HTC Desire HD
smartphone will receive the Android 4.0 ICS update sometime in July – August. HTC

The Samsung Galaxy S3 has been the most anticipated smartphone in 2012. With just days left for the official release of the device, the Korean giant has received bulk pre-orders making it possible for it to maintain its primary position in the smartphone market. Various retailers could be gearing up for an extremely busy launch day.

The HTC Desire HD, on the other hand, has been one of the popular HTC smartphones which comes with a huge screen that offers great web-browsing experience. In addition, it features better sound quality, thanks to Dolby Mobile and SRS virtual surround sound. Users can stream their photos, videos and music from the smartphone to a home theatre system through DLNA.

Here is a rundown of how the smartphones stack up:

Dimension

The Galaxy S3 measures 136.6 x 70.6 x 8.6mm and weighs 133g, while the Desire HD has a dimension of 123 x 68 x 11.8mm and weighs 164g.

Display

The Galaxy S3 exhibits a Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen with a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels at 306 pixel per inch (ppi). Its 4.8in screen packs Corning Gorilla glass 2, TouchWiz 4.0 version User Interface as well.

The Desire HD, on the other hand, comes with an 4.3in LCD capacitive touchscreen with a resolution of 800 x 480 pixels at 217 ppi. It includes Corning Gorilla glass and HTC Sense UI.

Processor

The Samsung smartphone is powered by the quad-core Exynos 4212 processor that clocks a respectable 1.4GHz and comes with 1GB of RAM. It has Mali 400MP Graphics Processing Unit.

The HTC smartphone, in comparison, is powered by a 1GHz Scorpion CPU and Qualcomm MSM8255 Snapdragon chipset. It includes Adreno 205 GPU that offers twice the performance of the Adreno 200 GPU. The Snapdragon processor utilises 45nm technology to offer higher integration and efficiency. It has 768MB of RAM.

Camera

The Samsung smartphone bumps up with an eight megapixel rear-facing camera featuring auto-focus, LED flash, simultaneous HD video and image recording, touch focus, geo-tagging and of course video recording capabilities of 1080p. It has a secondary camera of 1.9 megapixel for video calling.

In contrast, the HTC smartphone boasts an eight megapixel rear-facing camera. The sporting features are dual-LED flash, auto focus, geo-tagging and face detection. Users are allowed to capture video of 720p. Unfortunately, it lacks a secondary camera.

Operating System

The Galaxy S3 runs on Android 4.0.4 ICS platform, whereas the Desire HD runs on Android 2.2 Froyo OS which is upgradable to Android 2.3 Gingerbread OS. According to HTC, the smartphone will receive the Android 4.0 ICS update sometime in July - August.

Connectivity

The Galaxy S3 has Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, DLNA, Wi-Fi Direct, Wi-Fi hotspot and Bluetooth version 4.0 with A2DP and EDR. In addition, it offers support to NFC.

The Desire HD has Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, DLNA, Wi-Fi hotspot and Bluetooth 2.1 version with A2DP.

Storage

The Galaxy S3 has an internal memory configuration of 16/32/64GB and a microSD card slot that allows it to expand to another 64GB.

In comparison, the Desire HD comes with internal storage of 1.5GB and a microSD card slot which is expandable up to 32GB.

Battery

The Samsung smartphone comes with a Li-Ion 2100mAh standard battery that gives talk time of up to 21 hours 40 minutes on 2G and 11 hours 40 minutes on 3G networks and standby time of up to 590 hours on 2G and 790 hours on 3G networks.

The HTC smartphone includes Li-Ion 1230mAh standard battery which allows for talk time of up to nine hours 15 minutes on 2G and five hours 30 minutes on 3G networks. It offers for standby time of up to 490 hours on 2G and 420 hours on 3G networks.