Samsung looks to steal Apple’s thunder as Galaxy Alpha goes on sale

With Apple unveiling the iPhone 6 this week, all three main smartphone manufacturers now have their flagship, bigger screen handsets on sale.

But which should you buy? All three are amazing pieces of technology, with amazing features, cutting edge software and more apps than you can shake a stick at – but it’s a lot of money to shell out if you’re not sure.

Here’s our guide to the strengths and weaknesses of the iPhone 6, Samsung Galaxy S5 and HTC One M8.

Screen

The big sell on the new iPhone 6 is the increased screen size, but how does it square up with its rivals?

The iPhone 6 still has the smallest of the three phones here. If you’re looking for a really big screen, there’s still the iPhone 6 Plus – but that’ll cost more.

The iPhone keeps the 326 pixels-per-inch pixel density of the iPhone 5, but say the new Retina HD display has better contrast ratio and viewing angle.

The iPhone 5 screen was no slouch as far as the screen was concerned, but side-by-side with the S5 and M8, it looks bit less sharp. Although the iPhone has an IPS screen, which is typically less rich than the Super AMOLED displays in the S5 and M8, people who’ve had hands on access to Apple’s phone have reported it looks pretty glorious. One reviewer even said he thought he’d been given a dummy model to play with.

Software

iPhone 6 is expected to ship with the latest update of Apple’s mobile operating system, iOS 8. The S5 comes with Android Kit Kat, with Samsung’s custom front-end over the top. The M8 gives the option of HTC’s custom Android Kit Kat build, or Windows Phone 8.1.

This really comes down to personal preference, but f you’re invested in the Apple ‘ecosystem’ – particularly if you have a lot of music and video in iTunes – your life will be much easier with an iPhone. While iOS is less customisable than Android, it’s solid and beautifully designed. The quality and range on offer Apple’s App Store still eclipses both Google’s Play store and the woeful Windows Phone App Store – and multi-platform apps frequently turn up on iOS first.

Build

The aluminium and glass constructed iPhone 6 manages to be thinner than every previous iPhone – and only a few grams heavier than the ultra-light iPhone 5S. The HTC One M8 also has a solid feeling metal construction, but is a full 31g heavier and more than 3mm thicker.

Even though it’s build of slightly flimsy feeling plastic, the Galaxy S5 is both thicker and heavier than iPhone 6.

That combined with the world renowned Apple attention to detail make it hard to recommend anything other than iPhone 6 where build quality is concerned.

The iPhone 6 and HTC One M8 are both available in gold, silver and grey. The Galaxy S5 comes in black, white, blue or gold.

Camera

The iPhone 6 camera is still 8MP – on the face of it, a bit of a slouch compared to the 16MP camera on the S5. But the pixel numbers are only part of the story.

The M8 has a “4 Ultrapixel” camera – Ultrapixel is a made up marketing word meaning the M8 has less pixels but they’re bigger, which theoretically makes them better at capturing light. It may make smaller images, but the quality is amazing, and the lens included is industry-leading.

And iPhone 6 has improved image stabilisation (making low light pictures much sharper), focus pixels (which enable quicker autofocus) and a new sensor which Apple say vastly improves on earlier models.

The S5 has a selective focus function, which can be a little slow, but glean pretty amazing results if you’re looking for images with sharp foregrounds and blurred backgrounds.

It’ll be tough to tell which camera takes the best photos until we can directly compare them, but none of these phones has a camera you’d complain about.

Video

The iPhone 6 and M8 both shoot video in 1080p, whereas the S5 shoots in 4K resolution.

The 6 has the more impressive image stabilisation function – which is improved yet further if you spring for the 6 Plus. It also takes slow motion video at 240fps, double the rate of the Galaxy 5S

Storage

The iPhone 6 comes with 16GB, 32GB or 128GB on board storage, which is not upgradeable. Apple’s iCloud service – which can now store all your music, photos and home videos in the cloud for near-instant retrieval over WiFi – means that on board storage is perhaps less crucial than in previous years. You don’t have to carry your entire music or photo library around with you, just in case.

Both the HTC and Samsung phones have a Micro SD card slot allowing you to upgrade the 16GB or 32GB onboard by up to 128GB. If you’re looking for flexibility, Android and Windows phones are what you’re after.

Performance

Apple famously hates to talk numbers as far as processor and memory are concerned. It’s understandable, because clock speeds are fairly meaningless when comparing phones with different operating systems.

It’s hard to get a handle on which of these phones is the fastest, but what we can say is that none of them could be considered slow when running the latest software. Each iPhone update is noticably faster than the previous generation, and we expect the iPhone 6’s 64bit A8 chip to be no exception.

One-handed mode

One of the problems with asking for a bigger screen is that it’s unlikely you’ll get a bigger thumb with it. Both Android and iOS have solutions for this.

Android shrinks the whole display slightly so it all fits under your thumb, whereas iOS scrolls everything down a bit so you can reach the top line of icons. Both are inelegant solutions made necessary by the desire for slightly ungainly devices, but they work as well as they can.

Remote control

The Samsung Galaxy S5 comes with an “infra-red blaster” – which lets you use your phone as a universal remote control for your telly.

Apple presumably considers this analogue technology with faint derision, and unworthy of inclusion on their devices.

On the other hand, assuming you’re deep within the Apple ecosystem, you can use the Remote app to control your Apple TV, or iTunes on your Mac.

Price

The networks haven’t announced their subsidised pricing for iPhone 6 yet, but we can do a comparison of the off-contract pricing, which should give an idea.

Off Contract Price

The iPhone’s definitely more costly – but that’s to be expected for a brand new phone. That said, iPhones off-contract don’t tend to drop in price until the next model comes out. It’ll be interesting to see what the networks come up with.