Difference Between Samsung Galaxy S II 4G (Galaxy S2 4G) and HTC Velocity 4G

Samsung Galaxy S II 4G (Galaxy S2 4G) vs HTC Velocity 4G | Speed, Performance and Features Reviewed | Full Specs Compared
 

Telstra introduces Samsung Galaxy S II 4G (Galaxy S2 4G) as their first 4G smartphone by Samsung. It joins HTC Velocity 4G, the only other phone in the Telstra’s 4G mobile range up to now, and which is also the first 4G smartphone in Australia introduced in January 2012. Telstra’s 4G LTE smartphones would open up a whole new set of possibilities to the Australian market. It would undoubtedly lead to the rivals to follow the path set by Telstra, to come up with 4G smartphones that would serve the Australian technology addicts. We have already experienced Velocity 4G, and it was enjoyable with the fast connectivity, so we think Australian community will have a great time with the new Galaxy 4G smartphone too.

The Samsung Galaxy S II 4G is almost similar to Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket, which was introduced by AT&T in U.S., in November 2011. It is a member of much renowned Galaxy family, and Samsung is very thorough with the Galaxy family because they played a substantial role in making Samsung the World Leader in smartphones. We find this handset to be the ideal match to be compared against HTC Velocity 4G. The interesting fact is that, HTC is one of the main competitors for Samsung in United States, So we will stay tuned on how the new Samsung Galaxy S II 4G will take on HTC Velocity 4G in the Australian market. In the meantime, let’s look at these handsets individually and extract the differences.

HTC Velocity 4G

This is the time we face right on with handsets having dual core processors and super-fast LTE connectivity, high end optics and an operating system like Android, iOS or Windows Mobile. That’s how we perceive a modern smartphone and HTC Velocity 4G matches exactly to that definition. It is powered by 1.5GHz Scorpion dual core processor on top of Qualcomm MSM8260 Snapdragon chipset with Adreno 220 GPU and 1GB of RAM. That’s the top notch configuration you can find in a smartphone, in the market, right now, (until a quad core smartphone announced at the CES 2012 is released to the market.) The Android OS v2.3.7 Gingerbread might not be the ideal version to take control of this beast, but we are positive that HTC will provide an upgrade to v4.0 IceCreamSandwich soon enough. We also like the HTC Sense UI v3.5 because it has a clean layout and easy navigation. As the name suggests, Velocity 4G has the LTE connectivity and records consistent rate of high speeds. The powerful processor enables it to seamlessly multi task with all the opportunities the LTE connectivity provides.

HTC Velocity 4G has 4.5 inches S-LCD capacitive touchscreen featuring a resolution of 960 x 540 pixels at 245ppi pixel density. The display panel is good, but we would have preferred more resolution from a high end smartphone like this. It is somewhat thick scoring 11.3mm and on the hefty side of the spectrum scoring a weight of 163.8g. The smooth edged Black smartphone looks expensive, but you might have trouble in holding it for extended amounts of time due to its weight. HTC has included 8MP camera with autofocus, dual LED flash and geo tagging that can capture 1080p HD videos at 60 frames per second, which is awesome. It also has a 1.3MP front camera for video conferencing bundled together with Bluetooth v3.0. Although Velocity defines its connectivity through LTE, it also has Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, which can also act as a hotspot, to share your super-fast internet connection. It also has DLNA for wireless streaming of rich media content to a smart TV. It comes in 16GB internal storage with the option to expand using a microSD card. We were told that it would have 1620mAh battery that has juice for 5 hours 10 minutes of constant usage.

Samsung Galaxy S II 4G

Galaxy S II 4G has the same look and feel of the previous members of the Galaxy family, but it has slightly bigger dimensions than Galaxy S II (Galaxy S2). However, Samsung has made sure to keep the level of comfort intact. The battery cover of the Galaxy S II 4G is ultra-smooth, though, which makes it prone to slip through the fingers. It has a 4.5 inches gigantic Super AMOLED Plus Capacitive touchscreen, featuring a resolution of 480 x 800 pixels with a relatively low pixel density of 207ppi, which means the crispness of the image would not be as good as Velocity 4G. However, the Super AMOLED Plus display presents rich, vivid colors. Galaxy S II 4G has a 1.5 GHz Qualcomm APQ8060 (SnapDragon S3) dual core processor. As predicted, the performance is boosted by the 1GB RAM and storage of 16GB, which can be expanded up to 32GB worth of storage using a microSD card.

Galaxy S II 4G comes with a 8MP camera as like other members of the Galaxy S II family, and it can record 1080p HD videos @30 frames per second. It also promotes the video chat with the 2MP front camera along with Bluetooth v3.0 HS for ease of use. Galaxy S II 4G showcases Android v2.3.5 Gingerbread, and Samsung promises to provide an upgrade to v4.0 IceCreamSandwich soon. Galaxy S II 4G is capable to enjoy the LTE network of Telstra for fast internet access using built in Android browser with HTML5 and flash support. However, it is to be noted that Samsung Galaxy S II 4G promises a battery life of only 180 minutes continuous talktime with the high speed LTE connectivity.

Galaxy S II 4G also comes with Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n enabling it to access the wi-fi networks, as well as, act as a wi-fi hotspot. Samsung hasn’t forgotten A-GPS support together with the unmatchable google maps support enabling the phone to be a powerful GPS device. It also supports Geo-tagging feature for the camera. Like most of the smartphones nowadays it comes with an active noise cancellation with dedicated mic, microUSB v2.0 for fast data transfer, Near Field Communication support and 1080p playback of videos. Samsung also introduces a Gyroscope sensor for this 4G smartphone.

Conclusion

As you may have figured out, there aren’t many differences we can point out to stand alone. When we come to differences, the fact that there aren’t much means mobile phone vendors are unified towards achieving the same goal in different ways. In simple words, it indicates a reduction of price for handsets with dual cores and high end optics and 4G connectivity. To wrap up the comparison; we‘d like to mention that both of these handsets are top notch, and we liked both a lot. Especially, the look and feel is awesome, and we loved the performance both showed us. We can speculate just as much with the specs for hardware too. Although we like the display panels, we think that Galaxy S II 4G might have done better with a higher resolution screen panel. Apart from that, the Velocity 4G is thicker than Galaxy S II 4G. Also, we noticed a slight difference in the optics, where HTC Velocity 4G can capture 1080p HD videos at 60 frames per second, while Samsung Galaxy S II 4G has a cam coder that can capture 1080p videos at 30 frames per second. Besides these, both of these handsets are identical and thus, serve your purpose equally well. What we can say with absolute certainty is that, these handsets won’t get out-dated for a long time and there will be a very heated battle between Samsung and HTC to conquer the 4G market. In this battle, our advice is that your chances of winning are same in both sides, so the rest of the decision is up to your imagination and personal preference.