HTC Desire V Samsung Galaxy S

dedaw

I'm looking at the HTC Desire (had previously considered a Smart phone) versus the Samsung Galaxy S. I have a Gold upgrade with my provder, making either phone only €99!!!
SO whick do you reckon? Had not considered the Galaxy but the guy in shop reckons it's the dog's! Bigger screen, HD screen, longer life battery, and still runs on android.
Any opinions, ideas, info would be much appreciated!

Hogzy

dedaw wrote: »

I'm looking at the HTC Desire (had previously considered a Smart phone) versus the Samsung Galaxy S. I have a Gold upgrade with my provder, making either phone only €99!!!
SO whick do you reckon? Had not considered the Galaxy but the guy in shop reckons it's the dog's! Bigger screen, HD screen, longer life battery, and still runs on android.
Any opinions, ideas, info would be much appreciated!

Im a Desire Owner, fantastic phone (if you can get your hands on one).
Iv owned 3 samsung phones in the past and all 3 were terrible. Now the Galaxy S could be different. Iv never used one but i will never touch a samsung phone ever again.

Read this comparison maybe

Dave147

The main advantages for the Samsung Galaxy S are the HDMI out, the better battery, more internal storage.

However it lacks a camera flash, the UI isn't as good as HTC's sense, the design isn't as good either imo.

Random

@dedaw
i've moved your thread to the android forum. you should get a better response here. thanks

Abelloid

The Desire is hard to beat IMHO.

..and hard to find unfortunately.

dedaw

Thanks for the info guys, keep it coming! I was edging for the Samsung after reading up on some of the threads here, but no flash is a real pain in the a**e!!
Can anyone confirm if either or both have predictive texting? Is the battery life on both really bad? Thanks again!

caspa307

desire all the way mate, u should get one in 3-4 weeks i get about 2 days/2 and a half days out of mine battery is bad at first but once its conditioned (leave it go completley dead and charge it over night) a few times its fine

dedaw

One other thing, which has or doesn't have an alarm? Really need that for the early starts! Or which (if either or both) has an app for download to include the alarm? Cheers

BopNiblets

Bought a Galaxy S this week, great so far, should be even better with Froyo which should be out soon, screen on it it fantastic and that's coming from an Samsung Jet (normal AMOLED) user which I thought was the best!

I'm getting used to the different touchscreen (capacitive vs resistive, so sensitive I'm hitting everything by accident), and different OS.

I'd say either choice is good OP, depends if you want a slightly bigger screen or camera flash or whatever.

Abelloid

Don't worry about texting, with Android you can choose from a wide selection of keyboards and predictive methods. I think the Galaxy comes with Swype pre-installed, which would be my choice anyway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKSSOl4f9RA

I get a full day out of my HTC, no problem, and I rarely put it down for more than a couple of minutes.

jesus_thats_gre

The main advantages for the Samsung Galaxy S are the weight, the larger and superior screen, the thickness, HDMI out, the better battery, more internal storage. The Galaxy S also seems to be a more powerful device.

The Desire has a flash and the Sense UI as it's advantages.

In all honesty though, you will be happy with either choice.

Ron DMC

Seeing the screen of each side by side really blows the Desire out of the water on that front.

Then again, there's no flash on the camera on the Galaxy S, but unless you take lots of photos that's not gonna annoy you that much.

meathgal2010

dedaw wrote: »

Thanks for the info guys, keep it coming! I was edging for the Samsung after reading up on some of the threads here, but no flash is a real pain in the a**e!!
Can anyone confirm if either or both have predictive texting? Is the battery life on both really bad? Thanks again!

The Galaxy S had T9 predictive text. You can also use a normal keypad ie with the numbers and letters or you can use QWERTY or SWYPE (awesome) or you also have handwriting boxes where you draw the words

jd83

ANy samsung phone ive had has been crappy so for me desire all the way

Abelloid

jd83 wrote: »

ANy samsung phone ive had has been crappy so for me desire all the way

They do have some sh!te phones but I still say the Tocco Ultra was very well built and had a fantastic 8MP camera. I just wish they'd make an Android version.

partyatmygaff

Some general differences between both phones based on my observations

I'll list the cons of both phones relative to eachother

Desire
Smaller screen with almost negligible difference in colour saturation and difficult to read in direct sunlight

No HDMI out

Adreno GPU (Slower than what's found on the Galaxy S)

Slightly heavier

Stocking issues

Galaxy S

No camera flash

Larger in size

Slower CPU

Poorer build quality and doesn't "feel" as nice as the Desire

Lacks the developer community of HTC Phones as well as the support

Many games do not function on the Galaxy S due to it's GPU (As a general rule, any application which doesn't work on the Moto Droid/Milestone won't work)

Touchwiz 3.0 pales by comparison to Sense UI

HDMI Out by Micro USB rather than a dedicated port

osnola ibax

I believe that its a mistake to get too caught up in the sense UI. Having used stock froyo, I believe it to be complete and as comprehensive a UI as you need. It does a lot of things better than sense IMO, like the keyboard, linking contacts to face book, speed etc. Sense is a completely unnecessary drag on the phones resources IMO. I also think it looks awful, that sense dock is non - sensical. Ahem.

Stock froyo + launcherpro (free from market) ftw

partyatmygaff

Froyo Sense + Expressobar = A winning combination

I'm buying a Galaxy S tomorrow for my father so i'll have firsthand experience with both.

cnocbui

partyatmygaff wrote: »

Some general differences between both phones based on my observations

I'll list the cons of both phones relative to eachother

Larger in size

Slower CPU

The Galaxy S is thinner ;-)

And how do you come to the conclusion the CPU is slower?

For those of you who think that the Samsung Galaxy S line’s 1GHz processor speed isn’t enough for you, you’ll be glad to know that the original Galaxy S and Captivate have been successfully overclocked to 1.2 GHz. But what’s more interesting is that the Hummingbird processor can apparently be overclocked to a battery-draining 1.6GHz!

http://www.intomobile.com/2010/08/11/samsung-galaxy-s-hummingbird-processor-overclock-hits-1-2ghz-delivers-off-chart-benchmarks/

osnola ibax

partyatmygaff wrote: »

Froyo Sense + Expressobar = A winning combination

I'm buying a Galaxy S tomorrow for my father so i'll have firsthand experience with both.

That's actually what I have on my phone at the moment. I'm using neophyte 1.7.1 save battery sense. I use launcher pro over it though.

I think the CPU is underclocked to 800 mhz, and it uses f all battery in sleep mode. Went for 20 hours yesterday with a lot of usage, a few downloads, a couple of videos and still had 17% battery left. Runs smoothly enough aswell.

M5

Desire owner, Used galaxy s, better performance,camera, battery and screen. everything else much the same. Desire getting old in phone terms now too. One thing about the desire, if you enjoy screwing around with your phone the desire is more customisable by far.

BTW tocco was a joke of a phone, Samsung have moved on from there though

Abelloid

M5 wrote: »

BTW tocco was a joke of a phone, Samsung have moved on from there though

I agree the OS/software was painful, but my point still stands; it (Ultra) was very well built and had a great camera.

partyatmygaff

cnocbui wrote: »

The Galaxy S is thinner ;-)

And how do you come to the conclusion the CPU is slower?



http://www.intomobile.com/2010/08/11/samsung-galaxy-s-hummingbird-processor-overclock-hits-1-2ghz-delivers-off-chart-benchmarks/

I don't come to any conclusions. The stock standard cortex A8 as a CPU does not match the Snapdragon in CPU based operations. Quadrant scores take GPU in to account as well.

cnocbui

partyatmygaff wrote: »

I don't come to any conclusions. The stock standard cortex A8 as a CPU does not match the Snapdragon in CPU based operations. Quadrant scores take GPU in to account as well.

You just make it up as you go along. The Hummingbird processor used in the Galaxy S is NOT stock standard.

You might think that the Hummingbird doesn’t stand a chance against Qualcomm’s custom-built monster, but Samsung isn’t prepared to throw in the towel. In response to Snapdragon, they hired Intrinsity, a semiconductor company specializing in tweaking processor logic design, to customize the Cortex-A8 in the Hummingbird to perform certain binary functions using significantly less instructions than normal. Samsung estimates that 20% of the Hummingbird’s functions are affected, and of those, on average 25-50% less instructions are needed to complete each task. Overall, the processor can perform tasks 5-10% more quickly while handling the same 2 instructions per clock cycle as an unmodified ARM Cortex-A8 processor, and Samsung states it outperforms all other processors on the market (a statement seemingly aimed at Qualcomm).

http://alienbabeltech.com/main/?p=17125


Benchmarks comparing the Hummingbird processor (Galaxy S) against the Snapdragon show the former to be faster.

As shown by the charts above, the Galaxy S beat the two HTC-made devices by a bit for CPU and 2D graphics performance. But when it came to 3D graphics performance, the I9000 trumped the Qualcomm-equipped smartphones, achieving more than twice the frame rates of both the Nexus One and Desire (see video below).

These tests were performed on devices running Android 2.1. As some other reports have shown, the Nexus One is even faster with Android 2.2 (Froyo), improving upon its Eclair benchmarks, especially in terms of CPU performance. Given what the Galaxy S is capable of now, it's mouthwatering to imagine what it can do with a Froyo update.

http://asia.cnet.com/reviews/mobilephones/0,39050603,62200389,00.htm

GSM-Arena did CPU benchmarks of the Galaxy S and found it to be faster than the Desire as well: http://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_i9000_galaxy_s-review-478p3.php

Neocore Benchmark:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLUQP7CWyeQ&feature=player_embedded

Article comparing technical details of the two processors:

Lastly, since we know from the second article at the top that the Galaxy S performs so well with its GPU, why is it lacking in CPU performance, only barely edging past the 1 GHz Snapdragon?

http://alienbabeltech.com/main/?p=19309


The only benchmark tests where the Snapdragon outperformed the Hummingbird were where the device with the Snapdragon was running Froyo (2.2) and the device with the Hummingbird was running 2.1. Where testers have done this, such as here, They have usually gone on to say something like this:

Even though the Captivate lost to the Nexus One in every CPU benchmark, I would expect those results to change once the phone receives its Froyo update...

So as you can see, in ANY GPU benchmark, the Captivate (and all Galaxy S phones) simply walk away from the Nexus One.

What's even funnier is that the reported GPU performance from the next gen Qualcomm chip, the 1.5 GHz dual-core QSD8672, still wont quite match the GPU in the Hummingbird.

So any way you cut it, the standard hummingbird has a faster CPU than the Snapdragon, add overclocking and other tweaks that have been found, and the Galaxy S pulls even further ahead.

Qualcomm’s newest high performance chipset – the 1.5 GHz dual-core QSD8672 – also just so happens to have been specced to draw 80 million triangles per second. That’s pretty convincing for our hopes of this phone being able to nearly match the 3D performance seen out of the Galaxy S phones.

That’s until the phones get overclocked. The Samsung Galaxy S phones were rooted and modded as soon as the devices hit the UK and US markets. Since then, developers have been able to tweak the I/O read-write speeds for the phone’s default file system using a virtual EXT2 file system and some crafty hacking. That already made an impressive boost in Quadrant benchmark scores, but when you use a 1.2GHz overclock kernel, 2,500+ on Quadrant’s charts becomes a scary reality as no other Android handset has been able to crack the 2,000 barrier to date (let alone 2,500).
The kernels and file system tweaks are far from stable, however, but we’re confident the task is in good hands as it always is with the Android development scene. Then there’s FroYo yet to be released, as well: we might as well run for the hills at that point because these phones will have enough juice to build a mind of their own.

The only way you can have the Snapdragon CPU outperform the Hummingbird, is if you go to sleep and have a nice cozy dream where cold hard reality fades away and your wishful thinking becomes fact.

super_furry

Gotta say, I moved to the Galaxy S from an iPhone 3GS and I've been blown away by it. Very happy with the machine.

partyatmygaff

Cnocbui, I really couldn't care less. Reviews matter little, benchmarks are what matters. A Nexus One at 1GHz manages 75 MFLOPS. A Galaxy S manages 50 MFLOPS of CPU power using Linpack. There is no debate over GPU, CPU floating point operations however are a different matter. You don't own either phone so you can't really comment

However as of one hour ago I now have a Galaxy S AND a Desire (Well the Galaxy S isn't exactly mine as such but i've been using it for an hour now setting it up)

Here's what I can say

The Screen handles sunlight very good compared to the Desire. The extra 0.3 Inches of size make it seem massive in comparison to the Desire. Brightness between both is pretty much neglibile though.

TouchWiz 3.0 seriously sucks compared to Sense UI both in functionality and in speed. Menus lag and the widgets look poor and aren't as numerous.

The build quality feels decent but the phone feels too light and the plastics used feel cheap and thin

It looks like an iPhone rip off

Little and poor documentation when it comes to Android development on the phone (Rooting and ROMS, Kernels e.t.c.)

The GPU does make a difference. It makes some Live wallpapers like the Mario Bros run a tiny bit smoother (Although swiping between homescreens is pretty laggy)

The back cover looks cool despite feeling cheap :pac:

On all other accounts though it's a seriously good phone (I still prefer my Desire though)

Inquitus

Theres a few things wrong with the Galaxy S, but its a super phone.I'd take my Desire over it mind.

Firstly its a Samsung, and all that goes with that.

Secondly that GPU might be great, but find me a proper game that can't be played on the Nexus One / Desire as well as it can on the Samsung, the Quake demo aside. The developers code for the hardware, theres alot of games available on the Desire that aren't available on the Samsung, check the gameloft catalogue for instance. Given the Snapdragon CPU is the most prolific Android CPU the Galaxy's better GPU could end up being a handicap not a boon.

Thirdly its not as well supported by the Dev community nor is it going to be.

Fourth, theres huge complaints about GPS and Lag issues, the lag issues only fixable by fecking with your phone at a kernel level.

Sixth, its still on Eclair til the end of September at least, and will likely never see Gingerbread given Samsungs track record.

As I said, I wouldn't swap a Desire for a Galaxy S, no Sense, poorer Dev Community, and its a Samsung. Its a great bit of hardware, but it doesn't quite edge it for me.

The Desire HD is where it's at!

partyatmygaff

Installed Launcherpro. The lag is still pretty bad but i'm gonna go do those Kernel mods to speed it up.

I'll keep you guys up to date

cnocbui

partyatmygaff wrote: »

Cnocbui, I really couldn't care less.

Then why do you invent benchmark results out of thin air?

benchmarks are what matters. A Nexus One at 1GHz manages 75 MFLOPS. A Galaxy S manages 50 MFLOPS of CPU power using Linpack.

Did you say Linpack? Funny, that's exactly what they used here: http://asia.cnet.com/reviews/mobilephones/0,39050603,62200389,00.htm

Where they got 8.419 for the Galaxy S versus 7.003 for the HTC Desire.

CPU floating point operations however are a different matter. You don't own either phone so you can't really comment

Why do I need to own a phone in order to be able to research it's specifications and benchmarks performed by third parties? You were happy enough to state the Galaxy S had a slower CPU when you didn't own one at the time. As I said, you make it up as you go along.

Inquitus

cnocbui wrote: »

Then why do you invent benchmark results out of thin air?

Did you say Linpack? Funny, that's exactly what they used here: http://asia.cnet.com/reviews/mobilephones/0,39050603,62200389,00.htm

Where they got 8.419 for the Galaxy S versus 7.003 for the HTC Desire.

Why do I need to own a phone in order to be able to research it's specifications and benchmarks performed by third parties? You were happy enough to state the Galaxy S had a slower CPU when you didn't own one at the time. As I said, you make it up as you go along.

I get a linpack of 50+ on my Desire, and depending how well the JIT works with the Galaxy that may well be higher than the Galaxy even when it finally gets 2.2.

partyatmygaff

Can you please lose the attitude? And if you wouldn't mind please stop accusing me of making things up. You're acting as if i'm insulting your race or religion. It's only a phone and with all due respect you can't have an informed opinion without even owning a single Android device.

Nexus One No.1 Linpack result as per the linpack Android application

1 slaski 74.189 Nexus One 998.4MHz google/passion/passion

Samsung Galaxy S No.1 Linpack Result as per the linpack Android application


1 Atx 512 JohnJohn 47.906 SGH-T959 1000.0MHz Samsung/SGH-T959/SGH-T959


As you can see both are running at stock clock speeds. Guess which one has better performance in floating point operations? I don't care what some reviews say. These are the benchmark leaderboards for Android and I take them far more seriously than a possibly biased review.

These benchmarks need to be ran multiple times to get the maximum score, my stock Desire got 8.5 MFLOPS, now it's 50ish. That 74.18 is certainly possible but you would need to be running a very well optimised ROM (Something that Samsung will never manage)


I have both phones and I can safely say it's apparent that the GPU in the Samsung is better than the Desire and conversely the CPU in the Desire is better than the Samsung Galaxy.

partyatmygaff

cnocbui wrote: »

Why do I need to own a phone in order to be able to research it's specifications and benchmarks performed by third parties? You were happy enough to state the Galaxy S had a slower CPU when you didn't own one at the time. As I said, you make it up as you go along.

And now i've confirmed what I already knew haven't I? For the record overall I still prefer my Desire. The Galaxy S has some fine hardware but the software lets it down big time.

cnocbui

partyatmygaff wrote: »

Can you please lose the attitude? And if you wouldn't mind please stop accusing me of making things up. You're acting as if i'm insulting your race or religion. It's only a phone and with all due respect you can't have an informed opinion without even owning a single Android device.

You are quoting bechmark figures obtained for the Nexus One on a device running 2.2 Froyo against a device running 2.1. The scores are affected by the OS.

In the Androidcommunity link I have included below, the testers running BenchmarkPi on a Nexus One running 2.1 got a time of 3524 ms. In the comments below the article, a poster claiming to run 2.2 on a N1 got 1157 ms, slightly more than three times faster. :rolleyes:

Guess which one has better performance in floating point operations?

The one running 2.2

I don't care what some reviews say. These are the benchmark leaderboards for Android and I take them far more seriously than a possibly biased review.

Lots of others in the Android community don't because they believe the top scores are faked: http://forum.xda-developers.com/archive/index.php/t-680158.html

A single review can be biased, but all of them? It must be an organised conspiracy that all the independent reviews I have seen where the Galaxy S is benchmarked against Snapdragon equiped devices has it demonstrating better CPU performance.

I can't argue with your preference, you are free to have it. Mine is to see a variety of benchmarks used, preferably under controlled conditions such as using the same OS, as they did here:

http://androidcommunity.com/samsung-galaxy-s-benchmark-galore-20100531/

Can you please explain to me the motivation for their obvious bias?

These benchmarks need to be ran multiple times to get the maximum score, my stock Desire got 8.5 MFLOPS, now it's 50ish. That 74.18 is certainly possible but you would need to be running a very well optimised ROM (Something that Samsung will never manage)

In essence you are admitting you are not just testing CPU performance but the sum of the CPU+OS+Tweaks.

You have not provided what I consider credible evidence to support your assertion that the CPU speed of Snapdragon is greater than that of a Hummingbird.

partyatmygaff

cnocbui wrote: »

You are quoting bechmark figures obtained for the Nexus One on a device running 2.2 Froyo against a device running 2.1. The scores are affected by the OS.

And I presume you know the exact component of Android that permitted this increase in FPU performance? It was the JIT recompiler. That Galaxy S used for that benchmark is quite clearly an example of a Galaxy S with the JIT Recompiler enabled. There is no other factor between 2.1 and 2.2 (To my knowledge) that affects FPU performance. In any case, it's pretty clear that i'm wasting my time here. I don't see why you feel the constant need to defend the Galaxy S. At the end of the day raw power doesn't matter in the slightest. It's the final package and the Galaxy S lacks in that regard. It's not something worth arguing about.

partyatmygaff

Just rooted and flashed JP3 on the Galaxy (Latest leaked Android 2.2 ROM)

Ran quadrant on both, some pretty odd results (I used the Galaxy S to take the photo of the Desire and the Desire to take the photo of the Galaxy S)

Just a little info about both phones

Desire is running Leedroid 1.8 (Android 2.2) - No OC (Photo taken with the Galaxy)


Galaxy is running JP3 (Android 2.2) - No OC (Photo taken with Desire)

partyatmygaff

I *think* the Galaxy S is using the same Samsung camera sensor as does the Desire. The level of noise and general quality of both seems to be near enough the same.

thehomeofDob

Isn't the 2.2 firmware for the SGS still very buggy? Just wondering, have no comment on this debate at all. Got my SGS 'cause no one had the desire - still very happy with it though.

partyatmygaff

thehomeofDob wrote: »

Isn't the 2.2 firmware for the SGS still very buggy? Just wondering, have no comment on this debate at all. Got my SGS 'cause no one had the desire - still very happy with it though.

Apparently so. Have had 0 issues up until now though. Still though, buggy roms don't affect benchmarks from my experience.

patch

thehomeofDob wrote: »

Isn't the 2.2 firmware for the SGS still very buggy? Just wondering, have no comment on this debate at all. Got my SGS 'cause no one had the desire - still very happy with it though.

The latest leaked rom from samsung apparently is very good. Samsung release new firmwares at a very fast rate, but keeping an eye on xda forums will give you a fix for any issues you might have. This speed debate is a non issue, both phones are faster than any phone needs to be.

thehomeofDob

I'm running one of Modaco's first ROM's on a 2.1 firmware, JG5 I think. I haven't bothered going through the same process again and again (have had problems with titanium) as samsung are releasing firmwares at an alarming rate. I was planning on waiting till the official 2.2 came out, but if the one out now is supposed to be solid I might try it out.

partyatmygaff

thehomeofDob wrote: »

I'm running one of Modaco's first ROM's on a 2.1 firmware, JG5 I think. I haven't bothered going through the same process again and again (have had problems with titanium) as samsung are releasing firmwares at an alarming rate. I was planning on waiting till the official 2.2 came out, but if the one out now is supposed to be solid I might try it out.

Give it a shot. I'm using the rooted JP3 from modaco. It's perfectly stable.

lewis

I got Darky`s 8.0,rooted, speedmod and LPP, generation x theme, fast as feck

tonto2010

lewis wrote: »

I got Darky`s 8.0,rooted, speedmod and LPP, generation x theme, fast as feck

That ROM looks the dogs, will be loading it on my new phone over the weekend. What quadrant score are you getting after loading it? and did you apply the lag fix afterwards?

Cheers