Apple iPhone 4S vs. Samsung Galaxy S II� Which Is The Ultimate Smartphone

Posted by newbie Thursday, October 13, 2011 0 comments

The iPhone 4S is exactly what it sounds like -- a slight upgrade to theiPhone 4 with a beefed-up processor and a spangly new camera. We were disappointed with the lack of a new design, especially as the smart phone competition is hotter than ever. Let's see how Apple's new gadget compares to its greatest rival.

The Samsung Galaxy S2 is one of the finest blowers ever crafted by human hands (assuming that it was crafted by humans, and not sent down by a hyper-advanced race of alien technophiles), and blew our socks clean off our feet when we gave it the review treatment

Design

Dimension wise, the Samsung Galaxy S II is larger, slimmer and bigger than the iPhone 4S. Compared to the Galaxy S II dimensions of 125.3 x 66.1 x 8.5 mm, the iPhone 4S has dimensions of 115.2 x 58.6 x 9.3 mm. Last year, when Apple announced the iPhone 4, it vowed everyone with how slim the handset was. However, it was disappointing to see its successor having the same dimensions as the previous generation iPhone. The Galaxy S II weighs in at 113gms, while the iPhone 4 weighs 138gms.

While the iPhone 4S is primarily made of glass and metal, the Galaxy S II is made of plastic. Both the handsets are pretty stylish as well. However, out of the two, I would prefer the Samsung Galaxy S II, since at least it can be easily distinguished from the original Galaxy S, unlike the iPhone 4S.

Display

The Samsung Galaxy S II has a 4.3-inch SuperAMOLED Plus display with WVGA(800�480) resolution, while the iPhone 4S has a comparatively tiny 3.5-inch IPS LCD �Retina Display� with an eye-popping resolution of 640�960. Like the iPhone 4, the iPhone 4S trumps the Galaxy S 2 in terms of resolution and pixels. However, I would prefer the Samsung Galax S II just because it has a much bigger display with eye-popping colors and contrast ratios.

Also, it is just a matter of weeks (perhaps, days?) before the next-generation Android handsets trump the iPhone 4S with their 720p HD (1280�720) resolution. The Nexus Prime is reportedly rumored to have a 720p HD resolution. The Samsung Galaxy S II HD LTE already has a 4.65-inch SuperAMOLED display with 720p resolution.

Hardware

The Samsung Galaxy S II sports an Exynos 4210 SoC, which contains a 1.2GHz Cortex-A9 dual-core processor along with an ARM-Mali 400MP GPU. Like the iPad 2, the iPhone 4S is powered by an A5 SoC. The A5 SoC consists of a Cortex-A9 dual core, running at unknown frequency and a powerful PowerVR SGX543MP2 GPU.

While the CPU on the Galaxy S II trumps the iPhone 4S in terms of raw processing power, the tables turn when it comes to GPU. The PowerVR SGX543MP2 GPU is way ahead of the ARM Mali-400MP GPU in terms of performance.

OS

While the Samsung Galaxy S II runs on Android 2.3 Gingerbread, with Samsung�s proprietary TouchWIZ 4.0 UI on top of it. The iPhone 4S runs on iOS5, which includes a completely revamped notification center, iMessage, new camera app, and many other changes.

Compared to iOS5, the Android 2.3 Gingerbread OS on the Samsung Galaxy S II looks pretty stale. Hopefully, things will change when Google announces the next major version of Android this month � Ice Cream Sandwich.

Camera

Both the Samsung Galaxy S II and the iPhone 4S have an 8MP camera with an LED flash. While the Samsung Galaxy S II camera has an aperture size of 2.65, the iPhone 4S camera has an aperture size of 2.4. The iPhone 4S has a custom ISP designed by Apple, thanks to which it has features like Face recognition, Hybrid IR filter and auto-white balance. From the camera samples released by Apple, it looks like the iPhone 4S is capable of taking better photos compared to the Samsung Galaxy S II. There is not much difference between the picture quality though. However, in low-light conditions, the iPhone 4S totally trumps the Samsung Galaxy S II pictures.

Both the handsets are also capable of recording videos in Full HD (1080p) resolution at 30FPS. The most interesting feature of the iPhone 4S is that it sports real-time video image stabilization, along with real-time temporal noise reduction. Thanks to these features, the iPhone 4S records much better videos than the Galaxy S II. This does not mean that the Samsung Galaxy S II camera is bad. It still has one of the best cameras among the Android handsets.

The Verdict

This is perhaps for the first time, that a product announcement from Apple has led to a disappointment. The iPhone 4S while has evolutionary hardware, still sports a very small screen compared to the competition from its Droid counterparts.

Also, it looks exactly like its predecessor, which is not a good thing. Had the iPhone 4S been released at WWDC 2011, it would not have been such a disappointment. But, 14 months after the iPhone 4, the iPhone 4S is nothing but a disappointment

So, who is the ultimate winner? While this is a fairly sensitive and personal issue, I would like to leave this decision on our readers. Drop on your comments, and let us know who the ultimate winner is.