When it comes to buying a smartphone, there are several different ways you could go. What it all comes down to is design,display and size. (Some other things to look at are battery life,memory; more on that later. As for price, you can expect to drop some change, these are smartphones after all.)Several new smartphones have made splashes in the market, the latest being the iPhone 5, the Samsung Galaxy s4 and the HTC One. Which one would you get? Check out the comparison below.
Size, Design, Display
The size of your potential smartphone is an important factor because of how it fits in your hand. The overall design and display cover the look of the phone and the size and resolution of the screen.
The iPhone 5 has a slimmer design than that of its predecessors for easier handheld use. Holding it comfortably in one hand, you can easily reach across the 4 inch(diagonal) screen with your thumb. The phone is 7.6mm thick and weighs just 112 ounces, as stated by Apple, Inc. It has fingerprint-resistant coating on the front and a retina display with 1136x640 resolution. The iPhone 5 is also equipped with an 8.0 megapixel camera with HD video recording and a Front facing camera of 1.2MP and HD video recording at 720p. iPhones are known for their sleek design and crisp display. It's a great looking phone, bottom line.
The Samsung Galaxy S4 has a 1080x1920 resolution 5 inch display screen and weighs about 130 grams. It's 7.9 mm thick, a slight increase from the iPhone 5 but still not a bad fit for your hand. If you care about the camera and it's capabilities, the rear camera is arguably the best of the three phones at 13 megapixels,LED flash and Dual Shot where you can simultaneously shoot HD video and take images; it has a 2.0megapixel frontal camera.This Galaxy is a great phone in design, how it handles photography and its overall use. (Specifications from GSM arena)
The HTC One comes in with one of the larger dimensions: 9.3mm thick, weighing 143 grams, and a 1080p 4.7 inch full HD display. It has one of the slimmest designs on the market, with it's new sleek aluminum body and dual front-facing speakers. HTC changed the rear camera from megapixel to larger pixels therefore delivering better low-light picture quality. There's also a 2.1megapizel front camera, better than the iPhone 5's and the Galaxy S4's. If you're looking for capable phone, you've found it in the HTC One. It really has everything you want in a smartphone.
Battery life, Memory, Other
Besides the obvious, some other of the biggest differences between the three phones is that the iPhone runs on iOS while the Galaxy S4 and the HTC One run with Android . With the iPhone 5 an Galaxy phones the memory is expandable, meaning you can go from 16G to 32G to 64G. One con with the HTC One is you don't have a memory card slot so you'd have to buy a 32G phone or a 64G phone.
As for the battery lives, it's always difficult to rate a phone's battery life because there is so much you can do on a phone and not everyone uses them for the same thing. That said,Tech Radar rated the Samsung Galaxy S4 a 4.5 stating that, "But the good news is that the Samsung Galaxy S4 is able to handle all the things you can throw at it and still keep the 2600mAh battery chugging along at the end of the day. We found that in general use it was very well received, as nothing we found could hurt it." The iPhone 5 has no such luck. The Apple iPhone Discussions page is full complaints ranging from "3 to 4.5 hours of battery" to "30 hours on standby" after updating to the new iOs 6. Tech Radar gave HTC One 5 stars and said of its battery life,"In real life usage, we found the HTC One to be more than acceptable." but in comparison, "The HTC One managed to get to nearly 9PM, but the Samsung Galaxy S4 kept right on chugging until nearly midnight, when it still had around 10% of its juice left."
Whichever the case, most smartphone owners carry their chargers around.
In conclusion, the iPhone 5 may be a great phone for you if you're really big on sleek and fitting designs, then again so might the HTC One. The Samsung Galaxy S4 and HTC One are very similar and your decision may just come down to what mood you're in the day you go buy your new phone. They're all a little pricey with $199 really being the lowest price, if you're not into spending that chunk of change there are definitely several alternatives to check out that won't hurt your pocket.
Which will you choose?