Gadgetory

the new iPhone or the new HTC for consumers waffling between iOS and Android the choice can be a tough one because each is a solid product in its own right I'm Michael Fisher and today on PocketNow it's a high-end smartphone showdown HTC One m9 vs. Apple iPhone 6 by now many folks are pretty clear on the distinction between Apple's iOS and Google's Android platforms but for the sake of completeness we'll quickly touch on them globally Android is by far the bigger player with almost 80% market share to apples 15% in the United States that distribution is far more even with nearly a 50/50 split between the two as of January 2015 the ecosystem situation mirrors that both platforms are very healthy with Android leading the way a number of available apps but each app store boasting over a million titles apiece the upshot if there's an app on one platform odds are it's also going to be on the other the real differences are found in the interface comparison which hasn't changed much over the past few years either broadly speaking performance and fluidity is almost identical now the real disparity is in philosophy Apple's iOS is the more locked down and arguably the simpler of the two while Android is the more expandable and customizable that's especially true in the case of these specific phones the m9 doesn't just run Android it runs HTC's Sense layer atop it and that makes almost every corner of the operating system tweakable you can change fonts accent colors background images almost anything you can think of either by downloading a theme from HTC or having the phone create one based on a picture you download or a picture you take you can use your lockscreen to show you venue recommendations at mealtimes or it build custom shortcut buttons into your home key row so you don't have to reach to the top of the screen to get your notifications you can mix up your homescreen with widgets to bring you information at a glance and if none of that appeals to you you can throw the whole thing out and use a custom launcher for control over the look and feel if Android is the experimental free spirit then iOS is the set in its ways traditionalist you can change the wallpapers icon scale and the notification sounds but otherwise it's the same home screen we've seen for the past eight years a grid of icons and folders that serves as a launchpad into various apps the closest thing you get to a widget is the animated clock icon if you're a fan of making a phone your own this sounds dreary and conformist but if you're more concerned with simplicity then iOS absolutely delivers there are nice usability touches here and there the swipe up control panel provides easy one-handed access to system functions and the iPhone has a fix of its own for its tall screen in the reach ability function and if you don't want to hunt and peck for apps spotlight is just a swipe away to quickly find the one you're looking for or you can jump right into a web search on the other side of the display glass these phones basically have one thing in common aluminum the iPhone 6 definitely wins some hardware points here it's shorter and narrower and it's 32% thinner making it more pocket-friendly but also more fragile it's also rounded on every edge which makes it exceptionally comfortable in the hand its volume and power standby keys are placed on separate sides making them easier to find by feel and there's a manual mute switch too for quick silencing the iPhone also bears a touch ID fingerprint scanner that works exceptionally well and beneath that sits the port for the lightning cable it's a proprietary Apple standard which is annoying but the hardware itself is tiny and reversible making it a little less cumbersome than the m9 s USB but it's subjective opinion alert the design elements that Apple appropriated from HTC are uglier on the iPhone the embedded antenna channels following corners that aren't really there by contrast the one m9 keeps its antenna arrays crisp and continuous the m9 s display is also larger and much higher in resolution and it can be activated with a tap or a swipe if you don't want to deal with the phone's crowded side rail speaking of the m9 offers microSD expansion and an IR port while the iPhone doesn't again Android is the more versatile platform and it's impossible to miss the twin Dolby optimized boom sound speakers above and below the display they don't get quite as loud as the iPhones bottom firing port but they do throw the sound right at your face when you're watching a video playing a game or taking a speaker phone call and the faux surround sound makes for a much more dynamic experience the iPhone is often lauded as having one of the best smartphone cameras on the market no doubt thanks to its simplicity and reliability the 8 megapixel iPhone camera certainly doesn't take the cake in specs here dwarfed as it is by the 20 megapixel monster and the one m9 but to paraphrase dr. Dre pixels/inch that was that was not cool sorry about that anyway yeah there's no clearer way to put it the iPhone wins this category decisively tackling a low-light first as I demonstrated in the full one m9 review the HTC phone has more trouble keeping focus that dimmer the light gets the m9 output is also much more prone to digital noise even when night mode is activated for a longer exposure sometimes the difference is subtle other times it's stark the m9 does occasionally manage to produce a picture that's brighter than the iPhones but that's usually not a good thing because there's so much heat on the lighted areas that they get washed out the iPhones example here is darker but it's much easier to read the labels on the individual bottles the iPhones low-light superiority holds true in the shot of the unofficial narragansett mascot the m9 s photo is brighter but again we lose the detail and we get a lot more fuzz I didn't manage to find any low-light situation where I preferred the m9 s camera to the iPhones unless and this is important if you take a lot of selfies you're factoring the front-facing camera into the equation where HTC's ultrapixel FFC annihilates the iPhones puny selfie cam back to the main cameras put your lights on and things get a little closer photos with dramatic contrasts and colors are probably the closest to equivalent here the more light you can give each phone the better the results will be in video mode with each phone shooting at its maximum resolution 4k for the HTC and 1080p for the iPhone I don't like the wandering focus of the m9 but at least outdoors I do prefer its richer color and higher contrast the m9 also manages a few points with its HDR mode which is much more effective than Apple's and drawing out highlights from darkened areas at the cost of contrast and saturation now importantly I did have a lot more fun with the m9 if you follow me or PocketNow on instagram you'll know that I'm a huge fan of its various new software effects in the review I call it the most fun out of box smartphone camera on the market but you can duplicate a lot of those features with an app on the iPhone and for the purposes of this comparison comparing raw photos side by side one after the other the iPhones advantage is real and it's substantial finally the shortest of our segments the day-to-day this is the part of the comparison filled with the little things the fact that the one m9 is a little harsher on the ear with its sharp corners but at least it doesn't pull your hair out like the iPhone 6 trust me the struggle is real it hurts to use and the architectural differences between the Apple a8 chip and the Snapdragon 810 are interesting from a techie standpoint but for me the differences are confined to benchmarks even battery life seems to be comparable on our demo units but one our m9 is not a US model so our data is incomplete there and - we always point you to the full reviews for those details anyway and the full reviews are where you should go if you want to decide whether either of these is the phone for you because declaring a winner or loser here is frankly stupid the iPhone 6 is the best iPhone that's ever existed and it's one of only two current generation iPhones you can buy the HTC One m9 is the epitome of premium Android hardware and it's interface is the best you can find outside of stock Android if you throw specs out the window which you should the deciding factors here our platform ecosystem and camera so at the risk of oversimplifying get apples bump if you want a solid shooter and a simpler experience get the HTC if you want to be able to do more and do it bigger one last time our full review of each phone has much more detail than we could have included here find the links to those reviews in the description below and be sure to subscribe to pocket now if you haven't already until next time this has been michael fisher with pocket now captain to phones on Twitter reminding you that Apple vs. Android common wars are so 2009 so consider giving it a rest when you leave your comment below thanks for watching everyone we'll see you next time