FormSony Xperia S - 128x64x10.6mm, 144g
Samsung Galaxy S Advance - 123.2x63x9.7mm, 120g
Samsung Galaxy S Advance - 123.2x63x9.7mm, 120g
Samsung's Galaxy S Advance is based on the same shell as the original Galaxy S so its design is well over a year old now. Yet it still holds up quite well alongside the current crop of smartphones.
It's still one of the lighter and thinner handsets around and the simple slab-like design with slightly curved corners looks as contemporary as ever.
We do prefer it, however, when designers get a bit more adventurous and generally speaking you can rely on Sony to step up to the plate.
The Xperia S is a much sharper looking piece of kit although it is the heavier and thicker of the two devices here. It's got quite an angular form factor with un-softened corners.
There's also the rather nifty ‘band' round the bottom of the handset, a neatly uninterrupted and gently curved back panel and the screen takes up a nice amount of space on the front giving a very thin bezel.
Sony has produced a great looking device here and we have to put the Xperia S forward as the winner for this round.
Winner - Sony Xperia S
DisplayThe Galaxy S Advance uses the same Super AMOLED capacitive multi-touch display as its predecessor.
It's a 4-inch span of reinforced Gorilla Glass with an 800x480 pixel WVGA resolution and a pixel density of 233 pixels-per-inch (ppi), a reasonably high figure still often unachieved by many current phones not based on a previous design.
However, Sony's Xperia S is no low-achiever when it comes to screen tech either, not by a long shot.
The Xperia S's 4.3-inch capacitive multi-touch screen is an LED backlit LCD with an impressive 1280x720 pixel resolution, which gives and iPhone Retina display-beating pixel density of 342ppi.
Not only that but it uses Sony's Mobile Bravia Engine, a scratch resistant coating and the multi-touch screen supports all 10 fingers should someone decide to release a Twister app at some point in the future.
The Xperia S easily wins this round, but that's not exactly surprising considering it sports a display which would shame most of the competition.
Winner - Sony Xperia S
StorageSamsung's Galaxy S Advance comes in two variants with either 8GB or 16GB of onboard space along with 2GB of ROM and 768MB of RAM. Samsung's handset also has microSD capability for up to an additional 32GB.
The Xperia S only has one choice for memory but it's higher than the Samsung's at 32GB plus you get a whole 1GB to help with processing phone tasks. However, it doesn't have a card slot, which is a bit of a shame.
The Galaxy S Advance ends up with more storage to play with between the top-end 16GB option and 32GB card capacity, it doesn't have quite as much RAM as its opponent but it's not far off. We think on balance the Samsung wins this round but if the Xperia S had a microSD slot this would be a very different result.
Winner - Samsung Galaxy S AdvanceProcessorSony's new handset runs a Qualcomm quad core processor clocked at 1.5GHz and using the MSM8260 Snapdragon chipset. It also comes loaded with an Adreno 220 graphics processing unit (GPU) which is a higher-end version of the Adreno mobile GPU family and should give a boost to interface and gaming graphics.
Samsung's Galaxy S Advance has been upgraded from the original Galaxy S's single core roots to a new dual core 1GHz ARM Cortex-A9 processor running a NovaThor U8500 chipset and Mali-400MP GPU.
This setup features the same GPU found in the Galaxy S2 so it's pretty potent stuff, the NovaThor chip isn't quite as good as the S2's Exynos but it's still a modern piece of high performance tech which will give good results.
Bearing in mind that the Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc S used a single core 1.4GHz processor with an Adreno 205 GPU and delivered excellent performance, we're expecting great things from the new Sony Xperia S as it doubles the cores, ups the clock speed and puts a much better GPU into the mix.
We think the Sony Xperia S may have the edge here, but rest assured the Galaxy S Advance isn't far behind and should also perform well.
Winner - Sony Xperia S
Operating SystemBoth handsets ship with Android 2.3 Gingerbread. The Xperia S is scheduled to receive Android Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0, Google's latest build, some time this year.
There's no word from Samsung on whether the Galaxy S Advance will get upgraded but we wouldn't be at all surprised as Samsung seems to be one of the more proactive manufacturers in rolling out system updates across its portfolio.
In the meantime, there's nothing to compare the two devices here.
Winner - Draw
CameraThe Galaxy S Advance sports the same 5-megapixel primary camera as the Galaxy S with a 2592x1944 pixel resolution and capable of 720p video capture. It also boasts a 1.3-megapixel secondary on the front. Features include an LED flash, autofocus, touch focus, geo-tagging and face and smile detection.
With the Sony Xperia S it's once again difficult not to reference the Xperia Arc S which had a very nice 8-megapixel camera which captured sharp photos and video.
The Xperia S looks set to improve on it though as it carries a 12-megapixel primary with a 4000x3000 pixel resolution and fitted with an Exmor R CMOS sensor.
Features-wise it has an LED flash, geo-tagging, face and smile detection, autofocus, touch focus, image stabilisation and a 3D panoramic capture mode.
Video capture is at 1080p and features video stabilisation, a video light and continuous autofocus. Lastly, the Xperia S has a 1.3-megapixel secondary camera capable of 720p video capture.
Understandably the Sony Xperia S walks away victorious from this round with a much more comprehensive setup which should be capable of capturing some pretty amazing images and videos.
Final ThoughtsWe're quite impressed with Samsung's re-boot of the Galaxy S, in the form of the Galaxy S Advance, it's a testament to how good the Galaxy S originally was when it launched over a year ago that a simple processor swap can make it a viable competitor in today's market.
However, Sony's Xperia S represents a phone at the forefront of current smartphones, or non-quad core ones at the very least.
Its main strengths are its phenomenal display and excellent camera setup, but as we mentioned if the Xperia Arc S is anything to go by the Xperia S will make the very best use of its ample processor setup and we expect it to outperform Samsung's offering here.
It also looks fantastic and is due to receive the newest version of Android which is way ahead of Gingerbread 2.3. Our only beef with it is the lack of microSD support and it's not enough to stop us recognising an otherwise great phone when we see one.
No comments:
Post a Comment