Clash of the Titans - S4 vs HTC One

We finally got what we all wanted, well most of us did. The S4 has been announced and we did actually see quite a few features which weren't leaked before the event. I watched the launch event and like a lot of launch events it was quite flashy and pretty fast paced. I wasn't a fan of everything they did and at times it was a bit dull and in between the gimmicky features, I saw quite a lot of things that Samsung are bringing out that I think are very useful additions to a phone.

Let's compare phone specs, as if they haven't been done already to death:















Design
The design of the two phones are very different with Samsung deciding to stick to its S3 design and HTC brining out a very sexy looking phone made of aluminium. HTC have always made good looking phones with amazing form factor and this is no exception, although the plastic of the Samsung might be more durable, I have to give this to the One as it does look fantastic.


Screen
The S4 has a Super AMOLED 5 inch touchscreen while the One has a Super LCD3 4.7 inch touch screen. Both have the same resolution, 1080 x 1920 pixels, often referred to as 'Full HD'. Since the S4 has a slightly bigger screen, the ppi (pixels per inch) pixel density is slightly lower as it covers a larger area so we get 441 ppi for the S4 and 469 ppi for the One. The winner really depends on how you look at it, but given the S4 has Cornering Gorilla Glass 3 instead of 2 to protect the screen, I am tempted to just give it to the S4 but let's call it a draw.

Storage
Quite an easy one here, the S4 comes in three different storage capacities, 16/32/64gb while the One has two, 32/64gb but the winner is the S4 by a mile as it has the ability to increase storage using a microSD card up to 64gb. I can't see it any other way, microSD slot is always a winner in my eyes.

Connectivity
Boring stuff here, but basically the two phones have more or the less the same type of connectivity here. They are both LTE capable, so 4G in areas which it is available, they both have v4.0 Bluetooth, NFC, infrared ports and microUSB v2.0. The only slight difference is that the S4 has USB on-the-go which means you can plug in extra storage if you ever need it, something which will probably be available for the One if you decide to go down the custom firmware route. We'll call it another draw.

Camera
The S4 has a 13 megapixel camera while the One has a 4 megapixel camera which they have marketed as the 4 Ultra Pixels camera. At first glance you might think that S4 wins but early camera comparisons have shown that the One does indeed appear to perform better. I think it's always important to bear in mind higher megapixels isn't always better and the One indeed seems to prove this. Have to give it the HTC One for the camera.

Processor and graphics
On paper there doesn't seem to be a competition here. The S4 has the Exynos 5 Octa 5410 which is an eight-core processor while the One has a Qualcomm APQ8064T Snapdragon 600 processor which is quad-core. So the S4 has four more cores than the One, but again until these are properly benchmarked then it's not easy to compare. In terms of the GPU (graphics processing unit), it's another difficult one with the S4 sporting a PowerVR SGX 544MP3 and the One with the Adreno 320. A lot of fancy words and numbers there but S4's GPU has three cores clocked at 533 MHz which is roughly between the performance of the iPhone 5 and the iPad 4. The Adreno 320 is a little bit older and has already been featured in the Nexus 4. Overall I think we'll have to give this to the S4 in theory and wait to see what happens in reality.

Sensors and features
The S4 will come fitted with the usual accelerometer, gyro, proximity and compass, all of which the One has too but on top of this, the S4 will also include a barometer, temperature and humidity sensors. These are going to be used for various features that come with the S4. Talking about features, Samsung have introduced a lot of new things that the S4 will bring. Overall this round goes to the S4 as Samsung appear to have added in many little things, some gimmicky, that I can see being quite useful such as touch-less gestures, dual camera, drama shot, S-translate and so on.

Battery life
I don't know why HTC continue down this road but they've fitted the One with a non-removable 2300 mAh battery while the S4 has a 2600 mAh battery that is removable. It's a no brainer for me, the S4 wins in this category as I have the choice of buying an extra battery if I wanted to and overall it does have a higher capacity battery fitted.

Final remarks
Samsung - 6
HTC - 4

Obviously this is my view but I find the S4 more appealing that the One, maybe because of a slight brand loyalty to Samsung nowadays or it might just be that it is the better phone, either way I firmly believe that Samsung will sell many more units than HTC and this is most down to their incredible marketing budget! Having said that, my next phone is likely to be the S4.

Mo

Apps you can't live without?

As you might have noticed if you've been on the Play store, its celebrating one year since the renaming and rebranding of the Android marketplace. To celebrate, Google has launched a sale across its movies, books and apps, which is a bit of a letdown to say the least. There's not much on there that's enticing or new in terms of sales. It's basically an EA sale at the moment, one that happens every now and again and I really hope that more apps are added otherwise this will be the worst promotion they've done, period. It's also quite difficult to find what's on sale as there doesn't seem to be somewhere on the Play store where all these promotions are collated. You can check out the 'sale' here.

Since we're on the topic of apps, I always wonder what apps other people have that they think are 'must haves'. I mean the ones that you can't do without and quite unique in what they do. I have quite a few, with the most used app on my phone being Whatsapp, if you don't know what it is then either you've been living under a rock or you have no friends (sorry!), or both. I think the next most important app I have is Titanium Backup but this one is only for rooted users and if you're rooted then you've probably heard about it and what it can do. I guess most of my 'must have' apps are some of the most popular on Android so here's a few gems which I think people could definitely do with:

• mSecure
• AirDroid
• CurrentWidget
• Endomondo PRO
• Kingsoft Office
• Plume

mSecure

Store all your important data in this app, be it credit card details or website passwords. You can even create complicated, random passwords that the app can store for various websites so you can rest easy in the knowledge that your password is very strong and you don't have to remember it as it's stored, fully encrypted mind, on your phone. Instead of having to remember all your passwords for various websites, you only need to remember the password to access the app! Bear in mind you, if someone manages to guess this password then all the information stored is at their mercy. If your password is strong enough you can at least be assured that no-one can access the data stored on mSecure even if your phone is stolen or lost.

AirDroid

A very neat, simple app that allows you to access many of your phone's functions over wifi. You can send text messages, check your phone log and access your media and files and transfer files to and from your phone to your PC/Laptop. It's a feature rich app that you have to try to understand where the reviews are coming from and I think once you've tried it, this app will definitely remain on your phone. One drawback if you plan on using this app for transferring files is that you have to accept the slower transfer speeds compared to connecting your phone up using a USB cable so I wouldn't plan on transferring movies or your music library just yet using this method. For the odd files here and there though it does save you the hassle of connecting your phone up every time or trying to use Dropbox/Google Drive. 

CurrentWidget

This is a bit of a niche app, but I think a lot of people have come across a time when their phone hasn't been charging as quickly as it usually does. This clever widget can tell you what current your phone is accepting when charging so you can see whether your phone is charging normally or not. If it's not, you usually need to unplug your phone from the charger and just plug it back in. If this doesn't solve your issue you might have to change your charger or there could be a more serious problem. Either way, this phone is very useful for isolating the cause of why your phone is charging slowly.

Endomondo PRO

Do you do any sort of distance sports? If yes, then the chances are Endomondo can track your progress when your training. I do a lot of running and use it very regularly, it provides invaluable data when you're training and helps you to train with different modes such as interval training. The best part of the app in my mind is that you can make an Endomondo account online and view in depth how you work out and view all the data the app has collected. I haven't come across another app that does what Endomondo does anywhere near as well or as efficiently. It's definitely one that you must have if you do distance based training of any sort.

Kingsoft Office

One of the best mobile Office suites I've been able to find and it's free! It really doesn't get any better that this, I've tried both free and paid Office apps but none of them are as functional as this or as easy to use. I use this day to day and have slowly started removing my other Office suite apps as I've always kept a few on my phone just in case I want to use a feature that one of them didn't have. It doesn't feel like this with, I can do everything I need to do and do it well and on top of that, it can read PDFs. Perfect, well near enough.

Plume

For Twitter users only! This app is one of the best Twitter clients on the market in my opinion. We've lost quite a few Twitter apps recently owing to the ridiculous 100K user token ceiling that some apps have hit. But that aside, I've found Plume to be a very clean, efficient Twitter client that is much better than the official Twitter app (then again most 3rd party clients are) and competes very well with other Twitter clients on the market. I especially like the design of the app and how easy and intuitive it is to use. 

I'm sure there are a lot of apps that are vital to other users, let me know what your 'must have' apps are and your reasons why.

Mo