Samsung Galaxy S4 vs HTC One Google Play Editions: Which one should you choose?

The standard Nexus Experience of Android, which comes without any skins attached, is regarded as one of the best from Google. Coming with all the features and being highly responsive, you can understand why the original Android experience is so widely heralded. However, only Google offers this experience, with its native Nexus line. So when two of the biggest phones to have come out on Android (the Galaxy S4 and the HTC One) were released, it was little wonder that Google might release the standard Nexus experience on those two phones as well. And so, it did.

Both the Galaxy S4 and the HTC One are available via Google’s Play Store, providing the original, stripped down experience of Android on two of the greatest phones in the world at present. So, what are the changes in these phones?

The S4 has essentially the same specs, which include a 5” Super AMOLED display screen, with protection provided by Gorilla Glass 3. On the other hand, the HTC One has a sharper screen, since it packs the same pixel density of the S4, albeit in a shorter screen size by 0.3 inches. The phone is made of aluminum, and comes with Gorilla Glass 2 protection.

The phones come with the original Google experience, namely the 4.2.2 Android Jelly Bean. Not only is it good looking and massively responsive, but since there is essentially no manufacturer bloatware installed, you get significant extra storage space.

Both the devices run on the Qualcomm 600 chipsets, which come with the quad core Krait 300 CPU, as well as the Adreno 320 GPU. The only difference lies in the clocking speed (1.9 GHz on the S4 and 1.7 GHz in the One), but you can’t really find any sort of hiccups in either phone. More importantly, even though both come with 2 GB of RAM, the storage space varies. While the HTC One starts with 32 GB, the Samsung Galaxy S4 is also available in the 16 GB version, which becomes quite small for most users.

It is estimated that standard usage is going to make the S4 last around half a day, while the One can go up to a full day. The metal casing on the One is a real attraction, and if you were to choose that phone, it is unlikely that you would want to touch any other phone at all.