Extreme Tech: "The Battle for the Android Throne"

LG G4 vs. Samsung Galaxy S6: Battle for the Android throne

• By Ryan Whitwam on June 12, 2015 at 8:44 am
• Comment

Share This Article

Samsung released the Galaxy S6 just a few months ago to almost universal praise. Sure, it doesn’t have a removable battery or a microSD card slot, but the design, camera, and screen are all fantastic. However, maybe the Galaxy S6’s time on the Android throne is already at an end. The LG G4 has launched with an impressive spec sheet and several features Samsung dropped this year. Let’s see how these devices stack up.

Screens

The Samsung Galaxy S6 has an amazing 5.1-inch Super AMOLED panel that sports a 2560×1440 resolution. That works out to 577 pixels per-inch, more than any other flagship Android smartphone including the LG G4. The G4 is no slouch, though. It too has a 1440p screen, but it’s a little larger at 5.5-inches (538 PPI). This panel is also LCD instead of AMOLED, which changes the characteristics rather dramatically.

An AMOLED screen like the one on Samsung’s flagship is capable of producing incredibly vibrant colors. That used to mean blown out reds and oranges, but the Galaxy S6’s screen is actually very accurate with a color temperature that’s right where it’s supposed to be. The LG G4’s LCD is naturally more muted than AMOLED, so LG opted to bump up the colors a little. That has resulted in colors that are sometimes too cool, but in general use it looks nice enough.

The brightness of a screen is vitally important if you’re going to use the device outdoors, and this is something LG struggled with last year. It worked hard to improve brightness with the G4, and it seems to have been mostly successful. It can hit a maximum brightness of 450-460 nits. That’s respectable, but short of the Galaxy S6’s 550-560 nits. AMOLED is simply able to produce more light at higher efficiencies at such a high resolution.

In terms of clarity, the phones are evenly matched. The small difference in pixel density is not big deal, and the G4 does have that funky curved screen. It’s not really functional, but it’s kind of fun. The Galaxy S6 of course has the Edge variant with the even funkier curve, though. One last thing to note, the screen size puts LG’s flagship into the lower reaches of the phablet range. For some people, that’s just too big.

Internals and design

LG learned from what happened with the HTC One M9 and its own G Flex 2 and decided its 2015 flagship would skip the super-toasty Snapdragon 810. Instead, the LG G4 runs a more modest Snapdragon 808. This is still a 64-bit ARM chip, but it has only six total cores, whereas the 810 and Samsung’s Exynos 7420 have eight cores.

The Snapdragon 808 is set up with four (LITTLE) Cortex-A53 cores and two (big) Cortex-A57 in a big.LITTLE configuration. Meanwhile, the Galaxy S6’s Exynos has four of each. If you’re running your device hard, the Galaxy S6 is capable of more, but it also heats up quite a bit with those four high-power CPU cores. The Snapdragon 810 didn’t manage that heat very well, but Samsung did a better job. The Snapdragon 808 in the G4 stays cooler and uses less power when under load, and doesn’t really sacrifice much real-world performance.

Both phones have 3GB of RAM and start with 32GB of storage. But while Samsung charges more for larger storage capacities, LG just has a microSD card slot. This is a big deal to some people who need local access to a lot of media. On the flip side, the UFS 2.0 NAND storage in Samsung’s phone is several times faster than LG’s eMMC 5.0 NAND.

Samsung decided to really change things up this year by going with a completely sealed design, which means no removable battery. The 2550mAh cell (2600mAh in the Edge) will get you through a day, but that’s really it. The LG G4 has a removable 3000mAh battery that gives it far more standby time and a fair bit more screen time. The drawback is that the G4 feels less premium than the Galaxy S6. Still, if you’re going to stick your phone in a case, does that really matter?

The Galaxy S6 has a great fingerprint sensor built-into the home button, and LG doesn’t really have a counter to that. What the G4 does have is a very slim profile and rear-facing power/volume buttons. You’d be surprised how comfortable this configuration can be. The GS6 also has wireless charging built in and the G4 does not.

Cameras

The Galaxy S6 really blew everyone away with its 16MP camera. It has a very wide f/1.9 aperture that lets in more light than most competing phone cameras. That means great low-light shots, which was a weakness of the Galaxy S5. Samsung’s image processing technology is also extremely impressive. The HDR captures with this phone are almost instantaneous and the results are great.

It was hard to imagine another phone challenging Samsung so soon, but the G4 has improved on last year’s already great G3 camera. LG is again using its laser autofocus system, which ensures accurate and fast focusing, even in poor lighting. The G4 also has a 16MP image sensor and the aperture is slightly better than the GS6 at f/1.8. And indeed, it does do a little better in low light situations, producing brighter images with less noise.

LG has come a long way with its image processing algorithms, and it includes support for RAW photo capture. That means you can take the unprocessed files and drop them into Lightroom or a similar tool to process them however you like and export a JPEG. Samsung us rumored to be adding this feature in a future OS update, but right now the G4 has a more impressive feature set. Samsung is still ahead when it comes to HDR shots, though.

Software

Both the Samsung Galaxy S6 and the LG G4 run Lollipop out of the box, but they’re on slightly different versions right now. The G4 launched with Android 5.1, the latest and greatest version of the platform (for the moment). The Galaxy S6 comes with Android 5.0.2, but an update to 5.1 is expected to arrive over the summer. The functional difference here is minimal. Considering the way these OEMs tweak Android, the improved heads-up notifications with be the most noticeable advantage for the G4 right now.

Samsung’s Android UI is known as TouchWiz, and it’s been the subject of much (well deserved) derision over the years. The company started to turn things around with the Galaxy S5, and with the GS6 the software is much cleaner and snappier. There’s even a theme store that can change the still-questionable blue-green UI.

There are a few handy features in TouchWiz like ultra power saving mode, download booster, and multi-window. Most of the junk featured on the Galaxy S4 and S5 is gone or disabled and buried in the settings. Even though TouchWiz is sometimes not the most attractive UI, it is consistent, which remains a problem for LG.

LG doesn’t have an official snazzy name for its Android UI, but it has improved over the years. If you look back to what LG was doing on the Jelly Bean builds there’s no denying its software chops are better now. Still, I feel like it hasn’t made the transition to Lollipop as well as Samsung. The LG UI looks almost exactly the same on the Lollipop-equipped G4 as it did on the G3 with KitKat. It still flirts with both squares and circles throughout the UI, which tends to look disjointed.

LG has a few excellent features built-into the software that Samsung doesn’t. For example, there’s Knock Code, which is really the phone’s killer feature in my opinion. You can set a pattern of taps in different orientations to act as a secure unlock method. So if the phone is asleep, you can simply tap on the screen in the right pattern and it wakes up and unlocks in one step. Several OEMs do similar screen-off gestures, but LG does it better.

Conclusion

Samsung’s Galaxy S6 is a less modular device than the LG G4, but the build quality is definitely better. That’s not to say the G4 is bad, but the leather film pasted over a plastic shell isn’t really a premium design. The GS6’s screen is also still the best you can get on a smartphone. The G4’s LCD is larger, which some people prefer, but the colors aren’t as accurate and the brightness isn’t there.

When it comes to the camera, LG probably edges out Samsung. The laser autofocus thing is really cool and low-light performance is best-in-class. It’s really just HDR that Samsung still dominates. Both are good at general point-and-shoot functionality, though.

Samsung and LG have made great strides in software design over the years. Things aren’t perfect on this front, but Samsung has managed to trim some of the useless junk from TouchWiz and LG has updated its design language nicely. Samsung still has a more consistent and modern look on Lollipop, and the theme engine helps a lot.

These are very closely matched phones with a lot going for them. Samsung will probably continue to lead the way in sales because it’s an overall nicer phone. Still, if you need a removable battery or microSD card slot, the G4 is a much better device than many were expecting.