When it comes to the giants of the smartphone arena, the iPhone 6 Plus and the HTC One M8 are two devices that want to fight off badly. Both of these nifty machines are the flagships of 2014 for Apple, respectively HTC, and have a huge burden to carry. What defines these devices and which of them tops the other off? A little show and tell should straighten things out.
The measurements on the devices look quite different. The iPhone 6 Plus measures in at 158.1 x 77.8 x 7.1 mm (long, across, deep), while the One M8 is slightly smaller and thicker at 146.4 x 70.6 x 9.4 mm. The One M8 is a lighter than the iPhone 6 Plus, 160 vs. 172 g. The iPhone 6 Plus features the Touch ID security option that also allows the use of the fingerprint scanner for the Apple Pay service.
The screen on the iPhone 6 Plus is a LED-Backlit IPS LCD at 5.5 inches, with a max resolution of 1920 x 1080 and a pixel density of 401 ppi (pixels per inch). The HTC One M8 sports a 5 inch Super LCD3 with the same resolution and an increased pixel count of 441 ppi. Both devices feature protective measures for the displays; the iPhone 6 Plus bears a shatter proof glass and an oleophobic coating (anti-grease coating), while the One M8 gets a Corning Gorilla Glass 3.
The operating system on the iPhone 6 Plus is iOS 8 with the potential to upgrade to iOS 8.1.2. The HTC One M8 is using Android 4.4 KitKat with the possibility of upgrading to Android 5.0 Lollipop. In terms of hardware the iPhone 6 plus features a dual-core Apple A8 chip at 1.4 GHz and PowerVR GPU, backed up by 1 GB of RAM. The HTC One M8 gets a head start here with a quad-core Snapdragon 801 at 2.3 GHz and an Adrena 330 GPU. The memory on the M8 is also better with 2 GB of RAM. The internal storage options for the iPhone 6 Plus are 16/64/128 GB without a microSD card slot. The M8 features only two variants for internal storage, 16/32 GB, but has an added microSD card slot that can pump it up to 128 additional GB.
The camera wars favor the One M8 as it gets a dual 4 MP, dual-LED on the back and the micro-pixel tech which makes the pixels bigger, thus increasing the image quality. The iPhone 6 plus features an 8 MP rear snapper with dual-LED and Optical Image stabilization. The front snapper on the HTC One M8 is superior at 5 MP, while the iPhone 6 Plus only gets 1.2 MP, but with some nifty features like face detection and FaceTime over Wi-Fi or cellular. The battery on the HTC One M8 tops up at 2600 mAh while the iPhone 6 Plus goes up to 2915 mAh.
The build on the iPhone 6 Plus feel premium with an all-around aluminum encasing. The case remains the same for HTC One M8. The color variants for the iPhone 6 Plus are: Space Gray, Silver and Gold, while the One M8 gets Gunmetal Gray, Glacial Silver and Amber Gold, not too much of a difference if you ask me. The price however is the key difference here. The iPhone 6 Plus scores about 600 euros while the HTC One M8 goes up to 440 euros, quite the difference here. In the end it comes to that Android vs. iOS debate, but still for the lower price, better hardware specs and nifty camera I would go for the HTC One M8 anytime.