The Apple iPhone 5 has been around for a few months now, and while the phone failed to make a huge impression in the market, to make things worse, 2013 has already seen a number of superb flagship smartphone launches (the biggest one till now is Samsung galaxy S4). If you have the moolah for it and are considering the iPhone 5 as your next phone, do you think you should wait a while and look around in the market a little more? Maybe consider the HTC One or the Sony Xperia Z as alternatives?
HTC One: HTC’s flagship smartphone was finally unveiled after a lot of speculation just a few weeks ago and we like what we’ve seen so far. For those of you who love the iPhone’s all-metal premium look, the HTC One will definitely appeal to you. With a large 4.7-inch display having a resolution of 468 ppi, you can’t get better viewing on a smartphone currently. The HTC One is powered by a quad-core 1.7 GHz Krait processor and 2 GB of RAM and runs on Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean. It’s got a unique camera with HTC’s very own Ultrapixels camera which promises sharper, clearer and more natural looking images. For video calling, there’s a 2 MP camera as well. Choose from 32 GB or 64 GB of internal storage, but that’s all you get because there doesn’t seem to be microSD card slot on this phone. To keep the phone running, HTC has put in a 2,300 mAh battery.
Sony Xperia Z: Sony’s gorgeous flagship smartphone was unveiled at CES 2013 and literally blew us all away. We love that it’s dust and water resistant – high end smartphones do not get more rugged than this, not yet at least. The Xperia Z features a large 5-inch display with a resolution of 441 ppi and is powered by a quad-core 1.5 GHz Krait processor and 2 GB of RAM. This phone also runs on Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean and is fitted with a 13 MP rear camera with Sony’s own Exmos RS sensor. There’s a 2.2 MP camera in the front as well. The Xperia Z comes with just 16 GB of internal storage, but for those of you who want more, you can use a microSD card. A 2,330 mAh battery keeps the phone up and running for nearly 14 hours on a single charge.
Apple iPhone 5: The latest iPhone’s biggest weakness is its rather small 4-inch screen with a resolution of 326 ppi. The iPhone 5 is powered by Apple’s A6 dual-core 1.2 GHz processor and 1 GB of RAM and runs on iOS 6. An 8 MP rear camera and 1.2 MP front-facing camera also seem to pale with that of the HTC One and Sony Xperia Z. You can choose from 16 GB, 32 GB or 64 GB of internal storage, but there’s no provision for further memory expansion through microSD cards. Even the 1,440 mAh battery offers a talktime of just about 8 hours on the phone, which means you’ll be reaching for the charger more often.
