LG G4 vs. Galaxy S6: Ultimate Android Face-Off

The battle for the championship of ultimate Android phone is more evenly matched than ever. The LG G4 and Samsung Galaxy S6 are both at the top of their form, packing stunning 16-megapixel cameras and gorgeous quad-Hard disk drive displays. They're both decidedly more premium-looking than their predecessors, with the G4 adopting a lust-worthy leather design and the S6 finally ditching plastic for a combination of drinking glass and metallic.

While both phones are excellent, the Milky way S6 and LG G4 have some meaning differences, from performance to battery life to special features. In that location tin can but be ane king to rule the Android arena, so I put the two phones through a nine-round showdown to determine which one is the ameliorate purchase.

Blueprint

Credit: Jeremy Lips/Tom's Guide — (Image credit: Jeremy Lips/Tom'due south Guide)

The LG G4 comes in either a plastic or handcrafted leather exterior, the latter of which helps the telephone stand out from its metallic peers. Bachelor in dark-brown or black, the leather G4 feels adept, adds some actress immovability and makes LG's flagship wait only as much like a fashion accessory as it does a phone.

The plastic G4 (available in white or charcoal) is no slouch either, touting a sturdy back panel with a subtle, tactile checkerboard design. Both versions of the G4 feature the flagship's signature curved backside, too every bit the rear-facing volume and lock buttons unique to LG'due south phones. This blueprint has been around for a few years now, just still might take some getting used to for LG newbies.

While the G4 gained a shiny leather glaze, the Galaxy S6 is a complete overhaul from its predecessors. Samsung has finally ditched plastic in favor of a stunning premium blueprint, consummate with slim metal edges and an alluring Gorilla Drinking glass 4 rear panel that comes in black/blue or white/gold.

At 4.9 ounces, the S6 is slightly lighter than the five.47-ounce G4. The 0.39-inch-thick G4 starts out thicker than the S6 (0.27 inches) in its middle, only its far edges are slimmer than the S6's already-svelte sides. Overall, I adopt the mode the drinking glass-and-metallic S6 feels to hold, especially since the G4'due south wider display makes it a bit less ane-hand friendly.

Winner: Milky way S6. The G4's leather design and removable backside are dainty, just the Milky way S6 looks and feels better.

Display

The G4 and Milky way S6 both offer rich quad-HD displays, though the G4's brandish is larger (5.five vs. 5.1 inches), and promises more than cinematic movie quality via the Quantum engineering science constitute in its screen.

The Avengers: Age of Ultron trailer looked excellent on both devices, simply at that place were some notable differences. The Avengers' skin tones and multi-hued costumes looked more realistic on the G4'south display, while the supercolorful S6 appeared slightly oversaturated by comparison. However, because the S6 crams the aforementioned resolution into a smaller brandish, the video looked sharper on Samsung's phone. Information technology also looked noticeably brighter, and offered better viewing angles.

Our lab tests told largely the same story, equally the S6's 521-nit display outshone the 396-nit G4 past a long shot. Samsung's handset can brandish more of the sRGB color gamut (159 percent vs. 110 per centum), though the G4'due south color accuracy rating of 3.46 was a bit closer to a perfect 0 than was the S6's mark of iv.vii.

Winner: Galaxy S6. The LG G4'due south display is bigger, but the S6's brighter and more than colorful display gives it the edge.

Audio

Neither phone is platonic for cranking music at max volume, simply I found the S6's speaker to exist more satisfying. When listening to the sunny guitars and breezy vocals of Best Declension'due south "The Merely Identify," I found the track to be both crisper and slightly louder on the S6's bottom-facing speaker than on the G4'southward rear-facing i.

Winner: Galaxy S6.

Interface

The G4's UX 4.0 interface adds its own flair to Android Lollipop, complete with a well-organized quick-settings menu that makes information technology easy to change brightness or pop open a windowed QSlide app. My favorite role of the phone's UI is Smart Bulletin, which provides a quick look at your calendar, music histrion and daily step count once you lot swipe left from the home screen.

Samsung'south TouchWiz skin puts a similarly slick layer of gloss over the S6's interface, eliminating a good deal of the clutter that plagued older Galaxy phones. The S6'south quick-settings carte is merely as make clean and navigable as the G4's, and in that location's an Southward Finder feature for searching for any app, file or setting on your phone.

Both phones allow you dissever the screen betwixt 2 different apps, but the S6 provides more options. Samsung'south smartphone lets yous run apps such as Facebook and Instagram in multi-window mode, while yous're mostly limited to Google apps when splitting the screen on the G4.

I prefer the amend spacing and the satisfying haptic feedback of the S6'southward keyboard, and beloved that I tin can download custom themes that sprinkle the phone's interface with my favorite Marvel superheroes.

Winner: Galaxy S6. The S6's slick interface, better split-screen mode and superior keyboard make the phone a joy to navigate.

Features

Aside from its robust camera app (more on that after), the LG G4 is pretty spartan when information technology comes to special features. Its KnockOn feature lets yous wake the device with a quick double-tap of the screen, and Glance View lets y'all swipe downwardly to check the time without even waking the phone upwardly. While it may not be a special feature per se, the G4's replaceable battery and microSD slot give this phone a big advantage over the S6, at least for ability users.

The Galaxy S6 is a fleck more loftier-tech by comparison, offering a fingerprint scanner on the home push and a heart-rate monitor in the dorsum. The smartphone supports Qi and PMA charging standards, meaning you can accuse information technology with a wireless bombardment pad or at select businesses, such as McDonald's or Starbucks. The G4 likewise supports wireless charging, simply only when used with a special back cover.

Samsung's flagship will soon gain Samsung Pay, which, using special magnetic tech, volition allow S6 owners to make easy mobile payments at simply nigh any register that takes credit cards. Yet, while many of the S6'due south best features won't be applied until afterward on, the G4'due south expandable storage and replaceable bombardment let you make the nearly of the telephone right out of the box.

Winner: LG G4. Wireless charging and mobile payments are nice, only the ability to change batteries and add extra storage goes a long style.

Performance

The Samsung Exynos-powered Galaxy S6 and Snapdragon 808-infused LG G4 are both beasts when information technology comes to real-world performance. These two phones immune me to watch a YouTube video while simultaneously flipping through my photo gallery with no slowdown. I was able to launch the camera app on both devices in nether a second, and each phone was similarly quick when starting upwardly the graphically intense Modern Combat 5.

All the same, when looking at benchmark results, the extra oomph provided past the S6's octa-cadre Exynos CPU is clear. The S6 trumped the G4 on the Geekbench 3 performance examination (5,120 versus 3,493), and exhibited stronger graphics muscle on 3DMark Ice Tempest Unlimited (21,193 versus 18,510).

Winner: Milky way S6. Both of these phones are superfast, just the Milky way S6 packs the most ability.

Camera

The cameras found in the G4 and Galaxy S6 are both significant steps upward from final year. Each telephone touts 16-megapixel rear sensors, though the G4 camera'south f/1.8 discontinuity is designed to allow in more calorie-free than the S6's still-impressive f/1.ix discontinuity.

This shot of a sunny bed of flowers looks stunningly lifelike on both phones, simply the S6 produced slightly deeper colors.

This shot of a pink tree ready against a tall Manhattan building was similarly precipitous on both devices, merely the S6 once again offered amend color.

The Galaxy S6 takes superior low-light shots, producing brighter colors and more realistic skin tones both with flash on and with it off. The G4 is all the same solid under minimal light, simply I noticed some strange green and yellow overtones in my shots.

The G4's 8-MP front shooter takes stellar selfies, equally information technology accurately captured my pare tone and highlighted every concluding strand of my beard in dandy particular. I still enjoyed looking at myself using the Galaxy S6'due south 5-MP front shooter, which packs a wider 120-caste lens, just my G4 selfies looked improve.

If you desire as much control as possible over your shots, you lot will prefer the G4. LG's phone offers a robust manual style packed with DSLR-like features, including the ability to tweak white residuum, focus and shutter speed in existent time. While non as hard core, the S6 has some nifty features of its ain, including Virtual Shot mode for taking 360-caste photos and Selective Focus for tweaking your shot's focus after you've taken it.

Winner: Milky way S6: The G4's potent depression-low-cal performance and robust manual manner is enticing for enthusiasts, but we tin can't resist the S6's more colorful shots.

Apps

Samsung and LG were both wary of loading their new flagships with a mess of preloaded apps, instead opting for a few useful utilities on each telephone.

The G4 offers QMemo for apace annotating whatever'due south on your screen, as well as a handy Upshot Pocket feature that filters all of your Facebook invites and to-exercise lists into 1 unified calendar.

Some of the S6'south standout apps include an Optical Reader that scans business cards, too as S Translator for filtering strange languages.

Both phones have dedicated wellness apps, LG Health and S Health, that each permit you view your daily footstep count and set workout goals. Notwithstanding, Samsung'due south fitness app has the advantage of beingness able to track your heart rate, thanks to the S6'southward built-in monitor.

The G4 and S6 are both role of the Google Play ecosystem, significant y'all'll exist able to download whatsoever of the Play Store'southward million-plus apps on either device.

Winner: Draw. The Galaxy S6 is better for fitness, only in that location aren't many significant sectional apps on either side.

Bombardment Life

Neither the G4 nor the S6 offers stellar bombardment life, but the Milky way S6 has the slight edge. Samsung's phone endured 8 hours and 32 minutes of continuous Web surfing over 4G LTE on T-Mobile, while the G4 lasted roughly an hour less on AT&T'southward networks, at seven:38.

The Milky way S6 just barely surpassed our viii:27 average, while the G4 lagged backside information technology. The G4's battery life is slightly lower than last year's G3 (7:56), while the S6'due south endurance time is a big downgrade from the S5's 10 hours and 57 minutes.

Winner: Galaxy S6. I wish it lasted longer, but the S6's battery trumps the G4 past an hour.

Overall Winner

Don't let the scorecard fool you — the Galaxy S6 took the majority of the rounds in this showdown, but just barely. The S6 and LG G4 are both simply that proficient, each offering slick designs, cute displays and lust-worthy cameras.

Yet, the Galaxy S6 just looks and feels better. Its elegant structure is nicer to hold; its screen is brighter and more colorful, and information technology takes pictures that are just that more vibrant than the G4'southward. Power users who want a bigger screen, replaceable battery and expandable storage are amend off with the G4, but the S6 is even so our top overall pick.

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Mike Andronico is an Associate Editor at Tom's Guide. Follow Mike @MikeAndronico. Follow us@TomsGuide, on Facebook and on Google+.

Mike Andronico is Senior Writer at CNNUnderscored and was formerly Managing Editor at Tom's Guide. When not at work, you can usually catch him playing Street Fighter, devouring Twitch streams and trying to convince people that Hawkeye is the best Avenger.