Samsung Galaxy S6 vs. LG G4: Which Android smartphone has the better camera?

Introduction

The LG G4 and the Samsung Galaxy S6 are two of the biggest flagship Android phones for the year, but which one should you get if image quality is the most important thing for you? We've already reviewed both phones, but here we're going to focus just on their cameras to find out which has the better colour, contrast, noise, ease of use and detail.

Discover more about each flagship smartphone here:

• Samsung Galaxy S6's announcement, hands-on, and review
• LG G4's announcement, hands-on, review and travel photography shooting experience in South Korea

Cameras at a glance

Samsung Galaxy S6

The Galaxy S6 has a Quick Launch camera that pops up from any screen when you double tap the home screen. Samsung says the camera is ready to go in 0.7 seconds, so you’ll always be ready for that picture perfect moment.

There’s a 16-megapixel rear camera and a 5-megapixel front-facing camera for selfies, and both feature f/1.9 lenses for fast low-light performance with the 1/2.6" image sensor. There’s also Auto HDR built-in for rich, dynamic shots in all conditions, and the camera supports UHD 4K video (3840 x 2160) at 30fps.

LG G4

The LG G4 has a 16-megapixel rear camera with an f/1.8 lens, and an 8-megapixel front-facing camera with Selfie Mode, which turns your phone’s screen into a light for more flattering selfies.This is matched with a high performance 1/2.6" sensor that supports a wide range of ISO sensitivities.

There is a Colour Spectrum sensor that ensures colour accuracy, by using an infrared-sensitive sensor to analyse the light in a scene before taking the shot. The laser autofocus system from the LG G3 has been updated to be even faster. A new OIS 2.0 (optical image stabilization system), which uses a 3-axis gyroscope, helps to stabilise shaky handheld shots.

Specs-wise, here's the two phones stack up:

Camera interface

Galaxy S6: Simple gets it done

Overall, the Galaxy S6's camera app has an interface that users of all levels will be comfortable with. Everything is accessible from the shooting screen, and whether you’re using Auto or Pro mode, you’ll find adjustments are just at the tip of your fingers.

The S6 has seven shooting modes: Auto, Pro, Selective focus, Panorama, Slow motion, Fast motion, and Virtual Shot. Let's take a deeper look at each of them.

Slow and Fast motion modes are for creating Slow-motion and sped-up videos respectively (think time-lapse videos), while Selective focus mode attempts to do something like what you might get on a Lytro camera – shift the focus point after you’ve taken the shot.

For Selective focus, you get a choice of three focal points (or distances in this case), as the options available to you are "Near focus", "Far focus" and "Pan focus", which attempts to get everything in focus. But there’s a caveat – the selected object has to be less than 50cm away, so that limits what you can do with it.

Virtual Shot mode is another potentially interesting feature. You sweep around an object and the camera stitches a sort of 3D fly-by view that you can view later. But you really have to be able to walk around the selected object to get a proper Virtual Shot, as it will otherwise cut off early, leaving you with only a partial view.

For the regular shooting modes, the only difference between Pro and Auto is that Pro allows you control over ISO, White Balance, Focus and Exposure compensation, plus Colour options. Both modes allow control over Flash, Metering modes, Picture effects and Self-timer options.

As with most phones these days, the volume buttons work as shutter buttons in camera mode, so you can get a more stable grip on the phone while taking images. The buttons on the Galaxy S6 are very sensitive, so it’s easy to fire off a burst of captures without intending to.

Camera interface

LG G4: All the controls to get the shot

The LG G4 offers more in the camera app than the Galaxy S6, but it's more awkward to take pictures with the physical buttons, as the G4's buttons are located on its back, rather than its sides.

There are three levels of control available on the LG G4: Simple, Auto, and Manual. These are accessed by tapping the “More” icon (the one with three boxes) that’s found in the top right of the screen, right next to the flash icon.

Somewhat confusingly, you'll find another big “Mode” tab when you put the camera in Auto mode. That’s actually where LG stores the options for taking Panoramas, regular pictures, and Dual shot, which fires both cameras together, so you can put a small selfie or wefie into every picture.

Simple mode offers no controls, tapping the screen focuses on that point and takes a picture immediately. And that’s about all you can do in that mode, as all other options are hidden.

Auto mode is what you would expect from most phone cameras, with options to change the aspect ratio of the images, activate the flash, enable HDR, timer mode, voice commands, display a grid, and to switch to the front facing camera. Once you get past the slightly odd way that the LG G4 distinguishes between levels of control and shooting styles, you’ll probably find that the interface is largely similar to the S6 in Auto mode.

Manual mode is where all your controls are at, as this puts Shutter speed, ISO, White Balance, and Focus control at your fingertips. There’s also exposure compensation control available, but unlike with the Galaxy S6, using this disables the ability to adjust Shutter Speed or ISO, so it's useful just for quick adjustments. Here's a quick peek at the Simple, Auto and Manual mode interface as demoed at the local launch of the LG G4 event:-

Play

We prefer the LG G4’s interface in Manual mode compared to the Galaxy S6's, as it’s very handy to have your metering and shooting settings right at the top of the screen.You also get a small histogram display at the top left, which gives you an indication of what the overall light levels in the current scene are. Both are useful bits of information that help in the occasions that you don’t want to take a “correct” exposure, like when you’re taking a back-lit portrait.

The LG G4 allows you to activate the camera shutter with the volume buttons as well. But the buttons are located fairly close to the rear camera, so the likelihood of getting your finger in the shot is quite high.

Image quality

To get some real world impressions of how both cameras performed, we took them out for a day of shooting. We found that both cameras focused quickly, and both go fairly close, with close-up shots that could almost pass off for images taken with a true macro lens.

The images that follow are sample photographs shot with the Samsung Galaxy S6 and the LG G4. The photos were shot in JPEG, and no other processing has been applied to the images. The pictures are copyright to SPH Magazines and are provided for your reference only, so we ask that you do not reproduce them elsewhere. Click for the full-resolution images.

Flare

This is probably the one incident where we found significant flaring in the images from either camera, and on this occasion, the Galaxy S6 does a much better job of handling it.

Low light

When it comes to night scenes, the Galaxy S6 produced a more pleasing image with higher contrast, but the LG G4 had noticeably more detail captured, perhaps because the in-body image stabilisation system helped us to get a steadier shot.

Looking at the images from both cameras at 100% makes the differences more obvious. The Galaxy S6's picture is muddier, while the LG G4's retains more detail; you can make out the lines on the building and the trees' silhouettes. 

Color biases

In terms of colour, both cameras seem to be fairly accurate, needing only a slight adjustment to get to neutral colour. We’d say the Galaxy S6 leans slightly towards the yellows and greens, while the LG G4 has a slight green tinge.

Resolution

When it comes to details, it does seem like the LG G4 captures slightly more detail in its images compared to Galaxy S6, though it’s likely not to be something you’ll notice unless you scrutinize the images at 100%. Take for example, the following images:

At first glance, you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference, but look at them at 100%, and it becomes more obvious. In the picture taken with the LG G4, you can see more detail and texture in the white areas of the petal.

ISO Comparisons

We put both cameras through our studio test at all ISO levels, to see how noisy each is.

The images that follow are sample photographs shot with the Samsung Galaxy S6 and the LG G4. The photos were shot in JPEG, and no other processing has been applied to the images. The pictures are copyright to SPH Magazines and are provided for your reference only, so we ask that you do not reproduce them elsewhere. Click for the full-resolution images.

ISO 100

ISO 200

ISO 400

ISO 800

Galaxy S6 will only let you select up to ISO 800 under Pro mode, but our own tests shots show that it is capable of going up to at least ISO 1000 in Auto mode. Meanwhile, the LG G4 gives you (roughly) 1/3 more stops in Manual mode. We’ve captured the two closest full stops here as the next “proper” stops. (ISO 1500 is between ISO 1250 and ISO 1600, while ISO 2700 is in between ISO 2500 and ISO 3200.)

ISO 1500

ISO 2700

Predictably, the higher ISO speeds give you a much grainier picture with added color noise thrown in, but it allows you to select a higher shutter speed, which is crucial for capturing action. In the last image, we were able to push the shutter speed up to 1/250s, which accounts for the green banding seen in the image, as that speed is faster than the refresh rate of the fluorescent lighting in our lab.

Image detail versus image artifacts

To really get an idea of how the two compare, here are some 100% crops from both cameras at ISO 800:

As you can see, at ISO 800, the numbers "750" are completely blurred in the image from the Galaxy S6, whereas they can still be quite clearly seen in the LG G4. While there definitely is more colour noise in the image from the LG G4, we feel the compromise between color noise and detail is better in this case, while the less heavy-handed approach to contrast makes for a more-pleasing image after all.

There is one issue that is more evident with the LG G4 though, and that's the appearance of artifacts that look like crosshatching patterns, in the images at higher ISOs.

For example:

Compare this against what you get from the Galaxy S6:

The LG G4 introduces image artifacts into the image at high ISO settings. However, the G4 lets you shoot raw from the native app (the Samsung S6 has the ability to shoot raw with third-party apps), and here's a shot from a ISO 800 raw file exported via Adobe Lightroom. We see that the artifacts are no longer there:

There's noticeably more colour noise in this image, but remember that raw files are saved without any processing in-camera, including noise reduction. We can deduce, from looking at the camera JPEG and raw images, that the LG G4 is probably doing some heavy processing to the JPEGs, resulting in the odd crosshatching artifacts.

Conclusion: Which smartphone has the better camera?

Both the Samsung Galaxy S6 and the LG G4 produce images with outstanding quality and colours, with details that would leave you hard pressed to tell they were shot from smartphones if you viewed them on screen. Most would be happy the photographs from with either smartphone.

The Samsung Galaxy S6 produces images with good colour, detail and handles flare better. The UI is also easier to figure out, but it offers less manual options than the LG G4. If you like using physical buttons to take photos, the S6's shutter button - located on the side - is easier to reach, whereas the LG G4's - found on the back - is more awkward.

However, the images from the LG G4 were consistently sharper with less evidence of camera shake, perhaps evidence of a better optical image stabilisation system. There does seem to be a little bit more detail in the images taken by the LG G4 too, and we like how the G4 gives you more manual controls, with the option to save in raw from the native camera app (the Samsung Galaxy S6 can only save in raw with third-party apps that have the feature). The G4's one drawback is the appearance of artifacts in high ISO JPEG images, but those artifacts aren't present in raw.

It's a close call, but if you want the finest image quality possible, like having more control and you're willing to work with raw files, the LG G4 is the winner of our flagship smartphone camera comparison.

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