Samsung Galaxy S6 vs iPhone 6 vs HTC One M9: Which phone?

With Samsung Electronics finally taking the wraps off its Galaxy S6 spearhead and HTC unveiling the One M9 yesterday at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the stage is now set for the next round in the big Android vs Apple war.

It won’t be wrong to say that both the companies are facing a tough battle, one for survival (HTC), and the other for supremacy (Samsung).

How do the two new launches compare with the king of smartphones, the iPhone 6? Let's take a quick comparative look at three of the top 5 smartphones now.

Display

 

Adaptive display on the Galaxy S6 provides overall clarity in addition to improved brightness levels and pixel density.

The iPhone 6 may be bigger than any of the previous iPhones, but at 4.7 inches, its screen size is smallest in the category, with both the Galaxy S6 and HTC One M9 coming in at 5.1 inches apiece. Of course, the Galaxy S6 is a quad HD device with super Amoled display.

Apple’s iPhone 6 has a resolution of 1334 x 750, while the Galaxy S6 comes with a best-in-class 2560 x 1440 resolution. The HTC One M9, on the other hand, boasts of a 1920 x 1080 resolution.

The winner: Samsung Galaxy S6 is the clear winner in the display department – and not just because it outsizes the iPhone 6. 

Thickness
 

Galaxy S6 is the slimmest of the lot, even if by a whisker.

Slim is in, and that’s now true for smartphones too. iPhone 6 is quite slim at 6.9mm, but the Samsung Galaxy S6 beats it by the proverbial whisker, at 6.8mm. The HTC One M9, on the other hand, is the fatso of the three, measuring up at 9.6mm.

The winner: It’s an almost tie between the Galaxy S6 and the iPhone 6 but the former wins – and it’s a photo finish. 

The winner: iPhone 6 clearly wins this segment, and it isn’t a photo finish this time around.

Storage Space

iPhone 6 and Galaxy S6 both win with top storage space of 128GB.

iPhone 6 comes in three configurations (16GB, 64GB and 12GB) and so does the Galaxy S6 (32GB, 64GB and 128GB) but the HTC One M9 has some serious issues there with just one configuration – of 32GB – perhaps not enough for all one would like to do with a smartphone.

Shot by David K. with an iPhone 6 camera in Dubai.

The iPhone 6 really doesn’t have the shenanigans of the Galaxy S6 and the HTC One M9 when it comes to the camera, but it sure does pack a punch.

The iPhone 6 has an 8MP iSight camera that can compress a Panorama shot to as much as 43MP. The front-facing camera of the iPhone 6 is a rather embarrassing 1.2MP.

The Galaxy S6 has a 16MP primary camera while it is loaded with a 5MP front-facing one. The HTC One M9 has a 20MP ‘ultra-pixel’ front-facing camera, promising a lot of features.

The winner: We’ll go with the tried-and-tested iPhone 6 here, especially since its low-light photographs are among the best we’ve seen so far. HTC has promised an ‘ultra pixelised’ world before – and hasn’t been really able to live up to the hype so we’ll give it a pass. Galaxy S6 should be good too, especially since its camera enables 34 per cent more light to reach the sensor than the S5 camera.

Body

HTC One M9 may be heavy but has a beautiful aluminium unibody.

With Samsung finally joining the metal bandwagon, all three now sport an aluminium-and-glass body. The fat, plastic-looking tier 1 smartphone is finally dead, and it is time to welcome the slim and beautiful handy candy. 

The winner: The iPhone 6 is as beautiful as ever, and the Samsung Galaxy S6 is a welcome addition to the ‘beauty’ club. But there is no doubt (in our minds) that the HTC One M9 is the most beautiful of the three even though it is on the heavier side. 

Battery

The HTC One M9’s battery capacity is bigger than rivals.

The Galaxy S6 Samsung comes fitted with a 2550mAh battery while the HTC One M9 has done much better with a 2840 mAh device, providing talk time of up to 25.4 hours for 2G and 21.7 hours for 3G, and standby time of up to 391 hours for 2G and 402 hours for 3G. Apple on the other hand has a mere 1810 mAh battery, and will have to clearly do better to match up with rivals. 

The winner: The HTC One M9 wins this round, with Samsung Galaxy S6 coming a close second.

Special Features

HTC One M9’s camera has the ability to merge images.

The iPhone 6 and Galaxy S6 both come with a fingerprint sensor, which is conspicuous by its absence in the HTC One M9. The iPhone 6 supports (finally) NFC-based mobile payments while the Galaxy S6 does one better by also supporting magnetic strip payments.

While the iPhone 6 can record time-lapse and slow motion videos (all the rage nowadays), the Galaxy s6 boasts the capability of gaining a 50% battery charge in just 30 minutes. The HTC One M9 has certain camera editing features that stand out, like the ability to merge two images.

The winner: Each of the three has its own forte even as we tend to find that the Galaxy S6 now looks and feels too much like the iPhone 6. Whether that was deliberate, by design or just happened to be a desperate attempt at following the leader, we can’t say.

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