Samsung Galaxy S2 Vs HTC One S: Battle Between Old And New T-Mobile Smartphones Stiffens

Of late, the Taiwan-based company has been giving a hard try to get over its old sloppy image. Hence it launched the premium One series at this year's Mobile World Congress. The series comprises three smartphones as of now - HTC One S, HTC One X and HTC One V.

While HTC One X has already received a tag like the King among the Android phones, One S too is slowly making its presence felt among the reviewers and smartphone lovers.

But One S, which is currently running on T-Mobile network, has to face another heavyweight running on the same network, Samsung Galaxy S2.

Galaxy S2, which just has received its much-awaited Ice Cream Sandwich update, might be phased out with the launch of the Korean company's fabled Galaxy S3. But before it could go out, can this legendary smartphone give a strong fight against the newly launched HTC phone?

Let's compare HTC One S with Samsung Galaxy S2 to see how these two phones stand against each other.

Size: HTC One S represents today's latest trend of super-slim Android handsets and is an absolute stunner from outside (inside we'll discover later!). The phone touts a slim yet muscular body which is finely designed. The phone is 0.30 inch thick. Its thinness outshines almost all the existing T-mobile thin phones such as Apple iPhone 4S (0.37 inch) and the Samsung Galaxy Nexus (0.4 inch).

The HTC phone measures 5.15 (H) x 2.55 (L) x 0.30 (B) inches and weighs 119.5 grams with battery.

Galaxy S2, on the other hand, comes with 4.95 (H) x 2.60 (L) x 0.34 (B)-inch dimension and weighs 116 grams. Although Galaxy S2 is not as slim as the One S, it weighs a little less and with Samsung's intelligently curved sides, the phone provides a comfortable and assured grip.

Display: Samsung Galaxy S2 sports a gorgeous 4.3-inch 800x480 pixels Super AMOLED Plus capacitive touch-screen with 217 ppi pixel density. The screen is bright and has almost 180-degree viewing angles.

On the other hand, the 4.3-inch One S comes with a qHD Super AMOLED display with 960 x 540 resolution and 256 ppi pixel density.

While both the phones tout same screen size, the pixel structure makes all the difference.  HTC screen is designed with a PenTile subpixel matrix arrangement but Galaxy S2 offers a regular RGB matrix, making One S way brighter than the Samsung phone.

Processor: HTC One S comes with 1.5GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor and Adreno 225 GPU and feels sufficiently snappy. While the phone lacks an SD Card slot to add extra memory, the device does come with a spacious 16GB of internal storage and 1GB RAM. Like One X, this phone too comes with 25GB of free online storage courtesy to the Dropbox cloud service.

While the AT&T and Sprint version of Galaxy S2 comes with 1.2GHz Exynos dual-core CPU, the T-Mobile version comes with Snapdragon. The phone includes Mali-400MP GPU and 1 GB RAM. Samsung packs in internal memory configurations of 16/32GB and an external microSD card that allows its memory capacity to another 32GB.

Operating System:  HTC One S comes with Android's latest Ice Cream Sandwich OS and sports a sleek HTC Sense 4.0 user interface. The toned down version of the Sense UI is going well with the notification tray, Android 4.0's task switcher and revamped keyboard. The redesigned home screen dock is also quite impressive.

Galaxy S2 has just received an ICS update. The combination of ICS and its TouchWiz user interface version 4.0 gives a slick handling experience and adds real utility to daily use of the phone. With the new OS, the user can enjoy an endless carousel of homescreens and also browse through the new Google Chrome browser.

Camera: both smartphones come with 8 megapixel primary cameras. While HTC One S camera, with its proprietary ImageChip technology, gives richer color and brightness and a better ergonomic interface, S2 camera also offers panorama and macro modes as well as many tweaks and effects to let you apply over to your photos and videos.

The company has also provided the upgraded Sense 4.0 in the camera, which now lets the user tweak manually and capture up to 99 continuous pictures by holding down the shutter. The HTC phone sports a front VGA camera while S2 has a secondary 2 megapixel camera for video calling.

Primary cameras in both the phone can record videos in 1080p. The HTC phone, however, lacks a camera dedicated button.

Multimedia: As far as the Beats Audio is concerned, we still have some doubts over its performance. We feel that the old music player on the Galaxy S 2 is still better than the one on the One S due to more number of preset equalizer and the mock 5.1 channel surround sound mode.

3G/4G: The HTC phone runs on T-Mobile's HSPA+ 42 wireless network and offers quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE and tri-band 3G with HSDPA and HSUPA. The exact data speed, however, is yet to be found out.  

Galaxy S2, on the other hand, supports download speed of 21 Mbps and upload speed of 5.76 Mbps and supports LTE too.

WLAN/Bluetooth/USB: HTC sports 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, micro-USB 2.0 (5-pin), and DLNA compatibility along with Wi-Fi Direct, DLNA, and Wi-Fi hotspot.

Samsung Galaxy S2 comes with Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, DLNA, Wi-Fi Direct, Wi-Fi hotspot, Bluetooth version 3 and HS, USB version 2.0 with microUSB (MHL), USB On-the-go features. Galaxy S2 also provides Near Field Communication technology as an optional feature.

Battery: Galaxy S2 and One S come with a standard Li-Ion 1650 mAh battery. But for Samsung, the battery runs up to 8 hours 40 min for 3G, while on 3G mode, the HTC phone gives only 7 hours of talk time.

Other Features: HTC One X sports features like Beats Audio (which by the way could not impress us much), Gyro sensor, Digital compass, Proximity sensor, Ambient light sensor, MicroSIM card support only, Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic, TV-out (via MHL A/V link), SNS integration, MP4/H.263/H.264/WMV player, MP3/eAAC+/WMA/WAV player, Google Search, Maps, Gmail, YouTube, Calendar, Google Talk, Document viewer/editor, Voice memo/dial/commands and Predictive text input.

Galaxy S2 also sports the same features like active noise cancellation with dedicated mic, TV-out (via MHL A/V link), SNS integration, MP4/DivX/XviD/WMV/H.264/H.263 player, MP3/WAV/eAAC+/AC3/FLAC player, Organizer, Image/video editor, Document editor (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF), Voice memo/dial/commands and Predictive text input (Swype). Like any other Android phone, Galaxy S2 also integrates Google Search, Maps, Gmail, YouTube, Calendar, Google Talk, Picasa.

Editor's Pick: Till the time Galaxy S3 is launched on T-Mobile (not sure about Samsung's decision of launching it on T-Mobile), One S is the best Android phone available on this network. We do love our old Galaxy S2 but the new One S sports better design, much faster camera and a way zippier processor. The Sense 4.0 UI also works better on ICS than Samsung's existing version of TouchWiz. However, no SD card expansion slot or removable battery will score against the HTC phone.

HTC One S is available now for $200 with a two-year service contract (after a $50 mail-in rebate), exclusively on T-Mobile.