This thread is a wreck already.
First of all, let me start with this: what's most counter-intuitive to technological discussions are allergic reactions to certain brands. I'm talking mostly about Apple here. We have performance, design, comfort, battery life, price, etc... that distinguish one phone from another, and a phone that is weak in one is not necessarily a bad phone altogether. Else it wouldn't sell. That means it would have no place in the market. That means it doesn't exist.
Let's start with the issue of iPhone. Then let's compare these Android phones to iPhone, shall we?
Points going strongly for the iPhone are:
1) Form factor: suitable for many that want a smartphone that they can easily deal with with one hand. The iPhone is easily the smallest high-end smartphone today.
2) Design: the iPhone's design spells quality. Although some may have certain objections to it (I do, the glass back, it breaks easily, so does the screen glass), it is a very good design nevertheless. It seems to work for Apple.
3) Display: 3.5" display. Easily the smallest among high-end smartphones. But what is it capable of? 960 x 640 resolution, giving you a crazy 330ppi (pixels per inch), beaten only by the Sony Xperia S, and closely matched by the newest highest-end Android smartphones (and for good reason they cannot exceed it, I would rather have 1280 x 720 on my phone than 1366 x 768, for example). Let us not forget that the iPhone 4 was available since June 2010, when no phone around even came close to its pixel density.
4) Operating system: iOS was always smooth, and always will be. Apple committed to delivering an OS that works across all its devices on the market, instantly updateable devices, no delays, no fragmentation, nothing. While some may complain that it is basic, simple, or devoid of features, it does the job according to millions of people.
The CPU seems to never have been the iPhone's strong point, and for good reason too. Remind me, which does your desktop have, a beefy CPU, or a beefier GPU? Which is the main factor for performance in high workloads (gaming, mostly). And which component is referred to as the bottleneck? Which component is upgraded till it is no longer a bottleneck, then left till obsolescence? Answer these questions, and you will see why the iPhone still runs a "slow" dual-core (1GHz). While I do tend to agree that common workloads, such as internet browsers, if they converge, or use the same methods for rendering webpages, will suffer on a slower CPU. That is if GPU acceleration does not become the norm and the main factor determining browser performance.
Now the next part, the GPU: Excuse, but the 4S's PowerVR SGX543MP2 dual-core GPU is nothing to sniff at. It easily beats the ARM Mali-400 GPU in the Galaxy S2, declared the king of Android phones GPUs. You would also notice that the S2 trounced the iPhone 4 in terms of CPU and GPU, but the 4S regains some lost CPU ground, and beats it well in GPU.
Now the disadvantages: what may somebody find wrong, or missing, in an iPhone? I will state my opinion on this matter a lot. It will be interleaved with facts, but the differences will stand out, don't worry:
First of all, I see iOS as a consumer's OS. Something made to fit a strict body of users, with not much in the way of customization, contrary to Android, which allows infinite customization to be made. In short, I believe that rather than Apple listening to what its users want, or even trying to, it is making an OS based on what it believes "will be enough" for users.
Second: 3.5" display. Users clearly like displays above 4" nowadays. As we move more and more towards mobile devices, we do tend to enjoy larger screens for web browsing, photos, videos, etc... you name it. I have a 5.3" display, I may be a bit biased yes, but many Note users will tend to agree with me: "It is very hard to go back to a smaller display".
Third: the resolution: 960 x 640, easily outclassed by 1280 x 720. Unable to move forward simply because it's stuck with a 3.5" display. Now don't tell me the story of pixel density, because it's not the only factor. More resolution, more rendering space, HD movies, no need for video conversion or downscaling, period.
Fourth: The glass: yuk. That would break in an instant. I totally dislike phone covers. I like my phones naked. A drop test, if you please:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elKxgsrJFhw
AND: heavy. Heavy due to what? To glass? I don't want glass in my phone! Give me anything else, just not glass. Okay, treat my screen with Gorilla Glass, but not more than that!
Fifth: Lack of microSD slot, removeable battery: I mean, what? A microSD slot can easily be made in the side of the device. Just look at the Motorola Droid Razr. Lack of it means selling mass storage for high prices. Just look at the differences in pricing between iPhones of different capacities. Are you serious? Even from that, you want to profit that much? That's high-way robbery. NAND, for phones, at such speeds, and capacities, is INCREDIBLY cheap.
What would I say to iPhone? No thanks. But what am I left with? Android. Let's see:
1 & 2) Form factor and design: Many form factors and designs are available. You are still limited in form factors and design, since usually you first have to specify the bracket in which you can afford to buy a phone, then you have to choose the phone. This means that if, say, you are looking for a high-end Android phone, the results are clearly few. In the end, only about five major manufacturers produce Android phones, and release their flagships at different times, too. And to add to that, they just move and move towards bigger displays. Samsung Galaxy S2, HTC Sensation: 4.3". Samsung Galaxy S3, HTC One X, LG Optimus 4X: 4.7" (4.8" for S3). The Note was to settle a point: "For those who like 'em big, come and buy Note!". Newest phones are approaching Note size!
3) Display: Let's see. Near 300 ppi? Check. 720p resolution? Check. Choice between LCD and AMOLED? Check. Let us not forget that if you really want to buy a phone tailored towards your phone usage, you will have to pay particular attention to screen technology.
LCD offers:
1) Excellent viewing angles
2) More natural color reproduction, but sometimes weaker (the two are not inclusive).
3) Constant power consumption, independent of what is being displayed.
AMOLED offers:
1) Better viewing angles than LCD (although a bluish tint on extreme angles). This is a moot point already. Viewing angles are crazy for both technologies.
2) More vivid colors, accused of being oversaturated. And I agree, if the OLED screen is not calibrated properly. It may even be done intentionally. Blue survives less than other colors in OLED, and Samsung may be increasing blue brightness so as not to let the screen dim and become green/red/yellowish over time. This is just a theory, mind.
3)Contrast. Near zero level black. We are NOT yet at zero level black. Just hold an AMOLED phone, with the screen ON, but displaying black, in a completely dark room. It is still lit. Don't let gsmarena's 0 black level and infinite contrast fool you. I will say, however, that in daylight, or a moderately lit room, blacks are as black as the screen is when it is off. Not infinite contrast, but something incredibly high. Then, contrast is not anymore a valid measurement of screen quality (0 black is almost possible). Color space / gamut / accuracy is.
4) Variable power consumption. This is an advantage and a disadvantage at once. Black consumes nearly 0 power, white consumes around 3 times as much as LCD consumes, at a similar brightness level. With OLED, you have close to a million pixels, all emitting light, while in LCD, you have a single bulb emitting light. Turns out the latter is still more efficient until now. Read this:
http://www.phonearena.com/news/Smartphone-Displays---AMOLED-vs-LCD_id13824/page/2
4) Android: A dream, a nightmare, call it whatever. It's beyond reality. Infinitely customizeable, you can create your own ROM, from source code, a free to use and modify OS, caters for almost anybody, and I dare say this, as easy to use as iOS. App development enjoys more freedom and is less controlled, malware is higher. Fragmentation, due to stupid manufacturers, hits it heavy. This phone is getting ICS update delayed, this phone's update has been cancelled, this phone is waiting for its carrier to update it, etc... It's pretty painful, and goes against the whole foundation Android stands for. Android stands for a steady increase in performance, smoothness, usability, features, etc...It stands for phone evolution. This is why custom ROMs shine for Android.
Gingerbread. I see this as the OS that familiarized Android. And it's pretty obvious. More than 60% of current phones are Gingerbread. BUT: It doesn't use GPU acceleration. It's many times slow and laggy, not even compared to anything, and to iOS it's a lagfest. ICS fixes this issue by supporting GPU acceleration for UI. Let's not forget that manufacturers apply their own UIs on top, and their transitions may seem slow or not smooth. Here we should make an important distinction between "smooth" and "fast". iOS transitions are both "smooth" and "fast". ICS transitions are usually "smooth" but not fast. Just try scrolling a menu on ICS. I guarantee you will mostly get those 60 frames per second, provided your phone is capable enough, but it is not as "fast" as iOS scrolling. Do not confuse the two. You can get used to "fast & smooth" or "smooth". In the end, it doesn't really matter, if scrolling is made faster in an ICS-based ROM (we shall see if that happens).
I turn off EVERYTHING related to delaying the appearance of my homescreen, or switching to a new app. Turning off transitions and animations, in ICS, makes the phone faster than anything out there. Anything.
NOW: About the S3 vs. HTC One X vs. iP4S, I will present a small comparison (without links, those are abundant):
CPU: S3 is faster than One X. Both are more than twice as fast as the iP4S's CPU.
GPU: S3 is around 30-40% faster than One X, which in turn COMPETES with the iP4S's GPU. However, we are using a single benchmark, which is the Egypt 2.1 benchmark, which is multi-platform. Using other benchmarks is recommend, to give an overall comparison of performance, since these GPUs resemble desktop GPUs before Nvidia's G80 architecture (meaning they have pixel and vertex shaders, which were later unified into unified shaders in Nvidia's G80 architecture. Unified shaders can do both pixel shading and vertex shading. Think of it this way: A tunnel requires vertex shading, while other non-geometrical details require pixel shading. A GPU may be powerful one way or the other. With unified shaders, it can allocate some towards pixel shading, and some towards vertex shading. Benefit.)
RAM: 1GB vs 1GB vs 512MB on iP4S. I would guess that this would impact web browsing and high-end gaming, IF and ONLY IF these become as efficient on Android, using the same rendering techniques. In regard to OS, iOS will be tailored to manage 512MB of RAM, Android will be made to flex its muscles with 1GB RAM. In this case, Android may hog more memory (just tell me how Windows 7 hogs 2GB of your 4GB+ of RAM, you will understand what I mean).
Displays: 4.8" / 4.7" of 1280 x 720p beauty, vs. the incredibly dense 960 x 640 3.5" iP4S display. S3 uses AMOLED, HTC One X uses Super LCD2. One X has more natural colors, while the S3 has the advantages that naturally come with AMOLED.
Battery life: S3 lasts longer than HTC One X in pretty much everything (even in web browsing, which is surprising, given the predominantly white nature of web browsing, and the high power consumption of white in AMOLED). Refer to gsmarena's battery tests.
iPhone 4S, even with battery issues, seems to still be in a league of its own.
Extras: S3 comes with a microSD slot, removeable battery. HTC One X doesn't.
Form factor, Design: HTC One X uses a unibody design. I would guess this is why it doesn't have a removeable battery (for the lack of microSD slot, this to me is inexcusable. But they may have their reasons, I suppose). I will leave the rest concerning form factor and design up to you. It's subjective.
@ranibalaa: Artificial comparisons of existing phones with non-existing phones should not be made. Some phones are delayed, others may be brought forward, no one really knows beforehand. The iPhone 4 is compared to the Galaxy S1 is the first 10 months of its life, then to the S2 in the last 6 months of its life. The iPhone 4S should be compared to the S2 in the first 7-8 months of its life, then to the S3 the rest of its life (until the iPhone 5 is released). "Wait for phone x" does not really work except if you have a brand preference or are timing your phone purchase. There is always something "better" coming. iPhone vs Android only makes it worse / clearer.
If I were to choose a phone, I would choose the Samsung Galaxy S3.
