iPhone 5 vs HTC One

 Intro
Metal phones are in fashion, and it’s largely down to the popularity of two of the year’s best mobiles – the HTC One and the iPhone 5.
However, aside from being made of the cold, hard, shiny stuff, these are completely different phones. But which is right for you? We’ve compared their vital statistics to help you find out, from what they look like and how they sound to what they're like to use and how fast they can go...
HTC One vs iPhone 5 - Design
HTC One – Aluminium rear and front, plastic side strip, 137.4 x 68.2 x 9.3mm, 143g
iPhone 5 – Unibody aluminium shell, 123.8 x 58.6 x 7.6mm, 112g
The HTC One and iPhone 5 are the two highest-profile aluminium phones of the year so far. Metal is in.
However, their looks and feel are quite different. The HTC One is a much larger phone, at around 15mm wider than the iPhone. This will make quite a difference if you have smaller hands.
The HTC One - slim, but not super-slim
Ergonomics are completely different too. The iPhone 5 is a super-slim rectangle that doesn’t shy away from severe edges. The HTC One’s rear is a curved plate of aluminium, giving the phone a much softer feel.
It does leave the HTC significantly thicker than the iPhone 5 – 9.3mm thick against 7.6mm – but the HTC One never feels chunky. Large? Sure, but not chunky.
The sheer size of the HTC One, which makes the 4-inch iPhone 5 look petite, ensures that it’s a fair bit weightier. It’s 31g heavier, but what’s notable here is not how heavy the HTC One feels, but how light the iPhone 5 is. Almost unnervingly so.
The HTC One is the only one of this pair to use any plastic in its construction. There’s a strip of white plastic (or black in the black version) that runs around the phone’s outside edge. It's a bit of a dirt magnet, but doesn't reduce the strength of the body.

HTC One vs iPhone 5 – Internal Speaker
HTC One – Stereo speakers, front-facing
iPhone 5 – Mono speaker, fires out of bottom of phone
Speakers are an often-neglected part of mobile gadgets – even though they’re used pretty frequently. The iPhone 5 has a decent-quality speaker for its size, offering reasonable treble fidelity for a phone. In standard Apple fashion, there’s a decent baseline experience on offer here.
However, the speaker is still pretty limited. The sound fires from the bottom of the phone, through two grilles that sit to either side of the Lightning port, but the sound comes from a simple mono driver.
Why two grilles for a single speaker? It makes the sound much harder to muffle, which becomes particularly important if you’re playing games or watching a movie – holding the phone in landscape orientation.
The HTC One is a cut above. It uses a pair of user-facing speakers mounted to the front of the phone. They fire through the little dotty grille cut into the area above and below the screen.
This combo offers much better bass, more meaty sound and higher volume than almost any other phone out there at the moment. If anything, we found that the lowest volume was a little too high at times, rather than there not being enough on tap.
The HTC One also has a Beats mode, which tailors the sound for the small speaker, making it sound richer and more refined. It does this (in part) by cutting the mid frequencies, which give small speakers like this an 'ugly' edge.
Of course, it’s still nowhere near good enough to consider a ‘mini hi-fi’ if you want to use your phone as a music source – let’s not get carried away here, folks. For kitchen listening though – especially for podcasts or the radio – it’s great.

HTC One vs iPhone 5 – Screen
HTC One – 4.7-inch 1080p IPS screen
iPhone 5 – 4-inch 1,136 x 640-pixel IPS screen
A comparison of the screens of the HTC One and iPhone 5 is a case of weighing up similarities and differences. Most obvious of all, the HTC One screen is significantly larger than the iPhone 5’s.
It is 4.7 inches across where the iPhone 5’s is a 4-incher. As we find with so many of this year’s top-end Android phones, the HTC One makes the iPhone 5 seem a bit toy-like in its small size. This instantly makes HTC’s phone better to watch videos on.
Their resolutions are also completely different. The HTC One’s display is one of the most pixel-packed we’ve ever seen. It has a 1080p screen like the Samsung Galaxy S4, but as it’s packed into a smaller space than that 5-inch phone, it’s even sharper. Pixel density is a staggering 469ppi.
We thought the iPhone 5’s 326ppi 1,136 x 640 display was impressive, but HTC takes it to the next level. There is an argument to be made that density beyond the iPhone 5’s is a bit pointless as you can’t tell the difference in sharpness, but the HTC One’s screen is more immediately impressive, for multiple reasons.
Both phones use the same screen type – IPS. This is an excellent panel type for phones, offering great viewing angles, fairly natural colours and decent contrast.
The iPhone 5 and 4S, side-by-side
These are two of our favourite mobile phone screens. But for adding those extra screen inches without any sense of sacrificing sharpness, the HTC One gets our vote.

HTC One vs iPhone 5 – Storage
HTC One – 32/64GB, non-expandable
iPhone 5 – 16/32/64GB, non-expandable
Over the last few years, HTC has ticked off a few old-school Android fans – it was one of the companies that started cutting out memory card slots from its phones. The HTC One carries on that trend. If you want expandable memory you’ll have to look to the Galaxy S4.
As a seriously high-end phone, HTC has sensibly made 32GB the lowest storage option for the HTC One – slap a few videos on a 16GB phone and you’ll soon find its memory eaten up. There’s also a 64GB version of the HTC One, however it comes at a frankly scary premium. You’re looking at around £700.
iPhones never have, and perhaps never will, offer memory card slots. The iPhone 5 is available in 16GB, 32GB and 64GB editions. Much like the HTC One, the range tops out at £700 - whic is how much the 64GB model costs SIM-free.

HTC One vs iPhone 5 – CPU and Power
HTC One – Quad-core 1.7GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 Krait, 2GB RAM
iPhone 5 – Dual-core 1.2GHz Apple A6, 1GB RAM
Looking at the specs alone, the HTC One appears to be much, much more powerful. It has a quad-core 1.7GHz Snapdragon 600 CPU using the up-to-date Krait architecture. The iPhone 5 has a dual-core 1.2GHz processor with the, admittedly also pretty darn new, Cortex-A15 architecture.
The HTC One has double the RAM, 2GB instead of 1GB.
In theory, the HTC One should squish the iPhone 5 in between its curvy aluminium fingers. It’s not quite so simple, though.
In the Sunspider benchmark, which is roughly a test of how fast a device can render webpages, the iPhone 5 significantly outperforms the HTC One. It completes the test in around 900ms, where it takes the HTC One closer to 1400ms. Much of this is down to software optimisation.
Geekbench, which is a much wider test of a gadget’s performance, shows results closer to those we’d expect to see. The HTC One comes out with 2719 points, the iPhone 5 1612 points.
The HTC One is a more powerful phone, with a generation’s worth of spec upgrades. However, Android's less taut system design and a seeming slight lack of optimisation on HTC’s part seems to hold the HTC One back a tiny bit – the Samsung Galaxy S4 shows stronger performance than the iPhone 5 across the board.

HTC One vs iPhone 5 – Software
HTC One – Android 4.2 with HTC Sense
iPhone 5 – iOS 6, iOS7 incoming
The HTC One saw HTC debut a brand new version of its long-standing Sense Android interface. And it has a new look.
It’s pared-back and simple – and pretty stylish compared with the older version. BlinkFeed takes centre stage. This is a home screen that shows you recent updates from your favourite websites in a scrolling feed of tiles. The various widgets are also starker and simpler than ever before. It’s a good effort from HTC.
HTC's BlinkFeed
The iPhone 5’s software currently looks more-or-less like it always has. However, that’s all due to change in just a few short months.
iOS 7 gives the iPhone operating system a complete visual overhaul. Some say it looks a bit like Android – some say that’s a bad thing – but it adds a bunch of useful features, including a camera app that has a good deal more to it – such as filters.

HTC One vs iPhone 5 – Camera
HTC One – 4-megapixel UltraPixel camera with LED flash
iPhone 5 – 8-megapixel camera with LED flash
The iPhone 5 camera was a minor upgrade to its predecessor, the iPhone 4S. It uses a re-worked lens construction that helps the camera fit into the phone’s ultra-slim body. It is a great camera, capable of making some great shots in good lighting.
Periphery features you get with the iPhone 5’s iOS 6 camera app include HDR mode, which melds two exposures to render more detail in any given scene – especially those with tricky lighting – and the panorama mode. The iPhone panorama is particularly impressive, as it captures at full resolution rather than at cut-down quality like many other phones.
An iPhone 5 test shot
The HTC One offers many, many more features, though, and takes a much more dynamic approach to its camera technology. As well as HDR and panorama, the HTC One brings oodles of features and effects, Zoe mode, HDR video and more.
What’s far more notable is how its sensor works. The strategy of the HTC One's UltraPixel tech is to use a sensor roughly the same size as the current top dogs, but to have fewer, larger photo sensor pixels. These are able to harvest more light in the same exposure time as rivals.
An HTC One test shot
The real-life result of this is that the HTC One takes far, far better low-light shots than an iPhone 5. In bright daylight, though, the iPhone 5 will capture far more detail. Four megapixels only get you so far.

HTC One vs iPhone 5 – Verdict
The HTC One is a bolder, more dynamic phone than the iPhone 5. It takes more risks with its camera, software and design than the iPhone – not that Apple’s latest really needed to innovate dramatically to draw a crowd. The HTC is also far better for movie-watching thanks to its much larger screen. If there was ever a phone to tempt Apple fans away from their beloved iPhones, this is it. That Android doesn’t have as good as apps or games selection as iOS ensures the iPhone 5 keeps the lead in some respects, though. By

HTC Wildfire S vs Samsung Galaxy S

As much as we love high-end handsets like the Samsung Galaxy S2 and the HTC Sensation, they are often too big or too powerful for some who just want a small, basic phone. For others they're simply too expensive.
With the exception of Apple (unless this changes with the rumoured iPhone 4S/4 Nano) all the major manufacturers, including LG, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and HTC have produced cut down versions of their high-end flagship handsets.
Two of the most popular of these are the HTC Wildfire S and Samsung Galaxy Ace, both are Android handsets packed with features and priced in the mid-ranges. Which one should you go for? Read on to find out.
HTC Wildfire S vs Samsung Galaxy Ace: Design and Build
Both handsets look like mini version of their high-powered siblings: the HTC Desire S and Samsung Galaxy S. The Samsung is slightly longer; measuring 112.4mm to the HTC's 101.3mm, both are around the same depth at 11.5mm to 12.4mm and feel comfortable to hold.
Our version of the Wildfire S has a silver metal trim around the edge and white plastic back, you can also choose from black, purple and silver editions too. It looks and feels far classier than the Ace, which although is attractive with it's black-gloss front and textured back, feels cheaper and is a magnet for fingerprints.
HTC Wildfire S vs Samsung Galaxy Ace: Storage and connections
Specifications here are very similar, each has a 3.5mm jack in the top for plugging in a pair of headphones and a microUSB slot for charging. Internal storage of the Wildfire S is 512MB, which trumps the 158MB of the Ace. Both include microSD slots; the Ace’s is behind a wobbly plastic flap and to access the Wildfire S’s you need to remove the entire back, which is safer, if slightly more time consuming.
HTC Wildfire S vs Samsung Galaxy Ace: Screen
In terms of real estate the Ace comes out on top, with a 3.5-inches, in contrast to the HTC Wildfire S with a smaller 3.2-inch screen. However both screens have the same number of pixels (480 x 320), so because the Wildfire S's screen is smaller text is slightly sharper.
Side-by-side whites seem far purer and colours brighter on the Wildfire S, bright colours like orange and red in particular are muted on the Galaxy Ace. However off-angle viewing is better on the Ace, in bright sunlight the Wildfire Sis slightly easier to see, although neither phone is fantastic.
HTC Wildfire S vs Samsung Galaxy Ace: Interface
Both phones run Android. However the Ace is lagging somewhat with Android 2.2 Froyo, while the Wildfire S offers the more up to date Android 2.3.3 Gingerbread.
Advantages that Gingerbread offers over Froyo includes improved text cut and paste and a feature which automatically downloads any apps you've bought previously - useful if you're moving to the Wildfire S from another Android phone.
The Ace offers far closer to the vanilla Android experience, despite being overlayed with Samsung’s Touchwiz UI; this includes some neat extras like ThinkFreeOffice and All Share. For social networking you get Samsung’s Social Hub app, but it’s more of a portal for launching Twitter and Facebook via the browser, so we’d suggest downloading the Android apps instead. DLNA is welcome touch at this price though.
In common with all HTC Android handsets the Wildfire S runs HTC Sense, and a totally different experience. With instant customisation buttons and features. Friendstream pulls in Twitter and Facebook feeds, although the large widget won’t appeal to everyone.
HTC Wildfire S vs Samsung Galaxy Ace: Keyboard
With its bigger screen the Ace has the advantage here, especially if you have larger fingers; it makes the Wildfire S look pokey in comparison. The addition of Swype on the Galaxy Ace where you run your fingers over the letters to make a word is a bonus.
HTC Wildfire S vs Samsung Galaxy Ace: Browser
Browsing is a pleasant experience on both handsets. The slightly larger screen on the Ace is slightly better for reading text and scrolling, but the Wildfire S more than makes up for it with the excellent text wrapping feature where the text fits the space automatically.
The browsing experience can't match that of a high-specced handset though. Neither handset can run BBC iPlayer (or supports Flash) and you can only open a maximum of four screens on each.
HTC Wildfire S vs Samsung Galaxy Ace: Camera
Both phones can capture 5-megapixel stills and include autofocus and flash. When taking photographs with the Wildfire S, even when set to Auto White Balance, which continues through to the photos.
The Samsung Galaxy Ace struggles more with bright sunlight, one of our test shots was taken on a extremely bright day with the sun behind us and the sky looks artificially blue. The Wildfire S (left) was sharper and more natural, but suffered more with chromatic abberation (purple fringing between high/low contrast areas).
Both phones offer a good selection of tweakable features though. Wildfire S features include adjustable ISO and White Balance, you can also add around 4-5 other filters like Greyscale, Sepia, and Posterise. The Ace matches it with Metering, ISO and White Balance, along with 13 scene modes.
Unsurprisingly at this price point, neither includes a dedicated shutter button. Focus speeds are similar, although we like the ability to tap to focus on the Wildfire S.
When it comes to video however, the Wildfire S is the easy winner, mainly because it can shoot far larger footage at 640 x 480, compared to the Galaxy Ace at 320 x 240. Although the quality of footage from the Wildfire S isn’t great, it’s very soft and the colours aren’t as natural as the Ace.
HTC Wildfire vs Samsung Galaxy Ace:Music
The Samsung Galaxy Ace has the louder speaker, plug in some headphones (we used the Sennheiser CX281) and both phones are evenly matched.
Both phones have a similar layout with: Artists, Albums, Playlists and Tracks options, you can easily create playlists and Set as Ringtone, elsewhere the Wildfire S, with a newer version of Android comes with features like ‘Find Videos’ ‘You Tube’ and better sharing options.
Surprisingly only the Ace includes equaliser settings, with 12 to choose from including Bass Enhancer.
Audio file support is better on the Wildfire S, with AAC, WMA and OGG, alongside MP3 and AAC, while the Ace only supports MP3 and AAC.
HTC Wildfire S vs Samsung Galaxy Ace: Performance
The HTC Wildfire S is equipped with an 600Mhz processor and 512Mb RAM, while the Samsung Galaxy Ace has an 800Mz processor, but with slightly less RAM at 278MB. Neither is going to be blisteringly fast and in everyday use them seem very similar, with no problems swapping between applications, although sometimes the touchscreen responds slightly quicker on the Wildfire S.
Although for battery performance, the Wildfire S lags behind the Ace, with 350 minutes 3G talk time to the Ace with 390 minutes talk time. In use we found we had to charge the Wildfire S at the end of the day, but the Ace could make it into the second day. With heavy use - such as push email, GPS and Bluetooth all on, you'll have to charge every day though.
HTC Wildfire S vs Samsung Galaxy Ace: Verdict
If you are looking for a mid-range Android smartphone, you'll be happy with either of these handsets, both of which have advantages and disadvantages.
The HTC Wildfire S looks more premium, with superior build quality and although the screen is smaller, text looks sharper. Thanks to HTC Sense, the Wildfire S looks and feels far smoother to use with neat shortcuts and widgets, although the Samsung Galaxy Ace certainly is very user-friendly, although it's a real shame it doesn't run Gingerbread. For many Android fans, the ability to root the Ace will certainly appeal.
While both phones are fine for capturing quick snaps and uploading videos to YouTube, neither of these phones should be bought for their cameras, it's also a shame neither supports Flash video either.
Ultimately it's a close call between both handsets, for the overall user experience we prefer the Wildfire S, partly because we like HTC Sense, but many people will love the more 'pure' Android feel of the Ace. Android fans on a budget won't be disappointed with either.

P.s- Ace has recently got it's gingerbread upgrade.