HTC One vs Sony Xperia Z: One to Z

Synthetic benchmarks

Qualcomm's Snapdragon is one of the most popular smartphone chipsets around and it's the basis of both the Sony Xperia Z and the HTC One. There's an important difference though. The Xperia Z uses Snapdragon S4 Pro, while the One uses Snapdragon 600.

The S4 Pro uses four classic Krait cores clocked at 1.5GHz, while the 600 uses four Krait 300 cores at 1.7GHz. The two versions of Krait are similar, but the 300 has several speed tweaks that make sure it's doing better even when clocked at the same speed as its predecessor. Both chipsets use Adreno 320 GPUs but there may be a difference in clockspeed.

There's certainly a difference in clockspeed for the CPUs though. 200MHz in favor of the HTC One might not sound like much, but in combination with updated architecture should give it quite an edge.

It shows pretty clearly in BenchmarkPi, a single-threaded benchmarks. Some multithreaded workloads may not care much for the difference between chipsets (Linpack), but others do (Geekbench 2). Overall, you can expect the HTC One to be slighlty faster than the Xperia Z is CPU-heavy tasks.

BenchmarkPi

Lower is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4
  132
• LG Optimus G Pro
  147
• HTC One
  151
• Sony Xperia Z
  264
• HTC Butterfly
  266
• Oppo Find 5
  267
• HTC One X+
  280
• LG Optimus G
  285
• Samsung Galaxy Note II
  305
• HTC One X (Tegra 3)
  330
• LG Optimus 4X HD
  350
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  359
• Meizu MX 4-core
  362
• Nexus 4
  431

Linpack

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4
  788
• LG Optimus G Pro
  743
• HTC One
  646
• Sony Xperia Z
  630
• HTC Butterfly
  624
• LG Optimus G
  608
• Oppo Find 5
  593
• Samsung Galaxy Note II
  214.3
• Nexus 4
  213.5
• Meizu MX 4-core
  189.1
• HTC One X+
  177.7
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  175.5
• HTC One X
  160.9
• LG Optimus 4X HD
  141.5

Geekbench 2

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4
  3227
• LG Optimus G Pro
  3040
• HTC One
  2708
• Sony Xperia Z
  2173
• HTC Butterfly
  2143
• LG Nexus 4
  2048
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  1845
• LG Optimus G
  1723
• LG Optimus 4X HD
  1661
• iPhone 5
  1601

AnTuTu and Quadrant test the whole system - CPU, GPU, RAM, storage - so the lead of the HTC One widens here.

AnTuTu

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4
  24716
• HTC One
  22678
• Sony Xperia Z
  20794
• LG Optimus G Pro
  20056
• HTC Butterfly
  19513
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  15547
• Oppo Find 5
  15167

Quadrant

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4
  12376
• LG Optimus G Pro
  12105
• HTC One
  11746
• Sony Xperia Z
  8075
• HTC One X+
  7632
• LG Optimus G
  7439
• Oppo Find 5
  7111
• HTC One X
  5952
• Samsung Galaxy Note II
  5916
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  5450
• Meizu MX 4-core
  5170
• Nexus 4
  4567

But how much of that is due to a difference GPU performance (because of a higher clockspeed)? Well, GLBenchmark 2.5 Egypt (the 1080p off-screen test) showed the difference is quite significant and in favor of the HTC One (6fps or about 17% faster).

GLBenchmark 2.5 Egypt (1080p off-screen)

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4
  40
• HTC One
  34
• Asus Padfone 2
  31
• Oppo Find 5
  30
• Sony Xperia Z
  29
• LG Optimus G
  29
• HTC Butterfly
  27.9
• Apple iPhone 5
  27
• Nexus 4
  26
• Samsung Galaxy Note II
  17
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  15
• HTC One X+
  12
• HTC One X
  9

Real-world games might not show a difference for a while though. Epic Citadel is a tech demo for Unreal Engine, which has been used in many high-end 3D mobile games and the benchmark mode often hit the software 60fps limit on both smartphones.

Epic Citadel

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4
  57.1
• HTC One
  56.4
• Sony Xperia Z
  55.6
• LG Optimus G Pro
  54.2
• Nexus 4
  53.9
• Asus Padfone 2
  53.4
• LG Optimus G
  52.6
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  41.3
• Oppo Find 5
  38.6

The HTC One uses the stock Android browser and comes with Chrome preinstalled too, while the Sony Xperia Z has Chrome as its single web browsing option out of box. We used the stock browser on the One and Chrome for the Xperia Z benchmarks as we believe those are the default browsing options on the two smartphones.

Raw JavaScript performance is good though not stellar on both phones, with the HTC One having the lead (possibly due to its faster CPU).

SunSpider

Lower is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4
  810
• Samsung Ativ S
  891
• Apple iPhone 5
  915
• Nokia Lumia 920
  910
• Samsung Galaxy Note II
  972
• HTC One X+
  1001
• LG Optimus G Pro
  1011
• Motorola RAZR i XT890
  1059
• HTC One
  1124
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  1192
• Meizu MX 4-core
  1312
• Sony Xperia Z
  1336
• LG Optimus G
  1353
• HTC Butterfly
  1433
• Nexus 4
  1971
• Oppo Find 5
  2045

The HTML5 benchmark, Vellamo, also puts the two phones close together (closer to the top this time) with an advantage for the One.

Vellamo

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy Note II
  2418
• HTC One
  2382
• Sony Xperia Z
  2189
• HTC One X (Tegra 3)
  2078
• Samsung Galaxy S4
  2060
• HTC Butterfly
  1866
• Oppo Find 5
  1658
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  1641
• LG Optimus 4X HD
  1568
• LG Optimus G
  1522
• Meizu MX 4-core
  1468
• Nexus 4
  1310

Winner: HTC One. This was an easy win - the One beat the Xperia Z in every category (though often by small margins). The Sony Xperia Z is by no means a slouch, it just uses the previous generation of the chipset and has lower clock speeds.