desire s vs sgs 2 vs iphone 4

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sz1266

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Hi,
I am confused between htc desire s and sgs 2. i really like iphone 4 build, apps ecosystem, usability in general. but, i have to wait few more days or weeks for iphone 4 to launch in india and the phone is already a year old. desire s and sgs 2 look great alternative and come with 'new' hardware and an overhyped gingerbread. i lost my 3gs recently and have been using an age old dying nokia phone. should i wait for iphone 4 or iphone 5 which could take many many months? spending extra 10k on sgs 2 over desire s is worth? thanks.
 
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@hatter

Yeah,I know many Indian "reviewers" publish reviews without ever seeing the phone,or maybe just using it for 15 minutes.. ;)

But I beg to differ on the signal issue, 3g might be patchy,But the 2g signal quality we get in India esp on networks like Airtel is way better then that of most networks in states. As far as my friends tell me At & t do bag the prize for the worst reception in most of the US.

European networks are at the level of or better then Indian networks,but then they used to be the pioneers years ago..

BTW returning on the topic,It is heartening to see some ROM makers concentrating on features to extend the battery life of droid phones,case in the point being dook's excellent ROM for O1, I think It is called Nessy. I hope other ROM artists take a leaf out of his book..
 
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My SGS gives 24 hours battery life. Wasn't specific on my tests. But have seen a "17/19 hours since unplugged" many times when I have 15% remaining. Usage is mostly same. Lots of online chat,Many Texts, Few Calls, Few App Usage (just fiddling around with the apps), installing apps from market, 5-10 mins of camera use. 5-10 mins of music. 10-15 mins of browsing. 2-3 hrs of cricbuzz usage.
Auto Sync Disabled. Background Data turned On. Use 2G only enabled.

aka911 said:
I think Gsmarena Battery tests suck Bigtime

They say that SGS original can last 40 hours that too while doing a lot of stuff.
In my hands the SGS goes to <15% battery in 12 hours flat that is with 2g network,No music use,1 hour of 2G surfing,Few minutes of games and 30 mins of calls and some 50-60 messages...

Battery life unfortunately sucks on most modern phones. The "archaic" Nokia N8 and siblings are slightly ahead here. I am sure if Nokia used a 1500 Mah Battery in N8 It would have easily gone 4 days non stop.

@OP If you are blowing away this kinda cash then do get a dual core phone. Its not about better games and better features.It is just that paying 24k for a single core phone aint worth it in 2011.
Iphone 4 is obviously worth it esp for those who like a bit of zany fruit in their lives. But seriously SGS2 has some serious pedigree. Do keep in mind,That the same kindaa cash can get you a decent dual core laptop and a 3g phone thrown in.

So If buying a droid,Then either get a real highend flagship or get a low end but decent enough phones like O1 from LG. This is indeed a very bad time for high end midrangers like SE Arc
Click to expand...
 
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emmarbee said:
@avi - SGS2's 8mp cam beats the iPhone4 cam by a slight margin and the 1080p recording as well!
Samsung Galaxy S II vs LG Optimus 2X vs Nokia N8 vs Apple iPhone 4: Camera comparison - Phone Arena

Battery Tests:
Samsung I9100 Galaxy S II thorough battery life test ready
Showdown: Samsung Galaxy S II stars in our browsing battery life championship, not so brightly [UPDATED] (Note: the experience in 4.3" is way better than 3.5" browsing)

The price of SGS2 is already announced. It is priced at 32,830. (That's the recommended price given by samsung). Usually retailers give a lot less than that price. In the case of SGS, it was 31,000 given by samsung. But the retailers gave it for 28K. And that's the case for most of the mobiles. And even for SGS 2, it might come down around 29,500. But the thing is, with so much hype, the retailers might keep the 32K price tag for about a month or two and then reduce the price.
Click to expand...
Thats fake, it has to be since im using the galaxy SL and my cousin is using iphone 4 and i compared the camera quality of both the phone its very similar,if you are right, you're basically saying that the SGS2 8 mp is as good as the SL's 5mp,give me a break.
 
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SGS2 is an amazing device. If you can afford it , go for it eyes closed.

Stay away from Iphone 4 . IP5 will be out this year only ( expected before Christmas season ) .
 
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@joel.monty - I dunno what you are trying to say.
Did I mention about SL or SGS in my post?
What I told was SGS II's quality is slightly better than iP4.
iphone 4 has more noise (but is detailed too). SGS II has no noise when compared to ip4 (cause of 8mp). But if you see the color reproduction, ip4 wins.
 
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emmarbee said:
@joel.monty - I dunno what you are trying to say.
Did I mention about SL or SGS in my post?
What I told was SGS II's quality is slightly better than iP4.
iphone 4 has more noise (but is detailed too). SGS II has no noise when compared to ip4 (cause of 8mp). But if you see the color reproduction, ip4 wins.
Click to expand...
In colour reproduction, iPhone 4 does horrible job.
More vivid colours != better colours.
What you will see on N8 and SGS2 is more closer to reality than iPhone 4.
iPhone 4 software has tendency to oversaturate the colours as well as change colour tone and temperature to an extent that it can make some stuff look better, but it completely changes natural colours.
You will notice is better when you take photos of say flowers, or sky or natural scene. It can make magenta colour flower look like red or blue in colour depending on light conditions.
Its better to have a sensor and camera that produces pics with more natural tone. With manual post processing, you can make it look better, but its very hard to edit oversaturated pictures with changed colour tones and temperature to make them look more natural.
 
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emmarbee said:
@joel.monty - I dunno what you are trying to say.

Did I mention about SL or SGS in my post?

What I told was SGS II's quality is slightly better than iP4.

iphone 4 has more noise (but is detailed too). SGS II has no noise when compared to ip4 (cause of 8mp). But if you see the color reproduction, ip4 wins.
Click to expand...

I agree with Shripad,i have personally checked the iphone 4 cam ,and it doesn't do a good job in color reproduction.
 
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^- Even I thought the same, when I first compared the pictures of iphone4. But when comparing closely, ip4 looked similar to N8 but not the SGSII :(.
Anyway, I'm not suggesting that iphone4 camera is great. I'm just saying that for a 5MP cam, it look like a decent one.
Here's that color thing, I was talking about.
Photo Compare Tool - GSMArena.com

Also the image size in SGS II and O2X is 2-3 times that of IP4 and N8. I wonder how, N8 manages to get a picture of that quality in JPEG compression within that small size. weird...
 
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emmarbee said:
^- Even I thought the same, when I first compared the pictures of iphone4. But when comparing closely, ip4 looked similar to N8 but not the SGSII :(.

Anyway, I'm not suggesting that iphone4 camera is great. I'm just saying that for a 5MP cam, it look like a decent one.

Here's that color thing, I was talking about.

Photo Compare Tool - GSMArena.com

Also the image size in SGS II and O2X is 2-3 times that of IP4 and N8. I wonder how, N8 manages to get a picture of that quality in JPEG compression within that small size. weird...
Click to expand...
That is known issue with N8.

9MP N8 images are about 1 to 1.2Mb in size. Thats very heavy JPEG compression.

8MP images from SGS2 are twice the file size.

That is why N8 images sometimes show very heavy compression artifacts / loss of detail. But it depends on the scene.
 
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Shripad said:
That is known issue with N8.

9MP N8 images are about 1 to 1.2Mb in size. Thats very heavy JPEG compression.

8MP images from SGS2 are twice the file size.

That is why N8 images sometimes show very heavy compression artifacts / loss of detail. But it depends on the scene.
Click to expand...
That is called technology! there is still no phone that comes close to the quality offered by an N8!
 
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^That is known as bad implementation of technology. In a world where 32GB microSD cards cost nothing, what's the point of buying a Nokia 12MP camera (hardly a phone) and then reduce it's quality to save a few MB of space!!!
 
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smalltiger_s said:
That is called technology! there is still no phone that comes close to the quality offered by an N8!
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Not really.

N8 has fantastic sensor and optics. The 12MP snaps are really good, but due to heavy compression, there is loss of details at 100% crop in some scenes. It could have been soo much better had they at least given an option to end user to choose high quality big files and normal heavily compressed files like now.

I have posted comparative pics in low light areas on XDA, will post it here and you can see the effect of heavy compression.

See these sample shots of SGS2 and N8.

In second pictures, see the fins on graphics card heatsink at extreme end. See how washed out they are on N8. This is thanks to heavy compression.

N8 ( Complete Auto with flash , Auto without Flash, ISO 100 No flash )

http://img842.imageshack.us/img842/9960/15052011001.jpg

http://img808.imageshack.us/img808/6119/15052011002.jpg

http://img153.imageshack.us/img153/1061/15052011003.jpg

SGS2 ( Complete Auto with flash , Auto without Flash, ISO 100 No flash )

http://img808.imageshack.us/img808/1815/20110515025330.jpg

http://img269.imageshack.us/img269/170/20110515025357.jpg

http://img600.imageshack.us/img600/2239/20110515025425.jpg
 
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avi said:
^hmm...is there anyway to prevent compression ? any app ?
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Not that I am aware of.

On android, there are many 3rd party camera software options. But not on symbian as far as I know (i dont use N8 on day to day basis, it belongs to my sis ).

But you can clearly see the problems of compression in those images. All images posted above are untouched (you can check metadata ).

The so called best camera on phone shoots itself in foot due to this with loss of details and artifacts.
 
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avi said:
Yes, I have checked the images, that's why wanted to know anything to prevent that.
Click to expand...
Yes, You can do that. It involves gaining access (to system folders)on your N8 and then patching the required prop files so that you can actually control the amount of jpeg compression (85% to 100% most users use).
But the quality difference is almost negligible..In the website you might see the pics having quite a difference,but still it depends among the pics
Nokia Responds to hyperX’s Nokia N8 Camera Hack
If you want to do it , pls check the following links

Worlds first….. : HX CUSTOM ROMS

and BTW Nokia phones have always used high compression right from phones like N82,N79,N86 and now N8.
while some other brands esp LG and Sammy have always had phones that make a bigger sized image(which BTW is also reflected in the time it takes to save the image in their older phones like pixon and Renoir)
So saying that a higher file size Jpeg is better then lesser size photos is just like Megapixel/Megahertz myth.
So yeah, Image quality is directly proportional to file size,But to almost negligible degree in camera phones,unless you are getting a .RAW output.
It depends more on lets say the amount of space the engineers have to work in the image module(which includes sensor/optics) and the actually algorithms converting it.
regards

Off topic here is a nice photo from AAS that shows how camera modules are decreasing in size yet the quality keeps on improving. The camera module on N8 according to some authors is same size as N86...
from L to R: N73,N86,N97 and C7
cameras-n73-n86-n97-c7.jpg
 
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^thanks for the info. Nope, I didn't want to hack it, cos I don't own it. I just wanted to know is there any solution for that.

Is there any app which gives .RAW :P
 
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Since this is not a camera comparison, I’m not going to mention the N8′s other obvious shortcomings. I will say that you are correct. The N8 is the clear winner when it comes to cameras. But please do not over exagerate the quality of other camera phones against N8!
 
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