Monday, June 1, 2015
Samsung Galaxy S6 vs. HTC One M9: Design matters
Samsung and HTC both know what it’s like to be the top Android device maker. Samsung currently occupies that position, but HTC is struggling to climb back from a tough couple of years. Samsung has stumbled in the past year, but the newly announced Galaxy S6 is its chance to turn around slumping sales. At the same time, HTC is looking to keep its recent momentum going with the One M9. This year Samsung is changing it up dramatically, but HTC is staying the course. Let’s see how these 2015
Design and style If you’ve held one Samsung phone, you’ve held them all, right? Light, somewhat cheap-feeling, and almost entirely plastic — that was Samsung’s modus operandi before mid-2014 when it became apparent Galaxy S5 sales were coming in significantly below expectations. It began tinkering with metal frames and tweaked designs, but the Galaxy S6 is more than a tweak. While it retains that general Samsung aesthetic, the GS6 has virtually no plastic anywhere. The front (with its 5.1-inch screen) and back are both glass, and the frame is aluminum. No more of that painted chrome plastic for Samsung’s flagship. There are two versions of the GS6, one with a regular flat screen and another with a curved panel that slopes down at the edges. I don’t see the point of this personally, but it does look kind of neat. It might be annoying in practice, though.
On the face is a physical home button flanked by capacitive multitasking and back buttons. The fingerprint reader is now a touch sensor rather than swipe-based. The GS6 does bear a striking resemblance to the iPhone 6, but you can’t blame Samsung for doing what works. Samsung did, however, do a good job of slimming down the bezels from the GS5, which always felt rather clunky to me. Samsung’s devices have always had two notable features — a removable battery and microSD card slot. The Galaxy S6 doesn’t have either. I find this strange, especially for Samsung, but it has bumped the base model’s storage to 32GB and will offer both 64GB and 128GB (wow) versions. The Galaxy S6 has a lot in common with the HTC One M9. The M9 too is a sealed phone just like the M8 was. The battery doesn’t come out, but there is a microSD card slot. The Galaxy S6 looks much different than its predecessor, but HTC changed very little from the M8 to the M9. Again it’s a rounded unibody aluminum frame with a 5-inch screen (more on that later) and dual front-facing Boom Sound speakers. If you see the M9 from certain angles, you might not even be able to tell it from the M8. HTC has made a few changes in the design, as an eagle-eyed observer will note. First, the black bezel at the bottom of the front has been shrunk a touch and the top-mounted power button has moved to the side. Some of the lines on the phone are also ever so slightly different as well. Around back there’s a single large camera sensor instead of the dual cameras from the M8. So both phones will feel very premium, but the M9 will feel about the same as last year’s model did. Samsung changed a lot to catch up in the general look and feel department. Batteries vs. screens HTC and Samsung have both stuck with identical screen sizes from last year’s flagships. The GS6 is sporting a 5.1-inch Super AMOLED panel and the M9 has a 5-inch LCD. Samsung’s screen might be the same size, but the resolution has been bumped up to 2560×1440. HTC will use 1080p for the third year in a row, probably because 1440p LCD panels are still rather mediocre. Samsung’s quad-HD AMOLED will pack in a lot more pixels in a smaller space than other phones. It works out to a staggering 576 pixels per inch. The One M9 will again offer a “mere” 440 pixels per inch. One of those numbers is definitely larger than the other, but there are very few instances where most people will be able to notice the difference in resolution. If you’ve got less than perfect vision, those extra pixels on the GS6 might be wasted anyway.
These screens are also based on completely different technologies. Samsung makes the best AMOLED screens in the world, and it shows. The panel used on the Note 4 was devastatingly gorgeous, and the GS6 will probably look even better. Samsung has overcome many of AMOLED’s issues like low brightness and inaccurate, too-warm colors. Meanwhile, LCD is a reliable technology that offers accurate colors and good outdoor visibility. HTC tends to choose very good LCD panels too.
So, it’s likely that Samsung has a more impressive screen on its flagship device, but the battery has only grown a little to 2550mAh (2600 in the Edge variant). It should get solid battery life, but HTC’s 1080p LCD will use much less juice in most instances and it packs a larger 2840mAh cell. That should translate to much better battery life with more screen-on time for HTC.
Both of these screens have their strengths, but it’s up to you to decide what’s most important — being pretty or lasting a long time.
