Battle of the Flagships: Samsung Galaxy S6 vs Apple iPhone 6, HTC One M9
It’’s the season of flagship smartphones as all the popular smartphone makers are planning to surprise us with their latest tech-stuffed devices. Now that all the flagship smartphones like the HTC One M9, Samsung Galaxy S6 and Apple iPhone 6 are here, it can be confusing to choose the right one for you. But no sweat, here’s the rundown spec by spec for you!
Design
Let’s talk about the design part first. Samsung focused on making their smartphone thinner and came up with a completely new design that breaks out from the previous smartphones in the Galaxy S lineup. It’s only 6.8mm thick which makes it thinner than the iPhone 6. The HTC One M9 is quite bigger than these two phones with a thickness of 9.6mm. While the metallic design of the latest Galaxy S phone with a combo of glass body is definitely new for Samsung users, the metallic sides will definitely remind you of the iPhone 6.
Apple is mostly popular for their attractive, sleek and premium design and it really reflects on the design of the iPhone 6. As for the HTC One M9, they planned to keep their old design of the HTC One M8. While it’s not really a bad looking device, there is nothing unique about it. The competition in the design category can be titled as Samsung Galaxy S6 vs iPhone 6 as the HTC One M9 features the old design. It’s definitely tough to choose the best looking device of all the three, but when we compare the uniqueness and premium design of these smartphones, the iPhone 6 is leading here.
Winner: iPhone 6.
Hardware
When it comes to hardware, the iPhone 6 fails to keep up with the Galaxy S6 and HTC One M9. The screen size of the Samsung Galaxy S6 and HTC One M9 are almost similar. The Samsung flagship device features a 5.1-inch Super AMOLED screen while the HTC One M9 features a 5-inch Super LCD3 screen. The iPhone 6 features a smaller 4.7-inch IPS LCD screen and shows only 326 ppi of pixel density. It’s quite less compared to S6’s 577ppi of pixel density and HTC One M9’s 441ppi of pixel density. While the iPhone 6 packs only a dual-core processor clocked at 1.4GHz processor and 1GB of RAM, users get Octa-core 64-bit enabled processors in both Samsung and HTC flagship devices and both of them are accompanied by 3GB of RAM.
The Super AMOLED screen of the Samsung Galaxy S6 shows stunningly attractive colors and contrast and everything looks really amazing in its 5.1-inch screen. It’s 2K resolution and 577 ppi of pixel density shows everything with clarity which keeps it ahead of both Apple and HTC’s flagships. The combo of a great display and heavy specs is what helped us to decide that the Samsung flagship is definitely the leader here if you are confused between Samsung Galaxy S6 vs HTC One M9.
Winner: Samsung Galaxy S6
Battery Life
Judging by the numbers, the iPhone failed to keep up with the other two smartphones again. It’s only an 1810mAh battery where the HTC One M9 features a bigger, 2840mAh battery. However, as the iPhone sports less powerful processor, the energy consumption is also comparatively less which makes the battery life of the iPhone quite good. However, the non-removable Li-Ion 2550 mAh battery comes with quick charging, ultra power saving mode and wireless charging feature which makes the Samsung Galaxy S6 a winner in this category as well. Users can use four hours’ of battery life by charging the phone for just ten minutes. The chip used under the hood is also power-efficient.
Winner: Samsung Galaxy S6
Camera
More megapixels doesn’t necessarily means better quality and it’s really important that you keep that in mind when comparing the cameras of these smartphones. Just like the previous two categories, iPhone fails to keep up with the other two smartphones when it comes to megapixels. However, when you judge the image quality closely, it’s a different story. The Samsung Galaxy S6 features a 16-megapixel rear camera while the front one is a 5-megapixel shooter. The HTC flagship packs a bigger 20.7-megapixel camera and a better 4-Ultrapixel camera for selfies.
While the front camera of the iPhone 6 is only a 1.2-megapixel one, the image quality is definitely at par with the front cameras of the Samsung Galaxy S6 and HTC One M9. The Samsung smartphone can capture images faster and the lens allows 35% more light inside which is a really useful situation when capturing images in the dark. The HTC One M9 packs more megapixels but the camera quality is still not satisfying compared to the other two flagships. Judging the quality of images, we pick the iPhone 6 here as the winner. Most of the images captured using the iPhone are quite eye-catching.
Winner: iPhone 6
User Experience
Before we start, it’s important that we explain that the user experience mostly depends on the user itself. Both the HTC and Samsung smartphones will be running Android Lollipop while the iPhone 6 packs iOS 8. The HTC includes a touch of HTC Sense UI 7.0 with the Lollipop and the Samsung Galaxy S6 comes with a touch of TouchWiz UI. If you love smooth and easy user interface without much features or hassle, the iPhone 6 is definitely the best one here. However, the HTC Sense UI 7.0 give users instant access to some useful options like screenshot capturing, power saver, Wi-Fi hotspot making, screen timeout setting and more. It’s a tough thing to do actually to choose one from these two operating systems, but if you want a user friendly interface, its iOS 8 you want. So, the iPhone 6 is the winner in this category.
Winner: iPhone 6
Verdict
The iPhone 6 was released back in September, 2014, so the fight is mostly between the Samsung Galaxy S6 and HTC One M9. Before we pick a final winner here, we must say that both the phone offers a premium and true smartphone like experience that we users look for in a smartphone. However, when we break down the main parts of a smartphone in categories, the Samsung Galaxy S6 clearly beats the HTC flagship device. The Samsung Galaxy S5 didn’t manage to grab our attention much, but the South Korean company made up for it with the Samsung Galaxy S6.
Final Winner: Samsung Galaxy S6
