Samsung Galaxy S6 vs. HTC One M9
Introduction
The last two generations of HTC One and Samsung Galaxy S were separated by the looks versus practicality debate. Samsung's revamped design erodes this difference, while HTC stepped up its camera game
HTC once ruled the Android world, but has since been supplanted by Samsung. Still, last year the companies' trajectories were reversing once again - Samsung's streak of record profits ended, as did HTC's streak of quarters in the red.
Samsung Galaxy S6 over One M9
- Bigger screen diagonal: 5.1-inch vs. 5.0-inch screen
- Higher resolution screen - 1,440 x 2,560 vs. 1,080 x 1,920px
- Optical image stabilization for the camera
- PayPal-certified fingerprint scanner
- Thinner and lighter - 6.8mm and 138g vs. 9.6mm and 157g
- Heart rate and blood-oxygen (SpO2) sensors), barometer
- Wireless charging (market dependent)
HTC One M9 over Galaxy S6
- Metal unibody vs. metal and glass body
- Stereo speakers
- Higher resolution still camera - 20.7MP vs 16MP; dual-LED flash
- Expandable storage with microSD card slot
- Larger battery - 2,840mAh vs. 2,550mAh, both sealed
Hardware comparison
HTC has a history of metal unibodies, most of which are part of the recent One series and they have come in all sizes (mini and Max). The HTC One M9 uses the blueprint of 2013's One, with some refinements - an eye-catching dual-color design, a microSD card slot and improved handling.
Samsung's Galaxy S6 flagship grew a bit taller than its predecessor, but cut the thickness down to 6.8mm and went down in weight. The Samsung and HTC flagships measure 143.4 x 70.5 x 6.8mm and 144.6 x 69.7 x 9.6mm respectively. Their weight is 138g vs. 157g - a substantial difference.
The One M9 also features the trademark BoomSound speakers, which make it a portable boombox. The Galaxy S6 has only one speaker (on the bottom), so it doesn't provide the same stereo experience for music and videos.
Display comparison
Samsung kept the 5.1" screen diagonal from the previous Galaxy S, but stepped up the resolution to QHD (that's 1,440 x 2,560px). HTC kept the same IPS LCD - 5 inch in diagonal with 1080p resolution. Both displays are protected by Gorilla Glass 4.
You may think that QHD is excessive, but Samsung's Super AMOLED has a PenTile matrix - that's two sub-pixels instead of three. This means the sub-pixel count is now roughly equal to a 1080p LCD so it does improve sharpness.
Connectivity
Both phones can (theoretically) go up to 300Mbps when connected to an LTE network and they also support 42Mbps 3G. Both use a single nano-SIM card, with no official dual-SIM versions announced yet.
Locally, both can hook up to speedy Wi-Fi ac (on 2.4GHz or 5GHz) and both have the latest Bluetooth 4.1 with apt-X for high quality audio streaming. The Galaxy S6 also has ANT+ for use with certain sports sensors.
For positioning the Samsung supports a combination of GPS, GLONASS and Beidou (the Chinese system). The HTC One M9's specs page doesn't list Beidou even though the Snapdragon 810 chipset does support it.
If you still listen to plain old FM radio broadcasts (as opposed to online streaming radio), the One M9 requires you to plug in a pair of headphones, while the Galaxy S6 does not support it at all.
Both phones have IR blasters to control AV equipment at home. Surprisingly, both come with the Smart Peel Remote app, but you can always install a different app.
Battery life
HTC managed to fit a slightly bigger battery in its new flagship (2,840mAh vs. 2,600mAh), while Samsung actually went down in battery capacity (2,550mAh vs. 2,800mAh). Yes, Samsung has wireless charging for quick top ups, but as we found in our review the Endurance rating of the phone tumbled down by nearly 20 hours as compared to the Galaxy S5.
Performance
Samsung is a conglomerate of many companies, one of which happens to make smartphone chipsets. So why then did the Galaxy S4 and S5 along with the Galaxy Note 3 and Note 4 use a Snapdragon chipset from Qualcomm? And more importantly, why did Samsung switch back to its own supply?
Both the Exynos 7420 that's used in the Samsung Galaxy S6 and the Snapdragon 810 inside the HTC One M9 use CPU cores designed by ARM. Four powerful Cortex-A57 cores are balanced with four low-power Cortex-A53 cores, those can be mixed and matched to fit the current workload. They are 64-bit capable too and the two flagships run a 64-bit version of Android 5.0 Lollipop.
The thing is, Samsung has a superior manufacturing capability - its chips are made at 14nm, while the TSMC-manufactured Snapdragon chips are at 20nm. This let Samsung clock its chipset 100MHz higher for both types of cores and keeps the heat in check. Note that both phones can warm up, but under heavy stress the HTC One M9 gets noticeably hotter.
The Samsung Galaxy S6 wins in both single and multi-core performance, confirmed by Geekbench 3 and Basemark OS II 2.0. Since the cores are identical the difference comes from the actual clockspeed - manufacturers advertise the maximum speed, but the chipsets in their phones rarely hit that mark, especially with multiple cores running.
Camera features
HTC's UltraPixel experiment was brave, but ultimately it failed. Now the company is back in the resolution race and it's a big jump with a 20MP BSI sensor. The HTC One M9 sensor sits behind an f/2.2 aperture and is 1/2.3" big, with the unusual 10:7 aspect ratio.
Samsung Galaxy S6 has a wider aperture, f/1.9, which in photography speak, lets about half a stop more light. It's a 16:9 sensor and features optical image stabilization (OIS) to further help with photos in the dark. It has only a single-LED flash to fight HTC's dual-LED, dual-tone flash.
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