HTC One S vs Samsung Galaxy S Advance

We see if Samsung's Galaxy S revival, the Galaxy S Advance, can compete with HTC's One S.

Form
HTC One S - 130.9x65x7.8mm, 119.5g
Samsung Galaxy S Advance - 123.2x63x9.7mm, 120g

HTC's One S is, in our view, easily the best-looking phone the company has produced to date. Gone is the dull recycled rectangular shape with slightly rounded corners, instead you've got a nicely contoured and slightly curved body shell with chiselled edges.

It looks very contemporary, in part thanks to the thin ‘bezel' of bodywork around a smaller wedge of black plastic which the screen sits inside.

The back panel has rubber-coated panels on the top and bottom and the bodywork has a high-quality and somewhat metallic feel to it, while the camera lens is housed in a coloured metal ‘porthole'. Interface control is handled by three capacitive buttons.

The Samsung Galaxy S Advance uses the same form factor as the original Galaxy S, which still manages to look appealing and keeps pace with the current market.

It has a more angular and squared-off shape and overall slightly blockier proportions. However, it is a bit chunkier than the One S at 9.7mm to the HTC's 7.8mm.

We think the design has aged well but it's not got the sleek, cutting edge charm of the HTC One S.

Winner - HTC One S

Display
The Galaxy S Advance features a 4-inch Super AMOLED capacitive multi-touch display with an 800x480 pixel resolution and a pixel density of 233 pixels-per-inch (ppi).

It uses Corning's Gorilla Glass for extra durability and should put out some pretty impressive visuals thanks to the AMOLED tech and relatively high pixel density.

HTC's One S has a slightly larger 4.3-inch capacitive display, it's still Super AMOLED, Gorilla Glass and multi-touch like its rival but has a higher 960x540 pixel resolution and consequently boasts a slightly higher pixel density of 256ppi, though we'd expect the picture quality to be somewhat comparable.

Winner - Draw

Storage
Samsung's handset has options for either 8GB or 16GB of onboard storage with 768MB of RAM and 2GB of ROM, plus a micro SD slot which allows cards up to 32GB.

The HTC One S has a fixed storage capacity of 16GB with no micro SD slot for expansion. It does, however, come with 25GB of free DropBox cloud storage integrated into the phone - all you have to do is register an account. It has more RAM than its opponent with a whole 1GB to play with.

This is something of a recurring theme with the One S, and indeed its stable-mate the One X, without micro SD capability they keep getting let down in the storage category. The Samsung Galaxy S Advance can have much more storage overall, as well as the added flexibility of micro SD.

Winner - Samsung Galaxy S Advance