HTC One vs Nokia Lumia 920

Nokia's Lumia 920 is a large form-factor phone with a polycarbonate unibody, a decently-sized IPS LCD display and a Qualcomm dual-core processor running Windows Phone 8.

It also features some fantastic camera hardware with the PureView and its optical image stabilisation.

The HTC One is he latest Android flagship model from the Taiwanese phone-maker and features an aluminium unibody, a sizable SLCD3 display and a brand new Qualcomm 600.

HTC One: Key specs and what’s hot

Unquestionably the best things about the HTC One are its build quality, design, display and processing power. Fortunately these are some of the more important aspects to get right in order to deliver a satisfying high-end smartphone.

The build is reassuringly premium to handle and looks good too, with the HTC One having a very sci-fi flavour overall. The handset uses a unibody design made from anodised aluminium which features a matte finish, curved back and corners and a display insert surrounding the touchscreen panel with a narrow bezel.

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This is capped at each end by the unibody in a similar style to the iPhone 5 and BlackBerry Z10.

There’s some interesting silver detailing around the top and bottom of the back panel, which links up neatly with the flush-fitting camera port. If we had to place what this reminds us of it’d probably be robots and technology from manga films.

Neatly drilled ports for the speakers and microphone sit inside the top and bottom panels, the edges are tapered sharply and a solid volume rocker is made from brushed metal.

The display is a 4.7-inch Super LCD3 touchscreen with a 1920x1080 pixel Full HD resolution at 468 pixels-per-inch (ppi). This delivers extremely sharp clarity and some great colour depth. The brightness is also excellent.

Performance is top-drawer as the HTC One is fitted with Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 600 quad-core chip clocked at 1.7GHz with 2GB of dual-channel RAM and an Adreno 320 GPU.

The phone runs Android 4.1 Jelly Bean with the HTC Sense 5 interface on top.

Jelly Bean is fast, stable and responsive with an easy-to-use multitasking functionality that performs very well. It also enjoys a choice of over 700,000 apps on Google Play.

Nokia Lumia 920: Key specs and what’s hot

We have our reservations about the Lumia 920’s size and weight, but the build quality is still a strong point as it’s well-made from premium-grade polycarbonate and uses a unibody design.

Visually the design is also quite pleasing to the eye as it follows a similar shape and style to the Lumia 900 and Lumia 800, with a starkly angular profile and bright colour choices.

While it’s not as staggering as the HTC One’s touchscreen, the Lumia 920’s display is still very impressive.

It’s a 4.5-inch IPS LCD with a 1280x768 pixel resolution at 332ppi, which is still very sharp.

There’s also Nokia’s ClearBlack technology for great contrast and dark colour depth and PureMotion HD+ technology which optimises latency and generally helps contribute to a picture which is very clear and fluid.

The processor setup is decent as it uses a Qualcomm dual-core Snapdragon S4 MSM8960 chip clocked at 1.5GHz with 1GB of RAM and an Adreno 225 GPU.

Windows Phone 8 is generally quite well optimised so navigating through its interface is a fairly slick experience, however, a big stumbling block is app load times which are not debilitatingly slow, but noticeably slower than similarly equipped Android devices.

We suspect this is a failing of Windows Phone 8 rather than the internal hardware and it shouldn’t be indicative of its performance within apps and games once they’re loaded, which should be quite good overall.

The Lumia 920’s PureView 8-megapixel camera is stunning. The optical image stabilisaton ensures you get plenty of light, resulting in some incredibly high quality pictures and video.

Direct spec comparison: Shootout