Samsung Galaxy S vs HTC Desire

The two flagship Android phones from the two biggest players in the mobile market, the Samsung Galaxy S and HTC Desire are being put face to face. Let’s head out for a comparison and find out which one wins where.

Screen
The Samsung Galaxy S has a 4-inch Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen which has more brightness, more visibility outdoors and lower power consumption than the AMOLED capacitive screen found on the HTC Desire. However, the 3.7-inch AMOLED capacitive touchscreen on the HTC Desire  is among the best in the industry, but it is beaten by the more advanced Super AMOLED found on the Galaxy S.

Both screens pack the same WVGA resolution (480 x 800 pixels) and it was easy to assume that the smaller 3.7-inch screen on the HTC Desire would look crispier and sharper due to more pixel density. But with all the Super AMOLED superiority, that .3-inch more on the Galaxy S still looked sharper and brighter. The bigger size display on the Galaxy S did not make the screen’s sharpness any less better rather the Super AMOLED has an edge over the AMOLED screen on the Desire on all counts.

Interface
The Desire came with the much loved HTC proprietary interface called the HTC Sense which in our opinion is more slick and fluid than the TouchWiz 3.0 interface on the Galaxy S. Both the interface offered seven home screen with options to add widgets and shortcuts, however, we found more useful Widgets on the HTC than we did on the Samsung’s Touchwiz 3.0. Though the look and design is quite subjective, the HTC Sense with its feature like  pinch to zoom out to thumbnail view, more useful Widgets and better look wins over the Galaxy S’s TouchWiz 3.0.

Camera
Both the Desire and Galaxy S offer a 5MP camera with autofocus but here are the differences. The Desire camera comes with LED flash while Galaxy S has none,  but the Desire records only WVGA video (800 x 480) at 15fps while the Galaxy S records 720p HD video as good as many pocket camcorder does. Soon, the Desire with Froyo update will be capable of recording 720p HD video, however, when it will get the update is not known yet. And the Galaxy S has a front VGA camera for video calling. The Galaxy S’s camera is also more feature packed than the Desire’s camera.

Media Playback
Samsung loaded the Galaxy S well with rich media playback support. Apart from the standard formats like MP3, WMA, WAV, AAC, WMV and MP4, the Galaxy S plays, FLAC, DivX, MKV and  XviD which made it a worthy option for multimedia. The Desire plays all standard formats except for MKV,DivX, XviD and FLAC.

Text Input
We have not much complaints about the default text input on both the phones, however,  the Swype text input on the Galaxy S takes entering text on the touchscreen to a next level.  All in all, both the phones offered one of the best text-input systems we have seen on any touchscreen device.

Processor and Memory
The Galaxy S uses a 1GHz Hummingbird processor which has the same speed as the Qualcomm Snapdragon found on the Desire. Surprisingly, the Desire has more RAM (526MB) than the Galaxy S which came with 512MB. Onboard memory of 8GB/16GB on the Galaxy S is much more attractive and worth-going for than the 512MB ROM on the Desire.

GPS
Both the phones rely on Google Maps for navigating and they both have built-in GPS receiver with A-GPS support. And you can find many more GPS software/maps and download from the Marketplace.

Price
Currently, the Galaxy S costs Rs. 28,449 ( univercell.in) while the HTC Desire can be bought from flipkart.com for Rs. 27,099.