It’s not exactly news that the LG G4 and Samsung Galaxy S6 pack two of the best smartphone cameras ever. We specifically called them out for their optical excellence in our full reviews, dubbing the G4’s camera “the best available on Android today” and singling out the Galaxy S6’s shooter as “one of the best low-light performers we’ve seen.” Putting them up against each other in a direct comparison, the closest we could get to a conclusion was to say that they were neck-and-neck, with a slight edge going to the LG G4 thanks to its more precise manual controls and out-of-box RAW image support.
Now, we finally have the science to back up our subjective take. Today, the experts over at Reviewed.com dropped a whopper of a feature analyzing camera samples from seven top smartphones: the Apple iPhone 6, Samsung Galaxy S6, LG G4, Sony Xperia Z3 Compact, Panasonic Lumix CM1, HTC One M9, and Google Nexus 6. Thousands of photo and video samples went into the analysis, including hundreds taken inside Reviewed.com’s labs where specialized equipment was put to work to test everything from white balance to dynamic range. The result: the LG G4 and Galaxy S6 distinguish themselves as “phenomenal performers” with “class-leading image quality.”
Taking a strict reading of Reviewed.com’s findings, though, the G4 and S6 are only the winners of a particular category: we’ll call it “normal-people phones.” If you’re in the market for image quality above all else (and you’re not afraid to carry a brick in your pocket), the Panasonic Lumix CM1 is the shooter for you. You may remember the CM1 as the monster handheld we previewed at CES 2015; it looks much more like a camera than anything else, but an Android smartphone it is – and true to its $960 price tag, it blows away everything else on the list.
There were some surprises, too: despite being criticized as lacking in the camera department, Google’s Nexus 6 distinguished itself in areas like color accuracy and low-light sharpness, while the Z3 Compact‘s digital stabilization nearly held its own with optically-stabilized competitors in a shake test. And while Apple’s iPhone is often singled out as one of the best smartphone cameras out there, it’s conspicuously absent from many of the test’s top rankings
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