Sony Xperia Z Vs. HTC M7: Sony's Handset Is Quirkier, But Is It Enough?

With the HTC M7 due to be revealed possibly sooner than we originally thought and the Sony Xperia Z unveiled at this year's CES, it looks like we have a flagship Android smartphone showdown in the making. Here's a rundown of how the two will (likely) compare.

Release Date

What makes the M7 and Xperia Z seem like the top two Android rivals is that today rumors of an early unveiling of the HTC M7 hit the web. The Xperia Z looks like it will be released, at least in the United Kingdom, on March 1^st. Many were expecting HTC to unveil the M7 during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, starting February 25^th, but today we heard that HTC may have a dedicated M7 unveiling event in London  a week earlier, on February 19^th.

Display

The Xperia Z sports a massive 5-inch display with a full high definition 1920 x 1080 resolution, packing 443 pixels per square inch. Sony is calling it the "Reality Display." The HTC M7 was earlier rumored to have a 5-inch display as well, but most have revised their predictions to a (slightly) more humble 4.7-inch screen. It'll be capable of the same 1920 x 1080 resolution, if rumors are correct. And the M7's display will feature even more reality than Sony's, with an incredible 468 pixels per square inch.

Camera

Both phones feature rear cameras with the new industry standard of 13 megapixels. The M7 is rumored to have a 2-megapixel front facing camera, making the Xperia Z, with a 2.2-megapixel front facing camera, slightly superior.

Speed

The Xperia Z will have a 1.5GHz Snapdragon S4 Pro quad-core processor, compared to the M7's likely 1.7GHz quad-core Snapdragon processor. Both come with 2GB of RAM.

Battery

Both phones are likely to have similar batteries: The Xperia Z has a slight advantage at 2,330 mAh removable batter versus a rumored 2,300 mAh on the M7 that likely won't be removable.

Storage

The HTC M7 is rumored to have 32GB of storage, beating the Xperia Z's 16GB out of the box. However, Sony's smartphone storage is microSD, allowing the possibility of an upgrade, while there's no word on microSD support in the M7.

Software

The HTC M7 is rumored to have the newest version of Android Jelly Bean, version 4.2 out of the box, while, as we previously reported, you may have to wait for a little while for Sony to roll out an update from 4.1 to 4.2. Another cool rumor about the M7 is that it will ship with the most up to date version of HTC Sense, version 5, the latest version of HTC's interface, and we reported recently that the Xperia Z looks like it will feature custom screen calibration.

Other Features

Sony's Xperia Z got a lot of attention at CES for being so waterproof that it survived a dunk test. Also, Sony recently announced that the Xperia Z would be able to charge off of its tablet cousin, the Xperia Tablet Z, for added convenience. Compared to that, HTC's rumored IR port seems like a quirky addition, but not as immediately valuable as being able to text in a rainstorm.  

As usual, we'll have to wait and see which ones consumers embrace after they hit shelves, but which one of these two Android smartphones has you more excited at the moment?