Gadgetory

what's up guys lon here from Android Authority and today we're taking a look at the LG g5 versus the Samsung Galaxy s7 edge these are arguably two of the biggest flagships of the year and two phones that most consumers will be looking at when making a buying decision so let's find out exactly how well these two stack up so this year LG decided to go in a completely different direction with their flagship while Samsung chose to refine and improve what they had with last year's s6 what the g5 LG basically started all over from the ground up it's a completely new design with all new materials the g5 is an aluminum unibody design with a nice little chamfered edge that runs around the backside of the phone it may not feel like a metal phone though because LG coated the phone in a primer and paint through a process they call micro dicing which is supposed to make the phone look more seamless but as a consequence it feels less premium the most interesting part about the g5 S design though is the fact that the bottom chin is removable allowing you to swap in different modules like the camera grip or the hive ID Act from Bang & Olufsen the modular aspect of the g5 is a very bold move by LG and it's nice to season trying something different but it definitely needs some refinement the s7 edge or s7 is pretty much just a continuation of last year's s6 and s6 edge the s7 edge is made of the same glass and metal materials which means it still feels slippery in the hand and is a total fingerprint magnet but it's a little bit bigger now thanks to the larger screen and it's also a hair thicker than before the phone is also a lot more comfortable feeling in the hand because everything has been rounded off including the back glass and the metal frame so it doesn't have that same sharp feel that a lot of people complain about with the s6 edge as far as one-handed usability goes the g5 is definitely easy to use in one hand due to its smaller size but overall the s7 edge feels a lot nicer and way more comfortable despite being a bigger phone obviously if you want a smaller galaxy s you can always opt for the regular s7 specs wise they are pretty much identical on the inside they're both being powered by the Snapdragon 820 Adreno 530 and 4 gigs of ram so they're both extremely extremely fast phones and you won't really notice too much of a difference between the two and real-world use if any at all gaming multitasking opening apps web browsing and whatever else you do on a smartphone both of these phones do them all very well they both also have microSD card slots for up to 200 gigabytes of additional storage for storing all of your photos and videos another similarity that these two phones share are the built-in fingerprint sensors but the g5 has its fingerprint sensor built into the power button on the back side of the phone whereas the s7 edge has its fingerprint sensor integrated into the home button on the front of the phone whether you prefer a fingerprint sensor on the back or on the front is a matter of personal preference but what I will say though is that the g5 fingerprint sensor is much faster to set up and you don't have to push the power button down in order for it to read your fingerprint like you would with the home button of the s7 edge both of these fingerprint sensors however are blazing fast and very accurate so you shouldn't have a problem with either one in regular everyday use where the s7 and s7 edge have the leg up is in water and dust resistance capabilities it may not look like it because there's no flaps or anything covering any of the ports but that's because all the sealing is done from the inside so if you need that type of protection because you drop your phone in the toilet or the sink a lot this phone will give you that peace of mind but don't attempt to do the same thing with a g5 with the Snapdragon 820 inside both of these phones do support quick charge 3.0 but if you care about wireless charging you're only going to get that with the s7 and s7 edge thanks to the modular design the g5 does however retain that removable battery so if your phone dies you can simply swap it out for a fresh one and go from 0 to 800 real quick while we're on the subject of battery life the g5 has a 2800 milliamp hour battery whereas the s7 Edge has a slightly larger 3000 milliamp hour battery and battery life on both of these phones have been really good in my experience if you put a lot of value or faith and screen on time numbers as your main measuring stick for evaluating battery life the s7 edge is the clear winner by a significant margin but despite the disparity in screen on time numbers between these two phones I've actually had no problems getting through a full day on either phone with the same type of usage taking a look at the displays the g5 has a 5.3 inch IPS LCD display with the resolution of 2560 by 1440 and got everything that you would want out of a display on a flagship smartphone it's got really nice and accurate color reproduction great viewing angles and it's super sharp thanks to that quad HD resolution 5.3 inches is also a very respectable size that you won't have any problems when it comes to things like playing games or watching YouTube the s7 edge has the same 2560 by 1440 resolution but it's a slightly larger display at 5.5 inches and it's using Super AMOLED technology just as you would expect from a Samsung flagship this is hands-down one of the best displays on the market if not the best and it's absolutely stunning the colors are very vibrant and saturated the viewing angles are nice and it has those rich inky deep blacks that you come to expect from AMOLED the whites don't look quite as accurate or as clean as the whites of the LCD on the g5 but that's a pretty small price to pay for what is an overall very fantastic looking screen the SM Edge also features that curved glass that spills over on the sides hence the edge moniker so when you're looking at content like YouTube videos or playing games it creates for an awesome looking waterfall effect that you don't get with any other smartphone currently on the market one thing that these two displays have in common is that they both utilize and always-on display feature to show basic information like the time and notifications the one for the s7 edge is slightly more fleshed out because it can be customized to show you a calendar and it's much brighter and easy to see over the very dim looking always-on display of the g5 s but it isn't exactly a make-or-break feature for either phone what people really want to know the most about is how do the cameras on these two phones stack up to one another after all Samsung and LG produce some of the best image quality in the game right now when it comes to Android smartphones the g5 is rocking a dual camera set up just like the LG v10 except this time it's been moved to the back the main lens is a 16 megapixel sensor with optical image stabilization laser autofocus and F 1.8 aperture the secondary sensor comes in at 8 megapixels but it's a wide-angle lens and it's easily one of the coolest features on the g5 not only is the wide-angle lens a lot of fun to use but you can get some really amazing looking shots with it and it's something that the s7 edge is just not capable of doing with the s7 and s7 edge Samsung decided to go with fewer megapixels this year for better low-light performance similar to what Google did with the Nexus phones it's a brand new 12 pixel sensor with optical image stabilization and is currently the brightest lens you can get on a smartphone at F 1.7 aperture the SM Edge is also utilizing a new dual pixel auto focusing system that's extremely fast and noticeably much faster than the g5 s laser auto focusing especially in low light LG's camera software is very simple and intuitive but at the same time offers a lot of freedom with a variety of different shooting modes including slow-motion time-lapse 4k video the ability to shoot in raw and DSLR like manual controls if you really want fine-grained controls over your picture taking the same can pretty much be said about samsung's camera software it's simple easy to use and offers a lot of the same features that LG does like 4k video shooting in RAW and manual controls with Samsung's Pro Mode but you do get some other unique features like hyperlapse and YouTube live streaming it's safe to say that both of these cameras take fantastic looking photos and you can't really go wrong with either one the images are sharp rich in color very well detailed and full of depth in some situations the photos between the two can look pretty identical but in most cases I notice that the g5s images are typically more towards the warmer side while the s7 edge stays with cooler color tones the other huge difference is how over sharpen the s7 s images are compared to the g5 it isn't always a bad thing and in some situations it works in the camera's favor but in this flower photo for example you can really see how aggressive the over sharpening is and it just doesn't look quite as natural as a g5 image even though the s7 is supposed to be really good in low-light the g5 surprisingly does a much better job the photos are sharper more detailed and they're significantly less noise reduction the sm does however handle highlights a lot better than the g5 there are a lot more blown out on the g5 whereas the s7 is able to keep them in check but overall the low-light and nighttime shots generally look much better on the g5 as far as software goes the g5 comes with Android 6.0 marshmallow out of the box the latest version of LG's custom interface which brings a lot of changes generally it has a much cleaner appearance feels much more fluid and LG has dialed back a lot of the software features or at least have made them more hidden so it's a lot less in-your-face the biggest change to the UI is the lack of an app drawer you either love or hate but since this is Android it's not a huge deal you can easily bring it back by downloading a third-party one like the Google now launcher or nova or if you really want to stick with LG software LG recently released their home 4.0 launcher which brings the app door back to the g5 the galaxy s7 edge is also running android 6.0 marshmallow and i'm basically going to be repeating a lot of the same things here because samsung has cleaned up their interface a lot to the animations are much nicer and TouchWiz no longer feels slow and this is probably the nicest TouchWiz has ever looked but if you're still not a fan the theme store offers a lot of options to really customize that how you want including making it look more like stock Android the biggest problem is that Samsung still bombard you with a lot of duplicate apps and if you have a carrier version the amount of bloatware is even worse but the same can pretty much be said about the g5 with the s7 edge you're also getting those edge specific features like the apps edge people edge tasks edge and the edge panels that let you see a variety of information such as sports scores stocks and whether there are third-party apps out there that can do a lot of the same things but with the s7 edge the features are baked right into the OS and because you can see more information and do a lot more with it it's actually useful now the biggest question of them all is which one should you buy obviously you can't really go wrong with either one because they both do the typical things that we expect out of a smartphone extremely well they're both fast they have great cameras great displays and good battery life for me I prefer the s7 edge because it's a much more refined smartphone experience whereas the g5 feels like a first generation product and in a lot of ways it is surely LG will have it all figured out in the next version but if you really feel compelled by the g5 s modularity didn't give the phone a shot if you'd rather play it safe the s7 and s7 edge is the safest bet money can buy as always thank you guys so much for watching this video if you did enjoy it please give a thumbs up down below and also subscribe to the channel which is also down below if you haven't already and feel free to follow us on social media all the links will be down below and feel free to follow me on Twitter as well that link is also down below and check us out at Android authority comm for more in-depth coverage because we are your source for all things Android