I'm personally holding out until the new Snapdragon 800 or Tegra 4i phones come in withing the next few months.
Even if Samsung's Exynos 5 is superior to Qualcomm's Snapdragon 600, both are at part in Android's life where the hardware is more advanced than the software available. So you'll get a pretty similar Android experience on each device. The only real differences are the screen sizes, sound, and battery life. If you get HTC One's 64GB version, then theres no need to wine over a SD slot. However removable battery is a huge plus for Samsung.
If you're not interested in the power of these CPUs for the sake of experimental emulation like PSP and NDS emulators, then I actually suggest that you scale back a year and save a few hundred dollars by getting a year old used smart phone. I bought a used phone that was considered "cutting edge" 2 years ago, rooted it, put some performance enhancing crap on it, and honestly I can hardly tell the difference between it and my Nexus 7. Obviously my Nex7 is nearly twice as powerful and can run 3 or 4 games my HTC can't, but considering what it's STILL capable, and the only $100 price tag I spent, I felt it was a good buy. The one thing my old crap phone does better than my nex7 however is loading the play store. Though maybe its because of the reduced sizes and resolutions.
Keep in mind that I did buy my cell phone intended to be a portable media player device. I don't use a service, but I can make calls on free wifi networks I find. Considering just how little i actually use phones for phoning, its just what I need. Go to work with a fully charged phone, streaming music to my bluetooth sets for a few hours, and I'll still have 85-90% battery left when I get home.
