GSMArena.com GSMArena.com

Tip us

1.5m
109k
RSS

EV

Merch

Log in

Login

I forgot my password
Sign up
  • Home
  • News
  • Reviews
  • Videos
  • Featured
  • Phone Finder
  • Deals
  • MerchNew
  • Coverage
  • Contact
ADVERTISEMENTS
GSMArena team, 06 August 2010

Collision course


Samsung I9000 Galaxy S vs. Apple iPhone 4: Collision course

  • Comments (940)
  • I9000 Galaxy S
  • iPhone 4

6. Music players and audio quality, video players
  1. 1. Introduction
  2. 2. Design and construction
  3. 3. Telephony, displays
  4. 4. Still cameras
  5. 5. Video recording
  6. 6. Music players and audio quality, video players
  7. 7. Web browsers
  8. 8. Applications, wrap up
  9.  
  10. Samsung I9000 Galaxy S specification
  11. Apple iPhone 4 specification
  12. Review comments (940)

Samsung Apple Android Touch UI Shootout

Music player

Ample high-quality screens, vast storage space and loads of processing power – the iPhone 4 and the Galaxy S are both great portable multimedia players. But it takes more than that to reach perfection and we are about to see which of them walked the extra mile.

Samsung I9000 Galaxy S Samsung I9000 Galaxy S Samsung I9000 Galaxy S
The Galaxy S music player

In terms of visualization, none of the smartphones gains an upper hand as their touch music player interfaces are among the best on the market.

The Samsung Galaxy S however scores an extra point for bringing an FM radio along. While the iPhone 4 may have an edge in audio quality, it’s certainly has no match for tuning to a favorite FM station.

Apple iPhone 4 Apple iPhone 4 Apple iPhone 4 Apple iPhone 4
The iPhone 4 music player

On one hand you have the iPhone 4 with its iPod pedigree, making a really strong candidate. The iPhone 4 is also the handset with the cleanest audio output we have seen and one of the loudest, too (when using headphones).

The Galaxy S audio quality is great but not iPhone 4-perfect.

For this shootout we decided to do something more than our usual audio quality test and recorded each of the handsets twice. The first two rows of the table below contain the numbers we usually publish - this is the performance of the handset when plugged into an active amplifier (i.e. your car stereo or your home audio system). It's the best the handsets can deliver as there is no additional resistance they have to deal with.

The second two rows show the actual performance of the iPhone 4 and the Galaxy S when a pair of headphones is plugged. We used a pair of AKG headphones with impedance of 32 ohms. As you can see both handsets audio quality slightly deteriorated but it still remained perfect for almost all purposes practical.

The stereo crosstalk is the only area that took a serious hit (mostly so with the Galaxy S), so leakage between the channels is more pronounced but everything else is great. Still it's easy to notice that the iPhone 4 gets an edge when headphones are connected, which is the only thing that matters to most of the users. The creators of the iPod certainly knew what they were doing here.

TestFrequency responseNoise levelDynamic rangeTHDIMD + NoiseStereo crosstalk
Apple iPhone 4+0.01, -0.07-90.590.60.00410.011-92.0
Samsung I9000 Galaxy S+0.03 -0.04-90.790.60.014 0.019-90.6
Apple iPhone 4 (headphones attached)+0.01, -0.07-90.490.40.00360.092-68.4
Samsung I9000 Galaxy S (headphones attached)+0.40 -0.12-90.790.60.018 0.329-43.3

Apple iPhone 4 vs Samsung I9000 Galaxy S
Apple iPhone 4 vs Samsung I9000 Galaxy S

As far as uploading multimedia files to you mobile phone goes, the Galaxy S has a clear advantage. You can just attach a cable (Bluetooth and WLAN are also options) to your phone and any computer nearby and you are good to go. Things just don’t get simpler than drag-and-drop.

Of course the iPhone 4 comes in 16/32 GB flavors so it offers more storage out of the box than the 8/16GB Galaxy S, but the Samsung handset has a microSD card slot, which lets you bump its storage up to the impressive 48 GB.

The biggest multimedia sin of the iPhone 4 is that it’s all too reliant on iTunes to prepare its multimedia files for it, which is quite a complication – especially on Windows, where iTunes performance is hardly award-winning. You should be able to transfer files to your handset anyway you like anywhere you want, not on a fixed computer through some fixed piece of software. There are workarounds for this, like the Filer app, we recently covered, but none of them is as good as the real thing.

Apple iPhone 4: 8/10 • Samsung I9000 Galaxy S: 9/10

Video player

The Samsung Galaxy S brings a larger screen with much better contrast, making it perfect for watching videos. It also sports a much more suitable screen aspect ratio, allowing widescreen movies to fit better and waste less screen estate. And with native DivX and XviD support, chances are you won’t need any video conversion kung-fu too.

Then of course, there’s battery life too. You can only play so many movies as your batter lasts. In our recent dedicated battery test the Samsung Galaxy S went on playing our test DivX video sample for some good 7 hours and 25 minutes before the battery fell below 10%.

Samsung I9000 Galaxy S Samsung I9000 Galaxy S Samsung I9000 Galaxy S
The Galaxy S video player

The iPhone 4 however is our current video battery life champ. We converted the test video sample in a format it recognizes but keeping the original bitrate and we fed it to its iPod video player. It lasted 9 hours and 40 minutes – a very impressive achievement.

Apple iPhone 4 Apple iPhone 4
The iPhone 4 video player

As far as general battery performance is concerned, we find the two contenders quite on par with each other.

However would still pick the Galaxy S as a better all-round portable player, because larger, wider screen. Not to mention that the stuff about the overall larger storage capacity (and removable, too) of the Galaxy S plus the silly iTunes chains on the iPhone 4 still hold true when you mean to use your phone as a video player.

Apple iPhone 4: 8/10 • Samsung I9000 Galaxy S: 10/10
Next Page » 7. Web browsers
6. Music players and audio quality, video players
  1. 1. Introduction
  2. 2. Design and construction
  3. 3. Telephony, displays
  4. 4. Still cameras
  5. 5. Video recording
  6. 6. Music players and audio quality, video players
  7. 7. Web browsers
  8. 8. Applications, wrap up
  9.  
  10. Samsung I9000 Galaxy S specification
  11. Apple iPhone 4 specification
  12. Review comments (940)

Reviews Samsung Galaxy S vs. Apple iPhone 4Page 6
  • Comments (940)
  • I9000 Galaxy S
  • iPhone 4

Phone finder

  • Samsung
  • Apple
  • Huawei
  • Nokia
  • Sony
  • LG
  • HTC
  • Motorola
  • Lenovo
  • Xiaomi
  • Google
  • Honor
  • Oppo
  • Realme
  • OnePlus
  • vivo
  • Meizu
  • BlackBerry
  • Asus
  • Alcatel
  • ZTE
  • Microsoft
  • Vodafone
  • Energizer
  • Cat
  • Sharp
  • Micromax
  • Infinix
  • TCL
  • Ulefone
  • Tecno
  • Doogee
  • Blackview
  • BLU
  • Panasonic
  • Plum

All brands Rumor mill

ADVERTISEMENTS

Related articles

  • Samsung Galaxy S23+ in for review
  • Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra benchmarks - Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy examined
  • Samsung cuts Galaxy S22 prices in India
  • Samsung Galaxy S23 in for review
ADVERTISEMENTS

Popular reviews

Apple iOS 14 review

Apple iOS 14 review
Xiaomi Mi 10 Ultra review

Xiaomi Mi 10 Ultra review
Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra 5G review

Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra 5G review

ELECTRIC VEHICLES

Tesla Model S tops 29 car-strong winter range test Tesla Model S tops 29 car-strong winter range test Nissan Qashqai e-Power real life test yields disappointing resultsTesla Model Y is now eligible for $7,500 IRA tax credit in the US
ADVERTISEMENTS

Home News Reviews Compare Coverage Glossary FAQ RSS feed Youtube Facebook Twitter Instagram

© 2000-2023 GSMArena.com Mobile version Android app Tools Contact us Merch store Privacy Terms of use Change Ad Consent Do not sell my data