Main idea of the article: Maybe we should give a chance to HTC One!
Seriously though, I think both are fine. And you, potential purchaser, you know that you'll still use your smartphone mostly for calling, texting and maybe for looking things up on Google and checking your e-mail while you're out. Therefore, I think either will do. No one fails because their phone does not have AirView or BlinkFeed. :)

I think the main feature that sets HTC One apart from any other smartphone is the HTC BoomSound™ made by Beats Audio™. Differences like: + or - .3 inches, + or - 200MHz (CPU speed), SD card present or not = are not that important. Having a more than decent sound is very important. After all, the main function of this device is the phone.
Why don't you mention the audio at least in the Wrap-up section?

They are not the same on RAM, S4 has DDR3 while the One has DDR2. The One has a brighter flash too. It's clear these are prototypes for people who are not patient for the Note / Nexus / iPhone 5.5 / next HTC phone. During the Q3-Q4 the best phones always come out to compete with the iPhone and that's when they've stored enough displays and chips. Also if you have the S3 it's not worth the upgrade to the S4. Just like the S3 was not worth the upgrade if you owned an S2.

I used to be an HTC fanboy & loved my Desire (except for the battery, and the lack of memory for apps) and my Flyer (until it got stolen)
However, I was forced to move to Samsung because of a couple of things that always get skimmed over because Apple does them too. a) no microSD ... why not? Easy, simple, cheap way of giving the customer the ability to upgrade data as well as to plug in large amounts quickly and easily. This is an absolutely massive mistake b) no easy replaceable battery ... my Desire got so bad that I had to keep 2 batteries and swap them in and out.
HTC seem to have bought into the philosophy that customers are idiots who can't be trusted to access even the most basic bits of a phone. Either that, or that customers are idiots who are going to make you more money by buying another of your phones every time their battery dies.
Neither philosophy inspires great devotion. So HTC you lost a fan (and by the way, Samsung has not gained one. For all its greatness the S3 is "just a phone" not an inspiration).

Hey Nickov8 I know I may not change your decision, but I too own a desire hd, and the batt sucked, but I own a one x+ and it's leaps above my desire, I can only imagine the HTC ONE will destroy the desire in battery like it will my one x+, memory side if things I purge my phone by putting stuff on my computer or my external hard drive if I wanna keep it, and mainly use my storage for games and apps, 64 gigs is sufficient, but that's just how I see it, good luck on ur future investment

So the only thing the HTC one has is a slightly better PPI which is countered by Samsung S4's slightly bigger screen. Seeing as both are to a level of quality undetectable to the human eye, I think Samsung win's that. Good as I've already started tracking it on WishPlz waiting for price to become affordable, http://bit.ly/XRexQQ if anyone else wants to track it too.

What upsets me is that no 'gadget site' differentiates between the TYPE of RAM found in the S4 and other devices, the LPDDR3 DRAM found in the S4 is almost twice as fast as other mobile's RAM.
How everybody states that only four cores can be run simultaneously, but barely any of the sites mention that it is 4 A15 cores as opposed to A7/A9.
And finally how Apple is never slated by most tech sites for bringing incremental updates to their lineup, but when Samsung not only change a reasonable amount about the design, but also upgrade almost every single piece of hardware found inside it, they all complain of copying itself. Never-mind the difference between the iPhone 4S and iPhone 5, the differences between the iPhone 4 and the iPhone 5 aren't as big as the S3 and S4.
Of course neither are perfect phones, and I am a 'fanboy' of neither camp, it just pains me to see the blatant bias towards Apple that most media outlets show.

Too bad we couldn't get a Samsung SIV that looked more like an HTC One, and less like the previous S3. My only caveat...

Yes David, I like the appearance and build of the HTC, (Looks very nice indeed) but I want the guts of the S4.

Hey Derrick
Always good when stuff improves, and glad to hear it was better with the OneX+ but: - it's not about how strong the battery is at first. It's about the fact that they all get significantly less good over time. By 2 years in, that initial 2 to 3 day charge is down to 2 to 3 hours if you're lucky. My point is that the correct solution is "pop in a new battery" for $25 or so, not "buy a new phone".
I don't see any justification whatsoever for designing in a whole new set of complexities that introduce additional problems/difficulties and give no customer benefit
Also, the problem with the Desire was not the amount of overall storage available via SD (I had a 32G card in there). It was the ludicrously small amount of system memory - i.e. available for apps. I had it cut down to the absolute minimum, put as many as possible onto SD, etc and it was still completely impossible.
I used to find my phone would be downloading all the updates each day, failing to install them due to system memory constraint, and then (because it had failed) re-downloading them the next day to try again.
It was such a great phone, except for these small and easily fixed problems. Unfortunately since then they've taken some really bad design decisions and gone down Apple's "disempower the customer" and "make them spend" path.
Still ... maybe next time round??