Gadgetory

many manufacturers have seen better days in the wireless industry and two of those are HTC and motorola both of which have new flagships out on the market how do their flagships compare I'm Taylor Martin this is pocket now and this is the motorola droid ultra versus the HTC one to say Samsung is dominating the mobile space is well an understatement as of July it held 30.4 percent of the global smartphone market share compared to 13.1 percent by Apple and 5.1 percent by LG as popular as brands like HTC maybe many of them are lumped into the dreaded other category Samsung success has come at the expense of many of its competitors market performance which is forced many of them to hit the drawing board and start anew two of the most notable companies to do this this year our HTC and motorola with their latest flagships the HTC One and droid ultra which of the two is the better phone all around that's what we're here to find out site for being the same general size and shape a rectangular wafer like shaped like practically every other modern smartphone the HTC one android ultra have very little in common in terms of appearance hardware specs and the like from a physical standpoint the two are a stark contrast from one another on one hand the HTC One is one of the most well designed well put together beautiful smart phones we've ever seen period much less just for Android it's jesse has made almost entirely of a tough aluminium never mind the dent on ours it can be likened to the build quality of mini apple products it's a highly regarded phone with spectacular build quality it's gone toward bag slips comfortably into the palm of your hand and it truly feels like a premium device worthy of a premium price tag on the other hand the droid ultra is none of that it's made almost entirely of plastic more like a Samsung device than the motorola smartphones we've come to expect and sometimes love at the very best it feels like a toy and it's flat back makes the phone rest on your fingers and thumb rather than in the comfort of your palm it's a glossy fingerprint magnet that tries to look much more appealing than it truly is the fake holographic carbon fiber visual effect isn't fooling anyone strangely enough the cheap plastics don't give the ultra any notable advantage and weight it hits the scales at 137 grams to the mostly aluminium HTC one's 143 grams we feel that maybe due to some additional display real estate but we'll get to that in a bit the droid ultra has a marginally larger footprint at 130 7.5 millimeters tall 71.2 millimeters wide and seven point two millimeters thick it's a mere 0.1 millimeters taller and three millimeters wider than the one however the one is 2.1 millimeters thicker so long as you only count the bottom edge the camera hump actually makes the ultra sit higher off the table on the top edge than the HTC One some trickery if you will and the differences in specs are certainly worth mentioning the HTC One comes with a 1.7 gigahertz quad-core krait 300 cpu and adreno 320 GPU 2 gigabytes of ram a 4 megapixel camera either 16 or 32 gigabytes of fixed storage infrared and a 2,300 milliamp hour battery our model is the unlock hspa+ model which works on t-mobile and AT&T here in the States but it's also available in various LTE worldwide the droid ultra specific to verizon has a 1.7 gigahertz dual-core crate cpu with the audrina 320 GPU two gigabytes of ram a 10 megapixel camera 16 gigabytes of fig storage and a 20 130 million power battery verizon also offers an upgraded version of the droid ultra called the droid maxx with 32 gigabytes of storage and a 3,500 milliamp hour battery both come with Wi-Fi b/g/n AC NFC and Bluetooth 4.0 the droid ultra does however come with a slightly larger display it boasts a 5 inch Super AMOLED panel while the HTC One comes equipped with a 4.7 inch slc d3 display but the droid ultra display only offers 720p resolution to the ones 1080p 294 pixels per inch to the ones staggering 469 PPI and the difference in clarity is noticeable to a trained eye that doesn't mean the droid ultra display is necessarily bad it offers deeper blacks more vibrant colors if that's your sort of thing and more contrast the HTC One S display is more true to life with milky blacks both offer wide viewing angles and are quite bright oh and lest we forget boomsound the front-facing Beats Audio speakers on the HTC One which are incredibly loud as opposed to the backward facing speaker on the ultra in terms of hardware it's a landslide victory for the HTC One if phones were priced solely on look and feel the one would retail for several times with the ultra would there's really no comparison and that's a shame because the ultras younger cousin the Moto X is beautifully designed and built comparing software on these two smartphones can get a little bit tricky as previously mentioned the HTC One comes in a few different models and not all of them run the same software the one from HTC or a wireless carrier comes running since five with Android 422 the google play edition HTC one comes pre-installed with android 43 and all of its goodies and the droid ultra sits somewhere between those two it's running a mostly stock version of Android 402 with some minor Motorola customizations and Verizon bloatware since five on the HTC One comes with a unique home screen feature dubbed blinkfeed which is a social feed reader with integrated news stories from your favorite websites you can set another home page as your default but you cannot disable blinkfeed it's an integral part of the since five experience and the app drawer is different in since five it incorporates a weather and large clock view at the top of the app drawer there are no quick setting toggles in the notification shade it uses the old method of applying widgets to the home screens and it's heavily laden with customizations from top to bottom change for the sake of change however it does come with some useful and awesome features such as Zoe in the camera application and the custom gallery application with highlights for a more streamlined approach there's the google play edition one which comes with only two notable changes from HTC beats audio support for the boomsound speakers and infrared support other than that it's almost exactly what you would expect out of a nexus smartphone which is great for vanilla junkies and the droid ultra isn't bad for those seeking more stock like experience either aside from the custom icons wallpapers and the motorola command center widget the software on ultra is almost stock for to sure some verizon apps are built in as is touchless control the ability to queue Google now searches hands-free and active notifications the pulsing notifications on the display in standby mode and finally there's droid zap the ability to easily share photos with a two finger gesture up in the gallery app so what do we make of all this there are choices when it comes to software and that's a great thing if we're talking about the HTC One but since five we'd give this all four edge to the ultra but if we're talking about the google play edition HTC One the scales would tip the other way and your opinions may vary we'll call it a draw in day-to-day performance both droid ultra and the HTC One performed quite well and considering they're both powered by a Krait 300 cpu clocked at 1.7 gigahertz they're neck-and-neck that said the two additional cores do play to the HTC one's advantage especially in more intensive work during graphical benchmarks despite the 1080p resolution the HTC One maintained higher frame rate than the ultra and likewise the one averaged higher scores in various benchmarks both are still a depth for gaming and intense multitasking but you may want to opt for the HTC One if you plan on pushing the limits of your phone often our HTC one is hspa+ only model and we've been using it in Charlotte on t-mobile the droid ultra on verizon's LTE network it's clearly capable of testing higher data speeds than the t-mobile's hspa+ in the Charlotte metro area but less we forget the HTC One also comes in many LTE variants battery life is a touchy subject with HTC One some claim to have stellar stamina on the one while others claim the opposite we're somewhere in the middle as the 2300 milliamp hour battery can typically last a full day on moderate usage but also needs to be plugged in in the late evening the droid ultra at least so far seems to be comparable with that and it's 21 30 million power battery leaves us wanting more fortunately that's why the droid Maxx exists finally the cameras the HTC One S 4 megapixel ultrapixel camera has been renowned for showing that megapixels only matters so much that it's more about what you do with those megapixels then how many you have its camera isn't amazing but the optical image stabilization in HTC software managed to produce some sailor shots from time to time other times images turn out dole noisy and full of artifacts the 10 megapixel camera on the ultra works decently well in the right lighting situations but as soon as light becomes an issue the clear pixel technology which is supposed to capture more light simply doesn't deliver the HTC One has the upper hand here in both imaging software and hardware despite its lower megapixel count it produces more realistic images and in general is more balanced the ultra tends to underexpose more often produce milky images and create lifeless images however we do love the ease of use of the ultras camera interface of these two we ask you which one you would pick motorola's droid ultra or the HTC one the answer is clear for us it's not that the droid ultra is a bad phone it isn't it software is quite nice with some very useful features without being too bloated and it performs respectively well but the HTC One is in an entirely different league the ultras build quality is admittedly not Motorola's best work whereas the one is some of HTC's finest the ones build quality is unprecedented it comes with two fantastic software options its performance is great and it's widely available for the price the only way we would recommend the droid over the HTC One is if you're in need of extra long battery life in that case we wouldn't technically recommend the ultra but it's next of kin the Droid Maxx that's going to wrap up this comparison if you enjoyed the video be sure to let us know by clicking the thumbs up button below and subscribing you can find us on twitter facebook and google+ at pocket now and be sure to stay tuned for more droid ultra coverage over the next week as well as the many many videos you'll see from Aoife from michael and anton in berlin I'm Taylor Martin you can find me on twitter at casper tech and i will see you next time