LG G2 mini vs HTC One: first look

LG's mini version of the G2 is quite the departure from its G2 flagship, despite bearing its name, as it sports a screen with much lower resolution, and a processor that is two step below the one on the G2, and one level below the chip in the HTC One, which we made a quick comparison with below.

Display

The new lower midrange phone from LG sports a 4.7" display, exactly the same diagonal that the HTC One has. HTC's handset, however, comes with one of the best pixel densities in its class, and sports top-notch brightness and color presentation. LG used a qHD 540x960 panel for the G2 mini, whose 234ppi pixel density is much worse than the breathtaking 468ppi of the One.

Interface

The G2 mini runs LG's Optimus UI on top of Android 4.4 KitKat, which means we get to have LG's QSlide suite of floating apps, and swipeable connectivity toggles in the status bar. The HTC One counters with the excellent Sense 5.5 overlay, and is now updated to KitKat as well. Sense 5.5 offers very uniform-looking and functional imagery, alongside the Blinkfeed news and social networking updates aggregator.

Processor and memory

The G2 mini is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor, and the chipset is clocked at 1.2 GHz, while a Tegra 4i version is also in store, with LTE connectivity. It sports 1 GB of RAM, and just 8 GB of internal memory, while the HTC One counters with 2 GB of RAM and no less than 32 GB of storage, but doesn't have a microSD slot like the G2 mini. The quad-core Snapdragon 600 is also a step above the midrange processor in the G2 mini.

Camera

HTC uses the so-called UltraPixel camera on the back, while the G2 mini has an 8 MP unit, both sporting an LED flash. HTC's front-facing shooter is of the wide-angle variety, fitting more people in the frame. The UltarPixel camera has large pixels, but only four million of them, so it's less detailed than the shooter on the G2 mini, but flaunts optical image stabilisation that prevents motion blur and shaky footage. Both handset allow 1080p video footage, captured at fluid 30fps.

The LG G2 mini is counting on the popularity of the G2 flagship, but sacrifices a lot in specs and design, whereas the HTC One has a much better 4.7" display, more premium design, and a lot more storage out of the box, if you can stomach the price differential.