Gadgetory

hey guys this is Jonathan from TLD with a head-to-head comparison of not only two of the year's top Android smartphones but arguably two of the year's best smartphones period the galaxy s4 versus the HTC One now when you stack these guys head-to-head without a shadow of a doubt the biggest difference between the two is build quality the HTC One epitomizes what a flagship phone should be in terms of build quality and the all-aluminum design to the tapered edges from the way it feels cold when you pick it up in the morning everything about it just screams premium at your face now as far as the galaxy s4 you can tell Samsung definitely went with the it ain't broke don't fix it model as it looks eerily similar to the Galaxy s3 it features the same plastic polycarbonate design with a removable back which does have some perks such as expansion via microSD and a removable battery and not to say that it's built poorly or bad because it's definitely not it feels solid but being a flagship foam it pales in comparison to the HTC One and in terms of build quality the HTC One takes the cake and then some now as of today's date in the US if you were to buy either of these phones on a new two-year contract $1.99 will get you a 16 gigabyte Galaxy s4 or for the same price you get a 32 gigabyte HTC One nopsi pricing fluctuates their steel sales promotions so if you want to stay up to date I will have the most current price and availability deals and sales if there are any as well as unlock pricing just in case you'd only lock down to a contract I'll link right below that like button jumping back to the storage of the 16 gigabytes on the galaxy s4 because there are so many software features packed into this thing there's only about nine available to the user now yes you can expand by a micro SD card up to an additional 64 gigabytes but that is limited to only photos music videos you can install apps on there so if you're someone who loves apps specifically games which can easily get to over a gig in size you'll find yourself running out of space sooner than later on the galaxy s4 whereas the HTC One if it's 32 gigs about 26 of that is available to the user to have a lot more room to play with in terms of apps and games and on top of that you get 25 gigs of Dropbox space free with HTC One so if you're the person that doesn't really rely on apps or games and you need that microSD card slot for your movies for your photos for your videos and it also plays a big role in routing and also making backups of your phone then the edge goes to the galaxy s4 but if you're the person that downloads tons of games and apps then that edge goes to the H tc1 next up let's talk about what is powering these guys what's under the hood because they are both stupid fast and it's gotten to the point where smartphones are becoming faster than most household computers the HTC One is rocking a 1.7 gigahertz Snapdragon 600 quad-core CPU with 2 gigs of RAM whereas the galaxy s4 being the u.s. model is rocking a slightly faster 1.9 gigahertz Snapdragon 600 quad-core CPU that also features 2 gigs of RAM now yes the Galaxy s4 is more powerful just slightly but in terms of real-world performance and actual benchmarks that rose a huge difference between the two in quadrant the galaxy s4 scored 12112 whereas the HTC One scored slightly lower at 12 thousand and 75 in Geekbench the galaxy s4 pulled away a little bit with a score of 3207 whereas HTC One was a little bit slower at 2676 given the edge to the galaxy s4 jumping over to 3dmark Icestorm again the galaxy s4 was slightly faster with a score of 11,000 266 compared to the slightly slower score of 11010 on the HTC one now I will have all these benchmarks linked again right below that like button so if you want to download them yourselves share your results leave a comment down below and let me know how your device fared the last benchmark I'm going to show you is GL benchmark 2.7 the on-screen version and this is going to translate directly into gaming performance and again you can see it was really close with the galaxy s4 averaging 15 frames per second and the HTC One averaging just a slight slower 13 frames per second now obviously that is a benchmark and it's going to be more demanding and taxing than most games so we'll go to jump out and check out Iron Man on both of these devices you can see they run buttery smooth they both look fantastic there's no lag they look great on the 1080p displays not leads us to the next question since they are both rocking 1080p displays which of the two is better the Galaxy s4 is a little bit bigger coming in at four point nine nine inches rounded up to five whereas the HTC One is slightly smaller at 4.7 inches giving it a slightly higher ppi array because they are packing more pixels into a smaller area now you can see side-by-side in terms of that point three inches you don't really gain or lose a lot with either phone in terms of screen real estate but in terms of actual quality I'm gonna have to give the edge to the HTC One it's a little more accurate and kind of gives you a true representation of what you are looking at on the screen whereas the Galaxy s4 is a little a little over the top saturated the best way I can kind of describe the two is the HTC one is like a good pair of audio monitors that's flat frequency so kind of what you hear is what you get in this case is what you see is what you get and the Galaxy s4 is kind of like an over-the-top set of speakers maybe they enhance the bass and hence the treble kind of tricking your mind and thinking it sounds better or again in this case looks better but for me it's a little too over-the-top a little too saturated and I definitely prefer the color accuracy on the HTC one but again not saying the galaxy s4 is bad by any means both of these displays are jaw-dropping and I'm willing to bet some people will prefer the over-the-top look of the galaxy s4 because it kind of tricks your mind into thinking images look better than they actually are it's really close but for me again the HTC One takes the crown in terms of display quality so now that we've taken a look at most of the hardware it's going to take a look at the software and this is where the galaxy s4 really separates itself from the HTC one out of the box the galaxy s4 is rockin Android 4.2.2 whereas the HTC One is rocking 4.1.2 and even though the galaxy s4 is rocking a more current version of Android neither of these are like stock Android at all I actually really did like Sense 5 on the HTC one it's light it's clean elegant blink feet which is one of their features there pushing is kind of like a permanent Flipboard on your screen I found it to be a little intrusive on your home screen but if you actually move it to the left I found it much more enjoyable and actually found myself checking it often one thing I didn't like on sense though is multitasking you got to press the slightly awkwardly plays home button on the right twice that's going to bring a little window up with nine different rectangles you have to swipe each out individually conversely on the galaxy s4 all you got to do is hold the home button which is conveniently placed right there in the middle it's going to give you an option we can swipe off apps you can kill everything at once you can quickly access Google now or you can get a shortcut to your active applications now while we're on the topic the galaxy s4 features obviously a physical home button with two capacitive buttons on each side kind of seems to make more sense and is more intuitive in terms of navigation whereas the HTC One only features two capacitive buttons no physical button on there whatsoever so for me like I said the galaxy s4 does make more sense and has a little more intuitive in terms of navigation but it's not a deal-breaker and wouldn't stop me from using the HTC One continuing on with the software on the Galaxy s4 this is where this phone separates itself with any other phone on the market they jampacked this guy with tons and tons and tons of features some of them were gimmicky but the more and the more and the more I use this phone the more I found myself enjoying these features for those of you guys who are familiar with the Galaxy Note 2 and really enjoyed the multi window support that has also come over to the Galaxy s4 all you got to do is hold the back button and from there it's going to give you a little tab that you can slide out you can choose from a list of applications and view two of those simultaneously now as far as the futuristic features on the galaxy s4 everything you see plastered all over these Samsung ads on TV I'm sure here on YouTube I actually really enjoyed air gesture if you've ever moved an icon on your Android phone and you've been a little frustrated when you're trying to drag it over to the next screen it doesn't quite make it with the galaxy s4 all you do is simply hold one down and you can actually swipe between pages and easily move it to another page without all that hassle and headache that same air gesture applies to waving your hand like a magic wand and moving through photos you can scroll with your fingers on a webpage and yeah it's a little bit gimmicky but as technology fans this is some of the stuff that we should geek out over if we show this to somebody 10 years ago they probably lost their mind because that's some of the things you expect to see on something like back to the future another feature I really enjoyed was smart scroll and by default it is stupidly set to follow how you move your head and you can all imagine how you look out in public trying to scroll moving your head on your galaxy s4 but if you actually adjust it to watch your eyes and then how you move the phone it works a lot better so when your eyes are on the screen if you tilt the device back it's going to scroll down to the article for you or if you tilt it towards you it's going to scroll back up and this is actually really useful and I found myself enjoying this a lot then you have things like smart stay which will watch your eyes if you move your head it's going to pause the video for you you have things like air view where you can hover your finger without touching the device and you're going to get a preview of a picture or an email or a calendar those are cool but I really didn't use those too much now they also do both feature IR blasters to control your TV both were extremely easy to set up both in under five minutes and they both work extremely well nothing to the point where I'd say choose this device over the other because of the remote control I do prefer the simplicity of sense on the HTC One but overall in terms of navigation and features the Galaxy s4 smokes the HTC One now I know I'm not talking about every single feature on the Galaxy s4 there's probably too much to talk about in this video but if you're interested in learning more I'll have all those features posted down below as well as my top five galaxy s4 features so now that we took a look at what separates the Galaxy s4 from the pack let's take a look at one of the biggest features on the HTC One something that really hasn't been done on a smartphone before and that is the HTC boomsound now it sounds simple too front-facing stereo speakers yet you haven't seen that before on a smart phone combine that with a little bit of audio processing and software and the results is the best sounding set of speakers I've ever heard on a smartphone the galaxy s4 on the other hand has a tiny little speaker located on the back and it really doesn't even come close to HTC One is night and day better and I know a YouTube video really can't do it complete justice but in order to give you guys the most accurate representation what I'm going to do is hold up the h1 which is a stereo recorder and show you guys how the two sounds side-by-side so you do have a plan yeah mr. white yes science so hopefully here there was a huge difference between the two so if you're watching movies videos YouTube music whatever it is if you consume a lot of media the HTC boomsound is a feature you're probably not going to want to overlook next up are the cameras the galaxy s4 is rocking a massive 13 megapixel camera whereas the HTC One is rocking a 4 megapixel or ultra pixel as their marketing in it and they do a great job of showing that it's not always about the megapixels for a lot of people there's an assumption that more megapixels equals better and that's not always the case it really comes down to the sensor and the HTC one shows why that's the case for most environments I think both cameras performed exceptionally well and I really don't think you'd be disappointed with either of these phones if you pick one but for me the HTC one was a little more accurate a little bit quicker and overall I prefer the pure camera on the HTC one over the Galaxy s4 it performed better in low light as you guys can see right here this is the galaxy s4 it's a little noisy and then here is the HTC One now conversely the galaxy s4 I think more people will enjoy the camera because of the layout and yes we're going back to it features because it is jam-packed with tons and tons and you guessed it tons of features even on the camera it's very similar to the Galaxy camera with the scroll style layout where you can choose from tons and tons of presets drama was really cool here's a little example of one of those shots you can get a similar effect on the HTC One but overall there's a lot more you can do on the Galaxy s4 you can simultaneously use both the front and the back facing camera which kind of could be cool for vlogging and I think overall like I said I do prefer the HTC One just a pure camera ability but I think more people are going to enjoy the camera on the galaxy s4 because it's not bad by any means they're both awesome cameras and I think the features take the galaxy s4 over the edge they both took outstanding video and is what you'd expect on a flagship 1080p smartphone I really wouldn't say one was drastically better than the other but I did notice the galaxy s4 microphones performed a lot better especially in windy situations so if you log and you want to use your phone for that matter you may want to check out the galaxy s4 next up what's going to talk about some of that's really important that kind of gets overlooked a lot of time that is battery life the HTC One is rocking a 2,300 milliamp hour battery whereas the Galaxy s4 is rocking a slightly larger 2600 milliamp hour battery now in terms of real world use I found myself sometimes struggling with the HTC One to make it through an entire day on the battery if I was watching lots of video or if I was playing games I felt like it really struggled to make it through the whole day and on top of that if your battery is low it takes a super long time to charge up so this is something where that removable battery on the galaxy s4 kind of gives that the edge so the galaxy s4 on top of all of that seemed to perform about 10 to 15 percent better in terms of battery life it charged faster and overall got me through the day a lot easier than the HTC One now at the end of the day the lack of removable battery on the HTC One wasn't a complete deal-breaker for me because I usually carry some sort of an external battery right now I'm using the Trent I carrier which is a 12,000 milliamp hour external battery it'll charge whatever device you got whether it's a tablet smartphone iOS or Android and it'll charge it for days if you guys are interested in more information on that again I will have that linked right below the like button now lastly I know we forget a lot of the times because these things are phones as well but both performed about the same in terms of cell quality and call quality I don't really get any drop calls on either phone they both feature LTE that of course depends on the area you live in but they both got about the same speeds for me and both worked about the same in terms of call quality now in terms of advantages or if there are any between the two in terms of being a foam I've had to give a slight edge to the HTC one in terms of speakerphone because of the boom sound so at the end of the day hopefully this video showed you the strengths and the weaknesses of each phone kind of showed you which phone is better for you and I think that's really what it comes down to what is better for you if you did enjoy this video you found it to be helpful and you are feeling like being awesome make sure to hit that like button as it is much appreciated and in return I will throw a virtual high five at yo face so to sum it up we have two of the most badass smartphones that I've ever used and to make it easy if you prefer expandability micro SD card slot removable battery fee prefer a slightly better battery and tons and tons and yet again tons of features then go with the galaxy s4 on the other hand if you think you really like boomsound and you watch a lot of media and consume a lot of music prefer build quality and the external battery it's not a huge deal to you I think you'd like the HTC One so let me know what you guys think with a comment down below try to keep it civil these are smart phones not anything to fight about kind of think about what you were using ten years ago to what we have now as options and have to decide between these two phones is definitely a first-world problem again thank you guys for watching if you have any questions on these two phones or just tech in general hit me up on twitter at t-- Eldin today I also have Facebook and Google+ where you can contact me there as well also I'll be working on my next phone comparison video let me know what you want to see either the galaxy s4 versus the iPhone 5 or the HTC One versus the iPhone 5 let me know in the comment down below and again this is Jonathan from TLD and I'll catch you guys later