omniusovermind
Well-known member
The vitriol being spewed over the Galaxy S4 is extremely amusing. Yes, the HTC One is more than likely going to feel better in the hand. While that plays a big part, I'm inclined to think that what my phone can actually -do- means a tad bit more. It seems to me that the improvements made to the S4 from a hardware standpoint are being grossly overlooked. The battery of the HTC One has been reported to be on par with the Droid DNA. I've used the DNA and while it wasn't god awful, it wasn't that great, either. The S4 has made a pretty large jump in the battery department, one in which, coupled with the Octa Core Exynos, could be a big difference maker. That is a huge, huge part of how we judge a phone and I've rarely seen anyone even mention this advantage for the S4. The Octa Core Exynos on it's own is an exciting prospect, especially since the benchmarks looked extremely impressive at 1.8ghz. I would imagine underclocking it is only going to aid the battery and still provide world-beating performance. While it hasn't been tested yet to see the quality, the camera has the potential to be extremely good given the software accompanying it. Storage is still a massive advantage given the microSD support. Global LTE support, if it means I can grab an international version with the Octa Core Exynos and use it with AT&T LTE, is going to be a really huge deal for a lot of people.
So then it really boils down to screen (pentile) and the plastic build. Half the people that complain about pentile complain because they hear other people complain. "It'll be grainy" is so damn hilarious. This wasn't much of an issue at 720p; unless you've got a microscope you use to look at your screen all the time, you're not going to notice it on this 1080p display. If you don't like AMOLED (I actually prefer SLCD3), then that's cool, but don't throw the pentle thing in there. It's ridiculous. When it comes to build quality, there is no question that the HTC One feels more premium. Part of that is the unibody design that doesn't allow for a removable battery. Not a big deal to some; point of contention for me. I don't care how good my phone looks if I can't use it all day.
There's nothing wrong with preferring the HTC One, but the fact that the S4 has garnered all this hate is astounding. It's literally people who choose to forget the huge improvements in both hardware and software and think because it's plastic that it sucks. I've chosen my horse in this race because Samsung caters to what I need; easy rooting, the world's largest dev support for Android, battery life, and functionality all while keeping pace/surpassing in other key areas. The Galaxy is definitely in iPhone territory now; hated for the sake of hating.
IIRC root and bootloader unlock have already been attained on the HTC One