HTC One M9 vs Samsung Galaxy S6: Flagship Successors Shine at MWC 2015

Design

HTC had a great design with the One M8. Yes, it was a little too tall, but the all-aluminum body with no gaps or seams was really nice. The M9 is a refinement of that. After years of flagship phones with a cheap plastic feel, Samsung needed a new design with the Galaxy S6. And they knocked it out of the park. The phone is beautiful, lightweight, and feels great in the hand.

Display

HTC and Samsung have both stuck with identical screen sizes from last year's flagships. The GS6 is sporting a 5.1-inch Super AMOLED panel and the M9 has a 5-inch LCD. Samsung's screen might be the same size, but the resolution has been bumped up to 2560×1440. HTC will use 1080p for the third year in a row, probably because 1440p LCD panels are still rather mediocre. Samsung's quad-HD AMOLED will pack in a lot more pixels in a smaller space than other phones. It works out to a staggering 576 pixels per inch. The One M9 will again offer a "mere" 440 pixels per inch.

Camera

The Galaxy S6's camera is, in my admittedly limited first-hand experience, very impressive. The camera app pops up instantly with a double-tap of the home button, no matter what you're doing with the phone. Focus and shutter latency is greatly diminished-his thing is fast. HTC's M9 Camera has a bit too much shutter and focus lag, and low light shots still aren't as good as they should be.

Performance

The One M9 uses the new Snapdragon 810, while the Galaxy S6 uses Samsung's own Exynos 7420. Until we run some benchmarks, it's going to be difficult to declare a winner. Samsung is also employing lightnight-fast UFS 2.0 flash storage in its phone, which could really help speed up application loading. HTC already had a lightning-quick interface with the One M8, and it's still buttery smooth on the M9. HTC One M9 is also a 64-bit octa-core chip based on the A57 and A53 setup. Just like the Exynos, it has support for global task scheduling. On the GPU side, Qualcomm stuck with its in-house Adreno 430.

Storage

Samsung's devices have always had two notable features - a removable battery and microSD card slot. The Galaxy S6 doesn't have either. I find this strange, especially for Samsung, but it has bumped the base model's storage to 32GB and will offer both 64GB and 128GB (wow) versions. The Galaxy S6 has a lot in common with the HTC One M9. The M9 too is a sealed phone just like the M8 was. The battery doesn't come out, but there is a microSD card slot.

Operating System

Both these phones will come with Android 5.0 Lollipop, but this won't be the version of Lollipop Google had been rolling out on Nexus devices for the last few months. The Galaxy S6 and One M9 will have OEM skins and features baked in. In the case of Samsung that's TouchWiz, and for HTC it's Sense 7.

Battery

Samsung has a more impressive screen on its flagship device, but the battery has only grown a little to 2550mAh (2600 in the Edge variant). It should get solid battery life, but HTC's 1080p LCD will use much less juice in most instances and it packs a larger 2840mAh cell. That should translate to much better battery life with more screen-on time for HTC.

Price And Availability

The HTC One has top of the line specifications, improved design, and is ready to take on others as the top smartphone of 2015. HTC One M9 will be available in India by mid of March and will carry a price tag of Rs. 40,068. On the other hand Samsung Galaxy S6: 32GB (Rs. 48,333), 64GB (Rs. 55,248), 128GB (Rs. 62,163).