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"The big three smartphones this year are all lined up and ready to have a go at grabbing the cash from your pocket. Unlike previous years, picking out a clear winner isn&amp;#039;t easy, with the Samsung Galaxy S5, HTC One M8 and Sony Xperia Z2 being very much level-pegged. &amp;lt;      So which is worth your hard-earned coinage? It isn&amp;#039;t a straightforward answer, so strap in and get ready for the latest smartphone shootout. Samsung Galaxy S5   Great screen Too much plastic Fussy menus   HTC One M8   Lovely design Simple user interface Camera is a let-down   Sony Xperia Z2   Great camera Top of the line specifications Gets grubby quickly   Design Right from the off, HTC has a big lead on the design front. Pick it up and it feels like a much more premium device than the other two. In particular, it&amp;#039;s clear that a lot of time has been spent ensuring that the user interface and design both feel slick.  Opting to use 90 percent metal in the M8&amp;#039;s construction also clears it from the plastic-fantastic feel you get with the Galaxy S5. Not that we are saying Samsung&amp;#039;s design is cheap, it&amp;#039;s much better than the faux leather efforts of previous years. It&amp;#039;s just never going to feel as premium. Read: HTC on the M8&amp;#039;s design Then you have the Sony Xperia Z2. Wrapped in fingerprint-friendly glass, it looks amazing when you first get it out of the box but soon ends up looking greasy; although Sony has worked on making things less scratch-prone with the Z2, which is a good thing. From an ergonomics point of view, Sony&amp;#039;s device is as comfortable to hold as a big, black, square slab would be. The Samsung&amp;#039;s grippy back makes it feel the least likely to end up on the pavement, while the M8&amp;#039;s subtle curve also makes it comfy for extended use. Picking a winner here isn&amp;#039;t hugely difficult. HTC has pegged everything on its design and, as such, takes the first point. Winner: HTC One M8 Hardware This is where things start to get close. All three smartphones here use Qualcomm&amp;#039;s latest-generation quad-core Snapdragon 801 processor. The clock speeds of each are slightly different however. Samsung&amp;#039;s Galaxy S5 is running at 2.5GHz, with the Z2 at 2.3GHz and the HTC One M8 the same. The thing is, all of these are absurdly powerful for a mobile phone. A few years back, the idea of a quad-core chip running at speeds similar to a high-end PC seemed impossible, but now it&amp;#039;s a reality.  Then there is the RAM argument. 3GB in the Z2, with 2GB to play with in the HTC One M8 and SGS5. It all depends how many apps you want to run, but we never felt like things were getting overloaded on any of the handsets during testing. Every phone includes microSD support, which keeps the storage argument covered from the off. You also get 16GB of internal storage as standard, although be aware that it&amp;#039;s closer to 10GB after the OS is installed on all handsets. Samsung&amp;#039;s removable battery is a bonus, especially if you are a bit of a smartphone power user. But then the Sony has the biggest battery from the off, at 3200 mAh. Samsung manages 2800 mAh, with HTC running at 2600. In real world usage, every handset more than makes it through a day. The clever power-saving modes included with each also do a good job of getting you more usage from a charge. In terms of display, Samsung takes the win for brightness and vibrancy, but the Sony has a subtlety and balance to it that we really like. The HTC isn&amp;#039;t much of an improvement over the TFT found in the One, but that&amp;#039;s no bad thing as it&amp;#039;s great. As for display size, the Z2 is 1080p, 5.2 inches with 424 ppi. The Samsung manages 1080p, 5.1 inches and 432ppi, with the HTC the same resolution but 5 inches and 441ppi. In practice, they all look just as sharp as each other. Really then, the only major hardware distinction comes with the fact that both the Galaxy S5 and Sony Xperia Z2 are waterproof and dustproof (IP67 for the Samsung, IP55/58 for the Sony). We just have to give the win to the Sony purely because of the extra RAM and because its display, while not the brightest, feels the most balanced. Winner: Sony Xperia Z2 User Interface Show any of these phones to someone not familiar with smartphones and they would struggle to spot any Android-shaped similarities between them. All three feature heavily customised user interfaces, with Sony, Samsung and HTC hoping their own unique twists will attract you to a device.  Samsung has gone for a &amp;#039;more is more&amp;#039; approach.  Case in point, the settings menu, which has a vast number of icons to tap, all of which lead to roughly the same set of options. Touchwiz looks a lot more friendly, with a cleverly chosen colour palette and updated icons that feel fresher. Its no iOS 7, but Samsung is clearly starting to get with the times. However, it is vastly overshadowed by the way the M8&amp;#039;s user interface is put together. Everything has been streamlined, with any unnecessary apps cast aside. BlinkFeed, the social media and website aggregator that sits to the left of your homescreen, is genuinely useful for example.  Sony&amp;#039;s Xperia Z2 is closer to stock Android than the others, but still deviates a lot from something that really should just be left alone. It does have some clever features though, including context-sensitive actions that can be queued up to do things like open the music player when you plug in headphones. None are exempt from the inevitable lag that Android can bring. Sony&amp;#039;s, for example, has an overly fussy live wallpaper that needs to be removed to get things going, Samsung&amp;#039;s camera and gallery app can be glitchy, while the HTC gets upset if you accidentally open up BlinkFeed. Given the power on offer, Android should feel lightning quick. We can&amp;#039;t help but feel like a few updates down the line and problems will be ironed out, but none have that &amp;#039;box fresh&amp;#039; feeling. If we had to pick a winner, it would be the HTC, simply because it&amp;#039;s the most focused and slick of the three. Winner: HTC One M8 Camera When it comes to cameras, virtually every flagship smartphone impresses nowadays. What HTC has tried to do here is very different, and it deserves praise simply for trying to push the envelope. The problem is, doing things differently doesn&amp;#039;t always work. HTC&amp;#039;s decision to use two camera sensors and the same &amp;#039;Ultrapixel&amp;#039; setup as found in the HTC One hasn&amp;#039;t paid off. The Ultrapixel camera uses larger pixels but a lower resolution sensor. It equates to roughly 4 megapixels, but can theoretically take in more light and work faster because of pixel size and the data it is working with. In practice, you get a very fast camera with the M8, but one that struggles to expose properly, offer up detail and work well in low light. The second lens, which allows for things like selective focus after a shot has been captured, also doesn&amp;#039;t really add much to the photographic experience.  Samsung sits right at the other end of the scale. The Galaxy S5&amp;#039;s 16-megapixel sensor is good but the camera UI suffers from being overly fussy. Settings like &amp;#039;beauty face&amp;#039; are not only in need of a bit of spell-checking, but also could be better replaced with a more fully featured manual mode. That said, autofocus is rapid and the camera can operate at a rate of knots similar to the One M8. It does sometimes lock up when you open it, which can prove irritating however. The Xperia Z2&amp;#039;s camera feels like it is in a bit of a different league. Using a 20-megapixel Exmor R sensor with the same G lens tech Sony has in high-end compacts and DSLRs was a good move. Users are given a camera that is highly customisable, with a proper user interface that allows you to tweak DSLR levels of photography. The Z1 had major issues with colour reproduction and exposure in auto mode; no such problems here. Winner: Sony Xperia Z2 Verdict Most people aren&amp;#039;t going to like this conclusion. If you play the numbers game, the Sony and HTC are level-pegged, but there isn&amp;#039;t a clear winner between them. The Samsung also missed out because it wasn&amp;#039;t as good in our chosen categories, but as a middle-ground device, it&amp;#039;s the best.  What it comes down to is what you want from a mobile phone.  If you expect something premium for your money and are just as fussed by form as you are functionality, then the M8 is for you. The Sony delivers something almost as nice, but with a better camera, so consider this if you take a lot of smartphone snaps. As for the Samsung, we still have an issue with the materials used to put it together, but it&amp;#039;s hard to ignore the rest of the package, especially that screen. If it were us, the M8 would get our money, simply because we think the gunmetal version is a beautiful thing to hold. That said, the last few weeks have seen us swapping between all three Android flagships and none has ever felt like less than a four-star product. Whichever you choose, spend some time playing with them. Don&amp;#039;t just fall for Samsung&amp;#039;s vast marketing dollars, or the HTC&amp;#039;s design. Instead head into your local phone shop, pick them up and make the decision for yourself. There&amp;#039;s no rush; you&amp;#039;ll likely be stuck with it for the next two years, so take your time. You can see our reviews of each device below    Sony Xperia Z2  HTC One M8  Samsung Galaxy S5 review   "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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