Difference between HTC Velocity 4G and Samsung Galaxy Nexus

A telephone is one of those things that kept evolving throughout the time, from the day Alexander Graham Bell has invented it. It used to be big, wired apparatus for a long time, and at the initial stages of development, people were more interested in enhancing the quality of service, or particularly, the quality of the voice transmitted. Then they concentrated on spreading it out and maximizing the reach of the telephone. After that only they stopped to think about mobile telephones. The first mobile telephones used to be brick sized and analog. Now they are more than 1/8 thinner than the initial models and has a lot of added functionalities other than calling. In fact, calling or texting has become an added value while the core set of functionalities has switched into multi-tasking and network connectivity. Marking another step of this process of evolution, HTC together with Telstra are releasing the first 4G smartphone to the Australian market. What we see in it is a mobile telephone that is more like a super computer back in the old days that can do a lot of things and has a fast internet connection. The HTC Velocity 4G is one smartphone Telstra can be proud about.

On the other hand, the rival for today is more or less a handset with the same set of functionalities besides the 4G connectivity. Samsung Galaxy Nexus is better known as Google’s brainchild because, it is engineered by Google Inc, the initiator of Android Operating System. Generically, Nexus comes with a lot of advantages, and the best thing is that, they are built to last until the successor is released; nobody can intimidate your handset for quite a long time.

HTC Velocity 4G

This is the time we face right on with handsets having dual core processors and super-fast LTE connectivity, high end optics and an operating system like Android, iOS or Windows Mobile. That’s how we perceive a modern smartphone and HTC Velocity 4G matches exactly to that definition. It is powered by 1.5GHz Scorpion dual core processor on top of Qualcomm MSM8260 Snapdragon chipset with Adreno 220 GPU and 1GB of RAM. That’s the top notch configuration you can find in a smartphone right now, until a quad core processor surfaces (We had a rumor at the CES about Fujitsu announcing a quad core smartphone). The Android OS v2.3.7 Gingerbread might not be the ideal version to take control of this beast, but we are positive that HTC will provide and upgrade to v4.0 IceCreamSandwich soon enough. We also like the HTC Sense UI, because it has a clean layout and easy navigations. As the name suggests, Velocity 4G has the LTE connectivity and records consistent rate of high speeds. The powerful processor enables it to seamlessly multi task with all the opportunities the LTE connectivity provides.

HTC Velocity 4G has 4.5 inches S-LCD capacitive touchscreen featuring a resolution of 960 x 540 pixels at 245ppi pixel density. The display panel is good, but we would have preferred more resolution from a high end smartphone like this. It is somewhat thick scoring 11.3mm and on the hefty side of the spectrum scoring a weight of 163.8g. The smooth edged Black smartphone looks expensive, but you might have trouble in holding it for extended amounts of time due to its weight. HTC has included 8MP camera with autofocus, dual LED flash and geo tagging that can capture 1080p HD videos at 60 frames per second, which is awesome. It also has a 1.3MP front camera for video conferencing bundled together with Bluetooth v3.0. Although Velocity defines its connectivity through LTE, it also has Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, which can also act as a hotspot, to share your super-fast internet connection. It also has DLNA for wireless streaming of rich media content to a smart TV. It comes in 16GB internal storage with the option to expand using a microSD card. It would have 1620mAh battery that has juice for 7 hours 40 minutes of constant usage.

Samsung Galaxy Nexus

Google’s own product, Nexus has always been the first to come up with the new versions of Android and who could blame for they are state of the art mobiles. The Galaxy Nexus is the successor for Nexus S and comes with a variety of improvement worthwhile talking about. It comes in Black and has an expensive and gorgeous design to fit right in your palm. It is true that Galaxy Nexus is on the upper quartile on size, but amazingly, it doesn’t feel hefty in your hands. In fact, it only weighs 135g and has dimensions of 135.5 x 67.9mm and comes as a slim phone with 8.9mm of thickness. It accommodates a 4.65 inches Super AMOLED Capacitive touchscreen with 16M colors, which a state of the art screen is going beyond the conventional size boundaries of 4.5 inches. It has true HD resolution of 720 x 1280 pixels with an ultra-high pixel density of 316ppi. For this, we can daresay, the image quality and the crispness of the text would be as good as iPhone 4S retina display.

Nexus is made to be a survivor till it has a successor, which means it comes with state of the art specifications that won’t feel neither intimidated nor outdated for an extended duration of time. Samsung has included a 1.2GHz dual core Cortex A9 processor on top of TI OMAP 4460 chipset bundled with the PowerVR SGX540 GPU. The system is been backed up by a RAM of 1GB and non-extendable storage of 16 or 32 GB. The software doesn’t fail to meet the expectations, as well. Featuring the world’s first IceCreamSandwich smartphone, it comes with a lot of new features that hasn’t been seen around the block. As for starters, it comes with a new optimized font for HD displays, an improved keyboard, more interactive notifications, resizable widgets and a refined browser that is intended to give a desktop-class experience to the user. It also promises the best Gmail experience to date, and a clean new look in the calendar and all these sums up to an enticing and intuitive OS. As if this isn’t enough, Android v4.0 IceCreamSandwich for Galaxy Nexus comes with a facial recognition front end, to unlock the phone called FaceUnlock and an improved version of Google + with hangouts.

Galaxy Nexus also has a 5MP camera with autofocus, LED flash, touch focus and face detection and Geo-tagging with the support of A-GPS. It can also capture 1080p HD videos @ 30 frames per second. The 1.3MP front camera bundled with built-in Bluetooth v3.0 with A2DP enhances the usability of video calling functionality. Samsung has also introduced single motion sweep panorama, and the ability to add live effects to the camera, which looks really enjoyable. It comes to be connected at all times with the inclusion of HSDPA 21Mbps connectivity. It also has Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n that enables you to connect to any Wi-Fi hotspot, as well as, set up a Wi-Fi hotspot of your own just as easily. The DLNA connectivity means that you can wirelessly stream 1080p media content to your HD TV. It also features Near Field Communication support, active noise cancellation, accelerometer sensor, proximity sensor and a 3-axis Gyro meter sensor that can be used to many emerging Augmented Reality applications. It is commendable to emphasize that Samsung has given a 17-hours 40 minutes talk time for Galaxy Nexus with a 1750mAh battery, which is beyond incredible.

Conclusion

There are certain undeniable facts that govern a conclusion. Most of the time, it accurately represents the discussion as key points and declare a verdict. Although we are at the conclusion, we don’t intend to declare a verdict; instead, we’ll discuss some differences and how they affect you in length. The basic difference is the clock rate of the processor where Velocity is clocked at 1.5GHz and Nexus is clocked at 1.2GHz. On an usability point of view, the probability of finding a difference in these two configurations is negligible. In fact, if we get the chance to run the benchmarks, we have our fair share of doubts that Galaxy Nexus will perform better than the latter. This is because of the operating system ICS was designed having Galaxy Nexus in mind. However, we find a significant difference in the display panel and the resolution. Samsung Galaxy Nexus easily excels HTC Velocity 4G. Further, Samsung Galaxy Nexus has better battery life and a sleek, thin and light built. But then, in terms of optics and network connectivity, HTC Velocity excels. So, if you are to get into an investment decision, all these facts need to be considered in order to decide the preference.