HTC One vs Samsung Galaxy S III

Introduction

Samsung's last year finest is still one of the most popular Android handsets around, which says a lot, and we are therefore pitting it against HTC's latest and greatest to ease your choice in the quest for the perfect fit.

HTC One sports a few novel features, like the UltraPixel camera with optical image stabilization, and the frontal stereo speakers setup. Samsung, as usual, bets on its unique AMOLED display technology, stuffed in a thin and light body, so which one is for you? Read on to find out...

Design

The polycarbonate Galaxy S III is slightly shorter and thinner than the One, but the aluminum-clad HTC is narrower and more elongated, thus easier for one-handed navigation.

The polished aluminum chassis of the HTC One goes rather edgy and slippery in the hand, compared to holding the curvy Galaxy S III, yet there is no denying that the precision-crafted metal unibody HTC has come up with looks and feels great in the hand. The other metal accents, like the one-piece volume key on the right, only contribute to the premium feeling.


HTC has also equipped its phone with a dual stereo speakers setup in the front, and integrated an IR blaster into the power/lock key, which lets you control TVs and set-top boxes, which are features the Galaxy S III doesn't possess.

HTC has placed the capacitive back button on the left under the display, though, which requires a lot more thumb stretching, unless you are a leftie. Kaji tuk I za power buttona on top koito pri tozi razmer ne e lesen za one hand?


Display

The HTC One sports a pretty great 4.7” Full HD S-LCD 3 display with 1080x1920 pixels of resolution, ensuring the highest 468ppi pixel density. The colors are accurate, and viewing angles are some of the best we've seen. It is not as bright as the displays on the HTC One X or the iPhone 5, for instance, but the difference is not big, so it's still pretty visible in direct sunlight, albeit could be less reflective.

The Galaxy S III is equipped with a 4.8” HD Super AMOLED display with 720x1280 pixels, which ring in a lower, 306ppi pixel density. It is still more than enough for your daily tasks, plus we get the typical for OLED screens wide viewing angles and deep blacks, but calibration is a weak point. Colors on the Galaxy S III are quite oversaturated by default, and appear pretty cold as well.

These are not major gripes, unless you are a display nut, but brightness is, and the S III doesn't deliver in that respect. Its low screen reflectance can't compensate for sub-400 nits luminance, which makes it difficult to tell anything outside, unless you shade the screen with your palm, while the HTC One screen perform much better in sunlight.









Interface and functionality

Both handsets run Android 4.1.2, but the manufacturers have slapped their own UI overlays on top of it. Samsung's TouchWiz Nature UX is decked out with a multi-window mode, which allows you to run any two applications at once by splitting the screen in two in a ratio of your choosing, and hovering the keyboard on top to boot.

HTC strikes back with a completely redesigned Sense 5.0 interface – as pervasive as the old one, reaching every nook and cranny of the submenus, but flatter and more minimalistic than before. It also includes some new features like BlinkFeed – HTC's curated way to show you relevant news on topics of your interest, mixed with social networking updates, calendar entries and so on – as well as the Zoe camera footage collage software, that can automagically mix stills, video, effects and music to highlight the events in your life better.




Processor and memory

Be it the international quad-core Exynos 4412 version, or the dual-core Snapdragon S4 one for the US, the Samsung Galaxy S III silicon can't match the HTC One's benchmark scores, as it sports the latest generation Snapdragon 600 chipset with four cores clocked at 1.7 GHz.

Coupled with the 2 GB of RAM vs 1 GB for the international S III (2 GB for the US one), the HTC One silicon pumps out some impressive performance. That's not to say that Android Jelly Bean doesn't run smooth on both handsets, as well as any apps, since today's chipsets are way more than the UI needs at the moment.

HTC, however, seems to have restricted again the number of apps you can have open at any given moment, to 9 this time, arranged in a neat 3x3 grid when you double-tap the home button. You can then close them by flicking each app screenshot with your finger, but there's still nine of them, whereas the S III lets you keep as many as the memory allows open at any given time.

	Quadrant Standard	AnTuTu
HTC One	12481	22198
Samsung Galaxy S III	5335	15152

There are 16 GB of internal memory in the basic Galaxy S III, whereas the HTC One starts you off with 32 GB, but Samsung has included a microSD slot for storage expansion, while HTC has skimmed through that part.

Internet and connectivity

Both handsets sport excellent browsers, which render pages very fast, and let you scroll, pan around and zoom smoothly. The stock browsers support Adobe Flash, and the HTC One even has a handy on/off button for it from the get-go.



As far as connectivity goes, the phones are loaded – with 4G LTE radios, where needed, and also HSPA+ radios, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, A-GPS, DLNA and NFC. HTC One throws in an infrared sensor at the top, too.

Camera

HTC shied away from the megapixel wars, enlarging the pixel size instead of count, and equipped its so-called UltraPixel module with optical image stabilization tech, making it a formidable competitor to any flagship out there, despite the comparatively low megapixel number.



The Galaxy S III sports a run-of-the-mill 8 MP sensor, but has a very rich number of settings, color effects and scene modes for it that can be picked from the interface. Still, HTC meets those scene modes and color effects, and raises with HDR video capabilities, the Zoe collage software that automatically makes a special effects movie out of your footage, and a Fast HD 60 fps mode. HTC also places the stills and video shutter keys on one and the same screen, so you don't have to switch back and forth, eventually missing important moments.

Outdoors, in good lightning conditions, the Galaxy S III captures more detail than the HTC One's camera, and exhibits more natural-looking colors than the slightly warmer and more saturated tones from the One. HTC's handset white balance measurement is spot on, but it tends to overexpose brighter areas a tad.

In low-light conditions the HTC One also overexposes the bright areas, to the point of a halo effect around light sources, for instance, but the footage is way brighter and clearer than the one from the Galaxy S III, with the only caveat being the colors that are slightly warmer than they should be.

The handsets can shoot 1080p video with 30fps, and with the Galaxy S III you can frame the exact scene before starting to record, whereas on the HTC One the interface goes out of the way only after you play the record button. Footage from both phones is crisp and smooth, but the HTC One has a natural advantage with the optical image stabilization for a shake-free video, that is clear and visible in conditions when the S III barely registers anything. It also sports better sound track compared to the flat and distorted recordings from the S III.

HTC One Sample Video:



Samsung Galaxy S III Sample Video:



Last but not least, the continuous autofocus works like a charm on the HTC One, zipping quickly between the background and an object front and center of the lens. The only gripe we have with the One's video capture is that in low-light conditions its focus often wanders for a brief second before sharping it out again.

Multimedia

The pictures and video gallery can be split in two on the S III, with the folder structure on the left, and the current folder content on the right, making it easier to navigate. You also get picture editing built into the gallery interface directly, and the One has this feature, too.

HTC One has a traditional grid gallery, which just lists the pics and videos in tiled thumbnail format, and you can sift through them chronologically by pinching in and out instead of scrolling if you like.

The music player on the Galaxy S III might not dazzle with graphics, but is very functional, and lets you choose from different equalizer presets and sound modes directly from the player's UI. HTC's music app is with rather basic looks, too, but can be set to display album art, artist's photos and lyrics automatically during playback. HTC doesn't let you set equalizers, as you have the preinstalled Beats audio setup when you plug the headphones, or pump music out through the speakers.



The dual stereo speaker system at the front with built-in amplifier does a commendable job at pumping out sounds loud and clear, and it definitely sets the bar very high. The S III's sole speaker explicably sounds much wimpier and distorted in comparison.

Both handsets have excellent video players with a number of options, but the Galaxy S III has playback zoom, and supports more formats, like DivX/Xvid/MKV, out of the box, whereas you have to get a 3rd party player for the HTC One to run DivX, for instance.

Call quality

Both the HTC One and the Galaxy S III exhibit very good call quality, but since HTC uses one of the amplified frontal speakers as an earpiece, the sound is pretty deafening, and very clean to boot, without any distortions. The noise-canceling mics on both phones do a nice job weeding out background fluff, yet the dual-membrane mics on the HTC One have an audible advantage.

Battery

HTC doesn't list official talk times from the 2300 mAh unit in the One, while Galaxy S III pegs its 2100 mAh battery as capable of a more than 11 hours convo in 3G mode. The S III also scores pretty high in video playback hours, pegged at around ten, while unofficial tests show the One to master about eight, but in browsing endurance the HTC One will likely beat the S III handsomely on account of AMOLED's higher power consumption while displaying white backgrounds, so it would be a pretty tight overall score in the end.

Conclusion

Samsung's Android mojo does a disservice to the Galaxy S III with its ability to lose value slower than other brands. Granted, without carrier subsidies the Galaxy S III is roughly 20-30% cheaper than the SIM-free HTC One, but you get so much more from HTC's handset in every department, that it's probably not worth the money saved.

The HTC One sports a sophisticated and head-turning design, brighter high-res display, much better sound recording and output, as well as superior low-light camera footage. Thus one of the very few reasons to pick the S III before the HTC One is if you have to have a swappable battery and a memory expansion slot, in all other cases HTC's current finest is a clear winner before Samsung's last year bestseller, as can be expected.

HTC One vs Samsung Galaxy S III: