Battle of the beasts: iPhone 4 v HTC Desire v Samsung Galaxy S

I have used and reviewed many smartphone over the past year and some stand out more than others. In an industry which is racing to the bottom in terms of average price there are still some smartphones produced that aim to be the very best in their field. For this battle I considered many phones such as the Nokia N97, BlackBerry Bold 9700 and Palm Pre, but decided that the iPhone 4, Desire and Galaxy S represented the best of what the touch screen smartphone industry has to offer. They were certainly the ones that stood out to me the most over the year and so I decided to let them battle it out to see which is the very best at this time. These are purely from my experiences so are not a technical look, but hopefully this article will help if you are stuck on deciding which one to buy.

I will take each feature in turn and then look at the overall usability of each phone and eventually decide which one is the best of the bunch.

Camera

Smartphone cameras have become a battleground all of their own in the past year and it is not uncommon to see phones marketed with the camera spec at the very top of the list. Manufacturers have realised this and are putting huge amounts of research and effort into cramming in the best cameras they can. Megapixels, as you probably know, are far from the whole story these days and this is even more apparent on smartphones. You have a phone with you and being able to catch a moment is crucial to the whole reason it is there. If it requires fiddling to capture an image in good quality its use is suddenly diminished. If it struggles to get meaningful snaps in poor lighting its use is halved. And if the video recording is blighted by poor sound capture or ghosting it starts to feel like an add-on rather than a feature worth having.

iPhone 4 Camera: 9/10

There is little doubt that Apple has put lots of effort into the iPhone 4 camera and once again proved that you do not need lots of Megapixals to take good quality pictures and video. Pictures are almost always of excellent quality and the more time you take, the better the result will be. It feels natural to use and crucially like you have some control over the process which is unusual in smartphone cameras. The flash works well and so far I have caught a few good snaps at night which other phones struggle to do.

Video capture is also very, very good and the sound and video quality are as good as I have seen on any other phone. The added bonus for iPhone photography is that there are many apps available which will help you to enhance the pictures you have taken in a variety of ways.

Galaxy S Camera: 7/10

For photos the Galaxy S is very good in decent lighting conditions and will serve as a worthy snapper in day to day use. However, the lack of a flash is the main reason it only gets 7/10 because this limits its use somewhat. A bizarre omission from Samsung.

Video capture is very good and only the sound quality lets it down a little. It is up there with the iPhone 4 for capture quality though.

HTC Desire Camera: 7/10

Image quality is excellent and worthy of inclusion in one of the highest specified Android smartphones. The flash works fairly well, but is not iPhone standard and the way the camera software works is not as easy as it could be.

Video recording is OK, but again suffers from poor sound capture which seems to be a problem in most smartphones no matter how much they cost. It is a worthy addition though, but it would be nice to see better in a smartphone of this specification.

Winner: The iPhone 4 takes the prize for the best smartphone camera out of the three. They are all good, but Apple has created something truly different which makes taking photos on a smartphone a pleasure rather than a chore.

Screen

From a practical point of view the screen is one of the most important parts of any smartphone and it needs to succeed in two areas. Firstly, it should be high resolution to display photos, video and lots of information in as good a clarity as possible and secondly it needs to be viewable in all conditions. Sadly not all manufacturers have figured this out yet.

iPhone 4 screen: 9/10

The Retina Display has created lots of discussion, but in the real world the fact that you cannot see the pixels does not make a huge difference. It is useful for games and photos, but I still believe that it is a feature that has been over marketed. However, the crispness of the screen cannot be ignored and so it does very well here.

It is also viewable in all conditions and only bright sunlight causes some glare and wash out, but not to the level you see on most other phones.

Galaxy S screen: 9/10

At 4” it offers more space than the others here and the Super AMOLED rivals the Retina Display in my opinion. Colours are perfectly reproduced and video and photos also benefit from the technology.

In bright conditions it is perfectly viewable and on a par, if not a little better, than the iPhone 4.

Finally, the technology is very easy on the battery and this can offer more flexibility with larger displays than other technologies.

HTC Desire screen: 6/10

The resolution is good and so is the size at 3.7” which come together to offer a pleasing experience, in preferable lighting conditions.

The fact is that the Desires screen performs better in bright sunlight than a lot of phones, but is streets behind the other two here and can almost wash out completely when the Sun is beating down. It is the one dark spot on an otherwise very well built phone.

Winner: I have to give it to the Galaxy S for a couple of reasons; it is bigger and it makes viewing photos and videos better than on the iPhone 4 which some of you may struggle to understand. When you use a Galaxy S in anger you soon start to realise that the screen is simply awesome.

Media

Video, games and music are fast becoming the staple diet of the latest and greatest smartphones and phones that are unable to compete in any one area soon fall foul of the media and ultimately the consumer.

iPhone 4 media: 10/10

Any iPhone has an immediate advantage because of the media that is immediately available to it with a couple of clicks. iTunes is tied to the iPhone like an umbilical cord and offers music, films, TV episodes, eBooks, Podcasts, apps, games and audiobooks which are all incredibly easy to buy and move over to the phone. The fact that you can rent films adds another dimension and all iPhones are capable of TV-out with the right cable so it can become your all in one entertainment centre.

Video playback on the iPhone 4 in HD is excellent and the music quality is simply awesome! There is little point in highlighting games and apps because they are plentiful and there are more than enough that offer a quality not previously seen on a mobile phone.

With a variety of eBook apps and publishers available over the air and through iTunes this media format is covered as well. There is nothing missing from the iPhone setup.

Galaxy S media: 8/10

Video is better on the Galaxy S than the iPhone 4 for obvious reasons, but you have to jump through some hoops to get the films and TV episodes over to the phone. Music quality is very good through the supplied headphones, but you have to be careful which ones you use with it. For example, my iPhone headphones sound terrible on the Galaxy.

There is a good selection of games, apps and eBooks available for Android and no Galaxy user will be left wanting, but it is not at the level of the iPhone system yet. It is also a bit hit and miss when you are trying to find good quality software because there is a lot of dreadful apps in the Android Market. I am not saying that there isn’t lots of dross in iTunes, but my perception is that there are more very good quality titles currently available and that the major services (shops, cinemas, banks etc.) think about the iPhone before considering other mobile platforms.

HTC Desire media: 7/10

I have covered the availability of apps etc. in the Galaxy sections and of course the Desire is running the same platform. Video playback is excellent again and so is music quality. The only negative sides are the screen in daylight and the hassle involved in moving media to the phone.

Winner: The iPhone 4 had to take the prize in this section because of the eco-system that is built around it. The astonishing sound quality is also on a whole new level compared to the competition and for effort alone it is hard to beat.

Ultimately, all three phones offer a media experience we could not have dreamed off two years ago and so they are all worthy purchases if this is most important to you.

Battery

Battery life is measured in hours these days and a smartphone that can last a day on one charge is often acclaimed as having a good battery. I disagree and probably always will because I still use voice a lot and prefer to use a phone for voice that I know for certain will get me through the heaviest of days. If I have three hours of conference calls, emails and whatever else I want to see at least 30% available by the time I get home in case the next day is even crazier.

iPhone 4 battery: 7/10

The iPhone 4 is better on battery than the 3GS, but the battery has been tweaked to offer superb efficiency for video and music playback. I still find that long calls will drop the meter too quickly and so my trusty BlackBerry is still my mainstay for voice calling.

Don’t get me wrong the iPhone 4 battery is adequate, but I still have a charger next to my bed, in my car, on my desks at work and home and in my briefcase.

Galaxy S battery: 8/10

The Galaxy S battery performs surprisingly well for almost all activities and I have found that more than a heavy day is possible, just. A very heavy day will kill it, but I don’t feel so concerned about the Galaxy battery as I do the iPhone.

HTC Desire battery: 6/10

It’s OK when compared to certain other smartphone, but HTC still hasn’t put battery life at the forefront of what it wants to do with smartphones. There will come a time, again, when things like the battery are seen as important features, but HTC is an example of a company that concentrates on this area less than some others.

Winner: Galaxy S.

Performance

I am please to say that for general performance we have reached a stage where the high-end smartphones move along at a consistently blistering pace and all of these are powered to the point that slow downs are a rarity. However, the iPhone 4 can stumble occasionally for me when too many big apps have been run in the recent past and seems to handle multi-tasking less well than the other two. The Desire also stumbles on occasion whereas the Galaxy seems to carry on no matter what I throw at it.

Winner: If I had to offer scores I would go for 9/10 to the Galaxy and 8/10 to the other two.

Call and Signal Quality

Let’s pretend that people still want to use smartphones to make voice calls and then we can look seriously at how well each of these phones perform in the real world.

They all offer a rich call quality experience, but the Galaxy S is special in this area. Here’s a quote from my review of the Galaxy- “The Samsung Wave surprised me with the sound quality during calls and the Galaxy S is arguably even better. Voice quality when next to your ear is rich and clear, but it gets even better when the speakerphone is used. It does not distort and even beats the BlackBerry Bold 9700 which makes it the first smartphone to do so. The loudness is just enough for the most testing of conditions so if you are one of the ever reducing number of smartphone users who actually makes calls this is an ideal choice.”

The iPhone signal is not half as bad as some would have you believe, but the speakerphone could sound more refined to me. As for the Desire, it marks a step up from HTC in this area with a rich sound marred slightly by the tinny speakerphone.

Signal is a contentious area at the moment, but I would again put the Galaxy (9/10) at the top with the Desire (8/10) next and the iPhone 4 (7/10) last. If I use my iPhone next to a Galaxy or Desire on the same network, it is still the only one that can suffer no signal at all. It is rare, but should never happen in 2010.

Software

We have two choices here- iOS and Android and I would still rate iOS as the better of the two, for me. Android has huge potential going forward and I fully expect to see more from it than iOS over the next 2 years, but at this time it feels more complete and polished. I want reliability and ease of use and iOS offers that in spades. 9/10 for the iPhone and 8/10 for the other two.

Conclusion

If I tot up the scores I end up with-

iPhone 4: 59
Galaxy S: 58
HTC Desire: 50

This kind of scoring is ultimately pointless because I could view one area as five times more important than another and so would concentrate on that more. What the scores do show is that there is very little to choose between the Galaxy S and the iPhone 4 and that each person will need to decide which is best for them. These two phones are way up my personal list and I find it hard to choose between them due to highs and lows in different areas, but the iPhone 4 just pinches it for me.

The HTC Desire has very quickly been overtaken by the other two and HTC needs to keep up the pace of development to keep up. More importantly, it needs to come up with something to get ahead of the pack because it is starting to fall into the Nokia trap of clinging on rather than leading.

The real positive here is that all three of these phones are light years ahead of what was available a mere twelve months earlier. I wonder what we can expect in August 2011?