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 as we compare design, features, speakers and software.
Samsung Galaxy S4 vs iPhone 5 – Price and deals
Samsung Galaxy S4 – 16GB only, From £32 a month
iPhone 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 rear
iPhone 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.
Samsung Galaxy S4 vs iPhone 5 – Internal Speaker
Samsung Galaxy S4 – Mono, rear-mounted
iPhone 5 – Mono, rear-mounted
Unlike the HTC One, neither the Galaxy S4 or iPhone 5 put all that much focus on their internal speakers. Both have rear-mounted drivers that point away from you.
The iPhone 5’s speaker grilles are found on its bottom edge, put most out of view, next to the Lightning port. Cleverly, there are two grilles to help you avoid muffling the speaker with your hand.
The Galaxy S4’s speaker output has even less ceremony to it – there’s a grille cut into the bottom-left of the plastic battery cover.
But which sounds better? The iPhone 5 speaker goes that bit louder, but the Galaxy S4 copes much better at higher volumes, where the iPhone 5 starts to sound a little strained nearing top volume.
Both phones output mono sound, though, so aren’t all that great to listen to movies with.
Samsung Galaxy S4 vs iPhone 5 - Screen
Samsung Galaxy S4 – 1080p, 4.99-inch Super AMOLED
iPhone 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 slot
iPhone 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.
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 TouchWiz
iPhone 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.
Samsung Galaxy S4 vs iPhone 5 - Camera
Samsung Galaxy S3 -13-megapixel sensor, LED flash
iPhone 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.
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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