Hi everyone, Scott Lewis here for Wirefly.
Today I’m here to bring you a cellphone schmackdown between HTC’s Droid DNA and
Samsung’s Galaxy S III.
We’re going to be going through three rounds and the first round is going to be design,
the second round specs and the third is the camera round.
So let’s go ahead and dig into round one the design round.
I wanted to start out round one by talking about the displays of the phones.
The Droid DNA has a five inch 1080p Super LCD3 display with screen resolution of 1080x1920.
That gives and overall pixel density of 441 pixels per inch.
The Galaxy S III doesn’t have a 1080p display although it is a very solid display, it is
a 4.8 inch Super AMOLED display with screen resolution of 720x1280, which gives it an
overall pixel density of 306 pixels per inch.
Looking at sample pictures and videos on the two displays, I really noticed a difference
with the 1080p display, especially when you were looking at all of the detail images that
seemed to come in a little crisper and sharper on the Droid DNA.
Now this next part let’s go ahead and talk about the actual physical design of the phone.
The Droid DNA comes with a soft touch plastic back, almost like a rubber feel, while the
Galaxy S III has a shiny plastic back.
They are both plastic, but this has the soft touch versus the shiny look.
With the Droid DNA you really only have one choice in color combinations without adding
a case.
You have the black look with the red accents around the phone.
It’s up on the power button and the volume button on the side here.
The Galaxy S III, well this one happens to be the white edition, comes in a couple different
colors.
You have an option for black, brown, blue or white with Verizon Wireless.
Something to keep in mind is that, the Galaxy S III also has the removable back plate that
you can replace and get all kinds of different colors if there’s a specific color you’re
looking for.
There are smart covers that even have the little fold over flap that you replace the
back and it changes the complete color of the phone, so that’s an option, because
it has a removable back.
The Droid DNA does not have a removable back cover, actually it has an integrated battery
also, so you can’t take the backplate off and you can’t replace the battery yourself.
The integrated batter on the DNA is a 2020 million amp hour battery, while the removable
battery on the Galaxy S III is a 2100 million amp hour battery.
One other thing that is under the removable back cover is the expansion slot for a microSD
card.
With the DNA you don’t have the option to expand it with a microSD card, so the memory
that comes on the phone is all that you get.
With the Galaxy S III you can add additional memory.
The overall thickness is very similar, that’s about one millimeter difference.
The Droid DNA is 9.73 millimeters thick, while the Galaxy S III here is 8.6 millimeters thick.
There is not a huge difference just one millimeter and because they both have a tapered design,
you really can’t tell the difference and they really don’t feel like they’re very
thick phones.
They both are very easy to use and very easy to put in your pocket or in your purse.
When talking weight of the phone, both phones are very similar in weight, there’s a one
ounce difference.
The Droid DNA is 4.8 ounces, where the Galaxy S III is 4.7 ounces.
I don’t there’s a real noticeable difference in the overall thickness or in the weight
of the phones.
Those are all the cosmetic differences between the Galaxy S III and the Droid DNA, so the
last part of the design round is going to be software.
Both of the phones are running Android 4.1, but they both have a different user interface.
The Droid DNA is running HTC Sense 4+ user interface which is very smooth and very easy
to use.
It rotates all the way around, so you can keep doing all the way through your home screens,
so I like that as a feature.
The Galaxy S III is running Samsung’s TouchWiz user interface, which is also very smooth
and very easy to use.
It also rotates all the way around, so I like the user interface on the Galaxy S III as
well.
The menus also go side-to-side and it’s very easy to use, very easy to find all your
different applications, there’s a little spot for widgets and it’s a very easy to
use user interface.
The TouchWiz user interface also has some very nice shortcuts that allow you to access
some different applications with different gestures.
I actually prefer the TouchWiz user interface.
I think it’s a little bit smoother and little bit more refined than the HTC Sense 4+.
While the display on the DNA is better than the Galaxy S III, I think the overall color
options and removable options and expandability that you have on the Galaxy S III paired with
the TouchWiz user interface gives the overall win for the round one design round to the
Samsung Galaxy S III.
Let’s go ahead and dig into round two now.
Round two is going to be about specks and benchmarks.
Right off the bat, the Galaxy S III has a dual-core 1.5GHz processor, 2GB of processor
RAM and comes with two different storage options of 16 or 32GB.
The Droid DNA has a quad-core processor and it’s also a 1.5GHz processor, but it is
a quad-core versus a dual-core.
It has 2GB of processor RAM, but only comes with 16GB of onboard storage.
Let’s go ahead and put our hardware through a Quadrant Standard benchmark to see who wins.
The Quadrant Standard benchmark is going to test the CPU, the GPU or the graphics processor,
the memory in the phone and also the read-write speed to the storage.
I’m going to speed up the video real quick, so you can see them go through the Quadrant
Standard benchmark.
That was the Quadrant Standard benchmark in a little fast forward.
Let’s go ahead and pull up our results here.
That’s not surprising that the quad-core processor actually performed faster than the
dual-core processor.
Our overall score for the DNA is 8143, while the Galaxy S III has a score of 5154.
Our overall winner for the spec and benchmark round is going to be the HTC Droid DNA.
Let’s go ahead and dig into our last round the camera round.
We had round one going to the Galaxy S III and round two went to the DNA, so our camera
round is going to determine the winner.
When you’re looking at specs of the cameras they’re very similar.
They both have 8MP rear facing cameras with LED flash and on the front; the Galaxy S III
has a 1.9MP front facing camera, while the DNA has a 2.1MP front facing camera.
There is not a huge difference between front cameras as well as the exact same megapixels
on the rear.
Let’s go ahead and take a look at some sample photos that’ll determine our winner for
round three.
Sample one is a picture that I took in one of the offices here.
Now it was a little light condition, because I didn’t have the lights on, so no fluorescent
lighting and we didn’t use a flash.
There was a little bit of light coming in through the windows of the office, but all
in all it was a very low light picture.
So comparing these two photos I thought the Galaxy S III took a brighter photo that showed
more detail on the table and on the chairs.
Let’s go ahead and take a look at sample two.
Sample two is in a stairwell that I used when I walk down to the Wirefly studio.
I thought this would be a perfect low light picture and once again I took without a flash.
The Galaxy S III also came out brighter and the actual color was more that almond color
versus the yellowish color that you get with the Droid DNA’s phone.
Overall I’d say the Galaxy S III takes better low light photos than the Droid DNA.
Let’s go ahead and move onto sample three.
Sample three is a photo that I took outside the Wirefly building here and I thought both
phones took a very high quality photo.
You can see the colors are very accurate and very true and almost identical from phone
to phone.
It looks like both the DNA and the Galaxy S III will take a good outside photo.
Those were the three sample photos that we took with Droid DNA and the Galaxy S III and
for our winner for round three; I’d have to give the slight advantage to the Galaxy
S III for taking better low light photos.
I think both phones performed very well in outdoors photos, but the low light photos
definitely were better on the Galaxy S III.
With the round three win for the Galaxy S III, which means the Galaxy S III win s our
schmackdown today.
Both phones are both high quality phones that I would highly recommend to anyone looking
to buy a new smartphone right now, especially for Verizon Wireless.
Now the Galaxy S III does have an advantage, it is available for some other carriers as
well, so if you have Sprint or T-Mobile or AT&T, you can get the Galaxy S III for any
of those carriers, but the Droid DNA is only available for Verizon Wireless.
Both of these phones are available on Wirefly.com.
I would highly recommend you check out our great prices and if you’re interested to
know how much these phones cost, I’ve included some links in the description.
Thanks for tuning into our cellphone schmackdown today.
My name’s Scott Lewis for Wirefly, thanks for watching.