Another Android smartphone, Motorola Photon has joined the competition to combine pleasure with business. It this one a real competitor for the impressive and powerful Samsung Galaxy S2? Head-to-head, these two devices have a different form factor, but what about inside? What the new entry Photon has to offer? Does it feature better specs than the Galaxy S2? Let’s take a closer look to both and give you a hand for an easier decision.
In the design category, we notice that the two Android phones come with different dimensions, with Motorola featuring the following: 126.9 x 66.9 x 12.2 mm, while the Galaxy S2 has these dimensions: 125.3 x 66.1 x 8.5 mm. So, although in terms of high and width, the difference is barely noticeable, in terms of weight, the beautiful Galaxy S2 clearly wins with its only 116g compared to the Photon’s 158g. The S2 is also slimmer, having 8.5mm, while Motorola Photon comes with 12.2mm.
Going down to the display, both include the standard size for major smartphones; 4.3-inch touchscreen. While the Photon has a TFT LCD capacitive display and a better resolution set at 540 x 960 pixels, the beautiful Galaxy S2 includes the new technology Super AMOLED Plus with a lower resolution:480×800 pixels and protected by Gorilla Glass. Motorola Photon has a new User Interface from Motorola called GhostBlur with some improvements and the Galaxy S 2 comes with TouchWiz UI v4.0.
Regarding the camera section, there is a performant 8 megapixel camera on the back of both handsets including autofocus and LED flash, capable of recording video at 720p (for Motorola Photon) and 1080p full HD (for Galaxy S2). For video calling, the Photon has a secondary front facing VGA cam, while the G2 comes with a 2MP. For other settings, both have useful features such as: geo-tagging, face detection, image stabilization.
As expected, these tow high-end Android phone include a dual-core processor. Motorola has equipped the Photon with the NVIDIA Tegra 2 chip bringing extreme multitasking clocked at 1 GHz dual core processor. Samsung Galaxy S2 includes also a speedy CPU, with a dual-core 1.2GHz ARM Cortex-A9 proccessor and an Orion chipset. Same 1GB of RAM on both devices. As far as the storage part is concerned, the Photon has 16GB built-in memory which can be expanded up to 32GB, while the Galaxy S2 comes with 16 or 32 GB internal memory plus an extra microSD card with another 8GB that can be expanded up to 32GB.
What about the software part? Samsung Galaxy S2 and Motorola Photon run the latest version of Android 2.3 Gingerbread with access to thousands of apps included on the Android Market. Both are compatible with Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, DLNA, Wi-Fi Direct, Wi-Fi hotspot plus Bluetooth.
Wrap-up
Depending on what you are looking for, both Android devices could be an excellent choice. Featuring great technical details, the Galaxy S2 is more stylish, portable and lighter than the Motorola Photon which has a rigid and classic appearance. While none of phones is yet available, you have time to consider which one worths the investment.
