LG G4 vs Samsung Galaxy S6 edge

Interface and Functionality

Visually, the LG UX 4.0 sports a neater and simpler package, but TouchWiz offers a little more depth.

Samsung honestly started the trend of offering a diversified experience with TouchWiz, one that has evolved from exhaustive offering of the Galaxy S4, to its modest and streamlined approach with its latest incarnation in the Galaxy S6 edge. LG, similarly, followed the same path with its own custom Android experience – where it’s now toned down to offer more useful features, as opposed to throwing several that were sometimes deemed as redundant. Thankfully, the two custom experiences are both running on top of Android 5.0 Lollipop.

Visually, we prefer the neater and flatter style of the new LG UX 4.0 experience – one that makes use of Google’s Material Design by offering bright colors with the interface. Despite the update, TouchWiz on the Galaxy S6 edge doesn’t change enough of the visual aesthetics to detach it from the cartoony style it’s been known for. Yes, it’s more streamlined and simpler than before, but LG’s styling is more tasteful.


Interestingly, both offer the user the ability to download and install various themes. Between them, however, we prefer Samsung’s interpretation because the visual changes extend into some of the core services and apps – like the phone dialer, calendar, clock, and much more.

On the features side, we’re given all the essential Android stuff, but they also happen to share several of the same secondary tools. In particular, they offer an enhanced multi-tasking experience – where two apps can be running simultaneously side-by-side to one another. As we dive deeper in how these enhancements operate, we begin to notice that TouchWiz has wider support that extends to other third party apps; not strictly core ones. Each customized experience have their unique traits and characteristics, and by in large, they get the job done for all sorts of users – including power ones who require more diversity.


Different as they are, TouchWiz and LG UX 4.0 both succeed in bringing simple, meaningful functionality to the lucky user. But although we like the LG UX 4.0 offering for being so straightforward, we find it somewhat bland and underdeveloped compared to TouchWiz, which has grown into a cohesive, aesthetically pleasing, and feature-rich platform. For example, there’s more app support with TouchWiz’s Multi-Window feature, there’s a useful one-handed mode too, and visual changes are made to other areas of the UI when selecting themes.

Processor and Memory

Both handle most basic tasks with no fluff, but the Exynos chip of the Galaxy S6 edge offers better graphics processing performance.

Great phones get only the best, right? In looking at what’s under the hood running on the inside of these two beasts, we’re assured that’s certainly the case. Samsung famously equipped the Galaxy S6 edge with a homemade SoC, the Exynos 7420. It's a 64-bit octa-core CPU built on a 14-nm process, and so far, we've been impressed by its performance. It employs four Cortex-A57 cores running at 2.0GHz, and four Cortex-A53 cores pushed to 1.5GHz, arranged in a true octa-core configuration (all eight cores can be utilized simultaneously). This performance beast is paired with a very capable Mali-T760 graphics unit and 3 gigabytes of fast LPDDR4 RAM. This configuration has been destroying benchmarks left and right, and its records in computing and 3D performance translate to everyday usage just as well.

While it’s still a formidable thing, LG has opted to endow the G4 with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 808 SoC – rather than going with the Snapdragon 810, which when we look at it from the totem pole, is widely regarded as the premier chip. Nevertheless, the 64-bit based hexa-core configuration of the Snapdragon 808, which breaks down to four ARM Cortex-A53 and two ARM Cortex-A57 cores, still proves to be an effective system for every day normal operations. Paired with 3GB of RAM and the Adreno 418 GPU, it’s decent performing too with graphical processing – though, it’s not quite as fluid in comparison to the S6 edge’s performance.

Comforting to know, these two flagship phones are offered with 32GB of internal storage at the bare minimum. And if you have extra money to spend, you can purchase them in higher capacities. While that’s great and all, the LG G4 retains a feature that’s becoming increasingly rare amongst high-end phone – the microSD card slot, which supplements its capacity and offers versatility in transferring data.

Internet and Connectivity

It’s really tough to botch the web surfing experience in this day and age, especially for beefy spec’d flagship phones. Showing their might and glory, these two champions offer all the essentials in making the surfing experience a memorable one. Not only are they able to handle all navigational controls and page loading effortlessly, but web sites come to life thanks to their quad-HD resolution displays. Ultimately, though, the only thing separating the two are their screen sizes.


Both the Samsung Galaxy S6 edge and the LG G4 are dual-band Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.1, NFC, GPS, 3G, and LTE-connected, which means they cover all the necessary networking bases. Also, both have microUSB 2.0 connectors for data and charging. Additionally, both offer IR blasters to make them double as universal remotes as well.