The next best thing.. Is it?

INTRODUCTION

We all know the biggest buzz. The GALAXY S4. Finally after the unpack event everyone got their pease. Though most of the rumors were true there were so many things that did throw a wow during the unpack event. All people could complain about was the plastic make. Am not going to comment on that but I must tell you that the phone feels premium enough and surprisingly one of the best devices to be hand held. Yes better than the HTC ONE. The galaxy s4 stands up to its own standards in battery life, performance and features.

SPECIFICATIONS

The galaxy s4 is not a world phone. Though that's quiet what we expected it would have been amazing to have one version of it to rule them all (iPhone strategy). Sadly there will be two variants that packs the following specifications

GT-I9505
Qualcomm 600 quad core karit processors with adreno 320 crunching the graphics.

2GB LDPR3 RAM

2600mah

Super AMOLED HD display with 441PPI

16/32/64GB internal storage + Miro SD card support up to another 64GB.

The snapdragon 600 by Qualcomm is so far the only commercially available processor breaking the records. Though adreno 320 is a bit old but its quiet amazing still with the smoothest and powerful graphic processing. The CPU clocking at 1.9 GHz (the highest frequency for 600) its blazing fast and better performing than any device running with the same chip. Yes I know what would be your next question "yeah we know the newer flagships always do the best in performance but what about the battery life?". That's one question I ask my self too and when the s4 was unpacked I was a bit disappointed with the 2600mah battery as I was expecting a 3000mah battery but when the results of the battery life test from gsmarena was released it was mind blowing. What the droid razor maxx achieved with its beefier battery the s4 managed to near it with a whooping 68hrs of backup on a decent usage. Trust me with so may sensors and a 5" 1080p display this the best you can get from a smart phone. Its quit understood that Samsung is not just keen on beefing up the performance and battery size but optimizing the os to perform to the fullest with the least usage of power now that's innovation. Have to give a big thumbs up for them on that.

The display is extremely gorgeous as usual except as using the pentile matrix they have tweaked the screen technology by thus giving the ultimate performance without sacrificing quality. There are more display mode including the RGB so I guess its up to us on what we Want to see. With an expandable storage of 64gb Samsung steals the show.

GT-I9500 ( INTERNATIONAL VERSION)
EXYNOS 5 (5410) OCTA processor with a Power VR 544 MP3 GPU. The only difference but indeed changes everything.

For beginners the exynos octa is an octa core processor though doesn't makes all the 8clusters function at the same time it works on the technology developed by ARM called BIGLITTLE. This BL (BIGLITTLE) technology consists of 4 cortex A-15 clusters or you can call very high performance oriented cores and another 4 clusters of cortex A-7 or low performance and battery saving cores. So what's BL's  magic here is that the cores switch between each other(a-15 to a-7) depending upon the load. Only 4 cores functions at a time so it can be of any order for example one A-7 core and 3 A-15 or vice versa. Thus in any combination by thus offering 70% battery saving while commencing normal tasks. That's a break through and its just because the A-7 and A-15 seamlessly syncs and switches at the very required moment. Let's say you are messaging and for that you don't need the high performing cores to get the job done and they use lot of power for it than the power saving one. During the web browsing some parts of the processing can be done by the A-7 at the same time needs good performance too so A-7 and A-15 works together and how may core from which cortex works will completely depend on the task and thus this I too consider as one of the most amazing innovations that helps the manufacturer to meet both performance and power saving so thumbs up again for Samsung. Surprisingly the A-15 cortex are clocked only at a 1.6 GHz and the A-7 at 1.2 GHz. As on competition everyone clocks a minimum of 1.7 GHz and so I guess with this frequency its surely gonna outperform the 600 clocked at 1.9 GHz. Exynos always means raw power and that's what this one is too going to be. This is still an illusion which may turn to reality as the benchmarking apps aren't optimized for the ARM's BIGLITTLE technology so time can only answer. Talking about Power VR Samsung hasn't switched from Mali since the galaxy s2 but the galaxy s did sport the power VR GPU and its nothing like its inferior to Mali or adreno. In fact the power VR 544 is the same GPU that the iPad 4 uses that crunched the graphic performance to the peak on benchmarks. Though again the 544 is older than adreno 320 its still has an amazing performance and supports direct x 9 and that's great because it supports all 3D games which the mali doesn't. So when it comes to gaming its gonna be the best you can ever have. This uses the mp3 version meaning the 3 core version than the mp4 (quad core version) found on the ipad4. Its clocked to a 533mhz and that's really a high speed indeed. With these two beast machines on the hardware I bet is going to deliver the best on performance and the highest battery life. But sadly it doesn't support the 4G LTE radio the 600 supports thus the reason for not being a world phone.

The 13megapixel camera is amazing and to everyone's surprise out performed the htc's ultra pixel even in low light conditions. The camera is stunning and has a new ui that's similar to that on the galaxy camera and not just that but offeres many more capturing modes than any other. Qualcomm says that the s4 can snap videos at 60fps in 1080p that means the s4 is gonna be the first android smartphone to shoot 60fps on 1080p joining the other gears like go pro. So on the whole gorgeous phone, amazing innovations, awesome performance & mind blowing battery life so what more do you need?

CONCLUSION

With the best performance, battery life and feature packed its one amazing phone. Not just that but it ships with android 4.2.2 which no one did and trust me touch wiz nature ux is the closest stack android exprencie you can ever get from any other custom skin and it really feels a colourful version of android which is very amazing to use. So on the whole the galaxy s4 is one phone to rule them all right from android experience to performance battery life & camera. For the record galaxy s4 is the first phone in 2013 to sport the Corning's gorilla glass 3. When the phone offeres so much I don't think plastic is to be more concerned about. Its a phone everyone one dreamt to be and Here it is so grab it than ignoring it on just one factor(plastic). Indeed its THE NEXT BEST THING. Am getting a galaxy s4, are you?.

The HTC One

Introduction
What's not to love about it. The single sheet of aluminium built and the ultra pixel camera and the HTC boom sound. Is that it? There is more than that meets the eye. Its just 7.3 mm thick with a 4.7" display with super lcd3 display technology. Due to smaller screen size it was possible for the manufacturer to bring the pixel density or ppi (pixels per square inch) to 468 which is an amazing breakthrough super passing the retina display. It has beats audio backing it up on the sounds and music. HTC managed to being in dual speakers which are pretty wide and will hit you to your face when you take the phone on hand looking at. With 93db its quiet loud enough. The 4up (ultra pixel) sensor seemed to do what it has promised and on the whole the HTC one stands to its name.

Pros
With the Qualcomm snapdragon 600 ticking at 1.7 GHz it functions flawless and thanks to jellybean there are no break frames or glitches while processing anywhere. The adreno 320 serves best when it comes to graphics processing. On the whole the phone really is an wonderful multimedia masterpiece. With 2gb of ram it can have more standby apps or can process high definition programs, applications or games. Now that's one to do them all. On the software part the HTC one comes with the new sense 5 UI which is far simpler compared to the previous iterations. The blink feed is a boon for news lovers. Your news is one touch away to update you. Its never ending and one gets to customize what they want to see or what interests them to see on the blink feed. That's innovation. The app drawer looks more holo thus making look more polished.everything works super smooth on the HTC one. Am not a camera person so am not gonna talk about the Zoe but have to say you have many things you got to do with the HTC one.

Corns
To my disappointment the HTC one comes out of the box with 4.1.2 though 4.2.2 was available right from November. Though everything is amazing and blazing fast to the hardware and the premium built quality the part where HTC never satisfied android lovers is on the UI. HTC always makes a tip to toe customisation on the android versions by thus makes it looks a lot unpleasant. The apps are now customized according to Google's holo theme and when you run them on the HTC one they really do look awkward. It feels as if those apps are ported from another os to the HTC's. The whoe of sense is  a lot disappointing as you can see all the manufacturers are trying to get their custom skins close to Google's stack to give users a uniform experience but that's where Sony and HTC are lacking. In the sense there is no widget drawer. We get to add widgets only from the home screen. You can't move apps from the app drawer to the home screen by continuous hold on the icon as again if you want it in the home screen get it from the home screen. Multitasking look a lot similar to the Nokia's N9 meego running smart phone. I really didn't like the sense 5. That's one thing that's keeping me away from buying that phone as there is no android experience. It may not matter to many but to me when it comes to an os there should be some pure experience of it. Samsung's touch wiz offers a pure yet coloured Google experience which I love to use with the touch wiz nature ux. On to of all that the 2300mah batter can't give enough juice for heavy users. A super phone that need more juice might run out of power so make sure to carry your charger where ever you go.

Conclusion
HTC one is an amazing phone to have around. HTC lovers are up for a treat. For users who don't like the user experience do wait for the next best thing. Well I am waiting.. Are you?