Music
All three of these phones come with standard headphone jacks, making them great as MP3 players. However, HTC has gone above and beyond by including Beats Audio and a useful music hub in the One X and EVO 4G LTE. While the Beats Audio works best if you buy Beats by Dr. Dre branded headphones, it will also enhance the sound of any audio coming out of the phone, whether it be a podcast, Spotify track, downloaded MP3 file, or YouTube video. It just all sounds better.
The music hub is also nice. Instead of trying to just sell its own tracks, HTC has created an app that attempts to aggregate and bring together every music-related app that you install on the phone. If possible, it lists all of your music in one place too. It’s not perfect, but we love that HTC has chosen to embrace competing apps instead of trying to do everything itself as it has in previous models. Kudos to the pleasant change in strategy.
Samsung’s enhancements are great as well, but only if you use its default music player app. The player has built-in support for music filters (similar to Beats) as well, and will also display lyrics and let you pick music based on your mood (kind of). But again, these enhancements are limited to the Samsung app, so if you use Spotify, Pandora, Google Music, Amazon MP3, or any other service, you won’t see any benefit.
The S3 comes with headphones, but they aren’t the best quality. HTC has chosen not to include headphones in its newer handsets.
Winner: One X and EVO 4G LTE
Rear camera
Both the HTC phones and the S3 come with 8-megapixel rear cameras and new camera apps. While Samsung has done its best to mimic the features that HTC unveiled for the One X back in February, HTC still takes the cake. The EVO 4G LTE and One X have better cameras and better camera software than the Galaxy S3, as best we can tell based on our limited hands-on experience with Samsung’s phone. HTC has included a custom “ImageSense” chip in its phones to enable great new features like burst shots, High Dynamic Range mode (HDR), and many other features. The One phones have an f2.0 aperture compared to the f2.6 aperture in the Galaxy S3, which also does not have a custom chip. The EVO and One X can also continuously autofocus in a video as well.
HTC’s lens and photo hardware is cool, but the new camera app is great. A new design puts the video and shutter buttons right next to each other, allowing you to snap photos while you record video, or even snap stills while you watch a video you just recorded. It seems like a silly feature, but sometimes you want to record a video but capture a single moment in a photo. Holding the shutter button also allows you to shoot up to 99 photos, one right after one another.
Samsung has included an HTC-like burst mode, but you have to tap the shutter button a bunch of times. And though I didn’t see it in my time with the device, there is also supposedly a way to shoot photos while you record video as well. The Galaxy S3 definitely doesn’t have a bad camera, but it’s not as great as HTC’s where it relates to software or hardware.
Winner: One X and EVO 4G LTE
Front camera
I’m not sure that anybody uses front-facing cameras, but if they are important to you, the One X and EVO 4G LTE have 1.3-megapixel front cameras. Samsung has slightly topped HTC by including a 1.9-megapixel camera, capable of recording 720p video at 30 frames per second. Not bad, though none of these front cameras are great.
Winner: Galaxy S3
Screen
The HTC One X and EVO 4G LTE each have a 4.7-inch 1280 x 720 pixel S-LCD 2 screen. The Samsung Galaxy S3 has a 4.8-inch 1280 x 720 pixel Super AMOLED screen. There are downsides to both of these displays. HTC’s LCD screens are sharper, but AMOLED produces stunningly deep blacks and overly vivid colors (a good and bad thing). The downside to AMOLED is that there are often visible black subpixels that checker the display. The S3 has minimized these weaknesses to a degree and because of that we prefer the Galaxy S3′s AMOLED screen, but visual geeks may disagree with me. In any case, both screens are fairly awesome.
Winner: Galaxy S3
Processing power
Processing power is pretty clear cut. The international versions of all of these phones have quad-core processors, but 4G LTE isn’t yet compatible with any mass produced quad-core chips, so here in the US we will probably get dual-core designs. The AT&T version of the HTC One X runs on a 1.5GHz Snapdragon S4 processor with 1GB of RAM, as does the Sprint HTC EVO 4G LTE. The Galaxy S3 has the advantage of RAM. It also runs on a dual-core Snapdragon S4 processor and 2GB of RAM. When it comes to processing power, it’s a dead heat, but when you add in the double RAM, S3 takes the prize.
Winner: Galaxy S3
Storage
This category is also by the numbers. The HTC One X has 32GB of internal flash memory storage with no microSD slot; the HTC EVO 4G LTE comes with 16GB of internal storage with a microSD slot; and the Samsung Galaxy S3 has 16GB and 32GB models, which each come with a microSD slot.
Winner: Galaxy S3
Good Article but I thing there is something sadly lacking in the Screen category. And that being which phone is easier to read in sunlight. If you read this message can you add a result please. Thanks in Advance..
It’s not a sunny day, but as soon as the sun comes out I will go out and directly compare them for you.
Before I bought the S3 I checked all the reviews but nobody mentioned that the EVO was capable of doing internet browser text wrapping while the S3 was not. I received my S3 yesterday and was very much impressed with it. However when I tried pinching the screen to enlarge the text to a comfortable size it did not perform the text wrapping like my old EVO. My eyes are not what they used to be and sometimes I need to pinch the screen to enlarge the text and text wrapping has become an indispensable feature. I hate to scroll sideways and then down so I tried downloading all the browser available on the app store but could not get the text wrapping to work. Later I called Samsung customer service only to find out that their software could not only do text wrapping for the web browsers. By the way text wrapping works great for the emails other than gmail. Since the reviews of the S3 and the new EVO are very similar I’m going to switch to the EVO. Hope this information is helpful to someone out there and it is something that the reviewers should have included since there are a lot of people over 40 that need the larger text size. Can’t blame Jeff because he looks like he is in his 20s and don’t need reading glasses!!!
Ha. You know every browser is different and HTC has probably changed its own browser since your last phone. I might recommend checking out Chrome for Android. It’s my new favorite browser and does tend to up the size of text a bit and format it well for zooming in. There are other options too in the Google Play store, like FireFox. The included browser isn’t necessarily a deal killer these days.
Did that already downloaded chrome, opera and opera next, dolphin firefox, etc when could not get it to works called Samsung they could not do it either so they ended up telling me that their phone could not do it. The opera browser has a text wrapping on and off setting and that didn’t work either
I already went by the sprint store and the new EVO 4g lte performed text wrapping it with every browser I tried. I wish I could keep my S3 but scrolling sideways is a pain. If you can find a solution let me know I only have 12 days left to return it. Thanks
Open browser. Click menu button. Click advanced. Scroll down and you will see auto fit pages. Check the box and enjoy!
Im sure he took it back already
Thank you for that important info, it helped me to make up my mind…
HTC phones also accept 64GB cards. Look around the internet for proof. People have been using them for a while. Also for any to claim the AMOLED screen looks better than the Super LCD, they must have their eyes closed. No one agrees that AMOLED looks better. The colors are off and there is no white. How can you claim a superior display when your whites have a blue/green tint and the colors are off? No one serious about accurate displays or graphics would ever claim such hogwash. Do some people like it? Sure, but it’s not a win.
but the one x doesnt. no sd card slot and no removable battery.
have you seen the s3 screen? no. samsung continues to improve on their amoled displays.
thats like saying the screen on the one x sucks because I used the iphone for reference.
the s-voice on the galaxy s2 talks back to you, also a similar feature was on the s2 and it talked back to you then as well.
I meant s3
I edited the wording of that sentence for clarification.
The One X has by far the best screen I’ve seen on a phone, so if the S3 tops it, I can’t wait to get my hands on it.
Well, as I said, it’s all about preference, really. But the S3 screen is quite nice. I do love the HTC One X screen though. For sure.
j