Five Apple iPhone 5 advantages over the Samsung Galaxy S4

The tech world is all abuzz about the ever sharpening face-off between Apple’s flagship iPhone 5 and Samsung’s new Galaxy S4. From a distance they look perhaps similar, leaving customers unsure of what to make of the two models. While the salespeople in stores like Best Buy and Radio Shack tend to be the kind of technology enthusiasts who are all too eager to steer you toward their preferred S4, their reasons for doing so may not match up with reasons mainstream consumers care about. So in the interest of presenting the other side of the argument, here are five advantages the iPhone 5 has over the Galaxy S4:

1. Screen quality: Salespeople love to talk about screen size in terms of inches. But that diagonal measurement doesn’t tell you much about the screen’s effective size. The iPhone 5 screen has a pixel density so tight it’s as dense as the naked human eye can see. In contrast the Galaxy S4 has a noticeably less sharp screen, meaning that you have to hold it significantly further away from your eyes for the screen to become clear. As such, the S4 effectively has a smaller screen than that of the iPhone 5. Inches may matter in other facets of life. But with smartphones, more low-pixel-density inches merely means you’re carrying around a physically larger device for no reason.

2. Battery life: On paper the iPhone 5 and Galaxy S4 have similar battery life numbers. But those numbers for the S4 are calculated on 3G networks, with 4G LTE networking turned off. Because it uses a first generation LTE chipset which requires significantly more power, the S4 gets fractional battery life when 4G LTE is enabled. Contrast that with the iPhone 5, which gets its full battery life specs with 4G LTE turned on, because Apple uses a second generation 4G LTE chipset which uses no more power than the older 3G chipset.

3. Music: The iPhone 5 syncs with Apple’s iTunes, an online music store which has been around for a decade and offers nearly every song in existence. iCloud now allows you to purchase a song from iTunes on your computer, and that song will automatically download wirelessly to your iPhone, meaning that the days of “syncing” are behind us. In contrast, the Galaxy S3 relies on Google Play, a still unfinished music store which is lacking in selection and ease of use.

4. App Store: The iPhone 5 relies on Apple’s App Store, while the Galaxy S4 relies on various Android app markets. Apple hand-tests every app before it goes live, ensuring that the apps you download for your iPhone 5 will be virus-free and won’t make your device crash. There is no such testing on the Android side, meaning that downloading apps must be done with caution. Although store salesmen love to claim the opposite, there are more free apps and more paid apps available for the iPhone 5 than there are for the S4.

5. Compatibility: While salesmen love to knock Apple products for supposed incompatibilities, it turns out the most glaring compatibility issue in the smartphone world is the one which the Android platform has – with itself. When Apple released the new iOS 6 system software last year, more than half of existing iPhone users installed it within the first month. Contrast that with the latest Android release, which despite having been available for half a year has thus far been installed on only about ten percent of existing Android devices. Some users couldn’t get past install hassles, but far more users didn’t install Android 4.2 because it simply wasn’t compatible with their device. In fact, the majority of new Android based devices for sale right now can’t run 4.2. This fragmentation has plagued the Android platform since the start, due to the wide variety of obscure devices which run Android. That means that when Android 4.3 or Android 5.0 is released later this year, there’s no way to know when – or even if – it’ll be compatible with the Galaxy S4. You could be stuck running 4.2.1 on your S4 for as long as you own it. But when Apple releases iOS 7 with major new features later this year, the free update will be guaranteed to be compatible with the iPhone 5 you buy now.