Our friends over at Droid Life put together a couple of charts that we are using to show you the comparative specifications for some of the most formidable smartphones on the market today. Two of the devices, the Galaxy Note 3 and LG G2 were just released in the past couple of days with the Moto X released a couple weeks ago, and while the Galaxy S4 and HTC One have been around a while, they are still worthy opponents. With all of the leaks posted and multiple articles it can sometimes get confusing as to which device has what, so hopefully this chart will give you a straight side by side comparison of the flagship or mother ships, as I like to call them.
I know you can read the chart, but I just wanted to make few observations (it’s my job, you know) about the facts and figures:
- Only the Galaxy Note 3 is arriving out of the box with Android 4.3 and a little disappointing for LG not to include it with their G2
- The skins help make the personality of the phone, so your preference of Samsung’s TouchWiz, LG’s UX, Moto Skin, and HTC’s Sense 5 could be a deciding factor…Moto claims their UI is most like stock Android
- The displays are all 1920 x 1080 resolutions except the Moto X which is 1280 x 720, and please keep in mind as the screen size goes up, the Pixels Per Inch (PPI) goes down, although I think you will find them all over the 300ppi that the human eye can discern
- All of the phones are running a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor of one configuration or another
- The cameras of all five phones should be excellent, and they all have their own special features to satisfy our increased demand for better photography from our smartphones
- All of these phones can be purchased at all four of the major U.S. carriers, which is a welcomed change
There is also a comparison of the Samsung only phones
This comparison of the Samsung only phones and this will allow you to decide if it may be worth jumping from your Galaxy S3 to the Galaxy Note 3, or some other combination.
Again, a few observations:
- At this point only the Note 3 will have Android 4.3 on it, but the latest rumors have the S4, S3 and Note 2 receiving their upgrade in October
- The Note 3 really bumped up its specs over the Note 2 with the PPI jumping from 265 to 386
- The processor went from a1.6GHz Exynos quad-core to the 2.3GHz Snapdragon quad-core
- RAM jumped from 2GB in the Note 2 to 3GB in the Note 3
- Internal storage begins at 32GB in the Note 3, whereas the Note 2 came with 16GB
- Cameras on the S4 and Note 3 are 13MP compared to 8MP on the S3 and Note 2
So there you have it – compare, cross-check everything, and hopefully you can make an informed opinion about which smartphone is best for you. Let us know what you decided.