Samsung Galaxy S II vs. Apple iPhone 4S

The leaders in the smart phone battle – Apple and Samsung – have released their latest phones – iPhone 4S and Galaxy S II.  The decision factors for buying a smart phone vary  from person to person but what is the most important aspect of a smart phone for you? Is it aesthetics,  hardware superiority or ease of use? We will try to break it down for you!

1. Aesthetics – Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

iPhone 4S has a similar rectangular, glass and aluminium design as that of the iPhone 4.   Galaxy S is taller and wider than the iPhone 4S. It also a bit thinner overall, bottom is thicker than the top, which we think might give a better grasp of the phone.

The iPhone has its customary circular home button, present in all its iDevices, for navigation and control. The Galaxy S has the on-screen buttons and does not have any physical buttons.  The physical button adds to ease of use while the onscreen buttons need some getting used to. The iPhone 4S comes in black and white while the Galaxy S comes in black and grey.

We think the display on both the devices – Apple’s Retina Display and Samsung’s Super AMOLED are very comparable. Text and images should be as sharp as you hope on both the devices. The height and width dimensions on the Galaxy S II increases the display size, but it does come at the risk of being a wee bit bigger to hold.

2. Innards - Lets strip open the two devices

    Memory  - iPhone 4S has a 512 MB on board RAM and Galaxy S II has 1 GB RAM. This does not account for your on board storage. The higher RAM would account for better performance, although it depends on the implementation of the OS – Android or iOS. The best way is for you to do a hands on test on both phones and try navigation, running Apps, opening and closing apps, running multiple apps at the same time etc to see which one is optimal for you.

Processor – Galaxy S II has a slightly better processor technically, but performance cannot be defined by this alone. For ex. iPhone 4S did better on browser speeds.

Download speed  - Galaxy S II has an added advantage of supporting LTE – the real 4G, but again it depends on if LTE is actually supported in your area. On the iPhone 4S, there have been reports that Verizon and AT&T have better speeds than Sprint. All in all, unless you are watching videos while on 3G/4G (not WiFi), or listening to music, or downloading Apps etc, you shouldn’t worry much about the data speeds. I mostly listen to streaming radio and rarely watch videos on AT&T, and so far I haven’t had any issues.

Storage – Ok, this is something most of the users should be concerned about. iPhone 4S comes with storage space of 16 GB, 32 GB and 64 GB while Galaxy S II with only 16 GB and 32 GB.  Additionally, iPhone 4S comes with free iCloud storage which automatically backs up all your data  to the cloud, we haven’t heard about it being available on the Galaxy S II yet.

    Battery Life – Both the phones have about 8 hours of talk time.
    Camera – iPhone 4S has a 8 MP rear camera with a f 2.4 aperture for high quality images, along with face detection, image stabilization and 1080p video. Galaxy S II has a 5MP camera, supports 1080 p video and comes with panorama support. The iPhone 4 is expected to take quicker photos. I like how the smart phones manufacturers are stepping it up and trampling the camera industry.

3. Features and ease of use

This is something you have to decide by trying out the two phones and their operating systems. The iPhone 4S boasts the new feature rich iOS 5 and the Samsung Galaxy S II boasts Android’s latest software version – Ice Cream sandwich. Take a look at our comparison of the features in both.