Samsung Galaxy S3 and HTC Sensation XE: Is XE With Beats Audio The Winner?

HTC Sensation XE is the first smartphone by the Taiwanese mobile manufacturer with integrated Beats Audio. It was introduced before Samsung unveiled its new Galaxy S smartphone in September with a market release in October. With a 1.5Ghz dual-core processor and extended battery life, the HTC Sensation XE enables users to listen, watch, speak and browse as long as they want.

Samsung announced its next generation Galaxy S smartphone on 3 May and it will arrive in the UK on 30 May. The handset will be available in pebble blue and marble white on its release and Samsung has promised more colours will be available later. Samsung has not yet announced the retail price of the smartphone.

Take a look at how the two smartphones stack up:

Display

The Galaxy S2 and Galaxy S feature smaller screens when compared to the Galaxy S3. The Galaxy S3 features a 4.8in HD Super AMOLED display with a protection of Corning Gorilla Glass 2. The resolution of the display measures 720 x 1280 pixels with 306 ppi pixel density.

The HTC Sensation XE, in contrast, features 4.3in capacitive touchscreen with HTC Sense user interface (UI). The resolution of the display is 540 x 960 pixels with 256 ppi pixel density.

Dimension

The Galaxy S3 is reasonably thin and a lightweight handset. It measures 136.6 x 70.6 x 8.6mm in thickness and weighs 133g. The smartphone provides an ergonomic comfortable experience through its human-centric design.

The dimension of HTC Sensation is 126.1 x 65.4 x 11.3mm and it weighs 151g with the battery.

Operating System

The Galaxy S3 will run on the Android operating system (OS) 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich whereas the HTC Sensation runs on the Android OS 2.3.4 Gingerbread and is upgradable to the Android v4.0.

Processor

The Galaxy S3 will be powered by 1.4 GHz Exynos 4 quad-core processor with Samsung claiming the processor possesses twice the processing power of its predecessor and consumes 20 percent less power. The handset packs 1GB of RAM.

The HTC Sensation is powered by a Qualcomm MSM8260 Snapdragon chip with dual-core 1.5 GHz Scorpion processor and it houses 768MB of RAM.

Camera

The Galaxy S3 sports an eight megapixel camera with auto-focus, LED flash and zero shutter lag. It can record video in 1080p at 30 frames per second (fps). The handset is equipped with a 1.9 megapixel front-facing camera that can capture video in 720p at 30 fps.

The HTC Sensation sports an eight megapixel primary camera with auto-focus, dual-LED flash, geo-tagging, touch-focus, image stabilisation, face detection and instant capture. The camera is capable of recording video in 1080p at 30fps. The smartphone is equipped with a VGA quality front-facing camera.

Wireless connectivity

The Galaxy S3 offers Wi-Fi a/b/g/n, Wi-Fi HT40, Bluetooth version 4.0 and supports Near Field Communication.

The HTC Sensation offers Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, DLNA, Wi-Fi hotspot and Bluetooth version 3.0 with A2DP.

Storage

The Galaxy S3 offers internal memory storage options of 16GB and32GB; the 64GB version will be available soon. The smartphone supports microSD card.

The HTC Sensation offers storage space of 4GB and using a microSD card the memory can be expanded to 32GB.

Battery

The Galaxy S3 is powered by a Li-ion battery of 2100mAh and expected to deliver an extended battery life since the battery is more powerful when compared to the battery of both Galaxy S and S2.

The HTC Sensation is powered with a Li-ion battery with a capacity of 1730mAh.