HTC Desire vs iPhone 4 vs Samsung Galaxy S

iPhone 4

The Retina Display from Apple packs the highest amount of pixels into a mobile phone screen, and offers a very sharp image on the screen indeed.

You can zoom right into letters on a web page and there's no graining – Apple says this is so high-res that the human eye doesn't need any more.

HTC desire vs iphone 4 vs samsung galaxy s

It uses LCD technology, rather than OLED, so it's a little thicker – although the iPhone 4 is still the thinnest smartphone on the market.

HTC Desire

The OLED screen on the Desire is pretty nice in its own right – decent colour saturation, high contrast ratio, good response – but despite it being at the sharp end of the industry, it's still beaten comfortably by its rivals.

It has the same resolution as the Samsung Galaxy S but doesn't have the same clarity – although watching video on the screen is still a nice experience, and you can really ramp the brightness up when necessary.

Samsung Galaxy S

The Super AMOLED screen on the Galaxy S is the most advanced the Koreans have created – and it shows.

The screen is pin sharp, and the speed and response time is the best we've seen on a mobile, which means watching movies is a really nice experience.

HTC desire vs iphone 4 vs samsung galaxy s

According to the spec sheet, the iPhone 4's Retina Display is actually superior – but to our eyes we prefer looking at things on the Galaxy S.

Winner: Samsung Galaxy S

Gareth Beavis
Formerly Global Editor in Chief

Gareth has been part of the consumer technology world in a career spanning three decades. He started life as a staff writer on the fledgling TechRadar, and has grown with the site (primarily as phones, tablets and wearables editor) until becoming Global Editor in Chief in 2018. Gareth has written over 4,000 articles for TechRadar, has contributed expert insight to a number of other publications, chaired panels on zeitgeist technologies, presented at the Gadget Show Live as well as representing the brand on TV and radio for multiple channels including Sky, BBC, ITV and Al-Jazeera. Passionate about fitness, he can bore anyone rigid about stress management, sleep tracking, heart rate variance as well as bemoaning something about the latest iPhone, Galaxy or OLED TV.