HTC One E8 vs iPhone 6 plus – price, specs and features compared

The HTC One E8 was launched as the cheaper version of the One M8. The One M8 has been praised for its metal design and great features, but HTC thought that it would make a more affordable version of its flagship so as to gain popularity and revenue. When we first saw the leaked info and images about the HTC One E8, we suspected that the company would sacrifice at least some of the great features found in the One M8 in order to make its younger brother more affordable. To our surprise, the One E8 is almost the exact replica of the One M8, save for the camera and its chassis.

The iPhone 6 is Apple’s newest flagship phone and it graced us with a launch in September, as if to celebrate Fall season. Apple introduced the iPhone 6 alongside the iPhone 6 Plus, Apple Pay, HealthKit and HomeKit, which made for a comprehensive launch event. Apple also introduced the Apple Watch at the event, more to tease the crowd than to unveil their new device. The new Apple suite, including the iPhones, the new software and the Apple Watch should make for a nice portfolio and a great bundle for Apple fans. With these devices and the software, you can access home automation and health monitoring, as well as Apple Pay mobile payments and Continuity. OS X Yosemite plays into Continuity and proves that Apple is set on creating a unified ecosystem between its products.

While the HTC One E8 was developed and released as a cheaper version of a current flagship, the iPhone 6 sports a hefty price tag that reflects the new features and design tweaks Apple has put into the phone. The iPhone 6 price is set at $650 for the 16 GB version, $750 for the 64 GB version and $850 for the 128 GB version. These prices are for unlocked iPhones, straight from Apple. You can get nice deals with carriers if you choose to do so. Black Friday iPhone 6 deals should also be coming our way very soon, so keep an eye out for those.

The HTC One E8 price, since it’s the cheaper One M8, is set at around $440, but that’s sure to drop in the holiday season as well. The price tag on the HTC One E8 might suggest this would be a phone that would fit in the mid-range category, but it’s actually as flagship as you can get with HTC at the moment. It has the same characteristics and features like the One M8, except for the different camera configuration and camera setup. That being said, when it comes to price, the HTC One E8 is the cheaper phone you can get and even before we get on with our comparison, I promise it will deliver just as much as the iPhone 6.

The HTC One E8 looks just like the One M8 from the front, but if you turn it around, the sacrifice the company made to make this phone cheap is obvious. You are met with a polycarbonate chassis that doesn’t look as premium as the metal unibody on the One M8. Even so, it feels good in the hand and is as durable as polycarbonate can get. It loses some of its water resistance, though. In any case, if you’re not a fan of metal, you might actually prefer the One E8 over the One M8, like me. When it comes to the iPhone 6 design, we do have a premium build with an aluminium unibody and chamfered edges, so if you’re after premium feel, the iPhone 6 would suit you better.

One of the best things HTC did with the One E8 is keep the One M8’s front facing BoomSound speakers. The BoomSound speakers were among the most appreciated features of the One M8 and we are surprised to see it didn’t end up being sacrificed for the sake of an affordable phone. HTC went about this in a smooth way, in my opinion, making a premium phone with a less premium chassis available for a wider range of people. That will surely pay off when it comes to revenue and popularity, as well as appreciation from the public. The One M8 has already impressed many tech enthusiasts, but when the One E8 came out, many were skeptic about its value. Now, you can sleep easy knowing that it might just be better to get the One E8 for starters.

The iPhone 6 sports a 4.7 inch 750*1334 resolution screen. The HTC One E8 on the other hand, has a slightly larger display measuring 5 inches. The resolution is higher, too measuring 1080*1920 pixels which amount to a 441 ppi pixel density. While on paper, the HTC One E8′s Super LCD3 display is superior to the iPhone 6 Retina display, that doesn’t mean you’ll know the difference if the phones are not side by side. The iPhone 6 uses zero-gap technology so that when you’re typing and swiping and tapping on the screen, the experience becomes more immersive. Even though the One E8 has higher resolution, the iPhone 6 display still produces great colors and it looks great from any angle and in any lighting. Nonetheless, this round goes to the HTC One E8, because side by side, its display looks brighter and sharper.

As I’ve said earlier, HTC decided to keep the BoomSound speakers of the One M8, so the sound quality on the One E8 is superior to that on the iPhone 6, more so because we have front facing speakers and high end technology, which compared to the bottom speakers of the iPhone 6, offer a better run for your money. At the same time, the iPhone 6 has other features which compensate for the average speaker setup. TouchID, Apple Pay, HealthKit and HomeKit are noteworthy when it comes to Apple’s new flagship. TouchID has been improved and an NFC chip has been included in the design, currently locked to Apple Pay. We think that the NFC chip will be opened up to developers in the future, much like TouchID was.

HTC One E8 specs include a Snapdragon 801 CPU backed by an Adreno 330 GPU and 2 GB RAM. You have 16 GB of internal storage available, which you can expand via a microSD card up to 128 GB. The iPhone 6 runs on Apple’s own A8 64 bit CPU, backed by 1 GB RAM and PowerVR graphics units. As we’ve mentioned before, you can choose between 16, 64 and 128 GB internal storage, depending on your budget and needs. There’s no microSD card on the Apple phone, which is no surprise. Both these flagships will run anything you throw at them smoothly, so performance-wise, we would say it’s a tie once again. Some might say that the iPhone 6’s 64 bit configuration offers a smoother performance, but so far, we haven’t noticed a big difference. Nonetheless, the iPhone 6 does qualify as a future-proof phone more than the One E8.

What sets these two flagships apart even more is OS. The HTC One M8 comes with Android 4.4 KitKat with Sense 6 overlaid out of the box. While we love what HTC did with Sense 6, we are looking forward to Sense 7 and the Android 5.0 Lollipop update OTA, which should arrive on the One E8 pretty soon. The iPhone 6 runs on iOS 8, which was buggy at its launch but subsequent updates 8.0.1, 8.0.2 made it even worse. Don’t fret, though, because Apple already mended these issues with the iOS 8.1 update and everything should run smoothly after that update.

The iPhone 6 battery is a 1810 mAH one, which is good for about a day and a half of moderate use. Many Apple fans and Android converts say that if Apple was to make the phone a big thicker, but with a larger battery, they would have been delighted. Alas, Apple puts emphasis on design, rather than extra battery life, which is not a bad thing to do. The issue is that Apple could have done more with the flagship since Android flagships are a tad ahead in development, features, battery life and specs. The HTC One E8 battery is a larger 2600 mAH one, which makes for about 2 days of light use, a day and a half of mixed use. Since smartphones nowadays haven’t yet reached the point of the one week battery life, most of them don’t pass the 2 day mixed used battery life mark. The best in terms of battery currently are the Sony Xperia Z3 and the Samsung Galaxy Note 4.

The iPhone 6 camera has been updated and users can now enjoy an 8 MP iSight shooter on the back and a 1.2 MP FaceTime shooter on the front. As we’ve been used to, the iPhone camera takes pretty good photos and handles low-light conditions better than most other phones. Even though MP count is lower than you would expect, we still get detailed photos with good color accuracy and representation. The HTC One E8 camera is one of the things the company decided to downgrade from the HTC One M8. We now have a 13 MP shooter on the back, without the 4 Ultrapixel lens and depth-sensor we’ve seen on the One M8 flagship. A 5 MP selfie camera should be enough for any kind of selfie or video you want to take, and produces pretty high quality shots.

That’s the gist of this comparison. As you can see, the iPhone 6 and HTC One E8 size up nicely next to each other in terms of features, display, specs and design. While I would always choose the One E8 over the iPhone 6, the latter still boasts great performance and functions. I would go for the One E8 because it is a lot cheaper, brings you high quality sound which you don’t really find on phones these days and because it offers great performance. The iPhone 6 also has a nice track record by now, with great performance, high quality photos, integration with other Apple devices and a better user experience than its predecessor. That being said, which would you choose? The Premium flagship or the affordable little brother?