First fight of Verizon classics: HTC Rezound vs. Samsung Galaxy Nexus

HTC Rezound vs. Samsung Galaxy Nexus

November is going to be interesting for the Smartphone enthusiasts as a plethora of new handsets are coming out from almost all the major manufacturers. Motorola’s Droid Razr, Samsung’s Flash S, Focus S and Galaxy Note, the recently launched iPhone 4S are just a few on the list that will dominate the month of November in Smartphone market. Renowned Smartphone maker HTC is not sitting idle either, storming the USA stores with their LTE enabled Rezound. The long awaited Android Ice Cream Sandwich is also releasing this month, with a brand new Nexus device from Samsung – the Galaxy Nexus. Today we are going to compare the two behemoths from HTC and Samsung, namely HTC Rezound and Samsung Galaxy Nexus. Read on to know more.

Comparison attributes

1. Display

Nowadays, displays in the premium Android phones almost instantly mean a minimum of 4.3 inch affair and the phones compared today are not exceptions. HTC Rezound offers a 4.3 inch Super LCD screen with a resolution of 1280 x 720, giving a pixel density of whopping 342 PPI. Samsung Galaxy Nexus has a 4.65 inch Super AMOLED display with the same resolution of 1280 x 720, offering a slightly less but fantastic pixel density of 316 PPI.

Winner

Samsung received a fair share of criticism when Corning tweeted about the absence of their Gorilla glass cover on Galaxy Nexus. Nevertheless, the Super AMOLED display with the great resolution of 720p really rocks and covers almost all the shortcomings of PenTile subpixel matrix on the display. While Super LCD is also a good improvement over traditional LCD screens, they are no Super AMOLEDs. The screen on Galaxy Nexus offers fantastic contrast ratio, saturated colors and better visibility under direct sunlight and thus wins this round.

2. Processor and CPU

Samsung really had to fulfill a lot of expectations from their next device owing to the very high benchmark they have set with their Galaxy S II. The 1.2 GHz dual core Cortex A9 CPU, running on a Texas Instrument OMAP 4460 chipset in Galaxy Nexus does not disappoint, but it is also not a match for the next generation Exynos SoC coming from Samsung. HTC opted for a 1.5 GHz dual core Scorpion processor on top of Qualcomm MSM 8660 Snapdragon chipset which offers pretty fantastic speed but cannot topple either Galaxy Nexus or the older Galaxy S II. Samsung’s Choice of PowerVR SGX540 GPU over the better Mali 400 which is used on their Galaxy S II can be controversial but it is lot better than the Adreno 220 GPU used in HTC Rezound.

Winner

If one looks at the sheer processing power then Samsung Galaxy Nexus comes out as a winner without any doubt. The benchmarks also confirm the fact that Galaxy Nexus do have the prowess to match any of the biggies in Smartphone arena today.

3. Software

HTC Rezound comes with Android Gingerbread and also Sense 3.5 on top of it. While Sense may be the best Android customization out there, Google’s stock Android Ice Cream Sandwich topples almost everything now. Being a Nexus device, Samsung Galaxy Nexus do come with vanilla version of Android Ice Cream Sandwich and also have an unlocked boot-loader, so the enthusiasts don’t have to worry about loading custom ROMs on the device.

Winner

From the early demonstrations and hands on with the Galaxy Nexus, it is quite clear that Ice Cream Sandwich is the best version of Android yet and quite fantastic even without the need of any third party customizations. Therefore Samsung Galaxy Nexus wins yet another round over HTC Rezound.

4. Camera

HTC Rezound packs an 8 MP camera with back illuminated sensor and f/2.2 lens, supported by autofocus and dual LED flash. The camera also shoots 1080p videos @ 30 fps and records sounds in stereo mode. Samsung, on the other hand, put a rather paltry 5 MP camera on their Galaxy Nexus with autofocus and single LED flash. The camera supports the new Panorama mode brought on Ice Cream Sandwich by Google and also the standard touch to focus, geo tagging and face detection etc. The greatest thing about the Galaxy Nexus’s camera is the ability to shoot stills with zero shutter lag and almost negligible camera lag to shoot photos in succession. It also shoots full HD 1080p videos @ 30 fps.

Winner

While the camera on Samsung Galaxy Nexus is impressive in terms of quality and number of new features it offers, the lack of a bigger sensor hurts the marketing. While megapixels are not the final thing on camera quality, 8 MP has become quite the standard in today’s premium Smartphone, so Samsung should have gone for an 8 MP one while retaining all the features it currently has. Anyway, there is not clear way to announce the Rezound’s camera a winner here so we believe it is a tie.

5. Battery Life

Battery life is one of the most important things to look for while buying a smartphone and LTE devices are known to suck battery like nothing else. As both the devices we are comparing here contain LTE radios, it is important to see how they fare in terms of battery life. HTC Rezound contains a standard Li-ion 1750 mAh capacity battery while Samsung Galaxy Nexus packs a Li-ion 1620 mAh capacity battery.

Winner

The sheer amount of mAh capacity does not decide the winner in this category as it also depends on how the operating system and hardware inside the device utilizes the battery while running. Ice Cream Sandwich has a lot of new optimizations at work for reducing the battery usage and improved multi core support for better performance which effectively brings a lot better battery life than the usual crop of LTE devices. While Rezound’s huge 1750 mAh battery will definitely last more than a full day under normal usage, Galaxy Nexus is aiming to give even more. So Nexus takes the crown here.

Verdict

HTC brought Rezound in the US as a worthy replacement of the Sensation XL that they released in European and Asian markets. While the phone packs some impressive hardware which can provide a fantastic performance in day to day tasks, Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus is just the face of next generation that promises much more, in terms of both performance and usability. Therefore, Samsung Galaxy Nexus is the better choice among the two compared here.

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