Samsung galaxy S4 Vs. HTC ONE.

[Batman]

My HTC one is scheduled to arrive on Friday from Google, after reading up on both phones for some time, i decided its the phone for me. I'm a little nervous about the solid build (no battery removing, no sd card etc) But i got along fine with my nexus without the memory slot, and the durability and solid build quality is what won me over, honestly. I have the S3 now, and its the [I]only[I] phone that i have ever owned thats had a screen break, (and i'm decently rough on my phones at times) and the first replacement screen broke in a week. I've been babying the second. Screens will be screens, i know, but it bugged me. The other thing is the cheap plastic feel. Its light, yes, but i'd rather have the solid slightly heavy metal feel. The battery door on both mine and my wife's S3s are splintered and cracked up, but hey.. still one piece and still functional!

My friend and his wife just got S4s, and they really are amazing. the gorgeous screen, faster processor, and updated touchwiz is nice. The only problem is: Its new specs in the same plastic body.

So with the S4, to me, it's either 1: you bought the new hotness, but nobody can SEE that you did (Think iphone 4 to iphone 4S Hitler video, link at bottom lol)
and/or 2: you now have a faster more capable phone, that is still a flimsy plastic feel.

I thought i was going to have to go with the S4 (which for many, is probably the right choice) because i am on Verizon, and they can't seem to nail down a timeframe for the ONE, its currently floating around september to october i think. I thought, why wait for that, when by holiday season or next spring, there might easily be a NEW flagship HTC? I want the hotness now! lol Anyway, i found a preorder option for the pure google version of the HTC one, good for any carrier (i assume worldwide) and pre-ordered it. I love custom roms, love HTC (except the thunderbolt, i was disappointed) and I am done with the samsung plastic feel, at least for now.

So ultimately, I would say its personal preference. You are used to an iPhone, so the solid/aluminum feel, not messing with memory cards or battery, and no one can resist the new beats audio stereo speakers apparently, may make the HTC one the phone for you.

As far as software goes, both HTC Sense and Touchwiz are very user friendly and intuitive. Touchwiz is defintitely a little more artsy and colorful, like an iPhone, but HTC sense to me is a step above, with a crisp clean modern look and feel. I've also heard that the new Sense that is on the ONE is a step even further above the old version. With the pure/vanilla google experience.. you get neither, haha but i'm sure there will be downloadable roms for me soon.

So after reading this novel, just keep in mind that whichever feels right in your hand, and clicks with your mind and usage, get that one. I used to sell phones, about a year ago, and i'd say almost everyone who sat there and played with each phone for a while, then chose the one they liked by "the feel of it in their hand" loved their phone, and didn't bring it back to switch for a different model. Definitely do your research, and test and use the phone. As much as I always wanted to make a sale, if someone was truly torn between phones, i would tell them to play with the phones for a while, go home, sleep on it, and come back the next morning. It makes the choice a lot easier when your brain automatically goes to one or the other, all by itself. Almost 100% of the time, my customers would walk in, without touching one of the models, and say "ring me up for the ______" Buying a phone now days is all about what integrates best with how you process information, use technology, and honestly, your taste in technology "fashion" lol.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lxn6Ag0mmhs"]Hitler gets angry about iPhone 4S - YouTube[/ame]

[PradiG]

Originally Posted by Batman

My HTC one is scheduled to arrive on Friday from Google, after reading up on both phones for some time, i decided its the phone for me. I'm a little nervous about the solid build (no battery removing, no sd card etc) But i got along fine with my nexus without the memory slot, and the durability and solid build quality is what won me over, honestly. I have the S3 now, and its the [I]only[I] phone that i have ever owned thats had a screen break, (and i'm decently rough on my phones at times) and the first replacement screen broke in a week. I've been babying the second. Screens will be screens, i know, but it bugged me. The other thing is the cheap plastic feel. Its light, yes, but i'd rather have the solid slightly heavy metal feel. The battery door on both mine and my wife's S3s are splintered and cracked up, but hey.. still one piece and still functional!

My friend and his wife just got S4s, and they really are amazing. the gorgeous screen, faster processor, and updated touchwiz is nice. The only problem is: Its new specs in the same plastic body.

So with the S4, to me, it's either 1: you bought the new hotness, but nobody can SEE that you did (Think iphone 4 to iphone 4S Hitler video, link at bottom lol)
and/or 2: you now have a faster more capable phone, that is still a flimsy plastic feel.

I thought i was going to have to go with the S4 (which for many, is probably the right choice) because i am on Verizon, and they can't seem to nail down a timeframe for the ONE, its currently floating around september to october i think. I thought, why wait for that, when by holiday season or next spring, there might easily be a NEW flagship HTC? I want the hotness now! lol Anyway, i found a preorder option for the pure google version of the HTC one, good for any carrier (i assume worldwide) and pre-ordered it. I love custom roms, love HTC (except the thunderbolt, i was disappointed) and I am done with the samsung plastic feel, at least for now.

So ultimately, I would say its personal preference. You are used to an iPhone, so the solid/aluminum feel, not messing with memory cards or battery, and no one can resist the new beats audio stereo speakers apparently, may make the HTC one the phone for you.

As far as software goes, both HTC Sense and Touchwiz are very user friendly and intuitive. Touchwiz is defintitely a little more artsy and colorful, like an iPhone, but HTC sense to me is a step above, with a crisp clean modern look and feel. I've also heard that the new Sense that is on the ONE is a step even further above the old version. With the pure/vanilla google experience.. you get neither, haha but i'm sure there will be downloadable roms for me soon.

So after reading this novel, just keep in mind that whichever feels right in your hand, and clicks with your mind and usage, get that one. I used to sell phones, about a year ago, and i'd say almost everyone who sat there and played with each phone for a while, then chose the one they liked by "the feel of it in their hand" loved their phone, and didn't bring it back to switch for a different model. Definitely do your research, and test and use the phone. As much as I always wanted to make a sale, if someone was truly torn between phones, i would tell them to play with the phones for a while, go home, sleep on it, and come back the next morning. It makes the choice a lot easier when your brain automatically goes to one or the other, all by itself. Almost 100% of the time, my customers would walk in, without touching one of the models, and say "ring me up for the ______" Buying a phone now days is all about what integrates best with how you process information, use technology, and honestly, your taste in technology "fashion" lol.

My god! Felt like a novel! Lol! But thanks for your input. I guess I'll head to best buy to really "feel the phone in my hand". I just wanted to factor in the software and technological aspects of it since there are probably people more knowledgeable on the subject than me

[Batman]

Originally Posted by PradiG

My god! Felt like a novel! Lol! But thanks for your input. I guess I'll head to best buy to really "feel the phone in my hand". I just wanted to factor in the software and technological aspects of it since there are probably people more knowledgeable on the subject than me

Yeah, i tend to ramble a little lol

Definitely a good plan, just go mess around on each phone for a while, you'll generally figure out which is best for you pretty quick.

Also, for buying the phone.. are you upgrading, or buying outright?

if you can't find a slick deal on wirefly or amazon, etc, i'd recommend going to Costco. (Wireless Advocates). They are almost always the best price for any phone, can (at least they used to) waive your upgrade fees, give you a couple accessories including a car charger, have a great, although short, return/exchange policy, and if you have the black card, you get 2% cash back haha

Best part, if they still do it, which costco generally does, is that if you go with phone 1, use it for a week, and hate it, take it back, say it sucks or you don't like it, or its slow, etc, and switch for phone 2. Just pay the difference if any. As long as you are within the carrier's "remorse" period, you are golden. Just remember to bring back all of your accessories too lol

Anyway, don't want another novel on our hands! have fun shoppin

[PradiG]

Originally Posted by Batman

Yeah, i tend to ramble a little lol

Definitely a good plan, just go mess around on each phone for a while, you'll generally figure out which is best for you pretty quick.

Also, for buying the phone.. are you upgrading, or buying outright?

if you can't find a slick deal on wirefly or amazon, etc, i'd recommend going to Costco. (Wireless Advocates). They are almost always the best price for any phone, can (at least they used to) waive your upgrade fees, give you a couple accessories including a car charger, have a great, although short, return/exchange policy, and if you have the black card, you get 2% cash back haha

Best part, if they still do it, which costco generally does, is that if you go with phone 1, use it for a week, and hate it, take it back, say it sucks or you don't like it, or its slow, etc, and switch for phone 2. Just pay the difference if any. As long as you are within the carrier's "remorse" period, you are golden. Just remember to bring back all of your accessories too lol

Anyway, don't want another novel on our hands! have fun shoppin

lol thanks for the info! My girlfriend's family is upgrading and they wanted an iPhone 5. I jokingly said they could have mine and ill take a new phone. Most likely theyre just going to take my phone (its in good condition). I also gave her dad my iphone 4, free of charge awhile ago.

[Batman]

Originally Posted by PradiG

lol thanks for the info! My girlfriend's family is upgrading and they wanted an iPhone 5. I jokingly said they could have mine and ill take a new phone. Most likely theyre just going to take my phone (its in good condition). I also gave her dad my iphone 4, free of charge awhile ago.

Thats awesome, iphones all around haha

Also, just as an update, and a sad one at that, for you or anyone else reading this, i mis-read the bands available on my new HTC, it won't be fully verizon capable, supposedly, and by that i mean that it will have data but no talk or text haha

SO, i might be in the market once again.. What service are you with?

[Shagaliscious]

I love my HTC One. The battery is amazing, the phone is ridiculously fast, beautiful display, the live tiles are pretty awesome, oh and it sounds great. It feels very solid in your hands too like someone said. I've never replaced a phone battery, and my previous phone I only had 24GB memory, so even though I don't have an expandable memory slot, 32GB will be more then enough for me.

I will admit that when compared to my buddies iphone5, the speakers didn't seem to be that much louder, but they certainly have a much crisper sound.

[SP86]

S4 for sure. Like previously stated; both have their positive and negative features but the expandable memory and removable battery is what I prefer every time. My immediate family have iphones and max them out quite often. Thus having to remove music and whatever else.

In my experience with the Galaxy so far o haven't had it die on me at all and I use it frequently. Love the camera, 1080 display is lovely. I don't care for people knowing what have car nor phone so with the phone looking alike doesn't bother me at all. It's what's on the inside that's counts..lol but really it comes down to the buyer go in play with both phones, watch many YouTube videos of each of the phones and go from there... I believe you get 30 days to try them out anyway. With Verizon anyway. Anyway happy shopping.

[WolfsFang]

I went with the HTC One, had the s3 and what a difference in the build quality. If you love listening to music then get the HTC One. The beats by dre thing is not a gimmick. Every HTC phone that has beats by dre have built in amp's that really help out. The front facing speakers destroys every phone out there. I have no problem with no SD card, all my music is on the cloud and I have more than half memory left even after all my photo's and videos. The camera on the One is a little worse then the s4 if you compare a day shots, the one shines at night shots though.

[Batman]

Originally Posted by WolfsFang

I went with the HTC One, had the s3 and what a difference in the build quality. If you love listening to music then get the HTC One. The beats by dre thing is not a gimmick. Every HTC phone that has beats by dre have built in amp's that really help out. The front facing speakers destroys every phone out there. I have no problem with no SD card, all my music is on the cloud and I have more than half memory left even after all my photo's and videos. The camera on the One is a little worse then the s4 if you compare a day shots, the one shines at night shots though.

haha man.. i've been waiting for a phone that can hold ALL my music! I've been using tune up on my itunes all week, to name all the songs, find duplicates, etc.. before getting rid of duplicates, i'm sitting right around 109 Gigs in my library, roughly 22-23k songs haha. I thought there would be a dent with duplicates, but so far.. its a lot less than i was hoping it would be lol. Too bad i can't get the chinese version of the ONE, the back pops off to reveal dual sim and SD slots! love it.

[whitefrs]

check the S4 Active from ATT

waterproof and dust proof

[WolfsFang]

Originally Posted by Batman

haha man.. i've been waiting for a phone that can hold ALL my music! I've been using tune up on my itunes all week, to name all the songs, find duplicates, etc.. before getting rid of duplicates, i'm sitting right around 109 Gigs in my library, roughly 22-23k songs haha. I thought there would be a dent with duplicates, but so far.. its a lot less than i was hoping it would be lol. Too bad i can't get the chinese version of the ONE, the back pops off to reveal dual sim and SD slots! love it.

if you use google play music app you can store 20k songs in the cloud for free.

Originally Posted by whitefrs

check the S4 Active from ATT
waterproof and dust proof

HTC one is water resilient.

[serialk11r]

Originally Posted by Luis_GT

They both have their ups and down... I have the S4 and I love it...

Replaceable battery and memory expansion slot are a plus over the HTC one

I didn't actually know that wasn't available for the HTC One. Glad I got the S4 then, microSD is essential for storing data if you swap ROMs.

Originally Posted by denkigrve

The build quality of the one destroys the s4.

I don't know about this one. When I got my first HTC phone (AT&T Inspire 4g) I thought the "build quality" was good, but then my volume button fell off and the plastic covers started getting loose and I lost a ton of trade in value at the AT&T store because of the missing volume buttons. The stock battery was completely shot after just 1 year, you could use it for 10 minutes before it started shutting off every 30 seconds and turning back on with the battery gauge reading 20% lower than it did before.

I do think that the HTC's size is a little better, I was used to being able to use one hand comfortably to use the phone before when I had a 4.3" phone and now with the 5" S4 my thumb can't reach all the corners of the screen anymore, whereas the HTC's slightly smaller screen size (but same resolution! ) would put more of the screen within reach. I think the thing that made the decision for me at the store was the Beats (I don't doubt that the HTC phone has better audio than other phones but Beats by Dre is a stupid brand that makes terrible headphones that ignorant people overhype, and they must've paid a lot for that name), and the convenience of the S voice on the S4 (just press the home button 2 times!).

I'm still not quite sure I bought the right phone because the S4 has a lot of bloatware (I'm going to just flash CM11 when I finally get to it) and the smart scroll, smart stay, facial recognition, etc. do not work 95% of the time and I would really appreciate front facing speakers, but I am still wary from my last HTC phone.

[denkigrve]

Originally Posted by serialk11r

I didn't actually know that wasn't available for the HTC One. Glad I got the S4 then, microSD is essential for storing data if you swap ROMs.



I don't know about this one. When I got my first HTC phone (AT&T Inspire 4g) I thought the "build quality" was good, but then my volume button fell off and the plastic covers started getting loose and I lost a ton of trade in value at the AT&T store because of the missing volume buttons. The stock battery was completely shot after just 1 year, you could use it for 10 minutes before it started shutting off every 30 seconds and turning back on with the battery gauge reading 20% lower than it did before.

I do think that the HTC's size is a little better, I was used to being able to use one hand comfortably to use the phone before when I had a 4.3" phone and now with the 5" S4 my thumb can't reach all the corners of the screen anymore, whereas the HTC's slightly smaller screen size (but same resolution! ) would put more of the screen within reach. I think the thing that made the decision for me at the store was the Beats (I don't doubt that the HTC phone has better audio than other phones but Beats by Dre is a stupid brand that makes terrible headphones that ignorant people overhype, and they must've paid a lot for that name), and the convenience of the S voice on the S4 (just press the home button 2 times!).

I'm still not quite sure I bought the right phone because the S4 has a lot of bloatware (I'm going to just flash CM11 when I finally get to it) and the smart scroll, smart stay, facial recognition, etc. do not work 95% of the time and I would really appreciate front facing speakers, but I am still wary from my last HTC phone.

Pick up an HTC one. It feels so much nicer in your hands than the S4. The One mini is definitely my next phone if it comes out.

[Batman]

Originally Posted by serialk11r

I didn't actually know that wasn't available for the HTC One. Glad I got the S4 then, microSD is essential for storing data if you swap ROMs.



I don't know about this one. When I got my first HTC phone (AT&T Inspire 4g) I thought the "build quality" was good, but then my volume button fell off and the plastic covers started getting loose and I lost a ton of trade in value at the AT&T store because of the missing volume buttons. The stock battery was completely shot after just 1 year, you could use it for 10 minutes before it started shutting off every 30 seconds and turning back on with the battery gauge reading 20% lower than it did before.

I do think that the HTC's size is a little better, I was used to being able to use one hand comfortably to use the phone before when I had a 4.3" phone and now with the 5" S4 my thumb can't reach all the corners of the screen anymore, whereas the HTC's slightly smaller screen size (but same resolution! ) would put more of the screen within reach. I think the thing that made the decision for me at the store was the Beats (I don't doubt that the HTC phone has better audio than other phones but Beats by Dre is a stupid brand that makes terrible headphones that ignorant people overhype, and they must've paid a lot for that name), and the convenience of the S voice on the S4 (just press the home button 2 times!).

I'm still not quite sure I bought the right phone because the S4 has a lot of bloatware (I'm going to just flash CM11 when I finally get to it) and the smart scroll, smart stay, facial recognition, etc. do not work 95% of the time and I would really appreciate front facing speakers, but I am still wary from my last HTC phone.

I can agree with you on many, and understand on some points, but as a long time "phone nerd" and ex-phone salesman.. Don't compare all HTC phones to the Inspire 4G or Thunderbolt We sold way too many of the HTC inspires because of the price, and because of the "quality." most of my team would advise against it, and sadly i had many returned. the few plastic pieces didn't fit, the buttons were awful, the battery was not great, and it just couldn't compare to a few of the other smart phones that were 20-50 bucks more at the time. Once you have used some of the HTC greats, like the original incredible, (and its successors for the most part) the "ONE" series from last year, even the sensation and its successors/series were awesome phones (sensational, if you will haha) and i'll give the Rezound from verizon a good review, even though it was a bit bulky, and the "beats" was no difference at all, you will know a good brand (with awful timing for releasing flagship phones to verizon) that has had its ups and downs, like all brands do.

I guess i have a little more dislike for the inspire than i thought haha, but the point i am trying to get across.. every manufacturer has had their good phones, and their bad phones. With the way technology is nowadays.. the next new tech is always around the corner, so last years model, or sometimes even last months model (Droid Bionic to Droid Razr) is not always a valid comparison. i generally try to look at every phone as if it is its own brand and reputation. with a little research and a little 'field study' down at best buy.. its not too hard to figure out which phone was built to be the best and which you might have to stock up on glass screens and plastic volume buttons ( to the inspire right there lol)