HTC Desire HD vs. Samsung Galaxy S

Aesthetics

The Galaxy S measures in at 122 x 64 x 9.9mm (118g) and is quite iPhone-esque in its appearance, despite being 1mm thicker. Whether or not this is a good thing depends entirely on your own personal tastes. It didn’t really bother us that much when we had one in to test – the iPhone, after all, is a good-looking device.

However, the same cannot be said for the Galaxy S’s build quality, which is probably best described as “plasticky” or if we were being really harsh, "cheap." Obviously, this isn't a good thing and has cost the Galaxy S dearly in this context.

The Desire HD on the other hand looks every inch the premium smartphone with its unibody aluminium chassis. It’s also bigger than the Galaxy S at 123 x 68 x 11.8 mm and weighs quite a bit more at 164g – it is a lot more solid, though, with it's unibody. And while it may be heavier, we don't think this is such a bad thing as it certainly looks better for it in our opinion.

All in all, we have to take our hats off to HTC in this respect. Sure the Desire HD is heavier, but when you take into account the differences in build quality who, exactly, is going to be bothered about a measly 0.46g? Not us!

Verdict – Desire HD

Display

As we said earlier, both these devices are BIG and, therefore, have big screens, which make them an obvious choice for users demanding excellence in browsing and media.

The Galaxy S uses a 4-inch Super AMOLED (480 x 800 pixels) display. The HTC Desire HD, on the other hand, has a significantly larger 4.3- inch (480 x 800 WVGA) LCD display.

So, which is best? LCD or SUPER AMOLED? Well, this is quite a difficult one to qualify, as some people will generally prefer Super AMOLED and others will be LCD all the way – both screen types have their positives and negatives.

For instance, Super AMOLED is a lot brighter and has deeper blacks than LCD, as well as the ability to view the entire screen from all angles, which are all pretty big positives.

Unlike Super AMOLED, LCD is backlit and therefore displays colours differently; we find them slightly muted when compared to the brighter Super AMOLED displays. That said, LCD does perform better in bright conditions making it better for outside use.

All in all, this is a massively tough call, but we’re going with the Desire HD – not because the screen is better, but because it performs better in bright conditions and is larger at 4.3-inches.

Verdict – Desire HD

Operating System

According to reports, the Samsung Galaxy S is getting updated to Android 2.2 by the end of September. So this means that when the Desire HD launches in early October, both devices will be available on the latest iteration of Google’s mobile OS, which means there’s no way, other than UIs (which we’ll look at next), to really separate the two handsets in this respect.

Verdict – Draw

UI

We’ve always been massive fans of HTC’s Sense UI. It has everything (and more) you’d expect from a modern smartphone interface and is probably the only UI on the planet that gives Apple’s iPhone UI and absolute pasting.

And with the latest version of Sense UI that’s present on the HTC Desire HD, HTC has once again raised the bar with the inclusion of htcsense.com, rapid boot-up time, cached map data for instant loading, DLNA, unified inbox, digital orientation and the ability to be more selective with what data it pulls from the web.

In short, HTC’s Sense UI takes some beating and unfortunately for Samsung, TouchWiz 3.0 just isn’t up to job. Don’t get us wrong, TouchWiz is still a brilliant UI, it just lacks the finesse of HTC’s Sense UI. For instance, TouchWiz is great for social networking, customisation, navigation and widgets, much like Sense. But what it does lack is the same overall level of quality that is found on HTC’s Sense UI. In short, Sense is a significantly more pleasant looking and intuitive UI to use on a day-to-day basis.

Verdict – Desire HD

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