HTC One X+ vs Samsung Galaxy S3 vs Apple iPhone 5 review

It's fair to say we're not fans of either HTC's Sense or Samsung's Touchwiz, believing that both custom skins complicate rather than simplify Android and add a few custom apps that most users are unlikely to need.

But of the two, Samsung's Touchwiz UI is far worse than the latest version of HTC's Sense UI, which comes with fewer custom apps and widgets preinstalled, making it less of a pain to use.

The only saving graces for the Galaxy S3 are its custom S Beam and Pop-up Play features. S Beam builds on the basic Android Beam technology and lets users share everything from contacts to movies and audio files using near field communications (NFC) connectivity.

The feature launches the moment you touch two S Beam enabled devices together. Testing S Beam we were surprised at how well it worked when sending pictures, with photos transferring in a matter of seconds.

Pop up Play is a particularly nice feature that lets you position a scaled-down view of any video you're playing anywhere on the screen. This means that you can be watching a video while replying to a text or scanning Twitter and Facebook.

The addition of these features means that even though the Galaxy S3 is, for now, running an older version of Android, it still feels slightly more cutting edge. For this reason, while we think the One X+ is more user friendly and smoother to use, its software suite lacks excitement compared to the Galaxy S3's.

Moving on to the iPhone 5, comparing Google Android to Apple's own iOS 6 mobile operating system is a far more subjective affair.

The iOS 6 mobile OS is the best version yet released by Apple and aims to improve how the phone interacts with other Apple devices. It does this by adding a host of iCloud integration features.

One of the most useful iCloud features we noticed is in the Safari web browser. The browser can be set up to automatically open web pages loaded on a Mac computer that it is synchronised with.

We found this useful when attempting to conduct research on the move, letting us continue researching an article we'd began working on at home when commuting to the office.

Features like this mean that for those with an iPhone and Mac OS computer, the iOS 6 operating system is great. However, for those without a Mac computer or iPad, the iOS 6 reliance on the iTunes store for apps, music and movies could prove a pain.

Android works better with Windows, letting you get content and videos from various different marketplaces and run them as you like. This means that the Android mobile OS will likely appeal to users who prefer to operate outside of Apple's cosy walled garden ecosystem.

Winner: three-way tie.

Camera
All three of the smartphone cameras are fairly equivalently specified on paper, each boasting an 8MP rear-facing snapper.

However, when testing the three cameras we soon found that their apparent similarities had little bearing on their actual performance.

This article was originally published on V3.