When buying a phone one should see what is the things which are absolutely required for him ... personall i don't give a damn about camera since if i am out-door, I have my DSLR. I care about indoor photography or night mode where HTC Beats S4.
That being said here are few things which makes me love HTC
I am paying freaking $700 and I don't want a piece of plastic in my hand after that. I want a phone which feels good and not some toy. I agree that S4 chose plastic to reduce weight but seriously I don't care if the "smart-phone" i am using feels like a toy
Samsung has put so many options via touch-wiz that it has cluttered its UI. While gazing at screen, there are too much information there. Of course, I can root the device and install a custom rom but i need a good Out of the box experience.
Touch-Wiz, seriuosly samsung, thats your innovation ? your UI still looks like old windows 98 style box layout in this modern age of Touch screen. If compsing a text on S4, you will see a "box" for contact, a "box" for attachment, a "box" for messages, a "box" for compose and then a "box" for send ... compare this with default android 4.2 layout and you would know how heavy samsung layout is on eyes. Then compare it with HTC Sense and you would know what i am talking about.
To be honest, every one is going crazy about samsung devices and the only reason is that samsung invested good in marketing. From a geeky guy's perspective, I don't rate samsung a very good device, specially not something worth $700. But again, everyone would say that samsung is best and they wouldn't even know *WHY THEY ARE SAYING IT*. remember, bigger isn't always better. Getting more mega-pixel camera doesn't mean that software which used this mega-pixel actually worthy enough to take good shots (this is just example, S4 definitely has better picture qualiyt in normal daylight)