HTC One vs Sony Xperia Z

Introduction

Seriously, we got like a thousand tips. So here it is - the HTC One vs the Sony Xperia Z battle of the gorgeous-looking flagships.

Both devices are the crucial points in their respective manufacturer's struggles to turn their fortunes around. The Sony Xperia Z and HTC One come with different skill sets but generally tend to appeal to the same group of users. Design conscious multimedia-addicts, who need top notch performance and value a streamlined interface over an endless number of features scattered around.

Of course, each of the two contestants has its own unique talents. The One will certainly be a favorite to those that have a soft spot for sweet audio - both through headphones and speakers. The Xperia Z on the other hand will certainly win the hearts of the outdoorsy, adventurous types who will love the fact that water and dust resistance no longer equals an entry-level feature set.

So let's see who draws first blood.

HTC One over Sony Xperia Z

·         Super LCD3 display with 469ppi density

·         Aluminum unibody

·         Optical Image Stabilization, image sensor with 2µm pixel size

·         Snapdragon 600 chipset

·         HTC Zoe, BlinkFeed

·         Front mounted stereo speakers, Beats Audio

·         IR blaster

·         Smaller footprint

Sony Xperia Z over HTC One

·         IP57 dust and water protection

·         Larger screen

·         All glass body

·         Higher resolution camera

·         microSD card support

·         Thinner body

It turns out the Sony Xperia Z and HTC One have quite a lot of differences, which are bound to give each of them an edge in some of the trials today. So it's shaping as an exciting matchup likely to resolve itself only after a fierce exchange of blows.

Going by the early sales estimates, it might be tempting to conclude that this is a fight for the second place as the Samsung Galaxy S4 is bound to beat both of these without breaking a sweat. Yet sales figures don't always mean a better smartphone and we can bet many will see their next dream handset emerge from this fight. After all, you probably won't get a more powerful water-resisting smartphone than the Xperia Z or a more visually appealing musically talented smartphone than the One.

   

HTC One and Sony Xperia Z

So back to the task at hand - each of these two smartphones is bound to win the few rounds that play exactly to its strengths, but there are plenty of fights hanging in the balance. Will the new low-res UltraPixel camera with OIS of the One beat the 13MP conventional snapper on the Xperia Z? And which of these beasts manages its battery better?

There's plenty to play for here, so let's get going. The first stop is hardware, right after the break.

Design and build quality

HTC and Sony both know how to make flagship devices with great looks and premium feel. The two companies took different approaches to the design, but the final result was great in both cases.

HTC has stuck to its guns, building a gapless unibody smartphone that is entirely made out of high-grade aluminum and feels impressively solid in the hand. The only part of the One that comes off is the SIM tray but even that requires a tool to operate.

Sony has put their best design ideas behind the Xperia Z and labeled it as precision engineered. The front and back panels of the smartphone are made out of tempered scratch-resistant glass that look stunning, even if they are not quite as solid when held in hand. The company also paid proper attention to details like the signature power button, which is specifically engineered for comfortable operation. The Xperia Z isn't a unibody construction but doesn't have a removable back cover, so accessing the battery is, again, a no-go.

HTC One and Xperia Z side by side

That said, the Sony Xperia Z design still holds a few important advantages over the HTC One unibody. The IP57 certification for water and dust resistance is the most prominent among those, but you shouldn't also forget the microSD card slot that allows for cheap and quick memory expansion. There's also the microSIM slot which can be operated without a sharp tool at hand, which might come in handy if you need to swap SIM cards on the go.

The HTC One has gone with a slightly smaller 4.7" screen, allowing it to retain a slightly slimmer footpint despite the dual-frontal speakers, each with its own Beats amplifier. The marketing term here is BoomSound and the benefits are easy to hear. The HTC One offers clearer and deeper sound than any device we've ever heard in the office and the placement of the speakers means watching videos or playing games will be a more immersive experience.

The HTC One's front

The Sony Xperia Z strikes back with a super slim 7.9mm waistline, which means it have a smaller overall volume despite its larger 5" screen. Of course, you should keep in mind that the Xperia Z's screen features on-screen buttons that take away from the real estate, but the software hides them in the gallery and video player, and while playing games so you get the extra space back where it counts.

The Sony Xperia Z's front

The HTC One isn't in the running for thinnest device but manages an acceptable 9.3 mm waistline. Its hardware controls do cause some usability issues though. The power button (which doubles as an IR emitter for controlling various appliances around your home) is located on top and is a rather hard to reach. The key itself is sitting pretty low and its press feedback is poor - traits shared with the volume rocker on the right side of the HTC One.

   

 The HTC One buttons aren't the easiest to operate

The sides of the smartphone have nice colored accents and feel almost unanimous to the finger until you open the flaps over the SIM, microUSB or microSD card slots, which are all covered with plastic flaps in order to fend of water and dusts.

 Sony Xperia Z from the side

The volume rocker consists of a thin and long button, while the power button is raised and falls comfortably under your thumb. Both buttons feel responsive and refined with good elevation and are fine-tuned to give out the right feedback.

Due to its sharp edges the Xperia Z feels very broad and is a bit unwieldy for those with small hands.

On the back of both devices you'll find the camera lenses complete with single LED flashes and secondary, noise-suppressing microphones. The HTC One has an arching design, which starts off slim at the extremes and grows thicker towards the center of the back. The Xperia Z relies on the same philosophy as on the front - flat minimal surface.

     

Both phones from the back

Winner: Sony Xperia Z. While we prefer the looks and the feel of the HTC One, the practical advantages of the Sony Xperia Z earn it the victory here. The IP57 certification, the microSD card slot, the easily swappable SIM slot and the more comfortable buttons outweigh the benefits of the aluminum unibody.

Screen comparison

Sony is among the first to bring a FullHD smartphone to market and made a big deal about mobile BRAVIA 2 engine that enhances the image quality. HTC didn't boast as much about its Super LCD3 technology but we can safely say that it speaks loudly for itself and we loved seeing it for the first time on the Butterfly and DROID DNA.

First, let's get the technical side of things out of the way for a moment. The HTC One sports a 4.7" Super LCD3 panel of 1080 x 1920 pixel resolution, resulting in the insanely-high 469 ppi density. The Xperia Z spreads the same resolution over a 5" diagonal and boasts 441 ppi. The difference in numbers is minor and downright impossible to detect in real-life usage. Both phones utilize conventional RGB matrices and are as sharp as it gets - you will need a microscope to tell them apart.

HTC One and Sony Xperia Z screens up close

The studio shots don't reveal as much as tables and charts do but you can still check out the Xperia Z next to a couple of HTC 1080p smartphones.

The HTC One vs Sony Xperia Z screens

When it comes to image quality, the Super LCD3 on the HTC One is clearly superior to the TFT of the Xperia Z. The One offers excellent contrast instead of the mediocre figure achieved by the Sony smartphone and has nicely saturated colors, too. Viewing angles are also immense on the HTC flagship and rather disappointing on the Xperia Z, so it's no contest here.

As you can see from the table below, the HTC One is brighter than the Xperia Z and among the brightest panels we've tested.

Display test	50% brightness			100% brightness
	Black, cd/m2	White, cd/m2	Contrast ratio	Black, cd/m2	White, cd/m2	Contrast ratio
HTC One	0.13	205	1580	0.42	647	1541
HTC Butterfly	0.14	173	1200	0.45	501	1104
Samsung I9505 Galaxy S4	0	201	∞	0	404	∞
Samsung I9300 Galaxy S III	0	174	∞	0	330	∞
Sony Xperia Z	-	-	-	0.70	492	705
Oppo Find 5	0.17	176	1123	0.51	565	1107
Samsung N7100 Galaxy Note II	0	215	∞	0	402	∞
LG Optimus G Pro	-	-	-	0.41	611	1489
Nokia Lumia 920	-	-	-	0.48	513	1065
LG Optimus G	0.14	197	1445	0.33	417	1438
Apple iPhone 5	0.13	200	1490	0.48	640	1320

In terms of sunlight legibility both phones are equally matched with the less reflective panel of the Xperia Z making up for its lower brightness.

Sunlight contrast ratio

·         Nokia 808 PureView4.698

·         HTC One S2.901

·         Samsung Galaxy S II2.832

·         Samsung Galaxy S II Plus2.801

·         Huawei Ascend P12.655

·         Nokia Lumia 9002.562

·         HTC One2.504

·         Sony Xperia Z2.462

·         Samsung Galaxy S III mini2.422

·         Motorola RAZR i2.366

·         Samsung Galaxy Note II2.307

·         Apple iPhone 4S2.269

·         Samsung Galaxy mini 21.114

Winner: HTC One. While both devices offer overall excellent screens that are great for consuming multimedia on the go, the HTC One clearly has the upper hand. All the Sony Xperia Z has on its side is slightly larger size and the Mobile BRAVIA 2 engine, which while doing a good job, can't quite make up for the deficiencies of its sub-par display panel.

Battery life

Our two contenders are evenly matched in terms of battery backup. The HTC One draws its power from a 2300 mAh Li-Polymer battery while the Sony Xperia Z uses a 2330 mAh Li-Ion unit.

HTC has designed a Power Saver mode, which switches the device's radios while in stand-by and can tone down CPU consumption but is no match for Sony's more complex Stamina Mode. The Sony smartphone not only gives you the usual options, but allows you to choose which apps get access to background tasks and notifications while in stand-by. We found that enabling the Xperia Z Stamina mode makes notable difference to stand-by efficiency, whereas the Power Saver on the HTC One barely affected the endurance.

Then there are chipsets to consider. The Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro has four Krait cores clocked at 1.5 GHz while the newer Snapdragon 600 in the HTC One uses four of the newer Krait 300 cores clocked at 1.7 GHz.

So let's get down to it. We start off with talk time - a phone's bread and butter. The HTC One achieved an impressive 13 hours and 38 minutes, but was no match for the Xperia Z with its incredible 16 hours and 3 minutes. While the difference is impressive it's safe to say that both phones did great in this trial .

Talk time

·         Motorola RAZR MAXX (ICS)21:18

·         LG Optimus G Pro20:45

·         Motorola DROID RAZR MAXX20:24

·         Motorola RAZR i20:07

·         Samsung Galaxy Note II N710016:57

·         Sony Xperia Z16:03

·         LG Optimus G15:30

·         Nokia Lumia 62014:17

·         Oppo Find 514:17

·         Google Nexus 414:17

·         Samsung Galaxy S413:53

·         HTC One13:38

·         Pantech Burst4:46

The Web browsing differed quite significantly, though. The HTC One came on top of our chart here with the amazing 9h and 58 minutes of browsing endurance on a single charge. The Xperia Z got only an average 6h 37m score here and came far behind its competitor.

Web browsing

·         HTC One9:58

·         Apple iPhone 59:56

·         Motorola RAZR MAXX (ICS)9:12

·         Apple iPad mini9:05

·         Samsung Galaxy Note II N71008:48

·         Samsung Galaxy S48:42

·         Sony Xperia Z6:37

·         Samsung Galaxy Nexus3:01

The video playback endurance told a similar story. The HTC One again achieved a great score, just exceeding the 10 hour mark, while the Xperia Z died at about half-wait point - 5h 39min.

Video playback

·         Motorola RAZR MAXX (ICS)16:35

·         Apple iPad mini12:51

·         Samsung Galaxy Premier12:51

·         Samsung Galaxy Note II N710011:27

·         Samsung Galaxy S410:16

·         Apple iPhone 510:12

·         HTC One10:02

·         Samsung I9300 Galaxy S III10:01

·         Samsung Galaxy Express10:00

·         Samsung I9105 Galaxy S II Plus10:00

·         Nokia 808 PureView9:53

·         Samsung I8530 Galaxy Beam9:42

·         Sony Xperia Z5:39

·         Nokia Lumia 7103:27

Despite the early setback the HTC One was able to easily outdo the Sony Xperia Z in the overall tests. The web browsing endurance of the HTC flagship was particularly impressive and the video playback was easily in the upper half of our charts too. The Sony Xperia Z was off to a promising start, but once the challenges that involved operating the screen started slid down to mediocre levels.

However, the battery challenge isn't over until the stand-by efficiency is factored in and we were in for another surprise. The HTC One had high battery drain when in idle mode, whereas the Xperia Z did quite well and the final result came perfectly even at 48 h. This means that if you do an hour of calls, browsing and watching video each day you'd need to charge either of those smartphones every 48 hours.

User interfaces

The Sony Xperia Z and HTC One are on par as far as the underlying Android version goes ,4.1.2 Jelly Bean, but both have extensively customized interfaces courtesy of their makers. Sony tried to stay relatively close to stock Android (more so than most other makers), while HTC continues with the recognizable Sense look.

Before we go on, here are hands-on videos to refresh your memory on what the UI of each phone looks like.

The lockscreen of the Xperia Z is behind the times with no widgets and only unlock and camera sliders. It doesn't work very well either, using the camera slider launches the camera as expected but going to the gallery from the camera (to check your last pic) sends you back to the lockscreen. Also, if you're running the camera and lock the phone, the next time you hit the Lock key you get the lockscreen.

The lockscreen and its options

The homescreen is much better and aside from Sony wallpapers and widgets it looks just like the stock Android launcher. Unlike it, however, you can add and remove homescreens, an extra bit of flexibility that even die-hard purists will appreciate.

 

Managing the homescreen

There's a new widget called Socialife (the successor of Timescape), which pools together pieces of info Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google Reader to bring you fresh, interesting info. Too bad Google nixed Reader, Sony will need to update the widget with something new.

The Socialife app

The notification area has been tweaked with the addition of four toggles - ringer/vibrate, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, mobile data.

The notification area now has a few connectivity shortcuts

The task switcher has been revamped too, it holds shortcuts for mini apps, small applications that float on top of the rest and allow you to do two things at once. You can only run apps that are specifically made for such use and only one at a time.

The updated task manager now features 'small apps' • The Calculator small app

The HTC One lockscreen received some visual modifications since previous versions of Sense. It is more functional than the Xperia screen (but nothing close to the Android 4.2 one) - there are several versions, which in effect have one widget each (for messages or for photos). There are four shortcuts too.

 The new lockscreen has no new functionality

There are no camera issues with this lockscreen - launching the camera unlocks the phone properly and if you lock the phone, the next time you hit the Lock key bypasses the lockscreen (unless you have setup a passcode, of coure) and shows the camera instantly.

The notification area in Sense traditionally had toggles but those are gone now. The task switcher has changed, too - it's a 3 x 3 grid, which shows more apps at a time than the previous version with the large side-scrollable shortcuts.

The notification area • task switcher

The homescreen is pretty special - one of its panes, called BlinkFeed, is dedicated to showing you a mix of interesting news and social networking updates. BlinkFeed is similar to Socialife, except it's a dedicated homescreen pane and not a widget and it doesn't rely on Google Reader for news info, HTC has partnered up with hundreds of news outlets.

BlinkFeed is the default homescreen pane

If it bugs you, you can set the default pane to be one of the others, which are standard widget-and-shortcut homescreen panes.

BlinkFeed aside, the homescreen is pretty standard

Here we should note the different control scheme. The Sony Xperia Z uses the official setup of three on-screen buttons (Back, Home, App switcher) while the HTC One has two hardware keys, Back and Home. Home serves a triple purpose - a Home button, a Google Now button (long press) and an App switcher button (double tap).

We have to say we like the Xperia's controls better - traditional Android controls play better with most apps. You get used to the HTC setup eventually, but three functions per key is simply not very intuitive. Also, if you're using an old app (those are getting fewer and fewer) a row at the bottom of the screen will be dedicated to just a virtual Menu button.

Still, HTC has given the One another weapon. The powerful Transfer feature, which will pull the contacts from your old phone over Bluetooth (works for Android 2.3+ and iOS) or even read an iPhone backup file to find the data.

Transferring your data from your old phone to the HTC One is easy

Winner: Sony Xperia Z. Many feel very positive about the stock Android experience and the Xperia Z comes pretty close with a couple of nicely functional and yet unobtrusive additions that enhance the user experience. We would look into installing a third party lockscreen though.

The HTC One does have the better lockscreen, but both should be scrapped soon when the phones get their Android 4.2 upgrades. As for the changes HTC has made to the rest of the UI, we miss the notification area toggles and think BlinkFeed should have been a widget (like Socialife, which is easier to remove if you don't like it).

Additional software

The HTC One is pretty unique in the mobile phone world with its Zoe gallery. The camera works in conjunction with the latest ImageChip tech, which can snap up to 20 full resolution photos and record 3 seconds of video each time you hit the shutter key.

Later, it can automatically stitch the 3 second video segments (and also still photos) into a short animation that can easily be posted on Zoe Share and reshaped on Facebook and Twitter. Those videos look pretty awesome and you get with no extra effort as the phone does it all automatically.

   

Zoe has social networking integration • Events view is where Zoe comes in

The extra photos and video have more uses too. You can, for example, remove a moving object from the scene (say, an absent-minded tourist walking into your shot), make sure no one has their eyes closed. Another cool trick is Sequence shot, it composes several copies of a moving object in the same image, making for a cool-looking dynamic shot.

    

The Zoe photo editor has tons of options

But Zoe can do tons more, including moderate-level picture editing like skin smoothing, making eyes brighter and wider and so on. A slider allows you to tune the strength of the effect.

The Sony Xperia Z has an almost standard Android gallery. One Sony addition is the ability to view thumbnails of your photos placed on a map. Facebook and Picasa integration lets you view online galleries and like and comment on them (the HTC One gallery does that too).

   

The Sony Xperia Z Album gallery

There's a photo editor (not nearly as advanced as Zoe) and a video editor (which requires manual editing).

Sony has one of the richest histories when it comes to multimedia. The company brought the iconic Walkman branding to the music player and have done a decent job of adding extra features to the player.

SensMe evaluates each song's mood and automatically creates playlists for a given mood (upbeat, energetic, mellow, dance, etc.). The Infinite button helps you find a music video on YouTube, look for lyrics or for more from the same artist. Sony's own TrackID will help find the song you're listening to.

    

The Walkman music player

As for sound-enhancing features, there are basic stuff like a 5-band equalizer (with presets) and Clear stereo. ClearAudio+ (different from Clear stereo), which tunes the playback to match each individual song. Then there are the loudspeaker options, xLOUD and Clear Phase.

Both the Sony Xperia Z and the HTC One have stereo FM radio with RDS if you prefer good old broadcasts over the newfangled Internet radios.

HTC is a younger company but audio is a huge part of its image. Part-owners in Beats Audio, HTC has added the Beats audio enhancement feature, which can be either on or off. There's no equalizer, you have to trust that HTC and Beats engineers have done their job well.

   

HTC's Beats-enabled music player • it automatically finds the song's lyrics

The music player will automatically find album art and lyrics (and display them karaoke style). SoundHound takes care of song recognition (but you only get 99 recognitions for free).

A big advantage is BoomSound - HTC's front-facing stereo speakers that provide better sound than most phone's single speaker. Better still, they aim the sound at you when watching videos instead of bouncing it off the table.

Sony is big in the video market and the video player on the Xperia Z is fairly nice. It handled most standard video files (AVIs with DivX and XviD, MKV files). That's better than what stock Android has to offer, but there's no subtitle support and no AC3 and DTS audio support. We do like that it automatically finds info about movies, though.

    

The Xperia Z Movies app

The HTC One fails to play MKV and DivX files (also no go on AC3 and DTS), but it does support subtitles. Also, it has an option to play High Frame Rate videos (including ones shot with the phone itself) in real time (i.e. 60fps) or in slow motion.

  

The HTC One video player

At the end of the day, if you're going to do any serious movie watching on the Sony Xperia Z or the HTC One, we'd recommend grabbing one of the excellent free third-party players. The Snapdragon chipsets are powerful enough to handle 1080p playback easily.

The HTC One does have one advantage here - its IR emitter. With the dedicated app, you can control TVs, AV receivers and disc players. So, you can turn on the TV, start the Blu-ray player (or use DLNA or Miracast to play from the phone itself) and adjust the volume of your home theater setup, all from the HTC One.

The Sony Xperia Z does not have an IR emitter.

Finally, the HTC One comes with Polaris Office, which features document editing, while the Sony Xperia Z has only a viewer, OfficeSuite 6, editing is a paid upgrade.

Winner: HTC One. Zoe alone might have been enough to win us over, but the IR remote functionality is great too. We already commended it for the speakers on the front and we'll look at the audio quality in a second.

The Xperia Z offered a slightly better video player, but not enough to stand on its own. It also gives you more freedom to control sound enhancements if you don't like the Beats singular setting.

Audio quality

The Sony Xperia Z did quite well in our dedicated audio quality, but as we've managed to confirm several times already the HTC One is simply in a class of its own at the moment.

Both the Xperia Z and the One have perfectly clean output when attached to an active external amplifier, but the HTC flagship took the round with much higher volume levels.

The Sony Xperia Z let some distortion creep in when we plugged in a pair of headphones, while the HTC One output was barely affected. Once again, we noted a huge volume level difference in favor of the HTC One.

And here go the results so you can see for yourselves.

Test	Frequency response	Noise level	Dynamic range	THD	IMD + Noise	Stereo crosstalk
HTC One	+0.11, -0.20	-82.7	82.7	0.0023	0.026	-80.9
HTC One (headphones attached)	+0.02, -0.32	-82.4	82.3	0.0045	0.057	-68.3
Sony Xperia Z	+0.11, -0.10	-81.9	82.1	0.043	0.041	-81.3
Sony Xperia Z (headphones attached)	+0.62, -0.09	-81.7	81.5	0.204	0.249	-56.4

HTC One frequency response

Sony Xperia Z frequency response

You can learn more about the whole testing process here.

Winner: HTC One. The extra high volume levels of the HTC flagship and its slightly cleaner output helped it ease to the victory here.

Loudspeaker

We tested out the loudspeakers of both phones as they're important for both notifications and for multimedia consumption. The HTC One packs two speakers on its front, each with a dedicated amp. It wasn't the loudest phone we've tested, but the sound quality is arguably the best in the smartphone game. The Sony Xperia Z meanwhile offered below average performance, as we guess that water-proofing isn't helping the sound much.

You can learn more about the loudspeaker test here.

Speakerphone test	Voice, dB	Pink noise/ Music, dB	Ringing phone, dB	Overal score
Sony Xperia Z	60.1	58.3	61.6	Below Average
Apple iPhone 5	66.8	66.1	67.7	Below Average
Nokia Lumia 920	61.6	64.8	65.8	Below Average
HTC One X+	64.6	65.8	74.6	Average
Asus Padfone 2	57.3	66.7	77.8	Average
HTC Butterfly	69.0	70.7	77.9	Good
Oppo Find 5	70.7	67.7	73.0	Good
Samsung I9505 Galaxy S4	70.6	66.2	77.3	Good
HTC One	69.3	66.6	75.9	Good
Google Nexus 4	71.1	66.6	78.8	Good
Samsung Galaxy S III	75.1	66.5	75.0	Good
LG Optimus G	74.6	71.3	82.7	Excellent

Winner: HTC One. Two loudspeakers that produce louder, crisper sound - it's no contest really.

Synthetic benchmarks

Qualcomm's Snapdragon is one of the most popular smartphone chipsets around and it's the basis of both the Sony Xperia Z and the HTC One. There's an important difference though. The Xperia Z uses Snapdragon S4 Pro, while the One uses Snapdragon 600.

The S4 Pro uses four classic Krait cores clocked at 1.5GHz, while the 600 uses four Krait 300 cores at 1.7GHz. The two versions of Krait are similar, but the 300 has several speed tweaks that make sure it's doing better even when clocked at the same speed as its predecessor. Both chipsets use Adreno 320 GPUs but there may be a difference in clockspeed.

There's certainly a difference in clockspeed for the CPUs though. 200MHz in favor of the HTC One might not sound like much, but in combination with updated architecture should give it quite an edge.

It shows pretty clearly in BenchmarkPi, a single-threaded benchmarks. Some multithreaded workloads may not care much for the difference between chipsets (Linpack), but others do (Geekbench 2). Overall, you can expect the HTC One to be slighlty faster than the Xperia Z is CPU-heavy tasks.

BenchmarkPi

Lower is better

·         Samsung Galaxy S4134

·         LG Optimus G Pro147

·         HTC One151

·         Sony Xperia Z264

·         HTC Butterfly266

·         Oppo Find 5267

·         HTC One X+280

·         LG Optimus G285

·         Samsung Galaxy Note II305

·         HTC One X (Tegra 3)330

·         LG Optimus 4X HD350

·         Samsung Galaxy S III359

·         Meizu MX 4-core362

·         Nexus 4431

Linpack

Higher is better

·         Samsung Galaxy S4749

·         LG Optimus G Pro743

·         HTC One646

·         Sony Xperia Z630

·         HTC Butterfly624

·         LG Optimus G608

·         Oppo Find 5593

·         Samsung Galaxy Note II214.3

·         Nexus 4213.5

·         Meizu MX 4-core189.1

·         HTC One X+177.7

·         Samsung Galaxy S III175.5

·         HTC One X160.9

·         LG Optimus 4X HD141.5

Geekbench 2

Higher is better

·         Samsung Galaxy S43227

·         LG Optimus G Pro3040

·         HTC One2708

·         Sony Xperia Z2173

·         HTC Butterfly2143

·         LG Nexus 42048

·         Samsung Galaxy S III1845

·         LG Optimus G1723

·         LG Optimus 4X HD1661

·         iPhone 51601

AnTuTu and Quadrant test the whole system - CPU, GPU, RAM, storage - so the lead of the HTC One widens here.

AnTuTu

Higher is better

·         Samsung Galaxy S423607

·         HTC One22678

·         Sony Xperia Z20794

·         LG Optimus G Pro20056

·         HTC Butterfly19513

·         Samsung Galaxy S III15547

·         Oppo Find 515167

Quadrant

Higher is better

·         LG Optimus G Pro12105

·         Samsung Galaxy S412028

·         HTC One11746

·         Sony Xperia Z8075

·         HTC One X+7632

·         LG Optimus G7439

·         Oppo Find 57111

·         HTC One X5952

·         Samsung Galaxy Note II5916

·         Samsung Galaxy S III5450

·         Meizu MX 4-core5170

·         Nexus 44567

But how much of that is due to a difference GPU performance (because of a higher clockspeed)? Well, GLBenchmark 2.5 Egypt (the 1080p off-screen test) showed the difference is quite significant and in favor of the HTC One (6fps or about 17% faster).

GLBenchmark 2.5 Egypt (1080p off-screen)

Higher is better

·         Samsung Galaxy S440

·         HTC One34

·         Asus Padfone 231

·         Oppo Find 530

·         Sony Xperia Z29

·         LG Optimus G29

·         HTC Butterfly27.9

·         Apple iPhone 527

·         Nexus 426

·         Samsung Galaxy Note II17

·         Samsung Galaxy S III15

·         HTC One X+12

·         HTC One X9

Real-world games might not show a difference for a while though. Epic Citadel is a tech demo for Unreal Engine, which has been used in many high-end 3D mobile games and the benchmark mode often hit the software 60fps limit on both smartphones.

Epic Citadel

Higher is better

·         Samsung Galaxy S457

·         HTC One56.4

·         Sony Xperia Z55.6

·         LG Optimus G Pro54.2

·         Nexus 453.9

·         Asus Padfone 253.4

·         LG Optimus G52.6

·         Samsung Galaxy S III41.3

·         Oppo Find 538.6

The HTC One uses the stock Android browser and comes with Chrome preinstalled too, while the Sony Xperia Z has Chrome as its single web browsing option out of box. We used the stock browser on the One and Chrome for the Xperia Z benchmarks as we believe those are the default browsing options on the two smartphones.

Raw JavaScript performance is good though not stellar on both phones, with the HTC One having the lead (possibly due to its faster CPU).

SunSpider

Lower is better

·         Samsung Ativ S891

·         Apple iPhone 5915

·         Nokia Lumia 920910

·         Samsung Galaxy Note II972

·         HTC One X+1001

·         LG Optimus G Pro1011

·         Motorola RAZR i XT8901059

·         Samsung Galaxy S41089

·         HTC One1124

·         Samsung Galaxy S III1192

·         Meizu MX 4-core1312

·         Sony Xperia Z1336

·         LG Optimus G1353

·         HTC Butterfly1433

·         Nexus 41971

·         Oppo Find 52045

The HTML5 benchmark, Vellamo, also puts the two phones close together (closer to the top this time) with an advantage for the One.

Vellamo

Higher is better

·         Samsung Galaxy Note II2418

·         HTC One2382

·         Sony Xperia Z2189

·         HTC One X (Tegra 3)2078

·         Samsung Galaxy S42022

·         HTC Butterfly1866

·         Oppo Find 51658

·         Samsung Galaxy S III1641

·         LG Optimus 4X HD1568

·         LG Optimus G1522

·         Meizu MX 4-core1468

·         Nexus 41310

Winner: HTC One. This was an easy win - the One beat the Xperia Z in every category (though often by small margins). The Sony Xperia Z is by no means a slouch, it just uses the previous generation of the chipset and has lower clock speeds.

Camera features

For the Xperia Z, Sony used a traditional camera interface with the traditional features. HTC, too, uses a traditional camera UI (more or less standard Sense camera) but has some very interesting features.

The Xperia Z uses the well-known two column UI - basic controls on the right and four customizable shortcuts on the left. The same interface is used for stills and videos, which can be quite inconvenient when shooting 4:3 photos and 16:9 videos.

Sony Xperia Z camera interface

The phone does have a wide array of manual settings, but you can also rely on Superior Auto. It drops the resolution to 12MP, but it automatically guesses the type of scene and adjusts the settings accordingly (it displays its choice so you can correct it if it's wrong).

The Sony Xperia Z camera offers all kinds of features, including face detection, smile shutter, geo-tagging, touch capture and HDR mode. There's also the home-baked quick launch mode, which lets you select what the camera shortcut on the lockscreen does.

The HTC One interface appears simpler but it's actually more difficult to use. Only a handful of settings are available on the viewfinder (flash and Zoe), while the rest are lumped into a long menu that requires a lot of scrolling.

 

  

HTC One's camera UI

The same UI serves both the still and video cameras, but both are natively shot in 16:9 aspect so there's no problem here.

Zoe is the real star of the show here - we already covered it in the previous chapter, but it bears pointing out that you need to hold still for a couple of seconds to get a good Zoe shot.

The power of Zoe is that one shot can be used for different things - to make a drama shot, or to remove a moving object, for the Zoe Highlights clips and so on. In reality it's many shots (up to 20) and a 3 second video, which makes it so powerful.

Both phones are capable of capturing photos while recording video. The HTC One snaps a full-resolution (4MP) shot, while the Sony Xperia Z manages an embarrassing 1MP. We say embarrassing because a single frame of a 1080p video is just over 2MP.

Burst shot on the HTC One also captures full res photos, while the Xperia Z tops out at 9.6MP. This mode is important for the Xperia Z, though, as we'll see later.

Winner: HTC One. The HTC One doesn't have the best camera UI in the world, but Zoe is amazing and a few other things are handled better (like snapping a photo during video recording).

Still camera quality

As usual, we've shot multiple camera samples with each of the two phones and we've prepared crops to highlight the differences in image quality. The full resolution shots are also available for your inspection.

Field of View (FoV) is quite important for every camera - it measures how much you can fit into the shot. The HTC One shoots 16:9 photos and they are expectedly wider than the 4:3 shots of the Sony Xperia Z. Surprisingly, the Xperia can't make up for that in the vertical direction, so in general you'll be able to fit more into an HTC One photo than an Xperia Z photo.

We've included the effective FoV of the Xperia Z when shooting in Burst mode (at 9.6MP resolution), too.

Resolution is the other major consideration. We have two very different resolutions here, 13MP and 4MP, a difference of just over 3 times. For the first couple of crops we upscaled the HTC One photos - that makes them softer, but doesn't throw away fine detail (as downscaling the Xperia Z shots would).

The top of the first crop gives us a glimpse of the captured detail and the bottom at color rendering. Despite the major difference in resolution, the total resolution isn't too different. The Sony Xperia Z obviously has an advantage here but its noise reduction algorithms have diminished it quite obviously.

The HTC One does much better with color rendering, painting a pretty accurate picture, while the Xperia Z oversaturates the colors.

Moving on to crop #2. We picked things with very fine detail like the white railing, but also letters. The railing is a hands-down victory for the Sony Xperia Z, as the HTC One simply doesn't have the resolution to show the individual vertical bars.

It gets worse though, even the big letters are nearly illegible due to the noise in the image. Smaller letters in the bottom half of the crop are completely illegible in the HTC One photo, especially the ESPRIT logo, which virtually disappeared. The Sony Xperia Z does a much better here.

For the third crop, we downscaled the Xperia Z image to 4MP, because we knew you were going to ask us to try that too. This is an unfair comparison as it throws out some of the fine detail in the Xperia shot, but it's relevant as most photo sharing results in downsampling of your images.

The HTC One photos still show a good deal of noise in them - so much for those big "UltraPixels" improving image quality.

An interesting thing we noticed is that Sony seems to have messed up the image processing of the Xperia Z quite badly. The Normal mode produces shots that are looking worse than the ones captured in Burst mode at 9.6MP resolution. This is why we included the Burst shot FoV above.

Normal processing has super aggressive and quite clumsy noise suppression algorithm which smears out the foliage and the roof tiles, while making the purple fringing around the white windows more visible. It does remove some of the noise though.

Burst shot seems to skip this processing and while the shots are slightly grainier, the foliage in the tree looks much better and you get much more detail in the fire escape and roof tiles.

To recap, Burst mode gives you better per-pixel detail because it doesn't process the images as much. An Xperia Z camera without the heavy-handed post-processing would have been much further ahead of the HTC One compared to the Xperia Z camera with the current software.

Burst shot is a stop-gap measure (you lose resolution, FoV, touch focus) until Sony pushes out an update to fix things (fingers crossed).

You can view the full-resolution shots we used for the crops:

      

We also tried out the HDR feature of the two phones, which can be quite helpful for contre-jour photos and cloudy days . We used downscaled Xperia Z photos here too as we care more about the dynamic range than fine detail.

The HTC One is very quick in capturing HDR photos and the result show decent improvement in the shadows and moderate improvement in the highlights, but a little too flat images. The Sony Xperia Z HDR mode had little effect on both the final image had better contrast.

Another thing we tried was the sweep panorama. Both phones seem to use a video-based solution since the vertical resolution is about 1080. The HTC One showed some stitching issues, but most noticeable is the poor handling of the well-lit areas. The Sony Xperia Z's panorama didn't complete a 360 degree arc, but handled bright areas and stitching better (the color is off though).

    

Winner: Sony Xperia Z. The color rendering and HDR could have been better, but if Sony tweaks its image processing algorithms, the Xperia Z can put out some pretty good shots. Even as things stand now though, it has an advantage over the HTC One.

The HTC One enjoys a wider FoV, better color accuracy HDR, but the low 4MP resolution limits the resolved detail and image noise eats further into it.

Video camera quality

Just as with the still camera, Field of View is important. We included the FoV for the cameras with HDR off and on as it changes when you engage the mode.

The HTC One has a noticeably wider FoV - as expected - but it gets a whole lot narrower when you enable HDR. The Sony Xperia Z FoV is narrower but remains almost unchanged with HDR on.

Let's take a peek at the quality. Both phones shoot 1080p video at 30fps and store it in MP4 files. The HTC One uses really high bitrate of about 19-20Mbps with stereo audio capture at 196Kbps bitrate and 48kHz sampling rate. The Sony Xperia Z goes slightly lower at 16-18Mbps video bitrate and stereo sound at 128Kbps and 48kHz.

The HTC One videos is sharper and even though it has a wider FoV (which means more objects need to fit in the same number of pixels) the objects are much better defined in it. It also once again wins in terms of color rendering is more accurate. The dynamic range is narrower than that of the Xperia though.

The Sony Xperia Z continuous autofocus triggered more often but at least it was very quick to refocus.

It's important to note that the HTC One has Optical Image Stabilization (OIS), which does an excellent job at keeping the shot relatively steady, while the Sony Xperia Z has only digital stabilization, which doesn't do much.

Here are the sample videos we shot for this comparison, with HDR off and on.

You can also have a look at our Video quality compare tool for another look at the video capturing abilities of both phones.

We mentioned dynamic range, so we have to try out the video HDR recording of the two. The HDR mode on the Sony Xperia Z somehow managed to make the clouds look worse and did virtually nothing for the shadows. The HTC One did improve slightly in the shadows, but it's still not worth the huge reduction in the FoV.

Winner: HTC One. This was a definitive victory - a wider FoV with better image quality and OIS are all major wins for the One.

Conclusion

The HTC One and Sony Xperia Z are the pride and joy of their respective manufacturers. In the videos dedicated to their design stories you can clearly see how passionate the teams are about their products. Fittingly, the Xperia Z and HTC One are two of the best looking handsets on the market right now.

HTC went with a gorgeous (but sadly hard to manufacture) aluminum unibody and made the phone it wanted, instead of chasing the current trend of 5" screens and large resolution cameras. The One may miss on some standard equipment like notification area toggles but is loaded with features exclusive to HTC. It also was the first premium flagship to give up on the megapixel race and look for innovation in another direction. The One is the rebel of this generation Android flagships, if you will.

HTC One • Sony Xperia Z

Sony picked glass for the exterior of its phone and packed it with specs to match the other flagships and topped them off with some Sony exclusives. The IP57 certification is unique among the current crop of mainstream flagships.

An absolute victory is impossible to award in a hotly contested fight like this, but once you've figured out your priorities you will immediately understand which of these beasts is right for you.

The HTC takes a narrow win in the design round and was even able to overcome its size disadvantage and take the screen battle. It also narrowly bested its opponent in the battery life and the audio reproduction tests.

On the software side, we're not in love with Sense but the HTC One brought more value added features than the Xperia Z (Zoe in particular is a real gem), plus its chipset is slightly faster. The One also scored easy wins in the video recording and low-light trials.

The IP57 certification of the Sony Xperia Z is a victory in its own right and Sony even managed to keep the microSD card slot, even though it's one more thing that had to be water-proofed. We liked the user interface, an enhanced stock Android better, too. Then there's the still camera which does notably better in good light and is one software update away from wiping the floor with its rival.

You shouldn't also forget that the Sony Xperia Z has a major advantage in terms of availability - it's been on sale for a while now and some people have already bought one. Meanwhile, HTC had troubles getting the One to stores on schedule, which surely cost it some sales. Furthermore, by the time the One reaches most major markets the Xperia Z will probably have undergone it's first price cut, giving it another advantage.

But as we said sales are not always a good gauge of which phone is better. It's what each of them can do for you that counts and while these two may differ in character, they both put quite a lot on the table.

April 08, 2013