We line up the new Samsung Galaxy S3 against the Sensation from HTC to find out which smartphone is best.

S3

The HTC Sensation, earlier called the Pyramid, was announced in April last year and released in May. The smartphone features HTC's latest User Interface (UI) Sense v3.0. In addition, the device can be updated to Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich); scheduled to arrive in June.

The smartphone packs a high resolution camera, similar to the one in Samsung's Galaxy S3, which was announced earlier last month and has been released to the global market.

Check out how the HTC Sensation stacks up against the Samsung Galaxy S3.

Display

The HTC Sensation features a 4.3in Super LCD capacitive touchscreen with Corning Gorilla Glass protection. The display has HTC's Sense 3.0 User Interface. The resolution of the display is 540x960 pixels with a pixel density of 256 pixels per inch (ppi).

The Galaxy S3 features a Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen protected with Corning Gorilla Glass 2. The display has Samsung's TouchWiz User Interface v4.0 and the resolution of the display is 720x1280 pixels with a density of 306 ppi.

Dimension

The HTC Sensation measures 126.1 x 65.4 x 11.3mm and weighs 148g while the Galaxy S3 measures 136.6x70.6x8.6mm and weighs slightly less at 133g.

Operating System

The HTC Sensation launched with Android (2.3.4) Gingerbread, which can be upgraded to v4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. The Galaxy S3 comes pre-installed with Ice Cream Sandwich.

Processor

The HTC Sensation is powered by a Qualcomm MSM8260 Snapdragon dual-core Scorpion processor, which is clocked at 1.2GHz. The smartphone packs 768MB of RAM. The Galaxy S3 is powered by the Exynos 4 quad-core processor, has been clocked at 1.4GHz and houses 1GB of RAM.

Camera

The HTC Sensation packs an eight megapixel rear-facing camera with auto-focus and dual-LED flash and other features which include geo-tagging, touch-focus, image stabilisation, face detection and instant capture. The camera can record video in 1080p at 30 frames per second (fps) with stereo sound recording. The smartphone features a VGA quality front-facing camera.

The Galaxy S3 is equipped with a rear camera of eight megapixels with auto-focus, LED flash and other features such as simultaneous HD video and image recording, geo-tagging, touch-focus, face and smile detection and image stabilisation. The camera can record video in 1080p at 30 fps, the same as the Sensation. The S3 packs a front-facing camera of 1.9 megapixels, which can record video in 720p at 30 fps.

Connectivity

The HTC Sensation offers Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, DLNA, Wi-Fi hotspot and Bluetooth version 3.0 with A2DP. It supports data speed up to HSDPA 14.4Mbps and HSUPA 5.76Mbps.

The Galaxy S3 offers Wi-Fi a/b/g/n, Wi-Fi HT40, NFC and Bluetooth v4.0. It supports data speeds up to HSDPA 21Mbps and HSUPA 5.76 Mbps and can connect to 4G networks.

Storage

The HTC Sensation offers storage space of 1GB and has a micro SD card slot which can support up to 32GB of additional space.

The S3 has two models - 16/32GB, with a 64GB model expected to be available soon. The smartphone also supports microSD.

Battery

The HTC Sensation is powered by Li-ion 1520mAh battery which delivers talk time of up to eight hours and 20 minutes on 2G and six hours and 40 minutes on 3G networks.

The Galaxy S3 has a larger 2100mAh battery and delivers a claimed talk time of up to 21 hour and 40 minutes on 2G and an impressive 11 hours and 40 minutes on 3G networks.