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This is the biggest speed test we have ever done where we have seven of the world's best flagship phones all competing for the title of fumbuff style speed test champ where we have the only non- Android phone in the iPhone 17 Pro Max its biggest rival in the Galaxy S26 Ultra, Google's own Pixel 10 Pro XL, the battery champ in the OnePlus 15, Oppo's FX9 Pro powered by MediaTek's Demensity chip, Honor's flagship phone in the Magic 8 Pro, and then the camera beast in Vivo's X300 Ultra. Now, while some of these phones do share the same chipset, specs can only tell you part of the story because in the real world, speed isn't just about the chip. It's about things like the software optimization,
image processing, and thermal performance, and like just overall responsiveness. So, we are putting these phones through everything in our lab from web browsing and document scanning to photo and video editing and even birdshot photography where by the end of this video, you'll know exactly how each of these phones stacks up and which one earns the title of champ. Let's get right into it. This video is sponsored by Whisper Flow, which might just be the fastest way to input text on a computer, at least until we all get brain chips. Now, most people don't realize how slow typing actually is. So, we built this typing test to
compare my typing speed, which I think is pretty fast, versus the same exact prompt using Whisflow's voice dictation. And not bad. I got around 100 words per minute. But now, let's try that same string of text with Whisper Flow. This is a random passage that I'm going to be typing and voice dictating. I want to use technical terms like RAM, CPU, and milliamp hours just to make sure that the voice dictation can actually pick up on this stuff. Yeah, that's a 2x improvement. Obviously, if I switch over to my phone, my typing speed is going to get even slower. So, using Whisper Flow, either on Android or the iPhone, you get that same massive speed boost, which honestly might be even more valuable on
a phone. And what's crazy is you can even whisper to it. Literally bring your phone closer to your mouth so nobody else in the room can hear you and it is still surprisingly accurate. Now, you might be thinking, why not just use the voice dictation that already comes on my phone? And to me, that probably means you haven't tried using those very much because something like Siri or even honestly Google's voice typing still isn't accurate enough for me to actually rely on. It struggles with technical terms, uncommon names, corrections mid-sentence, and maybe most importantly, it doesn't format your text in a way that's actually ready to send. But with Whisper Flow, it handles all of
that automatically with a surprisingly high level of accuracy. So instead of having to go back manually and fix your dictated text, it basically is ready to send as soon as you're done talking, which to me is where the real advantage comes in. Right now, you can try Whisper Flow Pro completely free for one month when you use my promo code PhoneBuff at the desktop checkout by clicking that first link down below. All right, so this first task is one that we all do from time to time and scanning a QR code and then loading a textbased menu. We'll start the stopwatches on each phone and then jump into the camera app where all seven of the phones complete the task pretty quickly with there like only
being a second or so delta between them. But in this portrait test, this time we are stressing the phones a little bit harder by taking 10 photos as fast as we possibly can. Now, because the phones all have different default focal lengths, we just switched everything to 2x where at least when it comes to actually capturing the photos, they all seem to be pretty close. But where we see the difference though is how long it takes for them to finish processing with the Pixel taking the longest by far, coming in nearly 8 seconds later than the fastest phone. Now, this could just be due to the Pixel's chip not having the horsepower, or it could just be that Google is applying more processing to
the image than the other phones, but either way, these results were consistent across all of our trials. In this browser test, we have each phone loading a locally hosted website where they're doing a range of tasks from loading a video and 3D model to zooming in on a map and loading a graph. And by the end of it, there was virtually no difference between the phones with them all performing at that flagship level you would expect. And that trend only continues through the lightweight and productivity apps where there was virtually no difference in Facebook. It was the same exact thing in Starbucks with them all finishing within a second of each other. And even in Microsoft Word, loading that 500page document netted no real deltas with the only
measurable difference being a 1second delta between the fastest and slowest phone in Excel. Of course, we haven't really been pushing the phones too hard. And so far, the phones have all had time to cool down and close apps in between each test, meaning thermals and RAM management haven't played a role yet, which we'll be testing in the second half of this video. But at least for now, one by one, in the gaming row, we are starting to see a pattern emerge. It looks like the Snapdragon powered phones are kind of all clustered together out in front with the Vivo actually leading the pack. The iPhone is right there behind them, followed by the Oppo with that dimensity chip. And then finally,
the Pixel with its Tensor G5, clearly a step behind, at least when it comes to gaming, but not everybody games on their phone. So, in this next app, we're scanning a document using the camera. This task is pretty interesting since the phones not only have to launch the camera, but they also have to recognize and scan the document and then do an OCR task to identify the text within that document in order to make it ready for editing. and we get some pretty different results with the Vivo being the first to finish at 22 seconds. The Galaxy and the iPhone come in 2 to 3 seconds later. The OnePlus and the Oppo basically tie at 28 seconds with the Magic 8 Pro coming in at 30 and the
Pixel coming in at 32. Now, one thing I did want to flag with the Pixel is while the other phones were all consistent across our trials, on the Pixel, we did see some variation with a few of the trials actually being around 6 seconds faster, which was kind of strange. But we'll see what happens here in Lightroom where we're editing the same 68 megapixel photo on each phone, which is a monster task. We're first doing an object removal and then we're having the phones detect the sky before applying some color correction. And oh man, we are seeing some big deltas. The S26 Ultra and the Vivo lead the pack once again, finishing around 5 seconds faster than it took the iPhone to complete the
task. The other two Snapdragon phones come in three to five seconds after the iPhone with the FX9 Pro in that dimensity chip coming in at 27 seconds and the Pixel taking the longest again at 32 seconds. We'll see if anything changes here in Instagram edits, though, where each phone is exporting the same 4K video, where this time the FX9 Pro and that Demensity chip just blazes through it, finishing in just 10 seconds with the Vivo coming in second, followed by the other Snapdragon phones, with the Pixel actually doing better than the iPhone this time, finishing 5 seconds ahead of it. Okay, in this final task, we're just unzipping the same 6 GB file using each phone's native files app,
which is something that you'd run into when downloading a large file from something like Google Drive, where this time it's a lot closer with all the phones finishing within 3 seconds of one another, save for the Pixel, which takes about 11 seconds longer than the fastest phone. And yes, this was consistent across all of our trials. Now, taking a look at the total times across all of the apps, we have four different tiers. In first place, we have a tie between the Galaxy and the Vivo at 167 seconds. In second place, we have a three-way tie between the OnePlus, the Oppo, and the Honor. In the next tier, it's the iPhone at 195 seconds, followed by the Pixel, which fell into last. So, this thing
isn't quite settled yet, which brings us to the gauntlet, where we're going to be running all the tests again, but this time without any breaks or time to cool down in between, which should give us a better idea as to how these phones perform under sustained load, especially as we start getting deeper into the test. But at least this early on, I don't expect there to be a major difference compared to what we saw in the app by app trials since we haven't really done anything to push the thermals, at least until now. Where the twist for the gauntlet is each phone has to record a 1 minute 4K video which is pretty taxing on phones since it involves the camera constantly making focus and exposure adjustments. The
microphone is at work and the phones are also writing the video to storage. All of which should push the temperatures on the phones up by quite a bit. So, we'll see if it had any effect here in the browser, which as far as I can tell, none of the phones seem to be slowing down at all. They're all keeping pace with what they did earlier, which is definitely good news since you wouldn't expect a flagship phone to overheat this early on. Now, I do think we'll see some sort of difference in the cooling systems on each phone by the time we're done with the gaming row, but at least for now, the Galaxy is leading the pack, followed closely by the OnePlus 15. Now, if the app by app trials are anything to
go off of, we should see the Vivo close in on the OnePlus and the Galaxy here in the gaming row since that was the area where it was the fastest. Of course, if the Vivo's cooling system doesn't match, though, it's entirely possible that doesn't happen here. And at the same time, the other phones don't look like they're giving up any ground with the Galaxy still out in front as it starts working on Zombie Fire with the three other Snapdragon phones all following closely behind, which is pretty interesting to see all lined up like this. As we move on to Adobe Scan, it's the four Qualcomm powered phones that are clearly out in front with Apple's A19 Pro and MediaTek Demensity in the Oppo just a half step behind it with the
Pixel and its Tensor G5 in a distant third. Okay, so with the fastest phones wrapping up with Adobe Scan, it does look like the Vivo closed the gap on the Galaxy with it being just a half second behind as they begin photo editing in Lightroom. So, this one looks like it's going to come down to the wire with the OnePlus 15 still right there in it with the Honor following it closely behind. And we still have some heavy duty tasks left to go. Not only do all the phones have to finish up with Lightroom, but we have that 4K video export in Instagram edits and the 6 GB extraction task in files. And the Galaxy just ripped through that video export. Meaning if it can maintain its performance here in
files, it might just secure its spot in first place, assuming that it could keep all the apps open in lap number two. And there you go. It finishes the first lap faster than all the phones with an impressive time of 3 minutes and 26 seconds with the Vivo coming in 7 seconds later with a time of 3 minutes and 33, which clearly points to the Galaxy being better at maintaining its performance while under heavy load. Now, that's not to say that the Vivo was bad under heavy load with it clearly out in front compared to all the rest of the phones with the OnePlus 15 not doing too bad either with it officially slotting in third for the first lap with the Honor right there behind it. But there
you go. The Galaxy finishes the entire test before the iPhone finishes with the first lap. And the reason is pretty clear with the iPhone actually taking the biggest performance hit in the gauntlet compared to its appbyapp baseline allowing every phone outside of the Pixel to run away with it with the OnePlus 15 officially slotting in third. The FX9 Pro does a better job than the Honor at RAM management coming in fourth with the Honor coming in just 4 seconds later with every phone but the iPhone being able to finish the entire test before the Pixel finishes up with the
first lap. We'll go ahead and fast forward the pixel all the way through where after struggling to keep a bunch of the apps open in the background, it makes its way across the finish line coming in seventh. But there you go. We have our official rankings with the winner and the undisputed foam buff style speed test champ, the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra. Anyway, that is it for me in this video. As you can imagine, this took weeks to put together with dozens and dozens of trials to make sure that we got it right. So, a thumbs up would be appreciated if you want to see more content like this. But thank you for watching and as always, I'll see you in the very next episode.
