Samsung Galaxy S II Trumps iPhone 4S

Also, his chart seems to only highlight (literally, in blue) the places where the Galaxy S II wins - notice how the Galaxy win in screen size is highlighted but the iPhone win in resolution isn't. He also makes implicit value judgements and doesn't tell you. For instance, both phones are on AT&T and Sprint, but the Droid is marked the winner of the category because its 3rd carrier is T-Mobile while the iPhone's 3rd carrier is Verizon.

All the above said, as someone in the market for a phone, there are more relevant factors that are too specific to the individual for a website breakdown. For instance, I spend 8 hours in a pre-war building with sub-optimal cell service and most of the rest of my day in the suburbs outside of 4g coverage, so 4G isn't crucial to me (but is to other people). Similarly, how much the overall plan costs per month may determine which carrier, which has an impact on which phone. A $10/month difference in calling plan prices is $240 over the life of the contract, swamping any difference in phone price. Or you may need a phone which works with Linux/iTunes/whatever, which also limits your decision. There are a lot of these factors which vary person to person and make it impossible for anyone to say which is the best phone in all circumstances for all people.

So, any comparison that states that a phone trumps the iPhone 4S should at the very least talk about software.

If you take the polished iOS UI and apps into account, you'll see that Apple has nothing to worry about -- yet.

But, the Android competition is clearly catching up. Yesterday I played around with a Galaxy II, and it's a very nice device with a huge screen. Based on my 1-minute consumer impression, the major downside compared to the iPhone is Android, which still isn't as nice and smooth as iOS.

Now, the Samsung Galaxy S II LTE HD (which has a 316ppi screen) is competitive, but the Galaxy S II is no comparison: you want an iPhone 4. Trust me: I don't like Apple winning this; I hate their attitude on openness more than just about anyone else, and I'd love a more reasonable piece of hardware to rest my software on, but they leapfrogged the competition so hard on the things that actually matter for day-to-day usage of the device, that apparently a year later other vendors aren't even trying.

I develop a mental picture of a squirrely, mad-scientist type who has just developed a cyborg lover and is frantically pitching it to a passer by on the street:

"Her lips are 8.6% larger than the average woman's! The width of her hips exactly 1.61803399 times the size of her waist size. The golden ratio! Her face is constructed using geometry indicated to be most appealing to the largest number of males in our thirty-thousand member clinical study! She's... um... ready & able to engage in intercourse using a synthetic lubrication dispersion system that contains real human pheromones up to 8 times a day! Try that with a real woman <laugh> <snort> !"

The passer by is confused and disgusted. As he walks in to his home, he grabs his girlfriend and holds her tight, breathing in her scent, and basking in the warmth of her embrace. Her measurements, nor the proportions of her face, enter his mind as he looks in to her eyes and tells her he loves her. The way she makes him feel cannot be attributed to any "specification".

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I don't mean to say that I feel about my phone the way I feel about the woman I love, but that in similar juxtaposition, the reasons I feel the way I do about my phone can't be expressed using specifications.

What is true is that the Galaxy S2 has had these specs for the last half year...

The S3 isn't that far away anymore and before that the Nexus Prime will come knocking, so from a hardware standpoint the iPhone 4s is outdated on launch, which is quite sad in comparison to how advanced the first models were.