Samsung Galaxy S4 or iPhone 5 - which should you get?
The Galaxy S4 and iPhone 5 are the most successful phones Samsung and
Apple have produced. They have sold tens of millions of handsets
across the world.
If
you're at the end of you contract, there's a good chance you'll be
looking at buying one of these phones. But which is right for you? Let's
take a closer look as we compare design, features, speakers and
software.
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A year on... problems and issues
The iPhone 5 and Galaxy S4 have been around for quite a while now. So
are there any serious problems or issues that need to be considered?
There's ultimately nothing too major. One of thew main recurring
problems is with battery drain issues in the iPhone 5. iOS 7 has
caused these to resurface - making the battery run down faster than
usual.
To solve these, check out our iOS 7 battery tips feature.
Although there have been concerns raised about the build quality of
the Galaxy S4, and the extent to which it is susceptible to water
damage, there's little to worry about on the Samsung front.
Update October 2013 - The Next Generation
As of September 20, the iPhone 5 has been discontinued. This was the
date on which Apple launched the iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C.
Normally, Apple keeps its old models to act as a lower-cost option,
but the iPhone 5 has been scrapped entirely - to be replaced by the
iPhone 5C. Of course, you'll still be able to buy it - just not
directly from Apple.
The Samsung Galaxy S4 remains a 'current' phone, and will do so until
the Galaxy S5
is released. The phone is expected to land early next year.
Want to know more about the new iPhone? Read our Galaxy S4 vs iPhone
5S comparison.
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Samsung Galaxy S4 vs iPhone 5 - Video Comparison
Don't
fancy poring over a load of text? We've produced a little video that
compares the Samsung Galaxy S4 and iPhone 5 side-by-side. Give it a
watch.
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Samsung Galaxy S4 vs iPhone 5 – Price and deals
Samsung Galaxy S4 – 16GB only, From £32 a month
iPhone 5 – 16GB: from £33 a month
There are hundreds of contract deals available for the Galaxy S4 and
iPhone 5, and they change from month to month. However, at present the
phones sell at very similar prices.
Over at Carphone Warehouse, both the Galaxy S4 and iPhone 5 are
available for free on contracts of £33 a month and up. Any lower than
that and you'll have to pay an up-front fee for the phone. That the
iPhone 5 has been discountinued hasn't caused the price to drop.
Go SIM-free and the Galaxy S4 is significantly cheaper these days. You
can get the phone for just over £400 if you shop hard enough, while
the iPhone 5 is closer to £500.
Galaxy S4 win
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Samsung Galaxy S4 vs iPhone 5 - Design
Samsung Galaxy S4 – 7.7mm thick, plastic rear
iPhone 5 – 7.6mm thick, aluminium rear
Unlike comparing the Samsung Galaxy S4 with its Android rivals, where
body shapes and sizes are similar at this high-end level, the Galaxy
S4 and iPhone 5 are completely different.
It may sound trivial, but one of the most important design differences
is that the Galaxy S4 is over 1cm wider than the iPhone 5. This makes
it much trickier to grasp reliably than the iPhone, which is intended
to fit comfortably into the hand of just about anyone.
Samsung Galaxy S4 versus 7
When changing the design from the iPhone 4S to the iPhone 5, Apple
elongated the screen rather than making it any wider for precisely
this reason.
Although the Galaxy S4 is much larger than the iPhone 5, it's not
actually any thicker – well it's 0.1mm thicker, but even in the
slimness-obsessed phone world that's not worth crowing about.
The Samsung Galaxy S4 has a curvier body than the iPhone, which feels
harder and more severe thanks to its aluminium shell and immaculate
bevelled edges. Conversely, there's no metal on the Galaxy S4's
exterior.
Samsung Galaxy S4 15
Its front is top-notch Gorilla Glass, but the rest is plastic. The
phone uses a removable plastic battery cover that is frequently
criticised for being flimsy or cheap-feeling.
There are a few upsides to a removable cover, though. It lets Samsung
bung-in a microSD memory card slot easily and means you can replace
the rear part if it gets damaged or scratched.
Replacing the housing of an iPhone 5 with an unofficial repairer
online will cost you £150. A replacement battery cover for the S4 can
be had for a few quid from eBay.
iPhone 5 win
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Samsung Galaxy S4 vs iPhone 5 – Durability
We're generally pretty nice to the phones we review at TrustedReviews.
Don't get us wrong, we're as critical as anything – but we don't tend
to destroy the things.
Not everyone is quite so nice. Android Authority staged a drop test,
pitting the Galaxy S4 against the iPhone 5 to see which is tougher.
The Galaxy S4 was the phone to crack first, its screen smashing after
a few drops. The iPhone 5 remained relatively in-tact, but it's worth
noting that its body will attract dings if you drop it – as it is made
of aluminium. Give it a watch below.
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Samsung Galaxy S4 vs iPhone 5 – Internal Speaker
Samsung Galaxy S4 – Mono, rear-mounted
iPhone 5 – Mono, rear-mounted
Unlike the HTC One, neither the Galaxy S4 or iPhone 5 put all that
much focus on their internal speakers. Both have rear-mounted drivers
that point away from you.
The iPhone 5's speaker grilles are found on its bottom edge, put most
out of view, next to the Lightning port. Cleverly, there are two
grilles to help you avoid muffling the speaker with your hand.
The Galaxy S4's speaker output has even less ceremony to it – there's
a grille cut into the bottom-left of the plastic battery cover.
But which sounds better? The iPhone 5 speaker goes that bit louder,
but the Galaxy S4 copes much better at higher volumes, where the
iPhone 5 starts to sound a little strained nearing top volume.
Both phones output mono sound, though, so aren't all that great to
listen to movies with.
Galaxy S4 win
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Samsung Galaxy S4 vs iPhone 5 - Connectivity
Samsung Galaxy S4 – Bluetooth 4.0, 4G, NFC, MHL, GPS
iPhone 5 – Bluetooth 4.0, 4G, GPS
The iPhone 5 famously leaves out a few connectivity features, while
the Galaxy S4 leaves out virtually nothing at all. However, if you're
not a real hardcore user you may not notice the bits left out of the
iPhone 5.
Both phones have the basics – GPS, Bluetooth (with Bluetooth 4.0),
Wi-Fi, 3G and even 4G.
So what's missing from the iPhone 5? There are two biggies – NFC and MHL.
NFC is Near-Field Communication and is a wireless standard that is
used in a number of different ways. The most exciting is to pay for
things on the high street – although this has hardly taken off. A few
coffee shops let you buy stuff using NFC, but it'll unlikely to gain
mainstream acceptance until it's adopted by the iPhone 5S (as it
rumoured).
NFC is also used to connect phones and tablets with audio docks, such
as the Samsung GA-F61. These are becoming pretty common, but if your
audio system is more than a year old you can be pretty much certain it
won't have NFC.
MHL is a tech that's crammed into the microUSB slot of the Samsung
Galaxy S4. With the right adapter, it lets the phone output HD video
and surround sound to a TV using an HDMI cable.
However, the adapter doesn't come in the box, and costs around £20.
Galaxy S4 win
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Samsung Galaxy S4 vs iPhone 5 - Screen
Samsung Galaxy S4 – 1080p, 4.99-inch Super AMOLED
iPhone 5 – 640 x 1136 pixel, 4-inch IPS
The Galaxy S4 and iPhone stick to the screen technologies used by
their predecessors. The iPhone 5 uses IPS, the Galaxy S4 AMOLED.
Both are huge improvements on the screens of their predecessors. Where the
Galaxy S3 display was a bit dim and seemed a lot less sharp than it
should have been, given its resolution, thanks to its PenTile screen
type, the Galaxy S4 display is super-bright and super-sharp.
Samsung Galaxy S4 versus 3
We had no real complaints about the iPhone 4S display when it was the
'current' iPhone, but the iPhone 5 screen makes it look a little dull,
with much-improved contrast and more vivid colours.
They're more significant generational steps-up than we were expecting
– but how do they fare head-to-head? That comparison is a lot
trickier.
The iPhone 5 has more natural-looking colours, while the Galaxy S4 has
better contrast in low-light conditions. Although the Galaxy S4 has
uses a much higher resolution, and has higher pixel density, there's
not a great difference in sharpness, though.
As both these screens are bonafide winners, the most important
difference is in size, not screen quality.
The 4.99-inch display of the Galaxy is much better than the 4-incher
of the iPhone 5 for playing games or watching films. We're not totally
on-board with ever-expanding mobile screens, but switching between the
two, the iPhone 5 does feel flat-out small.
What you need to do it weigh-up the entertainment benefits of the
Samsung's large screen next to the negative practical issues of such a
large phone.
Galaxy S4 win
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Samsung Galaxy S4 vs iPhone 5 - Storage
Samsung Galaxy S4 – 16GB baseline, microSD slot
iPhone 5 – 16GB baseline, 32GB and 64GB models available, non-expandable
If you're a big video or TV episode consumer, storage matters. The
iPhone 5 comes in 16GB, 32GB and 64GB varieties, while the Galaxy S4
is only widely available as a 16GB model in the UK.
There's a reason why the 32GB and 64GB Galaxy S4 editions on sale
elsewhere don't get much traction in the UK, though – the microSD
memory card slot.
This lets you expand the memory by an additional 32GB for less than
£20. To upgrade from the 16GB iPhone 5 to the 64GB version, you're
looking at spending an extra £170.
What is worth noting, though, is that the Galaxy S4 won't let you
install apps to the memory card – it's best to leave microSD card
storage for photos, videos or music.
Galaxy S4 win
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Samsung Galaxy S4 vs iPhone 5 - CPU and GPU
Samsung Galaxy S4 – Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 1.9GHz CPU, 2GB RAM,
iPhone 5 – Apple A6 dual-core 1.2GHz, 1GB RAM, PowerVR SGX 543 GPU
Before the phone launched, it was believed that the Galaxy S4 would be
the first eight-core phone. However, that version is not on sale in
the UK. We can only get our hands on the more ordinary-sounding
quad-core edition, which has a Snapdragon 600 1.9GHz processor.
It may not sound as impressive as the 'octo-core' edition, but both
trump the positively passé dual-core processor of the iPhone 5.
The iPhone 5 processor is not to be underestimated, though. Its cores
use the advanced Cortex-A15 architecture, and performance is solid –
even when compared to more powerful-sounding quad-core rivals. The
Galaxy S4 is still the clear winner, though.
Here's how some of their benchmark scores compare:
iPhone specs
Sunspider (lower is better)
iPhone 5: 915ms
Galaxy S4: 855ms
AnTuTu Galaxy S4
AnTuTu
iPhone 5: 18,000
Galaxy S4: 21,000
Geekbench Galaxy S4
Geekbench shows the iPhone 5 is arguably closer in performance to the
S3 than the S4
Geekbench
iPhone 5: 1650
Galaxy S4: 3163
Samsung's phone is more powerful across the board, whether judging
javascript performance or more general productivity/gaming prowess.
This is not surprising, though. The iPhone 5 is a more direct
competitor to the Galaxy S3 than the Galaxy S4. We'll see Apple catch
up with this year's iPhone 5S, but for now the Galaxy S4 is the power
king.
Galaxy S4 win
Samsung Galaxy S4 vs iPhone 5 - Software
Samsung Galaxy S4 – Android 4.2 with TouchWiz
iPhone 5 – iOS 7
That the difference in raw power won't matter all that much to people
becomes clear when you get hands-on with the phones' software. The
systems they use, and the way those systems operate, is completely
different.
Samsung Galaxy S4 5
The Samsung Galaxy S4 uses a customised version of Android Jelly Bean.
The custom interface that Samsung lays on top is called TouchWiz, and
it looks and feels just like the one seen in the Galaxy S3 – it will
seem familiar to Galaxy veterans.
TouchWiz is full of extra features. However, we did find that they
tend to slow Android down a little, with a little more lag evident in
transitions and app loading than we'd expect with a vanilla Android
phone with a CPU this fast – or with an iPhone 5.
The iPhone 5 uses iOS 7, which was released alongside the iPhone 5S
and iPhone 5C. It's a totaly visual reworking of the iOS system. And
it was long overdue - iOS had previously looked more-or-less the same
as it did when it launched in 2007.
iOS 7 brings much slicker screen transitions, a more modern, clean
look and new icons. We like it. iOS 7 also has a bunch of new features,
such as the ability to turn things like Wi-Fi on and off quickly using
the swipe-up Control Center menu.
For more on the extra features found in the Galaxy S4, read our top
TouchWiz features article
.
iPhone 5 win
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Samsung Galaxy S4 vs iPhone 5 - Camera
Samsung Galaxy S3 -13-megapixel sensor, LED flash
iPhone 5 – 8-megapixel sensor LED flash
The Samsung Galaxy S4 has more megapixels than the iPhone 5, with a
13-megapixel sensor in place of an 8-megapixel one. But is it better?
The difference is not as great as you might expect. When looking at
pixel level, the Galaxy S4's pictures have a little more detail, and a
little less noise in good lighting. However, the actual quality of the
photos when viewed at normal sizes is roughly comparable.
Let's take a closer look at a few photos taken with the cameras.
The biggest competition in mobile right now is Apple and Samsung, and
the biggest rivalry,
iPhone 5s vs. Galaxy S4. Both are enormously popular, but both are
incredibly different. Integrated vs. licensed, small screen vs. big
screen, design-centric vs. spec-centric, and the list goes on and on.
Which one is best is a matter of endless debate, but the more
important question is - which one is best for you?
Samsung Galaxy S4
The Samsung Galaxy S4 is the current king of standard-sized Android
handsets. And that 5-inches is standard sized now tells you a lot
about the state of Android handsets these days! Like the iPhone 5s,
the Galaxy S4 has been accused of being more tock than tick - an
iterative improvement over last year's monstrously successful Galaxy
S3. But what an iteration! Better in almost every way that matters, in
addition to the larger, sharper screen, it brings improved
performance, a 13-megapixel camera, and the latest version of
Samsung's Android presentation layer, TouchWiz.
Here's Android Central's Samsung Galaxy S4 review by Alex Dobie:
Galaxy S4: The good
The Galaxy S4 is a speedy all-rounder which manages to deliver great
performance and a big, bright screen in an ergonomic package.
Widespread availability, tons of features and a fairly recent version
of Android work in the S4's favor, as does its impressive 13-megapixel
camera.
Galaxy S4: The bad
The TouchWiz UI remains a clumsy construction, and still lacks any
kind of overarching design language. The bewildering array of settings
and features and poor UX design will confuse some users. The
occasional performance hiccups are disappointing to see, and the
plastic chassis feels cheap.
Galaxy S4: The bottom line
If you're looking for an Android phone that performs well across the
board, ticks every feature box you could possibly imagine and is
available on just about every carrier on the planet, the Galaxy S4 is
an easy recommendation. But this time around it's clear Samsung has
merely stacked incremental updates -- mostly features and internal
hardware -- upon its earlier flagship, rather than addressing that
device's issues and rethinking what a smartphone should be in 2013.
For some folks, that's fine. For others, more exciting products await
elsewhere.
iPhone 5s
Like the Galaxy S4, the iPhone 5s takes last year's smash hit to an
incrementally new level. It has the first 64-bit mobile processor, the
Apple A7, the Apple M7
motion coprocessor, a much improved 8-megapixel iSight camera,
increased LTE support, and the
Touch ID fingerprint identity sensor. It has the same 4-inch screen,
but it also has the newly redesigned
iOS 7.
Here's iMore's iPhone 5s review by your's truly:
iPhone 5s: The good
The iPhone 5s is twice as fast as last year's already fast model. The
improvements to the camera, including new 120fps slow motion video,
are considerable. Built on top of a physics and particle engine, iOS 7
is not only a welcome redesign for Apple, but for the industry.
Likewise, Touch ID works so well you'll immediately want it on
everything.
iPhone 5s: The bad
Aside from the processors, camera, and Touch ID, not much has changed,
unless you count new space gray and gold colors. It's still a 4-inch
screen, which some people might find small, and while iOS 7 is
beautiful in many ways, it's unfinished in some, and without the
customization available to Android.
iPhone 5s: The bottom line
Apple call's the iPhone 5s their most forward-thinking iPhone ever,
and on that they deliver. From iOS 7 to Touch ID to 64-bit, it's
next-year's technology in your hand today. It's going to be on most
carriers, in most countries in the world, and with the usual,
unmatched app, accessory, and media support. Ultimately, it's the best
iPhone ever. Again. If that's not what you want, Apple has nothing
different to offer you. If it is, get it now.
So which one should you get?
Neither Samsung nor Apple fundamentally changed the game this year.
Each simply got better at playing their existing strategies. And
that's okay. But it means the decision remains essentially the same.
If a bigger screen and the ability to customize is more important to
you than running iOS and all the high quality apps and accessories
that come with it, or if you simply don't like Apple, go with the
Galaxy S4.
If access to the iOS App Store, iTunes, and Apple Stores is more
important to you than the power and flexibility that comes with
Android, or you simply don't like Samsung, go with the iPhone 5s.
That's boiling it down to ridiculously absurd levels, but that's what
buying decisions are all about. If you're still not sure, here are
full reviews for both phones, and the best forums in the world to ask
questions and get answers. Once you've decided, leave a comment below
telling me why you went the way you did!
Samsung Galaxy S4 review
Samsung Galaxy S4 forum
iPhone 5s review
iPhone 5s forum
Still undecided?
If you're still not sure what to get, head on over to your local big
box or carrier show and ask to try them out. Don't settle for dummy
phones, ask to use demo units, and try them out for yourself. If you
think you want an iPhone, but aren't sure which model, carrier, color,
or capacity, here's a lot more information to help you decide:
Apple's current flagship iPhone with a 4-inch in-cell display, LTE 4G,
and BT 4.0 LE. New features include:
Touch ID fingerprint sensor
A7 64-bit processor
M7 motion coprocessor
iSight 120fps video
iOS 7 software
--
ashwin
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