HTC One versus Sony Xperia Z: Smartphone flagship showdown
Summary: Hands on with HTC and Sony's high end smartphones; which one will have the edge?
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The Xperia Z is, as advertised, waterproof up to certain depths for submersion of up to 30 minutes.
On paper the hardware of the two devices measure up well. The Xperia Z has a 5-inch (1920x1080 pixels) water and dust resistant display, 1.5GHz quad core Qualcomm processor and 13-megapixel camera on the rear. There's also 2GB RAM and 16GB of internal storage, which can be expanded through use of a microSD card.
In the other corner is the HTC One, which, while it isn't water or dust resistant, is still no slouch in the hardware department.
Under-the-bonnet, the HTC One has a 1.7GHz quad-core processor, 2GB RAM and is available in 32GB or 64GB storage variants. Unlike almost every other smartphone on the market, the One eschews the usual high megapixel count for its rear camera in favour of a 4-megapixel sensor specifically designed to give better low-light and all-round performance than your average snapper. Unfortunately, the design of the phone also means that HTC skipped over including a microSD slot for expanding that on board storage.
It’s a similar story for the displays, too. Both are full HD and with PPI counts in the mid 400s, although the HTC One does pip the Xperia Z to the post in terms of overall screen quality. But then, it's not waterproof.
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