HTC Droid DNA vs Apple iPhone 5
Apple iOS and Google Android have stepped in to an entanglement that any one of them can’t afford to reverse. It can be seen in a positive way for plenty of reasons. Their rivalry and strong competitiveness have granted us many things, including the many innovative features we wouldn’t have dreamt of otherwise. The price of the smartphones has come down significantly, and even Apple is forced to be cautious on their pricing schemes. Even if they refuse to admit, they learn from each other constantly and perfect their rivals’ recipe as a different dish and offers to their customers. If you analyze the characteristics, most would fall in to this category. This is actually a positive enhancement because somebody makes the recipe perfect ultimately although it may not be the introducing party. The Apple Retina display can be considered as one of those perfected recipes. Even though Steve Jobs introduced Retina Display, HTC has taken it into a new dimension by proving that they can produce display panels with higher pixel densities. Hence we decided to compare these two smartphones to find out how Android camp has perfected Apple’s recipe on Retina displays and included some more features to make their device to stand out in the crowd.
HTC Droid DNA Review
Usually, each flagship device from individual manufacturers has some unique and innovative feature they use to boast in marketing campaigns. Obviously this feature or features may not be that innovative or unique, but if they can conduct a good marketing campaign, people will perceive them as innovative products. In the case of HTC Droid DNA, however, this is not the case. HTC certainly boasts about the 1080p full HD display panel and that is a very good feature to emphasize in this handset. HTC Droid DNA has 5 inches Super LCD3 capacitive touchscreen featuring a resolution of 1080 x 1920 with a provoking pixel density of 441ppi. As we mentioned, this strikes as a controversial step to many analysts out there, and it is worth to check their views on the matter. The argument they are making is that you won’t really feel any difference when you have a screen with a pixel density of 441ppi and a screen with a pixel density of 300ppi. This according to them is a phenomenon of the human eye, but recent researches prove this to be wrong and it is implied that this misconception of the human eye cannot distinguish between a 300ppi screen and a 441ppi screen is encouraged by the announcement made by Steve Jobs when they introduced Retina display. Certain studies carried out implies that the human eye can distinguish a display panel with a pixel density up to 800ppi pessimistically and even more than that if you are optimistic about the calculations. Summing all these technical information in to Layman’s terms, we are trying to imply that 441ppi display panel is not a feature that doesn’t serve any purpose.
Now that we have established that, let us look what more Droid DNA has to offer. HTC Droid DNA is powered by 1.5GHz Krait Quad Core processor on top of Qualcomm APQ8064 chipset with Adreno 320 GPU and 2GB of RAM. The operating system in use is Android 4.1 Jelly Bean which will obviously be upgraded to v4.2 very soon. We can’t deny the fact that this configuration itself is very lucrative and bears the characteristics of a smartphone that can reach the top of the market. If you take a close look at the specs, you can see that HTC Droid DNA has the exact raw hardware as of Google LG Nexus 4. The internal memory is fixated at 16GB with 11GB of capacity available to the user without the ability to expand using microSD card. Now let us consider two aspects connected to the massive display panel. To enjoy the true HD display panel, you will need to have the capacity to put 1080p Videos at your liberty. 11GB is still a large capacity, but when you consider all of your other requirements like the photos and recorded 1080p videos, power users may find the memory restriction daunting. The second aspect is more favorable which is the performance of the GPU and CPU needed to recreate vivid graphics on a 1080p full HD screen at such a high pixel density. If there’s any configuration capable of doing that, I’m sure that is the Snapdragon S4 hence HTC’s choice is correct. However, they would have to address the problem of battery draining in powering up such a massive display panel. We’ll get in to that subsequently.
At a glance, HTC Droid DNA is really thin and stylishly attractive. It is also very light compared to the usual phablet range scoring a weight of 141.7g. HTC will release a CDMA edition as well as a GSM edition of Droid DNA while enabling users to enjoy Verizon’s super-fast 4g LTE connectivity. Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n adapter ensures continuous connectivity even when you’re out of range from your LTE network. As usual, it comes with DLNA and the capability to host your own Wi-Fi hotspot to share your internet connection with your friends. HTC has decided to include a 8MP camera in Droid DNA as the main snapper. It has autofocus and LED flash along with simultaneous HD video recording and image capturing. The new video stabilization engine promises better video captures than before with 1080p HD video recording at 30 frames per second. The front camera is also a 2.1MP wide angle camera that can capture 1080p HD video @ 30 frames per second, which would enable you to enjoy your video conferences immensely. The battery is relatively small at 2020mAh, and we are waiting for official announcements on how it would perform throughout the day without draining excessively.
Apple iPhone 5 Review
Apple iPhone 5 that was announced on 12th September 2012 was the successor for prestigious Apple iPhone 4S. The phone was launched on the 21st of September 2012 to the stores. Apple claims iPhone 5 to be the thinnest smartphone in the market scoring a thickness of 7.6mm which is really cool. It scores dimensions of 123.8 x 58.5mm and 112g of weight which makes it lighter than most of the smartphones out there in the world. Apple has kept the width at the same pace while making it taller in order to let the customers hang on to the familiar width when they hold the handset in their palms. It is made entirely from glass and Aluminum which is a great news for artistic consumers. No one would doubt the premium nature of this handset for Apple has tirelessly engineered even the smallest parts. The two tone back plate feels genuinely metallic and is pleasing to hold on to the handset. We particularly loved the Black model although Apple offers a White model, as well.
iPhone 5 uses an Apple A6 chipset along with Apple iOS 6 as the operating system. The new operating system provides better capabilities than the old one as usual. iPhone 5 is powered by a 1GHz Dual Core processor that Apple has come up with for iPhone 5. This processor is said to have Apple’s own SoC using ARM v7 based instruction set. The cores are based on Cortex A7 architecture which was previously rumored to be of A15 architecture. It is to be noted that this is not the Vanilla Cortex A7, but rather an in-house modified version of Apple’s Cortex A7 probably fabricated by Samsung. Apple iPhone 5 being a LTE smartphone, we are bound to expect some deviation from the normal battery life. However, Apple has addressed that problem with custom made Cortex A7 cores. As you can see, they haven’t increased the clock frequency at all, but instead, they have been successful in increasing the number of instructions executed per clock. Also, it was noticeable in the GeekBench benchmarks that the memory bandwidth has been significantly improved, as well. So all in all, now we have reason to believe that Tim Cook wasn’t exaggerating when he claimed that iPhone 5 is twice as faster as iPhone 4S. The internal storage would come in three variations of 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB with no option to expand storage using microSD card.
Apple iPhone 5 has 4 inch LED backlit IPS TFT capacitive touchscreen featuring a resolution of 1136 x 640 pixels at a pixel density of 326ppi. It is said to have 44% better color saturation with full sRGB rendering enabled. The usual Corning gorilla glass coating is available making the display scratch resistant. Apple CEO Tim Cook claims that this is the most advanced display panel in the world. Apple also claimed that the GPU performance is as twice better compared to iPhone 4S. There may be several other possibilities for them to achieve this, but we have reason to believe that the GPU is PowerVR SGX 543MP3 with a slightly overclocked frequency compared to that of iPhone 4S. Apple has apparently moved the headphone port all the down to the bottom of the smartphone. If you have invested in iReady accessories, you may well have to buy a conversion unit because Apple has introduced a new port for this iPhone.
The handset comes with 4G LTE connectivity as well as CDMA connectivity in different versions. The implications of this are subtle. Once you commit to a network provider and a specific version of Apple iPhone 5, there’s no going back. You can’t buy an AT&T model and then transfer the iPhone 5 to Verizon or Sprint’s network without buying another iPhone 5. So you will have to think rather carefully on what you want before committing to a handset. Apple boasts of an ultrafast Wi-Fi connectivity as well offering Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n dual band Wi-Fi Plus cellular adapter. Unfortunately, Apple iPhone 5 doesn’t feature NFC connectivity nor does it support wireless charging. The camera is the regular culprit of 8MP with autofocus and LED flash that can capture 1080p HD videos @ 30 frames per second. It also has a front camera to make video calls. It is worthwhile to note that Apple iPhone 5 only supports nano SIM card.
A Brief Comparison of HTC Droid DNA and Apple iPhone 5
• HTC Droid DNA is powered by 1.5GHz Krait Quad Core processor on top of Qualcomm APQ8064 Snapdragon S4 chipset with Adreno 320 GPU and 2GB of RAM while Apple iPhone 5 is powered by 1GHz Dual Core processor that is based on Cortex A7 architecture on top of Apple A6 chipset.
• HTC Droid DNA runs on Android 4.1 Jelly Bean while Apple iPhone 5 runs on Apple iOS 6.
• HTC Droid DNA has 5 inch Super LCD3 capacitive touchscreen display featuring a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels at a pixel density of 441ppi while Apple iPhone 5 has 4 inch LED backlit IPS TFT capacitive touchscreen featuring a resolution of 1136 x 640 pixels at a pixel density of 326ppi.
• HTC Droid DNA has 8MP back camera and 2.1MP front camera that can capture 1080p HD videos at 30 fps while Apple iPhone 5 has 8MP camera that can capture 1080p HD videos at 30 fps.
• HTC Droid DNA is bigger, thicker and heftier (141 x 70.5 mm / 9.78 mm / 141.7g) than Apple iPhone 5 (123.8 x 58.6mm / 7.6mm / 112g).
• HTC Droid DNA has 2020mAh battery while Apple iPhone 5 has 1440mAh battery.
Conclusion
These are two smartphones from two rival camps that constantly tries to outrun each other. Apple was a giant when Android started as a midget, but now they are both on par showing how much Google has achieved and given to raise Android to the level and eliminate the competitive advantage of few years Apple had. When we compare these two smartphones, HTC Droid DNA is obviously the winner in terms of performance as well as display panel and additional features. This comparison sometimes feels like an irony of the fate given Steve Jobs said when he introduced Retina display, that any display panel having a pixel density more than 300ppi is overkill. However, that was proven to be false by the announcement of this smartphone by HTC. Apart from all these solid facts, you may still want to go for an Apple iPhone 5 if you’re an ardent iOS lover for its simplicity and clean architecture; it certainly is your choice on your smartphone. Hence your preference should count the most.