Which powerhouse phone should you buy? Samsung Galaxy Note 7 vs. LG G5

“For the benefit of consumers’ safety, we stopped sales and exchanges of the Galaxy Note 7 and have consequently decided to stop production,” Samsung told Digital Trends in a statement.

If you have a Galaxy Note 7, please return it immediately to the place where you purchased it. You are entitled to a full refund or an exchange for a replacement device of equal value, as per the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s recall. Please see our full guide on how to return your Note 7 here. The guide also includes recommendations of which device to buy instead. One of the options at many carriers is the LG G5.

Below is our original comparison article.

Specs

The Galaxy Note 7 and LG G5 may have debuted months apart, but both pack nearly identical hardware. They share a processor, Qualcomm’s quad-core 820 chip, and feature the same 4GB of RAM.

The two are practical twins in terms of sensors, too. Both the G5 and Note 7 sport fingerprint modules — the Note 7’s on the home button and the G5’s on its rear panel, beneath the camera module — and both feature USB Type-C connectors. That’s significant: USB Type-C, a multipurpose port that’s just beginning to appear in earnest on smartphones, laptops, and desktops, packs an extraordinary amount of potential. On supported hardware, it’s capable of bidirectional power and data transfer — that is to say, it can supply power to or receive files from a device connected to it — and can theoretically carry high-definition audio.

The G5 and Note 7 have other silicon in common, too, including a gyroscope sensor, accelerometer, proximity sensor, compass, and barometer. And both feature dual-band Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.2. But that’s where the similarities end.

The Note 7 has a larger battery than the G5 — 3,500mAh versus the G5’s 2,800mAh — which should translate to a tangible longevity advantage. In our battery tests of the G5, we found it often struggled to last all day when checking social media, browsing the web, and snapping photos. On the other hand, the Galaxy Note 7 easily made it through a day’s use and then some.

Both the G5 and Note 7’s battery pack also support Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 3.0 standard, which means that, on paper, they’re capable of charging from zero to 80 percent in about 35 minutes. But the Note 7 can pull a card trick that the G5 can’t: it can charge wirelessly via the Qi standard or Samsung’s proprietary tech. The G5, thanks to its solid aluminum unibody, cannot.

Storage space is yet another point in the Note 7’s favor. The Note 7 sports a generous 64GB of internal storage, while the G5 slots in line with the rest of the Android crowd with 32GB. Both, however, have similar expandable storage options, which allow you to bring the capacity up to 256GB via a MicroSD card. This round is more or less a tie.

Winner: Tie

Mods vs. Iris Sensor and S Pen

The G5’s “Friends,” or modular add-ons that augment the handset in useful (and sometimes bizarre) ways are the G5’s something extra.  You can swap out the G5’s battery pack for a fully charged module on the go, for example, if you have the pocket room. There’s LG’s CAM Plus ($70), too, an external camera replete with a grip, a supplementary 1,200mAh battery, and analog controls. And then there’s the Hi-Fi Plus ($150+), an external Bang & Olufsen speaker that sports a 32-bit audio processor. The G5’s mods are neat, but not too terribly useful. They’re expensive, and popping them in and out is a bit of a hassle because doing so restarts your phone. None of them felt like must-haves.

The Note 7 may lack mods and Friends, but it’s got its own bag of tricks. Foremost is an iris scanner, a front-facing sensor that records your eye’s unique shape and color pattern for authentication purposes. For now, it serves as a means of quickly unlocking your phone, but Samsung plans to expand its usage dramatically in the coming months. It’ll soon allow developers to tap into Samsung Pass — its new software security platform for iris tech — for a variety of uses, including payments. The initial list of partners includes Bank of America, Citibank, and U.S. Bank.

Our impressions of the iris scanner are mostly positive, but the sensor isn’t without limitations. It may have trouble recognizing your iris if you’re wearing glasses or contacts, for instance, or if you’ve had recent eye surgery. And its relative utility ultimately depends on your personal preferences. If you can’t stand scanning your fingerprint to unlock your phone and authenticate payments, your choice is essentially made, as the iris scanner is a lot more convenient. But if you’re not convinced iris scanners are the way of the future, it’s harder to justify.

Beyond the iris scanner, the Note 7 packs another feature absent on the G5 — the Note series’ signature S Pen. The new stylus is a tad more compact and ergonomic than last year’s model, and features double the pressure sensitivity of most styli. But the S Pen, like the iris scanner, isn’t universally appealing. If you love taking notes with a pen or you draw all the time, you’ll love the new S Pen. It is an amazing stylus that’s great for creatives, but its usefulness depends on your needs.

Finally, the Note 7 supports Samsung Pay, the company’s mobile payments platform. That in and of itself isn’t noteworthy, though. The G5 can perform contactless payments at supported terminals — same as the Note — but Samsung’s hardware is capable of just a bit more. Thanks to support for magnetic secure transmission, or MST, the Note 7 can wirelessly emulate a card swipe at legacy terminals. Put simply, you can tap to pay at registers that don’t technically support Android Pay or Android Pay. It’s hardly a dealbreaker — having to swipe a card the old fashioned way isn’t the end of the world, after all — but it’s a bit closer to the dream of a wallet-less world.

The Note 7’s bells and whistles are more useful than the G5’s mods, so it gets the win in this set.

Winner: Galaxy Note 7

Design and Durability

The Note 7 and LG G5 couldn’t be further apart, aesthetically speaking.

Digital Trends’ Andy Boxall described the G5 as “understated” in his review, and that’s spot on. The handset has a subtle curve around the edges, giving it a polished if perhaps a tad homogenous, appearance. Impressively, though, save for a seam on the rear near the bottom of its body, the G5 is without obvious lines of demarcation, screw holes, or antenna housing. The exterior is unibody in every sense of the word, which is an incredible feat considering it’s made entirely out of aluminum.

The Galaxy Note 7 isn’t any less refined. Its form factor — a curved screen atop a glass-and-metal body — in some ways evokes the S7 Edge’s design, but the Note 7 is a sleeker. Much like the G5, there isn’t a sharp edge to be found on its wafer-thin, symmetrical aluminum frame, and its unadorned front and rear panels only serve to elevate its high-class minimalism. It is, simply put, a stunner of a flagship smartphone.

On paper, both the G5 and Note 7 should stand up to wear and tear, but the Note 7 might do so a bit better. The G5 features Corning’s Gorilla Glass 4 transparent sheathing, a generation behind the Note 7’s Gorilla Glass 5. And the G5, likely due to its modular design, lacks protection against dust and water. The Note 7, on the other hand, is IP68 certified. That doesn’t mean the G5 won’t survive the occasional dip or a concrete dive, but the Note 7 should, in theory, hold up to harsher abuse.

Winner: Galaxy Note 7

Display

There’s rarely an obvious winner between flagship smartphone displays, but the Note 7’s display is an exception to that rule.  It qualifies as one of the top smartphone screens on the market — research firm DisplayMate found that the Note 7’s color reproduction, contrast ratio, and brightness ranked among best it has ever tested.

The Note 7’s screen bests the G5’s in other areas, too. The resolutions of the two displays are the same — 2,560 x 1,440 — but the Note 7’s is a bit larger at 5.7 inches. And the Note 7’s display technology, AMOLED, is capable of displaying deeper blacks than its competitors’ IPS LCD.

That’s not to say the G5’s display is completely without merit. Thanks to its smaller size, its pixels are crammed more tightly together than those on the Note 7  — 557 pixels per inch on the G5 versus 554 pixels per inch on the Note 7. Day to day, though, it’s a difference that’s likely to be imperceptible to all but the most eagle-eyed of users.

Winner: Galaxy Note 7

Camera

The displays aren’t the only radical difference between the G5 and the Note 7. The G5’s rear-facing module features a 16-megapixel camera with an f/1.8 aperture, optical image stabilization, LED flash, and laser autofocus. It also sports a secondary, companion sensor that provides an expanded 135-degree wide-angle view. They’re used independently of each other, though the G5’s camera software allows you to mesh the two together, if ever you so choose.

Both sensors perform quite well. Digital Trends’ Andy Boxall found low light performance to be “superb,” even in auto mode. The wide-angle lens is the clear standout, however, and shines in scenes that call for an unfettered view of surroundings — i.e. sprawling cityscapes, for example, and wide-open vistas.

The Galaxy Note 7’s camera boasta a rear-facing sensor of 12-megapixels, but its f/1.7 aperture is superior. It also features a unique, super-fast autofocus technology that Samsung calls “dual-pixel.” This tech also ensures a larger pixel size, so the Note 7 takes outstanding photos in low light. It’s the best camera experience on any smartphone save the iPhone 6S Plus. The G5 isn’t far behind, though.

When it comes to front-facing shots, however, the G5 may take the cake. Its 8-megapixel, f/2.0 front-facing camera is of the wide-angle variety, and it performed exceptionally well in our tests. What impressed us most was its consistency — we could almost count on beautiful selfie after selfie. The Note 7’s 5-megapixel, f/1.7 shooter is also good, but not quite as stellar. In the end, this one’s a tie.

Winner: Tie

Software and Usability

Gone are the days when manufacturers packed unlocked smartphones with non-removable third-party apps, custom skins, and gimmicky features than users could shake a stick at. Both the G5 and Note 7 are light on such “bloatware,” as it’s known, and so aren’t all that distinguishable in that regard. But the two sport some software functionality that’s proven useful and unique enough to warrant mention.

The Note 7’s most notable apps tie into the new-and-improved S Pen stylus. You can doodle on the display when the phone’s switched off, or generate GIFs using Samsung’s Smart Select feature. Air Command provides a quick list of shortcuts to apps and actions. Translate interprets any word over which you hover the S Pen’s tip. Magnify turns the S Pen into a digital magnifying glass, enlarging the text and images underneath it. And Glance lets you preview a background app’s state before you switch to it.

The Note 7’s iris scanner can’t do all that much … yet. Samsung said it’s currently working with third parties to develop new use cases, but it’s far from useless. Secure Folder lets you secure apps and data within an iris-protected folder, and Samsung Pay is due to gain iris authentication down the line.

The G5 doesn’t have a stylus to match the Note 7’s, of course, but it’s not without unique software features of its own. Smart Bulletin is a persistent collection of widgets that provide quick access to Evernote, your calendar, and other apps of choice. LG’s KnockON feature lets you wake the G5 by tapping its display twice in rapid succession. And Smart Settings, a suite of contextual awareness apps, lets you manage preferences based on locations or events — it can switch off your phone’s Bluetooth when you arrive home, for instance, or mute your phone at the beginning of a work day.

Winner: Galaxy Note 7

Accessories

Both Samsung and LG are making plays for the burgeoning virtual reality market. Samsung’s collection of VR products comprises a newly redesigned Gear VR ($100) headset and the Gear 360 ($350), a diminutive camera that shoots in an immersive video format suited for VR.

This year’s Gear VR hasn’t radically changed from last year’s model, but what minor improvements it does have are welcome. The facial foam is now slightly thicker and cushier, a new USB Type-C connector is capable of charging and data transfer, the field of view is now slightly larger (101 degrees versus 96), and the touchpad is now flat.

The Gear 360, meanwhile, is one of the better VR cameras on the market. Digital Trends’ Les Shu found the quality of photos and videos impressive, the lens bright, and the construction solid. It’s a bit heftier than most 360-degree cameras, though, and features a spherical design that might put some people off.

LG’s answers to the Gear VR and Gear 360 are the LG 360 VR ($200) and LG 360 Cam ($200), respectively.

The 360 VR is the clear loser among the two headsets. It’s twice as expensive as the Gear VR, has an effective resolution much lower than the Gear VR — 960 x 720 pixels versus 1,280 x 1,440 pixels — and features an open design that’s susceptible to light leakage.

The 360 Cam, however, is a different story. We were impressed both by how easy it was to use and by its incredibly compact footprint. The video it produced was consistently good, too, and the cherry on top is that it’s one of the cheapest 360-degree cameras on the market.

The VR hardware face-off ends in a tie, then. The Gear VR is the clear winner of the two virtual reality headsets — it’s cheaper, more comfortable, and more capable than LG’s solution. But LG’s 360 Cam wins the video camera round given it captures great footage in a smaller, lighter package that’s less expensive than Samsung’s hardware.

Winner: Tie

Pricing and Availability

Neither the Galaxy Note 7 nor the G5 could be considered inexpensive, but the G5 has the advantage of obsolescence. While the Note 7 starts at $850, the G5 is now available for as low as $500, depending on where you shop.

That said, the Note 7 does come with gratis goodies that the G5 doesn’t. Samsung, for a limited time, is offering purchasers of its flagship the choice of a Gear Fit 2 or 256 Micro SD card — about a $180 or $210 value, respectively.

Here’s how the handsets’ pricing breaks down by carrier:

• AT&T: The Samsung Galaxy Note 7 costs $880 at full price, or $29.34 per month for 30 months. The LG G5 costs $690 at full price, or $22 per month for 30 months.
• T-Mobile: The Samsung Galaxy Note 7 costs $850 at full price, or $32.50 per month for 24 months. The LG G5 costs $500 at full price, or $20 per month for 24 months.
• Verizon: The Samsung Galaxy Note 7 costs $864 at full price, or $36 per month for 24 months. The LG G5 costs $624 at full price, or $26 per month for 24 months.
• Sprint: The Samsung Galaxy Note 7 costs $850 at full price, or $35.42 per month for 24 months. The LG G5 costs $576 at full price, or $24 per month for 24 months.

There are no two ways about it. In all cases, the LG G5 is significantly cheaper than the Note 7.

Winner: LG G5

Galaxy Note 7 Wins

To compare the LG G5 to the Samsung Note 7 is in many ways to pit apples against oranges. Nothing on the Note 7 can match the modularity of the G5’s Friends. The G5, meanwhile, has no hardware equal to the Note 7’s iris sensor or S Pen.

But that’s not to imply that the two are beyond compare. Both pack high-resolution, top-end displays, but the Note 7’s performs just a tad better. Both also sport large batteries capable of charging rapidly, but the Note 7’s is a bit larger. The Note 7’s internal storage capacity is double the size of the G5’s, and the Note 7, unlike the G5, is water- and dust-resistant. The S Pen is also a huge boon to artists and avid note-takers.

In terms of hardware alone, then, the Note 7 edges out the G5. LG’s flagship may offer practically limitless potential in its modularity, but that potential has yet to be fully realized. The Note 7, in contrast, offers a superior package out of the box.

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