Difference Between Huawei Honor and Samsung Galaxy S2 (Galaxy S II)

It is not every day a vendor digs up a previous advertisement and plays it all again in the Television. This might happen for two reasons, if the vendor thinks that the product is still not outdated and state of the art, or if the vendor thinks that the market penetration of the product is in jeopardy. In one condition, it’s a good thing, the other one, not so much. In any case, Samsung has dug the advertisement for Galaxy S II and replaying it again, and we think it’s because both reasons we mentioned above. It certainly is a state of the art machine even now, and there are certain smartphones that is threatening to obtain the market share from Galaxy S II in this holiday season. So the gesture from Samsung is rightly due.

What we are going to compare here is Samsung Galaxy S II and one such threatening smartphone from a new vendor at the corner. Huawei has come up with Honor to compete against the market giants, and the incentive they are throwing is the low price compared to other handsets. This may or may not yield in good results. It all depends on the perception of the customers because there’s a certain biasness involved in every decision. Let us compare these two handsets and try to give you an objective comparison for a better understanding.

Huawei Honor

The 11mm thick Huawei Honor comes in 6 colors, namely Glossy Black, Textured Black, Elegant White, Vibrant Yellow, Cherry Blossom Pink and Burgundy. It’s a rare incident that a smartphone comes in such a variety of colors, and the look and feel of Huawei Honor is pleasing, but at the same time, it doesn’t really look expensive. It comes with a 4.0 inches TFT Capacitive touchscreen featuring 854 x 480 resolution and a pixel density of 245ppi. It is smaller than Galaxy S II but heavier. As far as we can tell, it comes with the default UI of Android without any tweaking at the Huawei end which may give rise to some misnomers.

Huawei Honor comes with a 1.4GHz Scorpion processor on top of Qualcomm MSM8225T chipset with Adreno 205 Graphics Unit. Unfortunately, the 512MB RAM seems like a less elegant touch, for this processor should deserve a 1GB RAM. The whole system is controlled by Android OS v2.3 Gingerbread while Huawei promises an upgrade to new IceCreamSandwich soon. It has 4GB internal storage with the option to expand it upto 32GB using a microSD card. Honor is well equipped with HSDPA connectivity for fast internet usage; it also has Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n for continuous connectivity, and the fact that it can act as a hotspot gives us an important use case. It also has DLNA that enables you to stream rich media content to your TV wireless.

Huawei has been cautious to port Honor with 8MP camera with autofocus and LED flash. The fact that is can perform HDR adds value to the camera. It is also capable of capturing 720p HD videos at 30 frames per second and comes with a 2MP camera on the front, bundled with Bluetooth v2.1, for the delight of the video callers. The camera also supports Geo-tagging with the help of A-GPS technology. It has accelerometer, Gyro sensor, proximity sensor and a digital compass which might come in handy. It also supports Java applications and features active noise cancellation mic and other generic Android features that add value to it. The standard 1900mAh battery in Huawei Honor promises a talk time of 10 hours, which is impressive.

Samsung Galaxy S II

Samsung is the leading smartphone vendor in the world, and they have actually gained much of their popularity though Galaxy family. It’s not just because Samsung Galaxy is superior in quality and uses cutting edge technology, but it’s because Samsung is also concerned about the usability aspect of the smartphone and make sure that has the due attention. Galaxy S II comes in either Black or White or Pink and has three buttons at the bottom. It also has the same curved smooth edges Samsung gives to Galaxy family with an expensive looking plastic cover. It is really light weighing 116g and ultra-thin too having a thickness of 8.5mm.

The renowned phone was released in April 2011. It comes with a 1.2GHz ARM Cortex A9 dual core processor on top of Samsung Exynos chipset with Mali-400MP GPU. It also had 1GB of RAM. This was top notch configuration back in April, and even now only a few smartphones surpass the configurations. As I have mentioned earlier, this itself is good enough reason to dig the previous advertisements to be replayed. The operating system is Android OS v2.3 Gingerbread, and luckily Samsung promises an upgrade to V4.0 IceCreamSandwich soon. Galaxy S II has two storage options, 16 / 32 GB with the ability to expand the storage using a microSD card upto 32 GB more. It comes with 4.3 inches Super AMOLED Plus Capacitive touchscreen featuring a resolution of 480 x 800 pixels and a pixel density of 217ppi. While the panel is of superior quality, the pixel density could have been somewhat advanced, and it could have featured a better resolution. But nonetheless, this panel reproduces images in a great manner that would catch your eye. It has HSDPA connectivity, which is both fast and steady, along with Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, and it can also act as a wi-fi hotspot, which is really attractive. With the DLNA functionality, you can stream rich media directly to your TV wirelessly.

Samsung Galaxy S II comes with 8MP camera with autofocus and LED flash and some advanced functionalities. It can record 1080p HD videos at 30 frames per second and has Geo-tagging with the support of A-GPS. For the purpose of video conferences, it also features a 2MP camera on the front bundled with Bluetooth v3.0. Besides the normal sensor, Galaxy S II comes with a gyro sensor and the generic Android applications. It features Samsung TouchWiz UI v4.0, which gives a good user experience. It comes with 1650mAh battery and Samsung promises a talk time of 18 hours in 2G networks, which is simply amazing.

Conclusion

Another one of those easy conclusions, if there isn’t the factor of investment was involved. These smartphones are alike in some ways and different in other ways. In terms of raw performance, both are indexed at the parallel ranks. Perhaps in some cases, Samsung Galaxy S II excels. But when it comes to overall performance, Samsung Galaxy S II definitely is the winner dominating Huawei Honor by a well-defined margin. It has better processing power, more smooth operations due to the better RAM, and fascinating usability with the help of TouchWiz UI, super battery life as well as a well-made camera that has true HD recording. Needless to say, it’s the winner, but on the other hand, Huawei Honor also has some plus points. It certainly has a good combination of memory and processing power, good OS and some attractive features. But the real difference comes with the price they come with. While Huawei Honor is considerably inexpensive, Samsung Galaxy S II is more than twice of the price Honor is offered. So again, if you are an economical investor looking for a high end phone, you can go for Huawei Honor, but otherwise, Samsung Galaxy S II is your man.