[Galaxy S 4 General] BarryH_GEG:
There are a lot of reasons to choose specific designs and materials. Manufacturing accuracy and adherence to tolerances, durability, weight, size, etc. HTC's always chosen exotic and complex designs and its bitten them in the ass. The aluminum trim in the Sensation that caused Wi-Fi issues and the "unibody" design of the One X that caused the wireless issues they themselves acknowledged along with fitment inconsistencies between phones are two examples. Here's a tear down of the N2. You'll notice that the internal frame (item 3) is magnesium and no one ever sees it. It could have been made out of aluminum or even plastic if all Samsung was concerned about was cost. I'd guess they chose magnesium because it's a light and rigid material.

Speaking of costs. The selling price for high end devices is competitively fixed. At the same time, in order to stay in business and reinvest in R&D, each manufacturer strives for a certain profit margin. To achieve both, trade-offs are made when it comes to design, materials, and features. As an example, the HTC One for China has an SD card slot which proves providing one isn't a matter of ability. In fact, they substituted a 8MP camera to pay for it. They don't provide an SD card slot internationally to save costs. The components used in the One and SGS4 are probably more expensive than their predecessors. They've both added IR ports and Samsung's add a ton of new sensors. Yet, they'll have to sell at the same price as other high-end phones. So HTC's omitted things like the SD card slot and Samsung makes their devices out of plastic to prop up their margins. So each has picked a direction thinking they know what the market will accept. It's up to market, not us, to decide which best meets their needs.

The HTC One's camera has received mixed reviews. Your comment about it benefitting in low light is true. But with only 4MP it provides 1/3 of the detail of a 13MP camera and 1/2 the detail of last year's HTC camera. Technically, the SGS4's camera doesn't even exist yet as all the pics (NY event and shots taken in China) are from pre-production units that haven't had their s/w finalized. The SGS4 will most likely use the Exmor RS sensor that's in the XZ because Samsung's used Sony sensors in the past. They've also done a better job than Sony with camera s/w and drivers historically. Here are two sets of comparison pics between a One and XZ taken by GSMArena. Assuming the SGS4 ends up with the same sensor it'll do no worse and most likely better based on s/w. Personally, I think the One's darker pic is underexposed and the low light pic overexposed. Both GSMArena and Anandtech will do full standardized tests on both cameras. At that point we'll know whether HTC's 4MP or Samsung's 13MP is better and how they both perform in specific conditions.

Since finalized versions of the SGS4 don't exist yet it's hard to judge it against the One or other Samsung phones. SAMOLED will always be less bright than a good LCD panel but its better reflectance and contrast performance make it appear similar. As for the One, here are your standardized tests. It's better in brightness and contrast than the One X but no better and worse in others. Including color temperature and accuracy where it's way off and a couple of people who've gotten them early are complaining about blue push. How a screen performs on paper isn't as important as how shoppers and owners feel about it. How many people have their LCD TV's professionally calibrated?

More details and charts here...

http://translate.google.nl/translat...et-kleine-imperfecties-het-scherm-getest.html

Wow. You've sure made a ton of assumptions about a chip that hasn't even seen the light of day yet. It's expected that 2/3 of what people do most won't even kick the A15 chip in as the A7 running all four cores is more powerful than the most powerful dual core chip. That's the idea behind big.LITTLE.

So to most people who feel real world performance and battery life is a higher priority than benchmarks the efficiency of big.LITTLE should deliver 1/3 better battery life than Snapdragon. Again, debating such a new design is pretty futile. All our questions will be answered when a production SGS4 gets benchmarked in both S-600 and Octa form. Here's one issue the One will have that the SGS4 won't; browser performance. Even with S-600 it scores below the N2 in HTML5 and Java Script tests.

Who knows, your assumptions could be right or they might not be. Until production SGS4's are tested no one's speculation (including mine) is better than anyone else’s. Also, it takes a couple of months in people's hand to tell how a device really performs. For example, the One X launched in March but the Wi-Fi issue wasn't fully identified as a h/w problem until June. In between, XDA'rs on the One X forum were telling people they were crazy. So far, the people that have received their One's seem pleased. That's great for HTC as they really need a win.

---------- Post added at 10:40 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:18 PM ----------

Has that been an issue? Theoretically, the glass panels on the N4/OG should be better at heat dissipation than plastic but they both thermal throttle for other reasons.

The diversity antennas cost more and the reason they exist is out of fear a single antenna won't provide a strong enough signal in all circumstances. All those that went before HTC with all-aluminum designs had issues (including Apple). So either their engineers are brilliant and solved a problem companies with 20X their R&D budget couldn't or they'll have issues like those that preceded them. For me, until there's thousands in people's hands being used for voice, Wi-Fi, BT, GPS, and NFC alone and together in real world conditions the jury's still out.