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iPhone 4 vs Samsung Galaxy S II

We think Samsung’s Galaxy S II was the true show-stealer of this year’s Mobile World Congress. It’s a shame HTC didn’t give us anything that could stand up to both the current iPhone and its forthcoming rumour-magnet of a sequel. So what will the Galaxy S II offer us when it arrives in the UK, and how does the current year-old iPhone stack up?

Samsung Galaxy S II

Samsung have invested so much into this phone, and it shows. It eclipsed the rest of their mid-range Galaxy phones, and grabbed more attention than their tablet sequel, the Galaxy Tab 10.1.

But it’s not hard to see why, the thin-thin-thin shape, currently holding the title of World’s Thinnest Phone, measuring 8.49mm, trouncing the iPhone 4’s 9.3mm silhouette. Fatty.

Regardless of its size constraints, Samsung have still managed to cram in a flavour-of-the-month dual-core processor, promising huge leaps in app loading and web browsing speeds. The jury’s out on whether we’ll truly see a huge improvement immediately on dual-core phones, though.

There’s also the much-lauded SAMOLED plus screen, promising to be all-out better than the Galaxy S’s original AMOLED screen; brighter, less reflective and less energy hungry. It still doesn’t managed to catch up to the iPhone’s eye-bleeding retina display when it comes to pure technical pixel stats, Samsung’s 480×800 is soundly trounced by the iPhone’s 640×900.

Samsung’s camera credentials also have Apple on the ropes; a eight-megapixel beast rear-facing, capable of true HD recording (1080p) has been paired with a substantial two-megapixel front-facing camera for video-chat. Compared to the iPhone 4’s VGA front camera, and ageing five-megapixel rear camera, and its Samsung’s win.

There’s been plenty of new developments since iPhone 4 was unleashed to the world, and one gathering pace is NFC; something that the Galaxy S II can come with or without. That is, it will be available in some, but not all, of the Galaxy S II phones. We assume this’ll be dependent on country, and NFC infrastructure.

iPhone 4

Still the undisputed king of smartphones, winning BEst Mobile Device at this year’s Globad Mobile Awards 2011 in Barcelona. Though it’s no spring chicken anymore, the iPhone boast that retina screen, outperforming the Galaxy S II on numbers, though we’d like to give them a proper comparison when Samsung’s phone is finally released.

Although the iPhone’s camera may not have the biggest resolution, it can still respectably pump out 720p HD video, and can be easily edited on Apple’s iMovie software. Samsung will need to have some sort of editing function to compete with this.

We believe that Apple’s iOS is still stronger than Android. In the face of the sheer breadth of customisation open to Android users, iOS is still more reliable, and we feel the iTunes store is still a better experience than the now web-based Android Market.

The final, major point is that the iPhone’s successor is coming,and if you believe at least some of the rumour and hype, it could come with a power boost, spec boost, NFC, a bigger screen, and or a whole load of things we haven’t even guessed at.

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