The New HTC Sensation XL Does Battle With The Samsung Galaxy S2

Over the past 12 months the undoubted king of the smartphones has been the Samsung Galaxy S2 which has proved to be a best seller worldwide. HTC have now released a new premium handset that looks to take the place of this excellent model. The new Sensation XL offers a great blend of looks and specification but can it outshine its Samsung rival.

Despite being several months newer than the S2 the HTC Sensation XL does not surpass what is offered on the Samsung in several areas. Although this is initially disappointing it is worth remembering that the S2 is an exceptional handset that still boasts specification that betters many newer phones. In the processing department the new Sensation XL offers a powerful 1.5 Ghz processor together with a high quality Adreno 205 graphics processing unit. Despite the chipset only offering a single core users of the phone can still experience fast operation even when using multi tasking facilities. The S2 does offer a dual core chip which is an ARM Cortex A9 chip clocked at 1.2Ghz. Although the speed of the phone is similar to the XL in general use the dual cores come into their own for multi tasking providing a slightly smoother experience. The Sensation XL offers 768MB of RAM memory compared with 1GB installed on the Samsung. This makes the S2 more prepared for any advances in technology that may be introduced over the coming months.

Despite the massive 4.7 inch S-LCD screen fitted on the HTC Sensation XLthe developers have opted to keep the same 480 x 800 resolution that was offered on the original Sensation handset This screen does offer superb quality with naturally deep dark tones and vivid bright colours but the increase in screen size has resulted in the pixels per inch rating of the phone dropping to 199. In contrast the Galaxy S2 offers a smaller 4.3 inch display that uses Super AMOLED technology to produce an image which is arguably the best currently available with the exception of the Apple iPhone. The model uses the same resolution as the HTC but the smaller screen means that there are more pixels per inch at 217.

The camera features on a modern phone are now a key factor in many consumers purchasing decision and both of these models offer great facilities. The Sensation XL offers an 8 mega pixel camera with geo tagging abilities and a dual LED flash. The device can also record video footage at 720P resolution whilst the front facing camera can capture images at 1.3 mega pixel standard as well as enable video calling. The S2 offers the same resolution on the main camera but exceeds what is on offer on the HTC with its 1080P video capture and 2 mega pixel front facing camera.

The HTC Sensation XL in undoubtedly one of the most impressive devices that HTC have ever produced but it fails to eclipse the overall quality offered by the Samsung Galaxy S2, although in most areas both models seem to be quite evenly matched.

The HTC Sensation XL and the Samsung Galaxy S2 are available now.