comparably offering about two fewer hours of battery life. That said, the latter’s standby time—battery usage when a phone is idle—has significantly improved from before, and is now almost as good as that of the benchmark-setting low idle battery usage of iPhones.

The Pixel 10 Pro XL, disappointingly, discharges rapidly—and would need a quick 15-minute charge-up after an intense 12-hour work day.

To sum up, from a pure general-purpose everyday and work usage standpoint, the iPhone 17 Pro Max and the Galaxy S25 Ultra are the best smartphones in India right now. The Pixel 10 Pro XL, albeit being a clear third here, is not too far behind—and considered without comparison, feels smooth enough for users to not be perturbed.

Out shooting

In terms of pure-play camera features and specifications, the iPhone 17 Pro Max ranks as the outright best smartphone of the lot. As a point-and-shoot device, which is what most would use their phone cameras for, Apple produces consistently true-to-source colour tones with a slight bias towards warmer hues. Apple’s present ‘colour tone’ modes in the camera can also help pre-decide a photographic style, which is a niftier feature than using post-photography filters.

Apple’s portrait modes have also improved considerably, although depth separation in portrait landscape shots is still largely amiss. Nevertheless, the iPhone camera now has a larger zoom range than before, and even at concerts, 4x optical and 8x high-res digital zoom photographs look consistently dependable. Even in low light, Apple’s noise processing has evolved thanks to a new image engine inside. For professionals, the iPhone 17 Pro Max is the only phone in this list to have features like gen-locking, colour profiles in raw video output, and more.

The Pixel 10 Pro XL’s camera, meanwhile, produces sharper details in high dynamic range scenarios. For instance, in brightly-lit outdoors, Google manages to render sharper fine details in photographs. The Pixel camera application also supports easier manual controls of photographs, which means that for hobbyists, this is a great phone camera to consider. Google also has the party trick of offering 100x digital zoom, as well as native support for astrophotography when used with a tripod—making it an incredibly versatile camera to use. Google also integrates a host of AI features into its camera, and its gimmicky ‘Add Me’ is a fun party trick for conversation starters, at the very least.

The Galaxy S25 Ultra, meanwhile, matches the Pixel 10 Pro XL almost breath for breath. However, it does produce more vibrant colours by default, which is not entirely true-to-source. Many, however, may prefer this, since the Galaxy S25 Ultra’s photos would seem more usable across social media platforms. Samsung also offers astrophotography via their ‘expert RAW’ mode, and is reliably consistent and fast for burst shots and night shots alike.

While each of the three cameras are more than good enough for casual usage, for the discerning hobbyist, the iPhone 17 Pro Max offers the clear best camera out of the three, with the Pixel 10 Pro XL and the Galaxy S25 Ultra close on its heels.

Gaming, movies and music

For gamers, the Galaxy S25 Ultra is blazing fast, and even in ultra-high resolution games, does not exhibit frame drops for at least 20 minutes. The iPhone 17 Pro Max is more adept at keeping cool thanks to its new vapour chamber inside, which means that it has less throttling. Therefore, while the Galaxy S25 Ultra produces better graphics, the iPhone 17 Pro Max performs more smoothly without stuttering, for longer spans.

The Pixel 10 Pro XL, in fact, feels as smooth–if not smoother–than the S25 Ultra at times. However, thanks to the metal rim, the sides heat up considerably when gaming for more than 20 minutes—making it uncomfortable to hold for too long.

In movies and music, each of the three phones offer displays that are near-identical. To the naked eye, it is next to impossible to spot qualitative differences.

AI, and the best pick

All things considered, each of the three phones serve unique audiences. Empirically, the iPhone 17 Pro Max is the most ‘pro’ of the lot in terms of its gaming longevity, everyday smoothness and camera features—thereby perhaps making it the best overall phone in general. That said, there's no denying that AI is practically absent from the iPhone, though ChatGPT integration with Siri works smoothly even with screenshots. Even Siri's text mode isn't half-bad, but the iPhone feels distinctly less-AI of the three.

The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra is flashier, jazzier, and with its new interface that is integrated with Google’s Gemini AI models, almost more fun to use. It is a faster phone than the iPhone 17 Pro Max, but throttles considerably when used intensively for long. Its generative wallpapers are fun but monotonous after a point, though there's a clear sense of maturity in Samsung's interface today—making it one of the most well-heeled Android experiences in the market.

As far as AI is concerned, the Google Pixel 10 Pro XL is the best smartphone of the lot—thanks to its native integration of NotebookLM, Pixel Studio and Gemini. This makes it an excellent everyday smartphone as long as you are happy with Google’s AI ecosystem. However, as a standalone gaming phone, it heats up considerably, and its battery stamina is clearly third in this three-way showdown. That said, it beats the other two phones hands-down with its AI integration, and its camera and display are equivalent to the others. For Android users, there’s no denying that the Pixel 10 Pro XL is the best pick of the lot today.

Verdict

For longevity, performance and camera finesse—iPhone 17 Pro Max.

For power users who want speed and customisation—Galaxy S25 Ultra

For AI-driven smarts and clean Android—Pixel 10 Pro XL