Which of these smartphones is the best choice for consumers to purchase? The Sony Xperia Z1 Compact, the HTC One Mini or the Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini.
In terms of design and display, all three smartphones have displays of 4.3 inches, but the Sony Xperia Z1 Compact and the HTC One Mini support the same resolution of 720x1280pixels and the same pixel density of 342ppi, while the Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini has a resolution of 540x960pixels and 256ppi.
The Sony Xperia Z1 Compact features a TFT panel display, while the HTC One Mini is equipped with an LCD2 and only the Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini has the Super AMOLED technology.
The Sony model is thick and heavy, creating it based on these dimensions: 127×64.9×9.5 mm and because of its components, it weighs 137 grams. But the greater weight is also due to the fact that the device is water and dust resistant.
The HTC model weighs 122 grams and it measures 132×63.2×9.3 mm, while the Samsung unit weighs only 107 grams, which measures 124.6×61.3×8.9 mm.
For the hardware and OS, the Sony Xperia Z1 Compact is more powerful than its rivals, featuring a quad core 2GHz Krait 400 processor, backed up by a Qualcomm MSM8974 Snapdragon 800 chipset and an Adreno 330 GPU. It comes with 16GB of internal storage – expandable up to 64GB, and 2GB of RAM. The Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini has a dual core 1.7GHz Krait CPU and Qualcomm MSM8930 Snapdragon 400 chipset, using the same Adreno 305 GPU as the HTC One Mini, but which is powered by a dual core 1.4GHz Krait 200 CPU (Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 chipset). Finally, the HTC One Mini has an unexpandable memory of 16GB and 1GB of RAM, while the S4 Mini comes with 1.5GB of RAM and 8GB of internal memory which is expandable up to 64GB.
As for the operating systems, these three run on the Android Jelly Bean OS: Sony Xperia Z1 Compact with v4.3 and HTC One Mini and S4 Mini with v.4.2.2, and in between, they received the KitKat update: Compact runs now on the 4.4.4 version and uses Sony’s Xperia UI; the HTC One Mini and the S4 Mini both run on the 4.4.2 version. The HTC model comes with the Sense 5.0 and offers some new features (Blinkfeed), while the Samsung handset uses the TouchWiz UI.
In addition, all three smartphones support 4G LTE, GPS, GLONAS and Bluetooth 4.0, but only the One Mini lacks NFC.
For the battery and camera specs, the Sony Xperia Z1 Compact and the HTC One Mini have non removable batteries. However, the Sony unit has a Li-Ion 2300mAh battery which allows up to 18 hours of talk time in 3G, while the HTC unit has a Li-Po 1800mAh battery which allows only 13 hours of talk time on 3G. The Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini has a Li-Ion 1900mAh battery which allows users to talk for 12 hours on 3G.
The Sony unit has a 20.7MP rear camera with 1/2.3” sensor size, which is also found on the previous model. It has many features such as face and smile detection, HDR, geo-tagging, touch focus, image stabilization, panorama and video recording capabilities at 1080p@30fps HDR. The other camera is a 2MP and it record videos at 1080p@30fps.
The HTC One Mini is equipped with a 4UltraPixel shooter with 1/3” sensor size, geo-tagging, 2µm pixel size, face and smile detection and video recording at 1080p@30fps (HDR). It has also a 1.6MP secondary camera with video recording at 720p.
The Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini has an 8MP primary camera with geo-tagging, face detection, touch focus, HDR, panorama, LED flash and 1080p video recording capabilities, plus a 1.9MP front camera.
The Sony Xperia Z1 Compact can be bought from amazon.com at the price of $425. The HTC One Mini 16GB variant costs $334 and the Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini is around $297.
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