News & Reviews:   HTC One comparison

We've always felt that the HTC Butterfly and by extension the HTC Butterfly S never really got the attention and hype that they deserved. During the HTC Butterfly's time this was because HTC was pinning it's hopes of salvation on the HTC One but now that that time has passed the stigma seems to have overshadowed the HTC Butterfly S. Regardless, some people have gone and proven that the HTC Butterfly S for one is worthy of more than just a second glance as it manages to beat the flagship HTC One in performance benchmarks despite having the same Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 processor and chipset. This is probably because the HTC One is clocked at 1.7GHz while the HTC Butterfly S is clocked at 1.9GHz.

Great Design, Drops Better than the iPhone 5

While the HTC One managed to beat out Apple's iPhone 5 in drop tests recently it should be noted that it is a lot harder to repair. The HTC One recently got a teardown at iFixit (a site which takes apart smartphones and tries to put them back together). In that particular iFixit teardown, the HTC One is the only smartphone to get a repairability score of 1/10, which means it is next to impossible to repair (the Apple iPhone 5 has an iFixit repairability score of 7/10). Tearing down the HTC One the folks at iFixit found:

• Most of the components are covered with copper tape for shielding which when removed looks like used aluminum foil (almost impossible to fix back)
• The battery is attached to the midframe and covered by the motherboard, making it very difficult to replace.
• To replace the display you have to remove the rear case which may require taking apart the entire HTC One.

For quite some time now, Apple's iPhone has touted it's toughness and endurance based on it's aluminum unibody carved from a single block of aluminum. However, it is no longer alone in the smartphone arena as from the horde of plastic Android smartphones comes the HTC One, one of the first Android smartphones to have an aluminum unibody as well. Both have aluminum unibody casings and both have not nearly as tough glass screens. Which one would survive drops better?