Help me choose my next phone

littlejp

Until recently I had an Xperia Z3 which I mostly liked but found a bit boring. I broke it about 2 months ago and bought a Moto E on eBay to keep me going. I am now due an upgrade on Meteor and am debating which phone to get next. Have it narrowed down to:

• Sony Xperia Z5 (good specs, good battery, but quite similar to Z3)
• Galaxy S6 (great specs, poor battery life, not a huge fan of TouchWiz)
• HTC One M9 (looks great, decent battery, poor camera, nice software)

I've admired HTCs for a long time but have never owned one. Have read a lot of mixed reviews of the M9. Camera wouldn't bother me too much.

My dad got an S6 recently which I played around with. It's very nice but I'm not mad about TouchWiz and the battery is apparently pretty weak.

The Sony looks good but is a bit of a boring option coming from the Z3.

I'm leaning slightly toward the M9 but still haven't fully convinced myself. With the contract I'm looking at, they will all be similarly priced. Want to decide by Friday in case there are any good deals for Black Friday.

Any thoughts/suggestions?

Zombienosh

Out of those 3 options I'd lean towards the HTC, I was a Samsung user until last year I moved to a HTC and after using a few, I'd never go back to a Samsung. Even the lower/mid range HTC's are fairly nice, they make samsungs feel cheap in comparison.

littlejp

Zombienosh wrote: »

Out of those 3 options I'd lean towards the HTC, I was a Samsung user until last year I moved to a HTC and after using a few, I'd never go back to a Samsung. Even the lower/mid range HTC's are fairly nice, they make samsungs feel cheap in comparison.

Thanks. Definitely leaning that way. Like the look of the Dot View covers for the m9 too.

drunkmonkey

Z5, it trumps the others at so many things.

littlejp

drunkmonkey wrote: »

Z5, it trumps the others at so many things.

Have you got one? How's the battery?

drunkmonkey

littlejp wrote: »

Have you got one? How's the battery?

No had 2 x Z3's, one was stolen and i've broken the screen in the other 3 times...i'm going to get insurance next time round.

Great phone though, camera, battery, waterproof, hd audio, they really are brilliant phones.
Want to upgrade to a z5 premium but with 3 and there not selling it.

drunkmonkey

littlejp wrote: »

Have you got one? How's the battery?

Battery is unreal, it's the stand out feature, the compact version has the best battery.

shocksy

I personally wouldn't touch a Sony phone, full of bloatware, worse than Samsung, enough to stay away from them, shocking amount of garbage preloaded and can't be uninstalled.

HTC was the best decision I ever made. Never looked back since. Great battery life, smooth running system unlike Samsung.

Flaccus

drunkmonkey wrote: »

Z5, it trumps the others at so many things.

I guess it depends what you value in a smartphone. For me was how it felt in the hand, how it looked, and of course the camera.

I returned my Z5 and went back to my S6.

Z5 had better video, better speakers and slightly better UI. And of course expandable storage - handy for videos, pics but not not useful for apps. Also other pluses are waterproof, dustproof etc and ps4 support. All great stuff. The battery was awesome too.

But my S6 still took better pics in general, launched camera faster, better amoled 1440p screen which just pops, wireless charging and has the fastest SOC and memory performance on any android smartphone if that matters to people. I benchmark a lot. Don't know why

Neither lagged (regardless of touchwiz) or got overly hot but I still got rid of the S6 over Samsung's decision to save on battery life by enforcing aggressive memory management. And the battery in general sucks eggs on the s6. Actually now that I think about it, I also hate the fact it installs probably more bloatware than the Z5 ever did.

I had the M9 before these 2, and found it had the best UI of all and had the least amount of bloat ware. Also easy to unlock the boot loader and root. Fantastic build quality too. I rate it above the S6 and Z5 on that, with the only minus being the speaker grilles are actually plastic though they feel like metal. I had the gold version. Unfortunately I had it day1, and the camera at that stage still sucked. I found the screen pretty good despite the less than stellar reviews. If I could have got along with the camera I would have kept the M9.

I reckon the OP should weigh up what's important to him in a smartphone and decide between the M9, Z5, S6 and even consider the LG G4. Maybe look at the One Plus range also. For me I am moving onto the 6P.

littlejp

drunkmonkey wrote: »

Battery is unreal, it's the stand out feature, the compact version has the best battery.

Just reading up on the Compact version and now I have 4 phones to choose from! Thanks a lot

Flaccus

drunkmonkey wrote: »

No had 2 x Z3's, one was stolen and i've broken the screen in the other 3 times...i'm going to get insurance next time round.

Great phone though, camera, battery, waterproof, hd audio, they really are brilliant phones.
Want to upgrade to a z5 premium but with 3 and there not selling it.

The premium looks good but expensive. It's interesting how android doesn't support 4k natively (2k max) so when you use the premium to watch a 4k video on youtube, you can only select 1080p on youtube but the z5 will then upscale the video to 4k. I'm still not even sure I can tell the difference between 4k and 1080p though, let alone 4k and 2k.

I think Sony made a smart move by only allowing 4k to be used for video and photos and use 1080p the rest of the time. Battery life of 2 days I believe.

drunkmonkey

I don't buy into the 4k thing at all, i've a 1080p kuro tv and haven't seen a new 4k one with a better picture yet.
On the camera though, I print a lot of my photos and I do see the quality coming through on the sony. I know what you mean when you say the pictures pop on the samsung but that's the screen. It's woefully hard to get a screen on a phone or tv that gives you correct black and white.
I have a matt screen on my laptop as it's a lot easier to get white correct, the glossier screen made the pictures pop at the time and was cheaper but the matt gave me the best accuracy when printing.

Flaccus

drunkmonkey wrote: »

I don't buy into the 4k thing at all, i've a 1080p kuro tv and haven't seen a new 4k one with a better picture yet.
On the camera though, I print a lot of my photos and I do see the quality coming through on the sony. I know what you mean when you say the pictures pop on the samsung but that's the screen. It's woefully hard to get a screen on a phone or tv that gives you correct black and white.
I have a matt screen on my laptop as it's a lot easier to get white correct, the glossier screen made the pictures pop at the time and was cheaper but the matt gave me the best accuracy when printing.

I never got to try Sony's clear image zoom. Is it effective ?

And by the way, if you don't buy into 4k how come you were hankering for the premium ? Does it have extra features over the 4k panel.

I think 4k is good if you have the source and the tv big enough to take advantage of the extra detail. Image quality will always be better on plasma. I restrict 4k to my PC gaming really.

littlejp

For anyone that's interested, I went with the Galaxy S6. Got it for free on Black Friday. It's a great phone. Amazing screen, good camera. It's a bit slippy though. Have ordered a cover but the delivery of it has been delayed so I'm terrified of dropping it in the meantime. The only negative so far is the battery life. Fairly heavy user so have to charge it at least once during the day. No big deal at work really and it does charge very fast which takes some of the annoyance away. Might get a decent portable charger just in case. Apart from that I'm very happy with it.