T-Mobile held probably one of the wildest and most goodie-packed telecom events in recent history on Tuesday. Not only did T-Mobile, a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom, announce it would no longer force subscribers to sign contracts, it also announced the roll-out of three massively noteworthy smartphones: Apple's iPhone 5, the Samsung Galaxy S4 and HTC One.
Now get ready for the kicker. All three will be available for the same price: $99. With the economic aspect of choosing your device equalized across the board, is it possible that the iPhone 5, at least on T-Mobile, will take a backseat to the HTC One and Samsung Galaxy S4? The answer is maybe.
We'll try to make the decision easier on you by looking at three important criteria and offering our opinion as to which T-Mobile smartphone wins in each category.
Display | Winner: HTC One
First, we'll give you the specs and then our personal impressions, as we've had hands-ons with all three devices in the lineup.
iPhone 5 sports a 4-inch Retina display with a 640 x 1136 resolution, which produces a pixel density of 326 PPI.
The Galaxy S4 has a 5-inch Super AMOLED display and boasts HD resolution of 1080 x 1920, which equates to a pixel density of 441 PPI.
The HTC One features a 4.7-inch LCD 3 display, also with HD resolution at 1080 x 1920. The slightly smaller screen, as grants it a bit more pixel density at 469 PPI.
The terms "Retina," "Super AMOLED," and "LCD 3" probably mean about as much to you as they do to us. So why does HTC One win? The colors are more vibrant, the screen seems more resolute and it's just more fun to look at. What accounts for that is a question for engineers. We just play with things.
Camera | Winner: HTC One
Front-facing cameras are really not important, but if you must know, they're all about 2 megapixels and the iPhone's is less than 1.
Galaxy S4 has an insane 13-megapixel camera that shoots in 1080p and has an LED flash.
iPhone 5 packs an 8-megapixel camera with LED flash and also shoots in 1080p.
The HTC One only has a 4-megapixel camera, but there's a catch: instead of regular pixels, it renders UltraPixels — each one larger than normal. This sounded like sheer marketing and we were extremely skeptical before we actually saw it in action. All we can say is, UltraPixels FTW.
Operating System | Winner: iPhone 5
Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean is pretty cool and somewhat intuitive. Samsung's TouchWiz is neither of these things. Frankly, it's so terrible that you should strike the Galaxy S4 from contention just because of TouchWiz.
The HTC One also uses a custom skin, but rather than trying to reinvent the wheel, it simply steals freely from the Windows Live Tiles interface. And it not only looks good, but functions well too — an improvement on stock Android 4.1, which you'd think would be the first requisite to any skin, but hey, go figure.
Still, nothing so eloquent as iOS has ever graced a mobile platform, and neither of these devices changes that. Apple iOS is a masterpiece and it'll likely take a lot more tinkering before someone comes up with something better.
