Samsung Galaxy S4 or iPhone 5 - which should you get?
The Galaxy S4 and iPhone 5 are the most successful phones Samsung and Apple have produced. They have sold millions of handsets across the world, and will go on to sell millions more.If you’re at the end of you contract, there’s a good chance you’ll be looking at buying one of these phones. But which is right for you? Let’s take a closer look.
Samsung Galaxy S4 vs iPhone 5 - Video Comparison
Samsung Galaxy S4 vs iPhone 5 – Price and deals
Samsung Galaxy S4 – 16GB only, From £32 a monthiPhone 5 – 16GB: from £33 a month
There are hundreds of contract deals available for the Galaxy S4 and iPhone 5, and they change from month to month. However, at present the phones sell at very similar prices.
Over at Carphone Warehouse, both the Galaxy S4 and iPhone 5 are available for free on contracts of £33 a month and up. Any lower than that and you'll have to pay an up-front fee for the phone.
Go SIM-free and the Galaxy S4 is slightly more expensive in places. The 'RRP' for the Samsung phone is £579.99, while the 16GB iPhone 5 costs £529 direct from Apple. However, shop around and you can find the Galaxy S4 for a shade less than the iPhone - at the time of writing you can get the phone for £499.99 from Amazon. You'll rarely find a new iPhone selling for much less than Apple's asking price.
Samsung Galaxy S4 vs iPhone 5 - Design
Samsung Galaxy S4 – 7.7mm thick, plastic reariPhone 5 – 7.6mm thick, aluminium rear
Unlike comparing the Samsung Galaxy S4 with its Android rivals, where body shapes and sizes are similar at this high-end level, the Galaxy S4 and iPhone 5 are completely different.
It may sound trivial, but one of the most important design differences is that the Galaxy S4 is over 1cm wider than the iPhone 5. This makes it much trickier to grasp reliably than the iPhone, which is intended to fit comfortably into the hand of just about anyone.
When changing the design from the iPhone 4S to the iPhone 5, Apple elongated the screen rather than making it any wider for precisely this reason.
Although the Galaxy S4 is much larger than the iPhone 5, it’s not actually any thicker – well it’s 0.1mm thicker, but even in the slimness-obsessed phone world that’s not worth crowing about.
The Samsung Galaxy S4 has a curvier body than the iPhone, which feels harder and more severe thanks to its aluminium shell and immaculate bevelled edges. Conversely, there’s no metal on the Galaxy S4’s exterior.
Its front is top-notch Gorilla Glass, but the rest is plastic. The phone uses a removable plastic battery cover that is frequently criticised for being flimsy or cheap-feeling.
There are a few upsides to a removable cover, though. It lets Samsung bung-in a microSD memory card slot easily and means you can replace the rear part if it gets damaged or scratched.
Replacing the housing of an iPhone 5 with an unofficial repairer online will cost you £150. A replacement battery cover for the S4 can be had for a few quid from eBay.
Samsung Galaxy S4 vs iPhone 5 - Screen
Samsung Galaxy S4 – 1080p, 4.99-inch Super AMOLEDiPhone 5 – 640 x 1136 pixel, 4-inch IPS
The Galaxy S4 and iPhone stick to the screen technologies used by their predecessors. The iPhone 5 uses IPS, the Galaxy S4 AMOLED.
Both are huge improvements on the screens of their predecessors. Where the Galaxy S3 display was a bit dim and seemed a lot less sharp than it should have been, given its resolution, thanks to its PenTile screen type, the Galaxy S4 display is super-bright and super-sharp.
We had no real complaints about the iPhone 4S display when it was the ‘current’ iPhone, but the iPhone 5 screen makes it look a little dull, with much-improved contrast and more vivid colours.
They’re more significant generational steps-up than we were expecting – but how do they fare head-to-head? That comparison is a lot trickier.
The iPhone 5 has more natural-looking colours, while the Galaxy S4 has better contrast in low-light conditions. Although the Galaxy S4 has uses a much higher resolution, and has higher pixel density, there’s not a great difference in sharpness, though.
As both these screens are bonafide winners, the most important difference is in size, not screen quality.
The 4.99-inch display of the Galaxy is much better than the 4-incher of the iPhone 5 for playing games or watching films. We’re not totally on-board with ever-expanding mobile screens, but switching between the two, the iPhone 5 does feel flat-out small.
What you need to do it weigh-up the entertainment benefits of the Samsung’s large screen next to the negative practical issues of such a large phone.
Samsung Galaxy S4 vs iPhone 5 - Storage
Samsung Galaxy S4 – 16GB baseline, microSD slotiPhone 5 – 16GB baseline, 32GB and 64GB models available, non-expandable
If you’re a big video or TV episode consumer, storage matters. The iPhone 5 comes in 16GB, 32GB and 64GB varieties, while the Galaxy S4 is only widely available as a 16GB model in the UK.
There’s a reason why the 32GB and 64GB Galaxy S4 editions on sale elsewhere don’t get much traction in the UK, though – the microSD memory card slot.
This lets you expand the memory by an additional 32GB for less than £20. To upgrade from the 16GB iPhone 5 to the 64GB version, you’re looking at spending an extra £170.
What is worth noting, though, is that the Galaxy S4 won’t let you install apps to the memory card – it’s best to leave microSD card storage for photos, videos or music.
Samsung Galaxy S4 vs iPhone 5 - CPU and GPU
Samsung Galaxy S4 – Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 1.9GHz CPU, 2GB RAM,iPhone 5 – Apple A6 dual-core 1.2GHz, 1GB RAM, PowerVR SGX 543 GPU
Before the phone launched, it was believed that the Galaxy S4 would be the first eight-core phone. However, that version is not on sale in the UK. We can only get our hands on the more ordinary-sounding quad-core edition, which has a Snapdragon 600 1.9GHz processor.
It may not sound as impressive as the ‘octo-core’ edition, but both trump the positively passé dual-core processor of the iPhone 5.
The iPhone 5 processor is not to be underestimated, though. Its cores use the advanced Cortex-A15 architecture, and performance is solid – even when compared to more powerful-sounding quad-core rivals. The Galaxy S4 is still the clear winner, though.
Here’s how some of their benchmark scores compare:
Sunspider (lower is better)
iPhone 5: 915ms
Galaxy S4: 855ms
AnTuTu
iPhone 5: 18,000
Galaxy S4: 21,000
Geekbench shows the iPhone 5 is arguably closer in performance to the S3 than the S4
Geekbench
iPhone 5: 1650
Galaxy S4: 3163
Samsung’s phone is more powerful across the board, whether judging javascript performance or more general productivity/gaming prowess.
This is not surprising, though. The iPhone 5 is a more direct competitor to the Galaxy S3 than the Galaxy S4. We’ll see Apple catch up with this year’s iPhone 5S, but for now the Galaxy S4 is the power king.
Samsung Galaxy S4 vs iPhone 5 - Software
Samsung Galaxy S4 – Android 4.2 with TouchWiziPhone 5 – iOS 6.1
That the difference in raw power won’t matter all that much to people becomes clear when you get hands-on with the phones’ software. The systems they use, and the way those systems operate, is completely different.
The Samsung Galaxy S4 uses a customised version of Android Jelly Bean. The custom interface that Samsung lays on top is called TouchWiz, and it looks and feels just like the one seen in the Galaxy S3 – it will seem familiar to Galaxy veterans.
TouchWiz is full of extra features. However, we did find that they tend to slow Android down a little, with a little more lag evident in transitions and app loading than we’d expect with a vanilla Android phone with a CPU this fast – or with an iPhone 5.
The iPhone is still that bit quicker, and it is in part down to the way iOS works. It doesn’t allow apps to run freely whenever they like in the background, which is what commonly causes battery life and performance issues in Android phones.
It is quick, but the iPhone 5’s iOS software is starting to look pretty dated.
The Galaxy S4 is a bit temperamental and iOS is long in the tooth – but there are solutions on the way. There’s a ‘Google edition’ of the Galaxy S4 on the way, which replaces the TouchWiz version of the phone’s software with a completely vanilla edition. And iOS 7 is coming soon too. It’s being designed by Jonathan Ive, brainchild of most of Apple’s hardware. It’s likely to look and feel extremely stylish.
For more on the extra features found in the Galaxy S4, read our top TouchWiz features article.
Samsung Galaxy S4 vs iPhone 5 - Camera
Samsung Galaxy S3 -13-megapixel sensor, LED flashiPhone 5 – 8-megapixel sensor LED flash
The Samsung Galaxy S4 has more megapixels than the iPhone 5, with a 13-megapixel sensor in place of an 8-megapixel one. But is it better?
The difference is not as great as you might expect. When looking at pixel level, the Galaxy S4’s pictures have a little more detail, and a little less noise in good lighting. However, the actual quality of the photos when viewed at normal sizes is roughly comparable.
Let’s take a closer look at a few photos taken with the cameras.
iPhone 5 London scene
Galaxy S4 London scene
Pixel level comparion
This shot comparison gives the clearest indication of the sort of detail difference you can expect from the cameras in reasonable light. The Samsung Galaxy S4 renders some fine details far more successfully.
Check out the foreground building in the pixel level comparison. In the Galaxy S4 shot, the architectural lines between floors are clear, where they are reduced to mush by the iPhone 5. Similarly, there's far greater detail in the lines of the Gherkin, and the scaffolding in the shot.
iPhone 5 close-up test
Galaxy S4 close-up test
Pixel level comparison
In this second test, we tried to get up close and personal with the subject, to see how capable the phones are at macro-style photography. To start, the Galaxy S4 was much happier to focus close-up - the iPhone 5 had to be held back a little further to focus correctly.
Both phones manage a limited shallow depth of field effect, which is where the background appears blurred, bringing the subject into tighter focus. Of the two, the iPhone 5 makes a better job of bringing out the subject in question, the purple flower.
Zooming in to pixel level we see that while the iPhone 5's image is noisier, the Galaxy S4 doesn't render significantly more detail in the stamen, which was our exact point of focus.
Here we come to the crux of the problem - in difficult photographic situations, the Galaxy S4 won't fare much better than the lower-resolution iPhone 5 because the camera sensor sizes are roughly the same.
One of the main reasons why a DSLR camera can take much better photos than a phone is because it uses a larger sensor. The sensor is the part that takes in light, and a larger sensor lets it reap more light in the same exposure duration. More light equals more accurate and detailed pictures.
Software is also an important part of any phone camera.
The Samsung Galaxy S4 has many more modes, filters and effects than the iPhone 5, which has only HDR and panorama. If you want to have fun with your camera, the Galaxy S4 is where it's at - although plenty of iPhone apps that do similar things are available.
To see whether the built-in processing is of much use, we checked out these cameras' HDR modes.
iPhone 5 HDR demo
iPhone 5 HDR demo
From a quick glance, the iPhone 5's shot appears more lively, with greater contrast, and image 'pop'. However, judging the HDR function alone, the Samsung Galaxy S4 is more successful.
Check out the trimmed bush to the right of the shot, and the greenery at the rear. More foliage detail is brought out of the shadows in the Galaxy S4's photo. The exposure of the sky is a little more even in the Samsung shot too, even if all it does is to emphasise quite how drab a day we're recreating here.
The Samsung Galaxy S4 is the camera winner, but not by quite as great a margin as we'd have liked. Let's hope the iPhone 5S does more than catch up with the Galaxy S4.
Verdict
Several aspects show up that the iPhone 5 is a phone of last year, while the Galaxy S4 is absolutely a phone that belongs in 2013. It’s much more powerful, its camera has a full five extra megapixels at its disposal and it doesn’t even cost any more. In truth, the extras mean little in practise because there are far greater differences at work here than pure specs.Forgetting the elements that make this comparison a case of 'apples and oranges', the Galaxy S4 is clearly mode advanced in most respects.
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