Galaxy S4 or HTC One?

[MosquitoSmasher]

I am not sure if this is the right subforum for the question. But i assume it is, if not, my bad.

So i'm on the lookout for a new phone. I'm going from the very crappy Galaxy Ace to either a HTC One or Samsung Galaxy S4. But i'm on the fence, because a few things are still unclear to me. First i'll mention why it's either gonna be a S4 or One.

S4 because i hear nothing but good things about it. Plus it apparently is full of features and a huge plus is that it has removable battery and an SD card slot. However the build quality is nowhere near that of HTC One.

HTC One because the build quality and design is really impressive. I read in lots of previews that the sound is amazing, so music should sound fantastic on it. Isn't nearly as feature-rich as Galaxy S4, but then...some reviews say there's so many features you really won't use anyway. Both are from what i hear incredibly fast. So that's good. But what is not yet clear to me is how the battery life of both are.

Some reviews talk about 8 hours when in heavy use, but i don't heavily use a phone at all. Most of the time it comes down to messasing alittle on Whatsapp, some browsing, Youtube, some calling and that's about it. Not in any way in constant use. But still i want to know how the batterylife is of both phones. My Samsung Galaxy Ace lasts 1,5 days with light/medium usage and with the brightness all the way down. It should be fine with either one.

And last question...which one would you prefer and especially....WHY?

 

[ffejjj]

Well if you search these forums you'll see this topic covered extensively.

Its gonna get brutal i'm afraid because most members are very passionate about their respective devices. Only advise i'd offer is just to go and try them out, see what feels better to use for you.

All of us have our very valid reasons for the phone we chose but we couldn't possible know what would work best for you. I chose the Htc One and love it. To you i say good luck and i hope this thread stays somewhat civil. We'll see

 

[Aquila]

I would say that the build quality on each are actually pretty close to even. The materials used some people prefer one more than the other, and there are pros and cons to each choice, but the engineering integrity doesn't seem to be lacking on either one.

There isn't a wrong choice here, I would recommend going and playing with one or several of each in stores, etc. Get a feel for animation lag, or lack thereof, what some of the features are like, button configurations, screen quality, etc. If the SD card and Battery are things you really want and/or need, then clearly the S4 is the winner. Personally I don't care one way or another about either, but you mentioned them so I would assume that you do.

 

[Kilroy13]

May as well close this now!

Sent from my HTCONE using Tapatalk 2

 

[MosquitoSmasher]

Well if you search these forums you'll see this topic covered extensively.

Its gonna get brutal i'm afraid because most members are very passionate about their respective devices. Only advise i'd offer is just to go and try them out, see what feels better to use for you.

All of us have our very valid reasons for the phone we chose but we couldn't possible know what would work best for you. I chose the Htc One and love it. To you i say good luck and i hope this thread stays somewhat civil. We'll see

Oh it wasn't my intention at all to get people starting wars here or whatsoever. I'm genuinely on the fence with these two.

I would say that the build quality on each are actually pretty close to even. The materials used some people prefer one more than the other, and there are pros and cons to each choice, but the engineering integrity doesn't seem to be lacking on either one.

There isn't a wrong choice here, I would recommend going and playing with one or several of each in stores, etc. Get a feel for animation lag, or lack thereof, what some of the features are like, button configurations, screen quality, etc. If the SD card and Battery are things you really want and/or need, then clearly the S4 is the winner. Personally I don't care one way or another about either, but you mentioned them so I would assume that you do.

Ok it's good to hear about the build quality. Cause i hear a lot of 'the thing is plastic man' but when you see it for yourself, it really isn't that bad at all. But i DO appreciate the metal design of the HTC One more. Maybe it looked like i really cared a lot about memory card and removable battery, but if the battery life is good enough, it's fine for me. As for memory card, 32GB should be plenty for me. I mean, my Ace only has 2GB and i was fine with it, but then...i didn't put any music on it and that's going to change for the new phone. Still with the things i will be using the phone for, 32GB should be more than enough really. I just saw a video on Youtube and someone showed that the batterylife is pretty impressive. Basically the guy used it for the same kinds of things i used it for and it lasted him a day or even 1,5 days.

What i slightly worry about though is something that is mentioned in the Digitaltrends.com HTC One review. They say that the phone can get really hot, even when it's not doing a whole lot. But the reason i made this thread is basically...because i'd like to hear from owners of a S4 and/or HTC One how their experiences are with the batterylife and if the phone gets hot. It's also a very good piece of advice that its best to go toy around with the phones myself in the store and i'll definitely do that next week. But i hope these two questions can get answered.

 

[jonathan2677]

I agree pop the pop corn grab a soda and sit back the shows gonna begun, lmfao I have both and I use the one as my daily driver, I did solve the lag on my s4 with root and a custom rom but if your not willing to root keep the lag in mind

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk 4 Beta

 

[Farish]

How bout a Nexus 4?

 

[MosquitoSmasher]

I agree pop the pop corn grab a soda and sit back the shows gonna begun, lmfao I have both and I use the one as my daily driver, I did solve the lag on my s4 with root and a custom rom but if your not willing to root keep the lag in mind

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk 4 Beta

Hey man! Root? That's like jailbreak i assume? I rather not mess with that, cause won't that void the warranty? So lag you say? Could you go into a bit more detail on that?

How bout a Nexus 4?

Oh boy even more phone suggestions. Just after i scrapped the Nokia Lumia 920 as potential third choice....i'll go look into it though.

 

[benhmadison]

Hey man! Root? That's like jailbreak i assume? I rather not mess with that, cause won't that void the warranty? So lag you say? Could you go into a bit more detail on that?



Oh boy even more phone suggestions. Just after i scrapped the Nokia Lumia 920 as potential third choice....i'll go look into it though.

Some of the S4's have some lag issues when moving about the menu's and such. I have owned 2 s4's and never had any lag on either. The general consensus is the lag is due to all of the extra features that Samsung includes in their Touchwiz skin. Some say these features are useful and some say they are gimmicks. I went back and forth on these two devices for almost a month and in the end I chose the ONE. They are both fantastic devices but in the end the things that made me choose the ONE were (more internal storage, 25 usable gigs vs s4 having only 9.6) and the quality feel and beautiful screen on the ONE. Good luck and I hope this helps you out.


Sent from my Android Revolutionized HTC ONE.

 

[MosquitoSmasher]

Some of the S4's have some lag issues when moving about the menu's and such. I have owned 2 s4's and never had any lag on either. The general consensus is the lag is due to all of the extra features that Samsung includes in their Touchwiz skin. Some say these features are useful and some say they are gimmicks. I went back and forth on these two devices for almost a month and in the end I chose the ONE. They are both fantastic devices but in the end the things that made me choose the ONE were (more internal storage, 25 usable gigs vs s4 having only 9.6) and the quality feel and beautiful screen on the ONE. Good luck and I hope this helps you out.


Sent from my Android Revolutionized HTC ONE.

How odd that some folks have experienced lag, and others didn't. Yeah all those extra features. It sounds all very cool, but i can already see myself not caring much about it. Sure i'll try them out, but i doubt i will be using it much. For all these years so far i've only been using my phones for messaging, calling, bit of browsing and things like that. Of course now and then shooting a photo and video, but that's about it. The One doesn't have all those features, but i think that's actually a good thing then by the sound of it. I don't want any kind of lag, i want that thing to be lightning fast.

You are definitely right about the internal storage. It's a big plus that right out of the box you have 25 and not nearly as much on S4. Sure you can upgrade to more GBs, but that'll cost even more money and i really doubt i'll be filling up that 25GB quickly. But for both i think it sucks that the software takes up so many of those GB's, but i guess it's always been like that. Has been like that with USB sticks and external hdds and what not. And i agree about the design and build quality, i really love that about it. It really looks like i'm leaning more and more towards HTC One, but i'll definitely be giving both a very good thorough spin next week in the stores. And while i do say i have my doubts that i will fill up those 25GBs quickly...what if i do put a lot of music and videos on it and eventually i'm like 'Damn...i could use the option to put a bigger memory card in it now" ? That's kinda one of the few things that keeps me a bit on the fence. I went to a similar thread and i read something that i absolutely didn't know. I kept hearing about the amazing suond, but in that one thread it is mentioned a few times that the amazing sound is ONLY when listening to music/videos through the speakers. With headphones it shouldn't matter all that much compared to S4. So that's a plus less for HTC One if that's true.

 

[Kilroy13]

Keep your music on Google play! You can have 20000 songs there for free!

Sent from my HTCONE using Tapatalk 2

 

[ffejjj]

The quality of the sound you get thru the headphones is pretty amazing as well as sound level's. Very loud and still holds it's clarity

I have 600 plus songs on my One then add in all my apps and i still have over 20 gig's remaining

 

[MosquitoSmasher]

Free music on Google Play? You mean you can just listen to music for free in that app?

I forgot to mention something....i'm getting a new phone because i'm gonna extend my subscription. There's two deals to choose from:

HTC One. It's free if i choose a 2 year sub and i'll be paying 38 euros a month for those two years. Not bad at all.

Galaxy S4: It costs 60 euros. It's a 2 year sub, the first six months will be 17 euro a month and after that it'll be 34. So basically...going for HTC One would only cost slightly more.

 

[carraser891]

Only you know which one you want we can't answer that for you

Posted via Android Central App

 

[MosquitoSmasher]

Only you know which one you want we can't answer that for you

Posted via Android Central App

Very true man. I honestly never had such a hard time deciding between phones. Probably because all i've had before was crap phones. The ones i can remember are HTC Touch, LG Renoir, Samsung Galaxy Ace and both just really are nothing special at all. Whether i go with HTC One or S4, i'll be having one amazing device and just WORLDS better than what i've ever owned before. Next week i'll head into town and go to the shops, hopefully after that...my decision is made a whole lot easier. It should be, after having tried the two thoroughly.

 

[benhmadison]

Free music on Google Play? You mean you can just listen to music for free in that app?

Google Play Music let's you upload up to 20,000 songs to the cloud. You have the ability to stream your music at any time but that does use data. The smartest way to use Google music is to upload all of your music to the cloud then just pin the albums/songs/playlists you want to listen to at the time to your device. When you pin the music to your device it downloads it to the device where you don't have to use data to listen. I really don't think you would fill up 25 plus gigs of space but if you did you could always pin and unpin your music from week to week or until you wanted to listen to something new. Now I will tell you that when you pin music to your device through Google Play Music it will only store on your internal storage. That's where I ran into storage issues with the S4. My 9.6 gigs of internal space quickly turned into about 2 gigs. This is all subjective of course. If you were to have an unlimited data plan, all of what I have said would be irrelevant. Also if you got a 32gig version of the S4 you would end up with equal internal storage to the ONE plus the ability of expandable memory, but the 32 gig S4 would be more expensive. As previously stated, there are many factors in the decision, but if the lack of sd card support on the ONE is your only concern I think you would be fine.

 

[benhmadison]

Next week i'll head into town and go to the shops, hopefully after that...my decision is made a whole lot easier. It should be, after having tried the two thoroughly.

Let us know what you decide and like you said, they are both the best you can get

 

[MosquitoSmasher]

The decision has just been made a whole lot easier. Turns out i was looking at a total different subscription from a different phone company. Right now i'm at Vodafone and my sub ends on August 18th. I can however already extend my sub and via that get a brand new phone. Which the only doable option for me is the S4 which costs 46 euros for the phone itself. For the first six months i'll only pay 17 euros a month and after that i'll be paying 34 for the rest of the two year sub. If i choose to get the HTC One with that sub, i need to pay 157 or more for the phone itself alone and i'll be paying 38 euros a month right away. So definitely more expensive. The sub that offered the HTC One for free and 38 euros a month was a total different phone provider. If i decide to wait for that sub, it means i can't get a new phone right now, i'll have to cope with this terrible Ace and plus i can't take my phone with me when i go to Gamescom in Germany in August. If i then look at the pro's and cons....i can only really go with S4. I'm much cheaper off too.

 

[benhmadison]

The decision has just been made a whole lot easier. Turns out i was looking at a total different subscription from a different phone company. Right now i'm at Vodafone and my sub ends on August 18th. I can however already extend my sub and via that get a brand new phone. Which the only doable option for me is the S4 which costs 46 euros for the phone itself. For the first six months i'll only pay 17 euros a month and after that i'll be paying 34 for the rest of the two year sub. If i choose to get the HTC One with that sub, i need to pay 157 or more for the phone itself alone and i'll be paying 38 euros a month right away. So definitely more expensive. The sub that offered the HTC One for free and 38 euros a month was a total different phone provider. If i decide to wait for that sub, it means i can't get a new phone right now, i'll have to cope with this terrible Ace and plus i can't take my phone with me when i go to Gamescom in Germany in August. If i then look at the pro's and cons....i can only really go with S4. I'm much cheaper off too.

You will enjoy the S4. It is a great device and it is a huge upgrade from what you had

 

[Sidewinder2180]

Either way you can't go wrong! They are both great devices. I love my S4 and I'm sure I would love the One just as much if I had it. If you can play with them both and see witch you like.

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