Both Taiwanese tech companies, Asus and HTC have showcased their flagship smartphone offerings to the public, even though Asus did it a little earlier than its rival; at the Consumer Electronics Show. During the unveiling, Asus' Zenfone 2 became the first smartphone to ever sport 4 GB of RAM, and while HTC's One M9 possesses a much better performing chipset (Qualcomm Snapdragon 810), it still packs a whole gigabyte of memory less than the Zenfone 2.
Both devices render the 1080p resolution, but the Zenfone 2's ppi value is far lower compared to the One M9 since the former possesses a 5.5 inch screen size, a size which is half an inch bigger than HTC's flagship smartphone. The large form factor of Asus' smartphone has also allowed the company to pack in a larger battery pack; 3,000 mAh compared to the 2,840 mAh present in the One M9.
Coming back to the chipset side of things, the Zenfone 2 runs Intel's Atom Z3580, which features a 64 bit capable quad-core processor clocked in at 2.3 GHz. The Snapdragon 810 however features an octa-core package comprising of one quad-core 1.5 GHz Cortex-A53 and another quad-core 2 GHz Cortex-A57 CPU, which in order words means that it will easily zip past the processor present inside Intel's chipset. In addition, the Adreno 430 GPU present in Qualcomm's chipset will make short work of the PowerVR G6430 GPU placed in the Zenfone 2.
In terms of expandable storage options, the One M9 gives more freedom to owners, allowing them to expand their external storage up to 128 GB. On the Zenfone 2, that amount is limited to half the value present on the One M9. However, in terms of price/performance ratio, the Zenfone 2 is the clear winner. According to PhoneArena, the device carries a price tag of $318 (for the 64 GB internal capacity variant with 4 GB of RAM).
While the pricing details of HTC One M9 have not been announced, it will most likely be stamped with a much larger tag compared to its rivalling handset, which will easily sway consumers on a budget to stick to purchasing the cheaper solution since they will only sacrifice a small amount of performance and a little expandable storage for a ton of features.
