Behold the ultimate right now battle of the century. In this corner the newest and greatest dual-core device from Samsung, the next generation of the best selling series of Android smartphones in history, Samsung Galaxy S II! And in this corner, newly formed 4.3-inch round-sided king of the HTC world, blasting forth with another dual-core processor for a battle that’ll be remeniced about for centuries to come, the HTC Sensation! This war is a long time coming – or a long time coming if you consider technology time which is basically 100x faster than normal time. Let the fight begin!

Samsung offers the thinner of the two devices while HTC’s feel is what Chris Davies considers “better in the hand.” It’s curved on the front and curved on the back for a fully comfortable feel – high-quality metal and soft-touch plastic make for a device that appears to be much more expensive feeling than its Samsung opponent. The HTC here is thicker with 11.3mm versus 8.49mm and just under a millimeter longer, but it’s narrower than the S II by a bit. Rounded corners on the Sensation also add to the feeling that this is a smaller phone.

Display technology is a deal both HTC and Samsung say they’ve got the upper hand on, and what you’ve got here is a battle between quality and resolution. HTC has a qHD 960 x 540 resolution LCD panel on the Sensation, while the Galaxy S II has a lower-resolution, WVGA 800 x 480 screen – it’s Samsung’s own Super AMOLED Plus panel though, so you’ve got to take that into account. You’ll notice the extra pixels on the HTC when you’re up in the browser and looking at text lists – this means more on the screen and more readable text without a zoom on the higher-res Sensation.

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Note: Davies accidentally say the Sensation has 1GB of RAM in the video, whereas it actually has 768MB

Brighter whites appear to be emanating from the HTC device but the contrast and colors don’t POP like they do on the Samsung Super AMOLED Plus featured on the Galaxy S II. Blacks are more inky on the S II, colors are more saturated, and as you can see by the shot of the benchmarks below, richness can be seen quite clearly on the left. Something to consider here on the other hand is that the Sensation looks fantastic on its own, streaming video looking more than acceptable in most situations. Outdoor viewing goes to Samsung though by a mile.

As for performance, Samsung’s Galaxy S II is still the clear winner. Benchmarking in Quadrant Advanced showed the Samsung score 3504 overall, with 7119 in the CPU category. In contrast, the HTC managed 2245 overall, with 5918 in the CPU category. It’s important to note here that of course benchmarks aren’t everything and that, if you view the video above, Quadrant cannot identify the CPUs because they’re so new.

What do you think? Battery life going to let you decide which one you want? In that case you’d better wait on our full review of the Sensation as HTC hasn’t been the most impressive in such a category as of late. Will you let processor speed win you over? Better get on board with Samsung. How about feel? Samsung seems to have a bit of an edge in industrial design here if we’re talking about corners that wont poke your eye out.

Behold the battle! It rages on into the future!

[via SlashGear]

BONUS of course you’ll also want to check out Chris Davies’ unboxing and hands-on video as well as our write-up of his first look!

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Hands-On and Unboxing HTC Sensation

57 COMMENTS

  9. Had the SGS2 for the last few weeks and love it. No lag on any games eg psx or latest gameloft. Usable RAM is actually 833 mb according to the pre installed application manager widget. Screen on full brightness is unbeatable and for me much nicer than ‘retina’ though does drain the battery if you keep on this all the time. Battery has always made it through the day so far but no more than that. Under reported for me is excellent camera and 1080 video. If you want to see my example type ‘ sarah lambert marathon’ into youtube and switch to 1080. I can’t think of any issues yet… except samsung hubs still useless!

  16.  I will say it again – Overall resolution means NOTHING. 

    Given its an online video the SAMOLID+ screen eats qHD screen for breakfast imo. No comparason at all. Lower pixel counts is almost making it score 50% higher in the bloody benchmarks. 

    I take my hat off to Samsung. 

    • I agree. It looks like that might be the Samsung device. So far reviewers are saying it has good battery life and Samsung isn’t locking their boot loaders. That and on board storage is pushing me toward Sammy this time. 

  18.  I have my existing HTC devices, but I’m impressed by Samsungs hardware internals of late. I’m also leaning more to Samsung since they stated they’re not going to lock down their devices to make them difficult to change the OS on them.

    Having said that, the design of Samsung devices annoys the hell out of me. Why do they have to be so “iPhone” like, right down to the single button on the front and the layout of their app list? Even their icons are very iOS-like. If I want an iPhone, I’ll buy and iPhone. But, as stupid as it is, that one design principle within Samsung is stopping me buying their devices. They were on to a good thing with the design of the Nexus S. They should’ve continued with that.

    So when my DesireZ is old enough that I can justify replacing it, I will probably not buy a Samsung even though I really like the features of the GalaxyS2. Then again, hopefully there will be another decent device with a good physical keyboard to replace the DesireZ by then anyway 😉 Unfortunately, Samsung hasn’t won me over in that regard yet either. And Motorola just can’t seem to get anywhere near figuring out a decent physical keyboard in any of their devices so far.

    • Apple thinks no one could do what they do, nothing as thin, fast & what Samsung did was show them that yes they can. They got pissed that they made it even thinner & better looking. Even the latest galaxy tabs are thinner & better than the iPad. What they did is what nobody else could & shut up apple up. Beast them @ there game & took alot of there ex iphone customer’s while getting a couple of million other people to buy there first smart phone, reality it was because it looked like an iphone that it got so many buyers & became the best android smart phone out to date. Especially that the first galaxy had the SGX540 gpu, the super amoled screen the ball is in our Court.

  20. HTC originality for me… Love Samsung TVs but Touch Wiz lag UI and the copying of apple design, home button like apple, apps look like apple, trying to make the phone slim like apple… I’ll pass.

    • exactly my thoughts. it looks so much like an iphone. they could tell me all they want about how the GS II technically has better specs or anything like that, but I’m going to go with the choice that offers advantages on my side of the experience. for example, the better handling phone offers something to me that I can actually experience. the phone that offers better technical performance in areas I will rarely use does not offer me something that I can experience. in that sense (pun intended), I think that this comes down to a personal choice, and people cannot really say that one phone is “better” than the other. different people have different priorities and preferences.  

      • The fact that the touch wiz is easy for an ex iphone fiend is good because they’ll be familiar with the u. i. & also have the android u.i. as well the best of both world’s thats one reason the phone was so great. Call it the 3 step program phone for iphoner’s to adapt to did. Plus its launcher its more useful stone you can have window 1 hold the games & window 2 hold the google apps do its more organized than just having your apps listed alphabetically. Ice tried other phones& even installed launcher pro plus & I end up missing how easy it is to use touch wiz, even though launcher pro is customizable down to the icons. If you never tried it check it out.

      • That sounds great and honestly I’m sure the newest touchwiz is pretty good like sense. I would love to try it out and should say that I think the SGSII is honestly the best all around phone out, but my personal preference for the Sensation lies in the fact that as a T-Mobile user the SGSII does not appear to be an option for me (apparently the Hercules will be the Samsung super phone that tmob gets, but that won’t come out for quite a while).

      • That sounds great and honestly I’m sure the newest touchwiz is pretty good like sense. I would love to try it out and should say that I think the SGSII is honestly the best all around phone out, but my personal preference for the Sensation lies in the fact that as a T-Mobile user the SGSII does not appear to be an option for me (apparently the Hercules will be the Samsung super phone that tmob gets, but that won’t come out for quite a while).

    • Yeah the design resembles apple a lot but why would that be a bad thing for u? It would be natural for apple to be pissed about it but as a customer u should be happy about getting a nice interface. Copy or original? I couldn’t care less unless I’m an apple stockholder. 

    • The new TouchWiz on the S2 does not resemble iOS much at all, and that is coming from a soon-to-be-ex iPhone 3GS owner. Samsung seems to have got rid of the rounded square icon backgrounds which made it resemble iOS, so now it looks more like stock Android. And lag? LMFAO it’s by FAR the most insanely fast phone I have ever tried. And how is making a slim phone copying Apple? It looks nothing like the iPhone, and is way thinner and lighter. Deluded moron.

    • The new TouchWiz on the S2 does not resemble iOS much at all, and that is coming from a soon-to-be-ex iPhone 3GS owner. Samsung seems to have got rid of the rounded square icon backgrounds which made it resemble iOS, so now it looks more like stock Android. And lag? LMFAO it’s by FAR the most insanely fast phone I have ever tried. And how is making a slim phone copying Apple? It looks nothing like the iPhone, and is way thinner and lighter. Deluded moron.

  21. looks like I’ll be going with the Sensation here. it will be my first android phone and, as such, I believe it will be a more than merely decent phone to introduce me to android. I simply can’t wait any longer to see if tmob will actually be getting the GS II, and if that Hercules ends up being the Samsung super phone that tmob gets I definitely can’t wait till August or whenever that phone comes out. Also, I will admit that the GS II looks better on paper, but to me the Sensation seems to have the advantage on some tangible differences such as looks and skin (sense looks better than touchwiz to me). I will give the GS II the screen advantage, but that seems to be one of the few tangible advantages it has. I couldn’t care less if it has speed advantages that I wouldn’t even ever see in daily use, because from what I’ve read it seems that you really have to push these phones to ever need the incredible performance they offer.

  24.  I’d love to see how the HTC Sensation’s battery life holds up. The other issue I have is if the dev community will be able to get past HTC’s locked bootloader. If they’re not able to, I see the HTC Sensation bombing miserably!

    Personally, I’d MUCH rather have the much sexier and graphically-richer UI of HTC Sense as well as the beautiful casing on the Sensation.
    The only things that can get me to change my mind and jump on board with Samsung are the battery life and the bootloader. Let’s see how those 2 play out in the next couple of months.

  26.  gs2 hands down. the sensation has a less quality screen, colors wise(it is a cell phone, like those extra pixels make a difference)htc only has 768 MB of ram, and with all that bloated software htc filled this thing up with(htc sense) this thing is gonna lag and the battery is gonna die quickly. RIP HTC

  27. To me, the HTC has a HDMI connector and that is a giant plus.
    I am not going to buy a sensation though, since the EVO 3D comes by july with 1GB of ram, patched Sense, will retain the HDMI connection and have the i-don-t-care glassfree 3D screen tossed in.

    • @b82b22e035b9a19c5b4953a9b626faf0:disqus The Galaxy S2 has an MHL port which combines HDMI och USB though. All u need is an HDMI adapter to connect to the TV. MHL is the future (more features will come) so this is actually a win for S2.

    • @b82b22e035b9a19c5b4953a9b626faf0:disqus The Galaxy S2 has an MHL port which combines HDMI och USB though. All u need is an HDMI adapter to connect to the TV. MHL is the future (more features will come) so this is actually a win for S2.

  28. Pretty good phones, but I think I’ll go for the Galaxy S 2 because HTC locked down and signed the bootloader, so for now and until somebody hacks it, no custom rom and no root access 🙁

    Shame on you HTC! 

  29. Galaxy s is screen & style is embedded in my brain, I need this phone only thing now is when will it get here & no at&t version for me.

  30. The S2 is way thinner and way lighter than the Sensation, so the S2 is far more portable. And imo, having tried the device in store, the S2 has great build quality. Yes, it’s mainly plastic, but the display glass is very sturdy, and it has metal accents, and the battery cover has a premium feeling texture to it.

  31. The S2 is way thinner and way lighter than the Sensation, so the S2 is far more portable. And imo, having tried the device in store, the S2 has great build quality. Yes, it’s mainly plastic, but the display glass is very sturdy, and it has metal accents, and the battery cover has a premium feeling texture to it.

  34. The Galaxy S II is the best smartphone I have ever used. Simple as that.
    Rawr power. Just pure speed. Shame on chip companies. Samsung’s own home-made cpu just crapped all everything this year.

  35. The Galaxy S II is the best smartphone I have ever used. Simple as that.
    Rawr power. Just pure speed. Shame on chip companies. Samsung’s own home-made cpu just crapped all everything this year.

  36. I tried both for 2 weeks, what i have to say is that the Sensation has better software and the Galaxy S II has better hardware except the camera, camera specs are the same but in practice the HTC camera is way better. I have both so i don’t have to chose lol.

  39. HERCULES 4 ME…CAN’T WAIT T-MOBILE. FYI TRIDENT CASES ARE BETTER THAN ANY OTHER CASE I’VE SEEN. CHECK THEM OUT.

  40. I agree that Samsung is the device GS2 superior but critical so biased against the HTC feeling that almost made me laugh obvious. The feeling has a great user interface that was not submitted to full advantage and it is faster than the GS2. The GS2 display is much better and is thinner, lighter and more slippery. 

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