LG G5 vs. Samsung Galaxy S7: 2016 Flagship war

Introduction

This is why we love the MWC - some of the best phones of the year were announced almost side by side. Two of the headliners are the LG G5 and the Samsung Galaxy S7 edge and we know how heated the competition between the G-series and the Galaxy flagship can get. LG took the innovation route and created a phone with limited modularity. It may not be at Project Ara level, but also unlike Ara, it is consumer-ready. We have two modules so far - a camera battery grip and a high-quality audio DSP. LG (and partners) have a chance to keep the G5 fresh by releasing new modules.

Yesterday we learned that both the LG G5 and Samsung Galaxy S7 (and S7 Edge) have decided to forgo Android 6.0 Marshmallow’s adoptable storage feature. That’s LG and Samsung’s decision to make, but we can’t help but wonder why they didn’t give us more internal storage variants then. The LG G5 will only have 32GB internal storage and while Samsung is offering a 64GB model, it isn’t coming to the United States or Europe. In 2016, is 32GB storage enough room for all your apps? Depends on who you ask. On one hand, the microSD slot will still store all your music, movies, and photos (generally by default), and there’s even a few apps that can be transferred manually to microSD on many phones out there (apps like Facebook, etc). Still, with some games like Final Fantasy IX taking as much as 4GB of space – it’s easy to see how gamers and power users might run into issues when it comes to internal storage on the G5 and Galaxy S7. With adoptable storage, this wouldn’t be an issue. As most of you probably know, adoptable storage allows you to basically merge your microSD and internal storage into one partition, with the OS automatically placing things wherever there’s room – including all your apps.

Performance

The Samsung Galaxy S7 edge we had on hand in Barcelona was the version powered by the Exynos 8890. This gave us a great opportunity to pit Samsung's new in-house chipset against Qualcomm's Snapdragon 820 that powers the LG G5. Of course, the S7/S7 edge will have S820 versions, but it's a region specific thing. Anyway, these phones at the MWC grounds are fairly locked up, which limited the number of tests we can install and run.

We got AnTuTu 6 to work, a full system benchmark. It gives the LG G5 a slight edge in overall performance.

Then we tried Geekbench to see how Qualcomm's custom CPU cores (Kryo) measure up against Samsung's custom cores (Mongoose). Keep in mind that Kryo cores are bigger and faster than Mongoose, but there are fewer of them - the S820 CPU is a quad core while the Exynos has an octa-core processor.
Predictably, the LG G5 wins the single-core bench, though the margin isn't huge.

Exynos 8890's higher core count allows it to edge ahead in the multi-core test by a more noticeable margin. It's up to the app to put all eight cores to good use, so well-designed apps will benefit from the extra cores.

First impressions

We didn't have a lot of our equipment with us, so these are only preliminary findings. Still, we think we have a feel of the two phones.

The LG G5 is definitely the geekier of the two. Its modular design comes at the cost of battery capacity (bezels too), so you need a module or two to make up for it.

That said, its wide-angle camera is great for tourists and the videos came out with higher quality than the Samsung (sharper image, better audio).

The Samsung Galaxy S7 edge is about the same size as the G5, perhaps its curved screen edges help make it more compact. It's going to have some add-ons too, though those are strictly external - the Lens Cover adds a fisheye and a telephoto lens, while the battery pack uses wireless charging so it leaves the USB port exposed.

The S7 edge's strength lies in photography. Its photos are sharper and richer in detail. This advantage becomes only more pronounced the darker the scene gets. HDR really comes into its own when there's a great difference in the lightest and darkest parts of the image.

We think the two phones have room to cohabitate. The LG G5 holds some of the same promise that Google's Project Ara does. This, however, depends on LG and its partners actually producing interesting add-ons. Even without that the phone is great on its own, its seamless metal shell is quite impressive in person.

The Samsung Galaxy S7 edge is more self-sufficient. Sure, some snap-on accessories are available, but this is good ol' Samsung - the S7 has everything and the kitchen sink (and even the sink has more features than the competition). If you're looking for low-light photography, the S7 edge is the phone for you.