Iphone 4S vs Galaxy S II head to head review

THE APPLE IPHONE 4S and Samsung Galaxy S II are two of the best smartphones around so we've decided to put them head to head to see which one comes out on top.

• Design

In the beauty stakes the handsets are very similar, with both available in black or white. The most noticeable difference is the display, with the Galaxy S II having a screen that is almost an inch bigger the Iphone 4S at 4.3in compared to 3.5in.

Even though the Iphone 4S has a lovely glass finish, the Galaxy S II is thinner, lighter and more a tad more comfortable to hold. The Iphone 4S also appears to be much more fragile. In drop tests, we've seen the Iphone screen has shattered whilst the Galaxy S II survived the same punishment relatively unscathed.

• Performance

We could run all kinds of benchmarks to gain figures on both phones to see which is better, but it's the real life day to day performance that really matters. Both phones are quick when it comes to handling everyday tasks. The Galaxy S II has a 1.2GHz dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 chip and the Iphone 4S has the A5 dual-core processor found in the Ipad 2. However, the exact speed of the chip in the Iphone is not known, but is believed to around 800MHz..

However, in the future there could be games that only the Iphone 4S will be able to run as developers begin to use the graphical capabilities of the A5 chip.

• Cameras

Opinions were split in THE INQUIRER office, with some of us preferring the Iphone 4S photos and some liking the Samsung ones better. Colour representation was more natural on the Iphone and macro shots also came out sharper, edging it the way of Apple.

Strangely, we also found front-facing images on the Iphone to be surprisingly clearer than the 2MP snapper on the S II, despite Apple using only a VGA camera.

Another feature we liked is that the '+' volume button on the Iphone 4S can be used as a shutter button. So the Iphone came out on top for cameras, but it is a close call.

• Screen

As we've mentioned the screen on the Galaxy S II is bigger, by 0.8in so you do get a bit more real estate to play with. However, we preferred the Retina display on the Iphone 4S.

Whether set at automatic or full brightness, the Iphone's screen was nearly always clearer and crisper. The pixel density of the screen makes all the difference here with the Galaxy S II at 217ppi and the Iphone 4S way out in front at 326ppi.

• Web Browsing

For starters we found that web pages loaded considerably faster on the 4S and navigation around such as scrolling and zooming was much smoother. The resolution of the Iphone's screen meant that text was crisper and the colours, especially white, were more natural.

However, the Iphone 4S has no support for Flash which remains a massive omission. It means that you can't watch videos on sites like THE INQUIRER, and this is never a good thing.

Web pages are slightly easier to view on the S II due to the large screen. It also uses the entire screen to display the content unlike the Iphone 4S which displays the status bar and navigation buttons.

• Software

Moving to software is when we find a bigger difference between the handsets. The Iphone 4S comes pre-loaded with IOS 5 whereas the Galaxy S II has Android 2.3 Gingerbread.

IOS is a stable and proven operating system whilst Android has the advantage of a greater degree of customisation. A big difference are the application stores for each handset. The apps for the Iphone 4S are of high quality and more secure, partly because they have to be approved by Apple. We generally found that the Android Market has a lot more apps that aren't worth downloading.

• Battery Life

Neither of these phones is going to last for a few days without charging. We found  battery life to be a tad better on the Galaxy S II and one of its strong points.

The Iphone 4S also performed well but with notifications turned on the battery drained away uncomfortably fast. For this reason the Galaxy S II comes out on top for battery life.

• Overall 

It's been extremely hard to pick between these two smartphones as they are easily two of the best available today and are very close in many areas.

It was only by a small amount, but the Iphone 4S has won our approval as the better smartphone. It comes with a better display and camera, and performance is also smoother, if only by a small amount. Nevertheless, the Galaxy S II is still a great handset and a better choice if you want the openness and customisation options that the Android operating system offers.

Posted in: gadget