Samsung designed the upcoming Galaxy S6 to better compete with Apple's iPhone 6 with its metal design and beveled-edge design, but what about HTC's One M9 that is sure to take the market by storm with its classy and high-powered product.
Samsung does have a lot to prove to customers this year as last year's S5 didn't perform quite as expected, but the complete redesign of the S-series model is promising for consumers. HTC, on the other hand, is still riding the wave of positive energy that erupted from the successful One M8. If that trend can continue with the M9, Samsung might have something to worry about. But with a reported 20 million pre-order for the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge coming out of Korea for the April 10th launch, it will be a steep hill to climb for HTC.
Design
First taking a look at aesthetics of both phones, we see that the One M9 is significantly thicker than the S6 at 9.6mm versus 6.8mm on the S6.
And while the Galaxy S6 has moved from the plastic S5 to aluminum and Gorilla 4 glass, the HTC product's all-metal design is quite stylish. One major downfall for the S6 is the lack of any access to the battery and no SD card as found on the S5. The HTC product, however, does have a pop-out tray slot.
Screen
With only .1 of an inch separating the two displays (5.1-inch for the S6 and 5-inch for the M9), we can see that this might be the most closely comparable feature between the two phones. But Samsung's Super AMOLED screen shows more vibrancy than the LCD 3 screen on the M9.
Internal Specs
The most interesting part of this comparison is to see how HTC's Snapdragon 810 from Qualcomm will perform over Samsung's in-house Exynos chip. Samsung shunned the Qualcomm chip over some heating issues earlier this year, so that may or may not have been a smart move on their part.
But both CPUs are comparable in performance, both featuring 64-bit architecture and octo-core technology, and both phones will also house 3 GB of RAM standard.
As for storage capacity, the Samsung product ranges from 32, 64, and 128 GB with no microSD card support, while the HTC One M9 comes in 32 GB with microSD support (up to 128 GB). Both phones also include 100 GB of Dropbox cloud storage free for two years.
Camera
HTC beats out Samsung in the megapixel numbers with a 20-megapixel rear camera versus Samsung's 16-megapixel in the S6, but many reviewers say that the S6's optical image stabilization and low-light capabilities means so much more than pixel count.
Reviews
"There's no doubt the Galaxy S6's design is a big step forward for Samsung, and it's much slimmer than the HTC, but we suspect many will still prefer the M9's design," Trusted Reviews says in their comparison article. "It hasn't changed much since last year, but that's because it didn't have to. The fact it has a microSD card slot will be a big tick in its favour now that Samsung has abandoned that feature, too."
"These days Samsung Super AMOLED tech has largely eliminated its colour problems while still providing great brightness levels and some robust picture quality; excellent contrast, viewing angles and readability in bright sunlight," Know Your Mobile noted in their review. "The same cannot necessarily be said of SLCD3 aboard the One M9 which, during my brief hands-on, I noted was not particularly bright and had poor viewing angles. I remember the One M8 didn't do too well in sunlight with an SLCD3 display, so this is a cause for concern."
And finally, Greenbot's time with both phones showed an advantage for the S6, but final price will mean much more in the long run. "If the One M9 is a couple hundred dollars less expensive than the Galaxy S6, it would be a lot easier to swallow its comparative lack of features."
