Dunno man, I'm just not digging it. the spec is good, but not the best. that alone is the reason for me not to buy it. the dual speaker thing is not important to me, I will not walk around with the phone playing music through them anyway. the build quality... dunno, I think the galaxy phones are built to survive better than they get credit for. Sure, feel, they do feel cheaper than HTC and Apple. but they are just as sturdy. plus for me, and for a lot of people I see every day, they use cases for their phones. For me, the S4 is the best phone. it outperforms the One, has a larger screen, and is less bulky. With a case around it I just don't see anything that the One has to offer over the S4. apart from a different take on the camera.. but we've been there, done that (nokia with their "40 mpx" camera lol).
Not to sway you but there are a few things the one does better. For one it has a better screen. AMOLED suffers from a number of problems that Samsung just hasn't fixed yet. First you have color calibration, while the whites now meet 6500k the rest of the colors are still far off adobe's spec. Second is burn in. I've had multiple Galaxy Nexus devices and saw a few S3's and even a Note 2 with screen burn in. Battery life when displaying whites is bad. In the past it's been up to three times as high as LCD. The new subpixel layout may improve things here but it introduces a new problem, green shifting. On an angle the whites shift to a very noticeable green. I personally think the One's screen is superior. Second is headset volume. I know you mentioned speakers but if you listen to music through headphones, especially ones with a high impedance, the HTC One has an amplifier and drives the music significantly louder than the S4. unfortunately this lowers playback quality but it's still in the top tier of devices. The S4 does have higher quality playback at lower levels though. Third is interface. If you're going to be using a custom rom that will inevitably come out on the device, I guess it's pointless. But Sense is thousands times better than touchwiz. Not only is it better in terms of design choices and access to programs, but it's better in terms of appearance and functionality. Why Samsung decides to use light colors for it's UI when it's screen performs better on dark colors is beyond me. Then you have all the other obvious ones that were already stated. That being said, I'm getting an S4. While the HTC has a number of advantages over the S4, I prefer having a removable battery and SD card for my large music collection. I also have Verizon, which may never even receive the One. I do wish it didn't have the AMOLED screen though. I'm not a fan of that screen at all.
I like the amoled screen. also never had problems with music playback. I'm using voodoo louder app on my s2 if needed for +15db volume boost. and yeah, firstcthing I'm doing when I get my phone is install Apex launcher not saying the One isn't a good phone, I think the s4 is better suited for me.
Voodoo louder isn't giving you anything like the same driving power the One would, which has a dedicated hardware amp. But then, it doesn't seem like you're much of an audiophile anyway. The speakers, everyone likes to say "I would never use those" but in my three days with this phone, I have used them multiple times, daily, even in cases where I wouldn't use the S3's speaker. It's that good. Times when I'm at home, just playing a game or reading reddit, or whatever, music is on now. Before, I wouldn't even bother. Quick videos on youtube? The speakers are a freaking god send. If you do things like flash and root, then the speed difference between the one and the S4 is essentially nothing. 1.7 vs 1.9 isn't worth mentioning even in games and outside of them, if anything, 1.9 may even be a detriment. It remains to be seen how the binning difference between the two will affect overclocking/underclocking/undervolting, but I think its safe to safe the difference will be marginal, and possibly even offset by the better heat characteristics of the One. Which brings me to my next point, something that really hasn't been mentioned by most people. The phone doesn't really get hot. Yesterday, I had to play a game WHILE on the phone to feel anything. Even then, the entire back is essentially uniformly warm, instead of like my S3 where the lower half would get uncomfortably hot, even on the front of the screen. I assume this is due to the construction of the phone being, effectively, a heatsink. Battery life is slightly better than a stock S3. Charging time is very very poor. Even if it degrades the battery more quickly, if someone manages to hack quick charge to work, I will enable it without hesitation. It's even better if you redo the autobrightness with a program like Lux. By default, the phone does not seem to want to go below 50% brightness, and the screen on time suffers. Once you reign in the twitter and facebook syncing, blinkfeed updates, and auto brightness, battery life is actually quite good and more than sufficient for me throughout a day, without really even considering how much battery I have left. Though for heavy days, I want the option to be able to plug into a charger for 30 minutes and get 25-30% out of it instead of 10%. As for the screen, it's leaps and bounds ahead of the AMOLED. Reviews for the S4 will talk about the Adobe calibration. They will say "MY GOD, look at the whites. Finally, an AMOLED that can correctly display whites" What they won't mention is that there was never a technical limitation that kept them from displaying white, AMOLED can do that fine. The problem is that Samsung has always calibrated them to be too blue when you first turn them on, because the blues quickly wear out, allowing the display to look more natural after degrading. Anyway. In a year, two years, when you compare a One to an S4..I'm relatively certain that the HTC one will look like the day it came out of the box while the S4 will have degraded into a mess.
Voodoo louder does make the audio louder, I know it's not a proper hw amp but it does a decent job nevertheless. and it's plenty loud with my 50 and 32ohm headphones (Superlux 668B and AT AD700). I am not an audiophile, I'm not knowledgeable enough to consider myself one, but I do like good sound quality, that's why I have a SB Z and decent headphones and use Foobar with WASAPI and flac. The speakers are a moot point for me. I don't need stereo speakers. I had stereo speakers on a phone in the past (N96), it was never a deal breaker though. about the screen, it's not only the whites that the S4 does well, how about the blacks? you show me proper blacks on the One, I don't think you can. Also, I personally don't care if the screen degrades to look a mess (bit of an exaggeration, really) after 2 years because I'll be getting a new phone then. I have to say my s2 screen looks as good as new after 2 years.
I don't care. I was using your post as a method to address common concerns I hear about the phone. If it seemed like I was trying to convince you or something, I apologize, I wasn't. The things you said are ridiculous, though. The S2's audio quality is pretty widely regarded as poor. The N96's stereo is on a phone hardly capable of playing video, much less HD content and movies. While I agree that you'll probably have headphones in for anything of length, movie trailers and short clips benefit greatly. Your use of them is irrelevant to me in any regard. I can show you that the HTC One's blacks are the best you can get on a smartphone LCD. While, no, they are not AMOLED levels, this is simply a matter of taste and something I've got no interest in debating. AMOLED has superior black. LCD superior white, brightness, and longevity. AMOLED's consumption is reduced when a black image is presented, a rare occurrence on smartphones, especially given that Samsung shows no interest in taking advantage of it by giving the interface literally no blacks. The only time, on a stock S3 or S4, you see black is if you google "black", find apps with pure black backgrounds, or watch dark movies. Samsung doesn't even have the foresight to offer an inverted Browser, the biggest downfall of AMOLED, power use when displaying white/blue. Ironically, the One does offer an inverted browser.
it seems like you feel the need to defend your purchase lol. whatever. I'll take the s4 over One any day. so will many others.
Yeah, I'm in an HTC One thread commenting on my first hand experience with an HTC One, and Mr. S4-AMOLED here, who is either lost or stupid, is telling me I'm justifying myself.
Remember that new article the other day about Samsung paying people to write negative comments in forums about HTC...
Now now gents, there is no reason to get all worked up. We're talking about phones here, nothing more. Now, if I could just get my tax return on to my account soon!
I just wish Nokia released an Android phone with the 41mp camera. I would be all over that faster than Rosie O'donnell on a donuts joint.
Going on display colours and audio quality. I own an HTC 8X and it's my first phone with beats audio and whilst the speakers on the phone aren't powered by beats in any form I find the audio quality to be fantastic, I wonder whether if the polycarbonate case has anything to do with that as it sounds like it has a lot of bass. The LCD2 offers the best colours I've ever seen on an LCD and I agree with the blacks, they are quite simply rich.
Lots of interesting reviews on the SG4 out today. As expected really, HTC vs Samsung, it's all about personal preference at this point. Although, I'm a little surprised over all the complaints about the stock Sammy interface (TouchWiz) being so laggy.
TouchWiz is meh, it's the first thing that's going as soon as I get the phone. can you link any of these reviews pls?
