Galaxy S6 vs. HTC One M9: The definitive showdown

Sunday was easily one of the biggest days of 2015 for smartphone fans around the world, who watched along as three of the most impressive phones that have ever been created were unveiled at the annual Mobile World Congress trade show. HTC was up first, and the company showed off its next-generation HTC One M9 flagship phone, a sleek and elegant handset that continues HTC’s long tradition of class leading design. Then Samsung’s event kicked off, and the company unveiled its stunning new Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge smartphones.

Now that all three of these great new Android phones are official, it’s time to run through a quick comparison and find out how they stack up against each other.

MORE COVERAGE:
Samsung Galaxy S6 hands-on preview
Samsung Galaxy S6 edge hands-on preview
HTC One M9 hands-on preview

HTC and Samsung both stirred up a huge amount of hype leading up to yesterday’s announcements. Of course, all of the leaks and rumors didn’t hurt either.

In the case of all three new flagship phones, we already knew almost everything there was to know about them long before they were announced. Leaks gave us photos, performance test results and all of the key specs in all three cases.

While the HTC One M9, Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge are all clearly fantastic devices, one company unveiled a relatively unexciting update to last year’s model while the other started from scratch and completely reimagined its flagship phones.

Here’s a quick high-level rundown of the HTC One M9’s specs compared to the Galaxy S6 and S6 edge:

As we can see, this battle isn’t just being won by Samsung on the surface with its sexy new designs and premium materials, the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge have plenty of bite to match all that bark. As we saw in early benchmarks, the S6 is a killer on every level and it crushes the M9 in performance tests.

Cutting to the chase, this is shaping up to be a very rough bout for HTC. There’s no question that the HTC One M9 is a fantastic smartphone, but there’s also no question that it is a somewhat minor upgrade compared to last year’s M8.

The One M9 looks like the M8 and feels like the M8, and mass-market consumers familiar with HTC phones will not see it as a significant upgrade. Savvy enthusiasts will know that the phone packs plenty more power and a dramatically improved camera, but they’ll also know that it’s not a huge upgrade.

Meanwhile, everything about the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge is new. From the materials and design to the internal components and software, Samsung built brand new phones from the ground up.

Not only is the Galaxy S6 a huge upgrade compared to last year’s Galaxy S5, it’s a cut above everything else on the market in terms of both design and performance. That includes the M9.

Sales will always tip the scales in Samsung’s favor thanks to the company’s massive multi-billion dollar marketing and advertising budget. But in 2014, HTC still managed to drum up a nice amount of business because the HTC One M8 was so much better than the Galaxy S5 in almost every way.

This year, that simply isn’t the case.

It’s difficult to call a clear winner after spending such a short amount of time with each phone, but at this point it looks like Samsung all the way in 2015.

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This article was originally published on BGR.com