Samsung Galaxy S III vs HTC EVO 4G LTE

Introduction:

It can be argued that the original HTC EVO is phone that defined Android during its emergence as the world’s top mobile OS, but Samsung’s Galaxy S line of phones have been insanely popular over the past few years. Sprint customers have been fortunate enough to have their choice from these two family of phones, and this year HTC and Samsung are back with the latest version of their flagship models available on the pin-dropping network. Both the HTC EVO 4G LTE and the Samsung Galaxy S III run on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S4 SOC, feature large HD displays, an 8 megapixel camera and more memory than most people would need. It’s a good time for Sprint users to need a new phone, but which of these two powerhouses is the right phone for you?

Design:

While these two hero devices may share a similar spec sheet, they couldn’t be more different to look at and interact with. The EVO 4G LTE, which launched last month, is a triumph of industrial design and features an anodized aluminum unibody and a 4.7” display protected by Gorilla Glass 2. The premium materials feel great in the hand while making for excellent build quality. A striking red band adorns the back, giving the phone some personality while stealthily housing the EVO’s sturdy kickstand. The edges are milled down to bare aluminum, providing a smart contrast to the phone’s otherwise black hue. The glossy plastic cover allows for removable memory, something the EVO’s One X sister phone lacks, though many would prefer a matte finish. HTC has made design a top priority for this year’s lineup and this is very apparent in the EVO 4G LTE.


Samsung doesn’t use cheap plastic on the Galaxy S III, but it is still plastic nonetheless. It doesn’t help that they don’t give it any texture, making the phone hard and slippery in the hand. Of particular note is the silver trim ring, which is also plastic, that is made to look like brushed metal. To us this shows that Samsung is more worried about look than actually using premium materials on their phone. The build quality seems quite good, but it just does not translate into the feel of the phone in your hands.

The two devices are nearly identical in size, but to a man everyone who picked up both devices noted that the Galaxy S III felt wider (which it is, though only by 2mm.) We asked several happy Galaxy S II owners which device they preferred, and not a single one chose the Galaxy S III. The biggest complaints we received was that the Galaxy was too big, too slippery or that they did not like the new rounded look. We’d have to agree with them, while we appreciate the smooth back of the S III we prefer the overall design of the Galaxy S II more.



One thing we feel needs pointed out is that Samsung has broken with Android 4.0 design language and included a menu button instead of a task switcher like you’ll find on other ICS devices. Google has tried hard to make ICS a more cohesive and unified experience, and other manufacturers seem to be on board with this. Samsung has also rearranged the buttons, bringing Back to the far right. This isn’t a criticism one way or the other, but it is a curious decision from the manufacturer of the last two Nexus devices.



Display:

Both of these phones aim to make a mark with their brilliant displays, and both of them do. Samsung has stick with their own HD Super AMOLED technology on a 4.8” screen, while HTC uses Super LCD2 for their 4.7” display. In general both of these displays are large, bright, crisp and gorgeous and if you never put the two side by side it’d be hard to pick a winner. But pick a winner we must, and when they are placed side by side, the IPS S-LCD2 screen is the winner. While both technologies suffer from color oversaturation, the AMOLED panel is much more pronounced and still retains the bluish hue they are known for. Thanks to the IPS technology the viewing angle on the HTC EVO 4G LTE is astounding, something the Galaxy S III can’t match.

Objectively, media just looks better on the S-LCD2 display.

User Interface:

As flagships, the Galaxy S III and EVO 4G LTE are both running Android 4.0 at their base (Samsung has the slightly newer 4.0.4 to 4.0.3 on the HTC.) It is a fantastic base to work from, but both manufacturers feel the need to slap a custom skin on top of it in order to differentiate themselves in the market. They don’t, but let’s compare the two skins.

Nature UX is the latest attempt from Samsung at their TouchWiz interface, and there are definite improvements. Things are more customizable, such as the ability to hide applications in the app drawer. The interface is deeply integrated to the point that you don’t see any stock Android on this device, which means a unified design language is found throughout the device. There are motion gestures galore that let you do anything from panning around on a webpage to taking a screenshot. S Voice is a fairly decent stab at the automated assistant (read: Siri) market. Smart Stay watches the users eyes to determine if the screen should go to sleep or not. A lot of the included S apps are cool, but there is a lot going on and that’s a problem.

HTC has admitted that they overreached with Sense, and have scaled it back in Sense 4. While keeping the same basic design language, it has been refined and is much more grown-up than the cartoony TouchWiz. The clock and weather widget, a mainstay on homescreens everywhere, is a perfect example in the difference between the two. HTC’s main widget offers the familiar flip clock, but has gone with a naked background and uses high contrast for easy readability of the time, date and weather. Samsung uses a very pretty picture of the current weather condition on the background of their widget, but text readability suffers as a result and in general the layout is poor and cramped.



Both devices use the standard 4x4 grid for the homescreen, but Samsung uses nearly the bottom quarter of the screen for the launcher, making the rest of the interface more cramped than necessary. This is apparent when slowly flipping between homescreen pages and seeing how much remains stationary. These are just two of many examples where Sense is a better thought out, better implemented UI than TouchWiz.

It would seem that Samsung is getting too cute with TouchWiz- a hole HTC admittedly went down- and it is negatively affecting the Galaxy S III’s performance. Things like the toggle widgets sliding into place when you pull down the notification bar remind us of the spinning Sense homescreen; those animations are nothing but eye candy that take up resources, and frankly they get annoying by the third time you’ve seen them. Sense has also updated some things to stay in line with the ICS design language, such as larger contact pictures in the People app or deleting items from the homescreen by dragging up and not down, something Samsung has not changed.

We realize that a lot of it comes down to personal preference with these skins, but where we take issue with them is that they take up resources which slow down even these incredibly fast phones. If we had a choice we’d run pure Android on both of them, but outside of that Sense offers better performance with a more professional look.

Processor and Memory:

Thanks to LTE connectivity, neither of these variants run the quad-core processors found on non-LTE versions of the phones. That’s OK, because Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S4 SOC seems to perform just as well while offering impressive battery life and LTE connectivity to boot. The Galaxy S III and EVO 4G LTE are both using this dual-core chip clocked at 1.5GHz, though the Galaxy is backed by 2GB of RAM whereas the EVO only has 1GB. So, these two devise should perform about the same, right? Surprisingly the EVO had its way with the Galaxy S III, beating it convincingly in all three tests we ran it through.

	Quadrant Standard	AnTuTu	NenaMark 2
Samsung Galaxy S III	4733	5740	59.6
HTC EVO 4G LTE	5459	7151	62.1

We really expected the Galaxy S III to come out on top here due to the increased RAM, but that was not the case. Given that the devices run such similar hardware, the only logical conclusion we can come to is that HTC has done better with the software on the phone. These differences were slightly noticeable in real world usage too; while both of the phones fly in general there were things here and there that the Galaxy momentarily stumbled on and in general the HTC was more responsive.

The EVO 4G LTE comes with 16GB of internal memory, 25GB of Dropbox storage for 2 years and microSD expansion. The Galaxy S III does the EVO one better by offering a 32GB version (for $50 more) and giving 50GB of Dropbox storage, and also offers a microSD slot.

Connectivity and Internet:

You will not be hurting for connectivity options on either of these devices. The highlights include LTE, EVDO Rev. A, Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth 4.0, NFC and Wi-Fi Direct (which Samsung dubs S-Beam.) Right now there are no Sprint LTE cities, but the first ones should go live in about two weeks and the rest of the country will be upgraded over the next year and a half. Still, that means many people are stuck with a 3G phone and right now Sprint’s 3G network is hurting.

The stock browsers are as you’d expect on the phones. They are are plenty capable, but each had their issues. The HTC has the blink issue we’ve talked about in the past, where it re-renders the page for optimal viewing after you double tap in certain areas. The Samsung browser doesn’t zoom in nearly far enough on a double tap. This is a relatively moot point however, because if you have an ICS device you should be running Chrome, and if not that something like Dolphin or Firefox, all of which offer more features and better performance than stock browsers.

Camera:
 

Both devices pack an 8-megapixel back side illuminated camera with all kinds of nifty features and shooting modes. In our comparison the Galaxy S III produced more detailed images, but tended to be slightly overexposed. HTC, meanwhile, had better color capture but when zoomed in fully fine details could get muddy. Both cameras lost some sharpness indoors, especially as the light began to fade. Both cameras claim to have zero shutter lag, but we did find the Galaxy S III taking a second or two to focus, especially indoors, whereas the EVO was able to snap shots immediately every time.

The EVO 4G LTE produced better videos thanks to a quicker focus and better noise cancellation, though this is our third review device to have the audio cut out at the beginning of a sample video. When properly focused, the Galaxy took very good videos as well but started to lose focus as we switched fields, and as you can see in the end it never did recover. Both devices are able to record 1080p video at 30fps, though they each recorded at 29fps for our samples.

Samsung Galaxy S III Sample Video:



HTC EVO 4G LTE Sample Video:



In general we like HTC’s camera interface much better. For starters, it does not separate the camera and camcorder functions, you simply press the shutter to snap a photo or the camcorder button to record a video. The interface is also very clean, with small icons tucked away in the corners and sides. There is so much clutter in the Samsung camera app that it takes away from the viewfinder.



Multimedia:

Like the browsers, the stock music players don’t matter much as there are better and more connected options in the Play Store. We will give credit to HTC for a major overhaul of their music player, which now includes Soundhound and TuneIn integration, and the ability to add more apps to the main screen for quick access to podcasts or other media. Still, until they incorporate Google’s cloud storage into the app (or even Amazon’s) they are lagging behind.

Call quality:

Callers told us that the EVO 4G LTE was probably the best sounding phone we’ve ever tested, and on our end they were loud and clear as well. With the Galaxy S III they sounded equally as good if not better on our end, but callers complained of a wax paper effect at times and described us as having a hollow echo and being intermittently hard to hear. They rated the EVO a 9/10 while the Galaxy got a 7.5/10. Though the network isn’t yet capable of it, the EVO 4G LTE has HD voice technology baked in so it will get even better.

Battery:

The EVO 4G LTE has a fixed battery, putting it at an immediate disadvantage to the Galaxy S III’s removable one. The Galaxy’s battery is also slightly larger at 2100mAh compared to 2000mAh found on the EVO. Both batteries are powerful enough to get the average user though the day, but under heavy use it is possible to run through them thanks in part to the large displays. Samsung claims an extra two hours of usage with their phone, but in our testing the HTC battery held up slightly better.

Conclusion: