Difference Between Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket HD and Sony Xperia Ion

Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket HD vs Sony Xperia Ion | Speed, Performance and Features Reviewed | Full Specs Compared
 

CES has been a lot of things for different companies. For most of the vendors, it is about introducing their new products and getting the media attention. For some of the vendors, it’s all about market research and trying to identify the trends that need to be followed. Strangely for Sony Ericsson, CES marks the inception of Ericsson free smartphone line. The first smartphone of such is Sony Xperia Ion. Even though, they have dropped the Ericsson prefix from the name, they have continued to go along with the name Xperia for it has become a trademark brand for Sony smartphones. May it be Sony or Sony Ericsson; their products have been of superior quality throughout, although they weren’t the top seller in the market.

At the CES, we are now going to compare Sony Xperia Ion with a trend setter in the market, Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket HD. While both of these smartphones were revealed at the CES 2012, Galaxy S II Skyrocket had a non-HD version from sometime back. In the case of Sony, Xperia Ion will be the first smartphone to feature 4G connectivity, which would act as a cornerstone. We’ll go through the pros and cons of the handsets individually and try to identify which one gives the competitive advantage over what.

Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket HD

Skyrocket has the same look and feel of the previous members of the Galaxy family and has nearly the same dimensions, as well. Smartphone manufacturers are thriving to produce thinner and thinner phones and, this is a nice addition to that. But Samsung has made sure to keep the level of comfort intact. The battery cover of the Skyrocket is ultra-smooth, though it makes the handset prone to slip through the fingers. It has a 4.65 inches gigantic Super AMOLED Plus Capacitive touchscreen, featuring a resolution of 720 x 1280 pixels with a high pixel density of 316ppi, to make the images and text look crisp and clear. We also can deduce it that the processor of Skyrocket HD to be similar to that of Skyrocket, which would be 1.5GHz Scorpion dual core processor on top of Qualcomm MSM8260 chipset. The RAM scores a fair amount of 1GB. Skyrocket HD also features storage of 16GB, which can be expanded up to 32GB worth of storage using a microSD card.

Skyrocket HD comes with an 8MP camera, following members of the Galaxy 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 Skyrocket HD showcases the new Android v2.3.5 Gingerbread, which is promising while it is capable to enjoy the LTE network of AT&T for fast internet access using built in Android browser with HTML5 and flash support. It is worthwhile to note that Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket manages to score a good battery life, even with the high speed LTE connectivity. It 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, and Near Field Communication support. Samsung also includes a Gyroscope sensor for Skyrocket HD. Samsung Galaxy Skyrocket HD promises a 7h of talk time with 1850mAh battery, which is brilliant compared to its screen size.

Sony Xperia Ion

Sony Xperia Ion is a smartphone that is intended to succeed against all odds, for it is of too much value to Sony. Been the first Ericsson-less smartphone, it has the ardent responsibility of carrying Sony’s flag high and been the first LTE smartphone, the responsibility of impressing the reviewers about LTE connectivity is entrusted upon it, as well. Let us see how well Xperia Ion handles this pressure by looking at what it’s got.

Xperia Ion comes with 1.5GHz Scorpion dual core processor on top of Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset and Adreno 220 GPU. It has 1GB of RAM and runs on Android OS v2.3 Gingerbread. We expect Sony to come up with an upgrade to IceCreamSandwich soon, as well. Ion is also reinforced with the super-fast LTE connectivity of AT&T that delivers unbelievable browsing speeds at all times. The beauty of the system can be seen by the macro level when you are multi-tasking and switching between many applications and network connections. The performance of the processor can be seen with the seamless transitions from one to another which speaks for itself. Ion comes with Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n for continuous connectivity, and Sony has enabled it to act as a Wi-Fi hotspot and share the super-fast internet while DLNA functionality ensures that the user can wirelessly stream rich media content to a smart TV.

Xperia Ion has 4.55 inches LED backlit LCD Capacitive touchscreen with 16M colors, featuring a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels at a pixel density of 323ppi. It also boasts superior image clarity with the Sony Mobile BRAVIA Engine. Interestingly, it recognizes multi touch gestures from up to 4 fingers, which would give us some new gestures to practice. Sony has also made sure that Xperia Ion excels in optics. The 12MP camera with autofocus and LED flash is a state of the art; an unbeatable. It can also record 1080p HD videos @ 30 frames per second and the 1.3MP front camera can be used for video conferences. The camera has some advanced features like geo tagging, 3D sweep panorama and image stabilization. It comes with accelerometer, proximity sensor and gyro meter and this fancy handset come in flavors of Black and White. The 1900mAh battery promises a talk time of 12 hours, which certainly is impressive.

Conclusion

The indications of the initial run with Xperia Ion against Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket HD have been carried out, to identify the progressive involvement of the Ion in the market trends. We are happy to mention that Xperia Ion indeed passed the benchmarking test quite well. It features almost the same performance as Galaxy S II Skyrocket HD, and a better graphics engine and a higher pixel density. The proprietary Timescape UI is a nice addition to Xperia Ion, as well. Besides all of those micro differences, the major difference lies in the camera, where Sony Xperia Ion features 12MP camera, which is unbeatable, currently. Apart from these factors, rest of the specifications falls in to their own pieces and thus gives you the opportunity to manipulate them as you want to formulate the investment decision.