The Differences Between the Samsung Focus and HTC HD7 Smartphones: A Comparison

I'm putting this back on now, and we'll take a look at the display itself now that the operating system is identical, so we're not really going to go into that. But I do want to show you the differences in screens, and we'll talk a little bit about the external speakers on these as well.

The Samsung Focus, also known as the HTC HD7 in some regions, has a speaker located at this spot. The location of the speaker is one thing that sets it apart from the HTC HD7, which has a speaker located right here. What's supposed to happen with this speaker is when you're watching video or listening to music, it's supposed to resonate through these two slots and create a stereo effect, even though it's intended for earbuds or an external microphone. Unfortunately, that doesn't quite work as well on the Focus.

Let me show you the difference in display. I'll try to find a wallpaper that matches this one so we can compare colors. Yes, these are stock wallpapers. Let's see if they have the same one. Ah, yes! They do have the same wallpaper. Okay, now let's compare the two screens with this wallpaper.

As you can see from this image, there is a significant difference in brightness and color between the two screens. The Super AMOLED screen on the Focus is much brighter and more vibrant than the display on the HD7. I've had to turn down the brightness of the Focus's screen to make it comparable to the HD7.

In terms of responsiveness, both phones seem to be equally responsive to touch inputs. However, the viewing angle on the Focus is still one of its strongest features. The viewing angle on the HD7, while not bad, can't quite match the Focus in this regard. When comparing these two screens side by side, it's clear that the Super AMOLED screen on the Focus is a significant improvement over the display on the HD7.

Now, let me show you where the home button and back key are located. As you can see, both phones have a traditional Windows Phone 7 design with a home button and back key, which is typical for these operating systems. Both buttons seem to be responsive and work as expected.

I've also noticed that the build quality of these two phones is quite different. The Focus feels very light, almost like a toy phone compared to the heavier HD7. While this might make it easier to carry around, I do wonder how well it will hold up over time in terms of durability and scratch resistance. Both phones use some form of Gorilla Glass protection, but that's about all I can say on the matter.

If you have any questions or want to see more comparisons between these two phones, feel free to ask before I get rid of this HD7. And yes, I will be getting rid of it soon since I'm upgrading to another phone.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhi everyone this is Aaron for zotech and today we're going to be comparing the HTC hd7 to the Samsung Focus now the reason I chose these two is well I have them and the other reason is I believe the focus is the best on AT&T in my opinion and the hd7 is the only offering on T-Mobile and from what I can tell as far as reviews go and eBay prices are concerned these are the two most desirable devices so let's first start with the display both of them have nice displays but the focus has a Super AMOLED display that uh is just really really bright and I'll show you that in a moment the hd7 has a slightly larger display so we have a 4in display here a 4.3in display here but same resolution 800x 480 the hd7 has an overall better feel to it as far as build quality is concerned this focus on my right here feels very plasticky and has a a very bright or shiny plastic back while this has a textured rubber plastic back uh that just gives it an overall better feel in the hand and makes it less slippery you also have 5 megapixel cameras on both on the hd7 we have dual dual LED flash and a single LED flash on the focus now as far as the picture quality goes they're comparable uh there are lots of comparisons online otherwise I would just do a simple one right here but the camera uh overall from what I can tell looks a little bit better on the focus it just has a little bit more brightness to it the colors may be a little bit more true on the hd7 but you don't get a consistent picture with the hd7 sometimes it'll look perfect other times it won't in the same lighting conditions it's very strange and I'm not really sure what what the phone is doing and it may be a software bug that needs to be updated via Microsoft or something but as for for right now as far as the camera goes the focus seems they have a slightly better camera I don't think you'd be disappointed though with this if you don't have a 5 megapixel phone camera so on the side we have our typical uh Windows Phone 7 buttons we have our camera buttons now we have a volume rocker on the hd7 on this side and a sleep awake button on this side if we flip them to the other side we have nothing on the hd7 in our volume rocker on the focus on the top on the hd7 we have our sleep wake and Power on on the focus we have a 3.5 mm headphone jack and our micro USB connection on the bottoms we have a 3.5mm headphone jack and the hd7 and our uh micro USB and speaker and we have our just our speaker on the uh bottom here let me go ahead and pull the backs off so you can see inside just for any that might be curious about where the SIM card is and that sort of thing uh I'm always curious when I'm looking at videos online so I figured you guys might appreciate that let's go ahead and pop the backs off so on the back here you can see the focus has a much larger battery and actually capacity wise it is bigger this is a 1230 milliamp hour battery pretty small for a device that's supposed to last all day and it doesn't last all day you're going to have to charge this if you with regular use texting occasionally browsing the web um maybe a couple colums maybe a game you're going to have to charge this midafternoon at least I found I did the focus seems to last all day with its 1500 milliamp battery it just seems to have a much longer battery life because the battery actually is bigger so I've I can go as long as an iPhone 4 with the focus I've found if not maybe longer depending on use but same use I get much better battery life on the focus here's your SIM card on the focus your sim card for the HTC is right there it slides down take the battery out slides down there you have a 16 gbyte micr SD card right here and it is removable they I shouldn't say they Microsoft recommends you don't remove it because each micro SD card is a little bit different as far as speed is concerned even though it has a rating they've found that it needs to be a really good card that was just manufactured well so if you want to put a 32 gig card in it you could but you have to reformat the whole device in order to use the card it's not removable storage it actually uses that card for the operating system and how it interacts with it so keep that in mind uh you could do it though if you really wanted to the hd7 does not have that slot it's actually buried under all of this if you were to take it off it'd be under there and um has 16 gigs of storage as well so let's go ahead and put this back back on and we'll take a look at the display themselves now the operating system is identical so we're not really going to go into that uh but I do want to show you the differences in screens and we'll talk a little bit about the external speakers on these as well the uh let me show you the location first the speaker on the focus is right here we have a little speaker here on the hd7 and what it's supposed to do is when you're watching it like this it's supposed to kind of resonate through these two slots even though this is for your ear and microphone it's supposed to resonate through here and create kind of a stereo effect doesn't do that so well uh let's go ahead and turn it on now let me show you the difference in display and in fact let me see if I can change the wallpaper to make them identical so you can kind of get a better feel of colors and we go into settings here we go to wallpaper and I don't know that I have the same ones these are these are uh stock wallpapers actually right here stock wallpaper so let's see if we have the same one it looks like we might those are some I downloaded uh well you know what I could do is actually I know that I have this one let's see if we can go here and do the same on this phone I really want to show you an honest comparison of the screens because it is so so much different and I also have just to actually the flower would probably be better go back uh there's the flower check check okay now these are on full brightness both of these phones and set to automatic right now but it is as bright as they go automatically you could make them a little bit brighter here's the screens now I haven't seen a good comparison online and I think you can see that in these screens you can see how dim the hd7 is compared to the Super AMOLED screen it really is dramatically different so the the screens are responsive uh equally but they're really not brightness wise the super amlet screen is just so vibrant I've actually turned it to low because it's just too bright for my eyes if we go here we hit home now both of these phones have home search back that's that's typical for Windows Phone 7 but they're equally responsive the viewing angle on the focus is great and I think that's the main reason you would want to get the focus is the Fantastic viewing angle and better battery life but overall build quality just this phone feels solid I mean it's solid I guess as solid as an iPhone I would say just different than an iPhone it's heavy it's solid this feels very light it almost feels like a toy phone like a dummy phone it's really that light it's not bad but I'm just wondering over time how they'll handle uh abuse and regular use and stuff I don't know scratch resistance wise I guess they both use a version or their own version of of uh Gorilla Glass but overall I think I think that's a pretty quick comparison to give you an idea difference-- wise between the screens uh at an angle you can definitely see the difference straight on it's a little bit harder but the focus is just way way bright and um very vibrant so if you have any other questions you want to see I'm actually getting rid of the hd7 here pretty quickly uh feel free to ask before I get rid of it because I may be getting rid of it soon I've got to get another phone so if you have any questions feel free to ask I think thanks to anyone who subscribed uh and commented I appreciate that this is Aon I'll see you next time oh you stayed around uh I actually forgot something to to mention I forgot to mention the speaker quality so those of you that listen to music let's talk about the audio jacks on these phones the quality of the focus seems to be a little bit better the overall audio quality seems to be better in the focus I thought the hd7 was good the focus is even better in my my testing that's from the headphone jack as far as the external speaker the focus seems to be a little bit louder the the speaker seems to be a little lacking on the hd7 which surprised me because they did such a good job on the surround just the hd7 speaker doesn't match up so as far as the external speaker if you listen to a lot of music externally you're going to want to stick with the focus especially if you're on AT&T and you don't want to iPhone uh if you want a great phone on T-Mobile though this is a great great phone if you uh check out with no phone 7 uh other than that though thanks for watching this is Aaron I'll see you next timehi everyone this is Aaron for zotech and today we're going to be comparing the HTC hd7 to the Samsung Focus now the reason I chose these two is well I have them and the other reason is I believe the focus is the best on AT&T in my opinion and the hd7 is the only offering on T-Mobile and from what I can tell as far as reviews go and eBay prices are concerned these are the two most desirable devices so let's first start with the display both of them have nice displays but the focus has a Super AMOLED display that uh is just really really bright and I'll show you that in a moment the hd7 has a slightly larger display so we have a 4in display here a 4.3in display here but same resolution 800x 480 the hd7 has an overall better feel to it as far as build quality is concerned this focus on my right here feels very plasticky and has a a very bright or shiny plastic back while this has a textured rubber plastic back uh that just gives it an overall better feel in the hand and makes it less slippery you also have 5 megapixel cameras on both on the hd7 we have dual dual LED flash and a single LED flash on the focus now as far as the picture quality goes they're comparable uh there are lots of comparisons online otherwise I would just do a simple one right here but the camera uh overall from what I can tell looks a little bit better on the focus it just has a little bit more brightness to it the colors may be a little bit more true on the hd7 but you don't get a consistent picture with the hd7 sometimes it'll look perfect other times it won't in the same lighting conditions it's very strange and I'm not really sure what what the phone is doing and it may be a software bug that needs to be updated via Microsoft or something but as for for right now as far as the camera goes the focus seems they have a slightly better camera I don't think you'd be disappointed though with this if you don't have a 5 megapixel phone camera so on the side we have our typical uh Windows Phone 7 buttons we have our camera buttons now we have a volume rocker on the hd7 on this side and a sleep awake button on this side if we flip them to the other side we have nothing on the hd7 in our volume rocker on the focus on the top on the hd7 we have our sleep wake and Power on on the focus we have a 3.5 mm headphone jack and our micro USB connection on the bottoms we have a 3.5mm headphone jack and the hd7 and our uh micro USB and speaker and we have our just our speaker on the uh bottom here let me go ahead and pull the backs off so you can see inside just for any that might be curious about where the SIM card is and that sort of thing uh I'm always curious when I'm looking at videos online so I figured you guys might appreciate that let's go ahead and pop the backs off so on the back here you can see the focus has a much larger battery and actually capacity wise it is bigger this is a 1230 milliamp hour battery pretty small for a device that's supposed to last all day and it doesn't last all day you're going to have to charge this if you with regular use texting occasionally browsing the web um maybe a couple colums maybe a game you're going to have to charge this midafternoon at least I found I did the focus seems to last all day with its 1500 milliamp battery it just seems to have a much longer battery life because the battery actually is bigger so I've I can go as long as an iPhone 4 with the focus I've found if not maybe longer depending on use but same use I get much better battery life on the focus here's your SIM card on the focus your sim card for the HTC is right there it slides down take the battery out slides down there you have a 16 gbyte micr SD card right here and it is removable they I shouldn't say they Microsoft recommends you don't remove it because each micro SD card is a little bit different as far as speed is concerned even though it has a rating they've found that it needs to be a really good card that was just manufactured well so if you want to put a 32 gig card in it you could but you have to reformat the whole device in order to use the card it's not removable storage it actually uses that card for the operating system and how it interacts with it so keep that in mind uh you could do it though if you really wanted to the hd7 does not have that slot it's actually buried under all of this if you were to take it off it'd be under there and um has 16 gigs of storage as well so let's go ahead and put this back back on and we'll take a look at the display themselves now the operating system is identical so we're not really going to go into that uh but I do want to show you the differences in screens and we'll talk a little bit about the external speakers on these as well the uh let me show you the location first the speaker on the focus is right here we have a little speaker here on the hd7 and what it's supposed to do is when you're watching it like this it's supposed to kind of resonate through these two slots even though this is for your ear and microphone it's supposed to resonate through here and create kind of a stereo effect doesn't do that so well uh let's go ahead and turn it on now let me show you the difference in display and in fact let me see if I can change the wallpaper to make them identical so you can kind of get a better feel of colors and we go into settings here we go to wallpaper and I don't know that I have the same ones these are these are uh stock wallpapers actually right here stock wallpaper so let's see if we have the same one it looks like we might those are some I downloaded uh well you know what I could do is actually I know that I have this one let's see if we can go here and do the same on this phone I really want to show you an honest comparison of the screens because it is so so much different and I also have just to actually the flower would probably be better go back uh there's the flower check check okay now these are on full brightness both of these phones and set to automatic right now but it is as bright as they go automatically you could make them a little bit brighter here's the screens now I haven't seen a good comparison online and I think you can see that in these screens you can see how dim the hd7 is compared to the Super AMOLED screen it really is dramatically different so the the screens are responsive uh equally but they're really not brightness wise the super amlet screen is just so vibrant I've actually turned it to low because it's just too bright for my eyes if we go here we hit home now both of these phones have home search back that's that's typical for Windows Phone 7 but they're equally responsive the viewing angle on the focus is great and I think that's the main reason you would want to get the focus is the Fantastic viewing angle and better battery life but overall build quality just this phone feels solid I mean it's solid I guess as solid as an iPhone I would say just different than an iPhone it's heavy it's solid this feels very light it almost feels like a toy phone like a dummy phone it's really that light it's not bad but I'm just wondering over time how they'll handle uh abuse and regular use and stuff I don't know scratch resistance wise I guess they both use a version or their own version of of uh Gorilla Glass but overall I think I think that's a pretty quick comparison to give you an idea difference-- wise between the screens uh at an angle you can definitely see the difference straight on it's a little bit harder but the focus is just way way bright and um very vibrant so if you have any other questions you want to see I'm actually getting rid of the hd7 here pretty quickly uh feel free to ask before I get rid of it because I may be getting rid of it soon I've got to get another phone so if you have any questions feel free to ask I think thanks to anyone who subscribed uh and commented I appreciate that this is Aon I'll see you next time oh you stayed around uh I actually forgot something to to mention I forgot to mention the speaker quality so those of you that listen to music let's talk about the audio jacks on these phones the quality of the focus seems to be a little bit better the overall audio quality seems to be better in the focus I thought the hd7 was good the focus is even better in my my testing that's from the headphone jack as far as the external speaker the focus seems to be a little bit louder the the speaker seems to be a little lacking on the hd7 which surprised me because they did such a good job on the surround just the hd7 speaker doesn't match up so as far as the external speaker if you listen to a lot of music externally you're going to want to stick with the focus especially if you're on AT&T and you don't want to iPhone uh if you want a great phone on T-Mobile though this is a great great phone if you uh check out with no phone 7 uh other than that though thanks for watching this is Aaron I'll see you next time\n"