The high-end smartphone category is one of the most competitive consumer markets out there. It’s the place manufacturers showcase their latest and greatest developments, plus the most luxurious designs. We’ve rounded up five flagships to find out which is truly the best of the best.
VS APPLE IPHONE 6S PLUS HUAWEI NEXUS 6P LG V10 SAMSUNG GALAXY NOTE 5 SONY XPERIA Z5 PREMIUM.
The high-end smartphone category is one of the most competitive consumer markets out there. It’s the place manufacturers showcase their latest and greatest developments, plus the most luxurious designs. We’ve rounded up five flagships to find out which is truly the best of the best.
APPLE IPHONE 6S PLUS
The iPhone 6s Plus is the larger of Apple’s two flagship smartphones, and looks essentially the same as last year’s 6 Plus. It’s a fraction of a millimeter wider, longer and thicker but you won’t be able to tell the difference. It is 20g heavier than the 6 Plus though, due to the new 3D Touch sensors and the haptic feedback engine under the display.The 6s Plus is made from 7000-series aluminum - the same material Apple uses on the Apple Watch Sport. It is tougher than last year, but is otherwise indistinguishable.
The glass covering the screen is made using a dual-ion exchange process that makes it less prone to shattering and more resistant to scratches too.The rear iSight camera has been upgraded to 12-megapixels with optical image stabilization that now works for both videos and photos. The front camera has also been upgraded to 5-megapixels. Besides hardware, Apple introduced Live Photos, a mode that records 1.5 seconds of video before and after hitting the shutter button.
Press and hold a Live Photo when viewing and it will turn into a three second looping video complete with audio. It’s really clever and adds a bit of fun and context to your pictures. Live Photos works with both the front and rear-facing camera.While display resolution is identical to its predecessor – 1,920 x 1,080 pixels (401ppi) – the game changer is a new feature that lets it register varying levels of pressure; Apple calls this 3D Touch.
On the homescreen, press harder than normal on an app, and a Quick Actions menu will appear with shortcuts related to that app - like taking a selfi e with the camera, or calling one of your favorite contacts. Within an app, you can hard press on web urls, messages, maps or images to create a ‘Peek’ window that lets you preview that content. Press harder a second time to ‘Pop’ that content open in its related app.
3D Touch is a revolutionary addition to the touchscreen interface that creates a new way to interact with your phone. It makes everything more efficient and convenient. Powering all this is a new, more powerful 1.8GHz A9 processor. It’s still a dual-core chip, but with an integrated M9 motion co-processor, making it much more power efficient. Another benefit is the ability to listen for a “Hey Siri” prompt at all times, not just when the phone plugged-in like with older models. The 6s Plus also benefi ts from 2GB RAM, twice as much as the 6 Plus. According to Apple, this results in a 70 percent faster CPU, and 90 percent faster GPU.
The second generation Touch ID scanner is much faster and more reliable than last year’s.
The iPhone now comes in four colors: Space Gray, Silver, Gold, and the new Rose Gold, which is actually more of a metallic pink.
Hard press on the keyboard when you’re typing a message, note or email and it will turn into a trackpad to move the cursor!
AT A GLANCE
Operating System: iOS 9, Display: 5.5-inch Retina HD / 1,920 x 1,080 pixels / IPS, Processor: Apple A9 64-bit dual-core processor, Dimensions: 158.2 x 77.9 x 7.3mm, Weight: 192g.
HUAWEI NEXUS 6P
Time to throw everything you thought you knew about Nexus phones out the window. With the Nexus 6P, Google and Huawei have finally made a flagship-level device with top-notch build quality; its all-aluminium body is in the same league as Samsung’s latest Galaxy line of phones. The screen is an AMOLED display with a 2,560 x 1,440 pixels resolution (518ppi), and on paper, it is identical to the Samsung Galaxy Note 5. In fact, the team behind the Nexus 6P confirms using the latest generation panels from Samsung, so it might very well be the same as the Note 5.
As is typical of AMOLED screens though, colors can appear a tad bit oversaturated. You can enable sRGB color mode for a more muted but also more accurate screen.One of the standout features on the Nexus 6P is its excellent fingerprint sensor, dubbed Nexus Imprint, which is located as a nifty little depression on the back of the phone. You may need some time getting used to it if you’re used to a home-button sensor, but you’ll eventually find that the new placement is a cinch. The sensor’s performance was also just about fl awless.
It read and registered my prints in a heartbeat, regardless of the orientation. The 6P is also one of the first phones to utilize a USB Type-C port. The reversible design is a welcome improvement over micro USB for sure, and USB Type-C offers 15 watts of output that can get the phone from zero to a full charge in about an hour and 40 minutes. However, USB Type-C isn’t that common yet, so cables are still something of a rarity.
The 12.3MP rear camera captures lots of detail with accurate colors, comes with laser autofocus and a large 1.55μm pixels sensor to capture more light. It also proved fairly adept at capturing close-up shots. One complaint we have is with HDR+ mode; pictures turned out better without it, as its ability to properly balance light and shadow was wonky and inconsistent. Unfortunately, it has no OIS, a feature found on most of the other smartphones in this shootout (the only other exception is the Sony Xperia Z5 Premium).
The 6P is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 v2.1 64-bit, octa-core processor with 3GB RAM. This is an updated version of the controversial SoC previously dogged by reports of overheating and battery drain. Qualcomm has taken steps to rectify these issues in the latest version of the chip. Compared to the older v2.0 SoC, the Adreno 430 GPU also sees a slight increase in GPU clock speeds from 600MHz to 630MHz.
The Nexus 6P has a 12.3MP rear camera with laser autofocus.
The Nexus Imprint fingerprint sensor works exceedingly well.
The Nexus 6P is equipped with a USB Type-C port for charging.
AT A GLANCE
Operating System: Android 6.0 Marshmallow, Display: 5.7-inch 2,560 x 1,440 pixels AMOLED, Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 v2.1 octa-core processor, Dimensions:159.3 x 77.8 x 7.3mm, Weight: 178g.
LG V10
The LG V10 is a pretty big departure from LG’s previous flagship, the G4. It isn’t curved, it isn’t plastic and it doesn’t have a leather back. What it does have are two selfie cameras, two displays and a textured, rubberized rear cover that feels like the grip of a power tool.Along the sides of the V10, LG has gone for a really nice stainless steel frame. The V10 feels rugged and rigid in a way that its lighter aluminum rivals just can’t match — no #bendgate here.
Despite this, the V10 only weighs 192g, exactly the same as the iPhone 6s Plus. Like LG’s previous flagships, all of the buttons on the V10 are positioned at the rear with two volume keys framing one circular power button (that doubles up as a fingerprint scanner). The fingerprint scanner works reasonably well, but it isn’t quite as fast or accurate as the other phones in our shootout.
You need to press down on the power button to wake it and then wait a second or so for the phone to unlock.The camera module on the back of the V10 is the same 16-megapixel shooter with OIS and laser autofocus as on the G4, with new software upgrades. Automatic mode has better focus, exposure, ISO and shutter speed selection, while an improved manual mode provides even more granular control. These manual controls are even available when shooting video now, plus there’s also better video stabilization, which works in tandem with the phone’s optical image stabilization.
On the front of the phone, you get two 5MP selfie cameras: one with an 80 degree field of view, and one designed for ‘wefies’ with a wider 120 field of view.The main display on the V10 is a 5.7-inch IPS LCD with a QHD 2,560 x 1,440 (515ppi) pixels resolution. It is ultra sharp with good brightness, but colors look a bit muted and blacks, while deep, are naturally not as good as AMOLED. Above the main display, you’ll notice an always-on 2.1-inch secondary display that shows notifications and other system status messages.
It’s not incredibly useful, but it does show the time when the main display is off, which is quite nice. The V10 is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 quad-core processor with 4GB RAM. It’s also one of the last flagship smartphones available with both a microSD card and a removable battery. Particularly noteworthy is that it supports cards up to a massive 2TB. Internally, you get 64GB storage.
The rear power button on the V10 doubles up as a fingerprint scanner.
There’s an always-on secondary screen above the main display that shows notifications.
The V10 has two front-facing cameras: one for selfies, one for wefies.
AT A GLANCE
Operating System: Android 5.1.1 Lollipop, Display: 5.7-inch 2,560 x 1,440 pixels LCD, Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 hexa-core processor, Dimensions:159.6 x 79.3 x 8.6mm, Weight: 192g.
SAMSUNG GALAXY NOTE 5
The Samsung Galaxy Note 5 is cut from the same cloth as the smaller S6 we saw in March last year. It sports Gorilla Glass front and back, a strengthened metal frame, a 16-megapixel, optically stabilized rear camera and 5-megapixel front camera, a fingerprint-sensing Home button, a heart rate monitor at the flash area, support for two wireless charging standards, a super-fast Exynos octa-core processor, speedy UFS 2.0 storage, and 4GB LPDDR4 RAM.
It is however much larger than the S6, with a 5.7-inch display. Like the S6, there’s neither a removable battery nor expandable storage but unfortunately, unlike the S6, there’s no 128GB version available. The highest storage capacity an underwhelming 64GB.The Note 5 boasts a Super AMOLED panel with a whopping 2,560 x 1,440 pixels (518ppi) resolution in a 16:9 aspect ratio. Having said that, side-by-side comparisons with just your eye, it’s hard to see much, if any, difference between the Note 5 and the - on paper at least - inferior iPhone 6s Plus.
You will however notice its flawless contrast, vivid colors and deep blacks. The display is one of the brightest we’ve seen, even by Samsung standards.Like previous Notes, the Note 5’s standout feature is its S Pen stylus, which now has a spring-loaded tip for easy ejection. New features this time around include Scroll Capture, which lets you screen-capture a long webpage and then annotate it afterwards; PDF writing using both pen and finger; and Screen Off Memo, which lets you start writing on the screen the moment you eject the S Pen.
The rear camera has some new software upgrades. Pro mode lets you save photos as RAW and manually adjust the shutter speed between 1/24,000 and 10 seconds. Videos should also appear less shaky due to improved software-based video stabilization. Last but not least, you can combine multiple videos (including slow-mo footage) into a video collage, and stream a full HD live feed straight from the camera to YouTube.
Add all these to the fast startup (just double-press the Home button), high sensitivity, and a class-leading image quality, and you’ve got one of the best camera phones on the market today.The Galaxy Note 5 is powered by Samsung’s in-house Exynos 7420, an octa-core SoC fabricated using a 14nm process. Based on ARM’s big.LITTLE config, it has four Cortex-A57 cores clocked at 2.1GHz and four Cortex-A53 cores at 1.5GHz. The GPU continues to be a Mali-T760 MP8.
The Note 5 has a 16MP, optically stabilized rear camera that’s great at low light shooting.
The Note 5 has one of the best fingerprint scanners around.
The Note 5’s S Pen is the most accurate and nicest-feeling stylus Samsung has designed to date.
AT A GLANCE
Operating System: Android 5.1.1 Lollipop, Display: 5.7-inch flat Super AMOLED, 2,560 x 1,440 pixels, Processor: Samsung Exynos 7420 octa-core processor, Dimensions:153.2 x 76.1 x 7.6mm, Weight: 171g.
SONY XPERIA Z5 PREMIUM
Sony’s Xperia Z5 range consists of three models: the Z5 Compact (4.6-inch), the Z5 (5.2-inch) and the Z5 Premium (5.5-inch). But an extra 0.3-inches isn’t all that sets the Z5 Premium apart from its siblings. It also has a shinier finish and amazingly, a UHD display.Design-wise, the Z series has had only marginal changes over the years. The Z5 Premium’s minimalist, boxy design features front and rear panels made of Gorilla Glass 4 plus a metal frame with plastic corners.
Why the plastic? If you drop the phone, the plastic corners will absorb impact rather than directing pressure inwards (like metal), which would shatter the screen or rear glass. The Z5 Premium continues the waterproof tradition of its predecessors, with similar capless ports and IP68 rating of the Z3+.A new addition on the Z5 Premium is a fingerprint scanner. Gone is Sony’s signature round power button; in its place is an oblong power button that doesn’t look as stylish, but doubles up as a fast and accurate fingerprint scanner.
Its position on the side lets you grab the phone out of your pocket and already have it unlocked by the time you’re looking at the display.The Z5 Premium main selling point is its 3,840 x 2,160 pixels display. That’s 806ppi, which, for a 5.5-inch phone is quite honestly ridiculous. At this size, it’s completely impossible to tell the difference between a QHD (or even Full HD) display and the Z5 Premium’s UHD display. On top of which, most of your video content is likely to be full HD resolution at best.
While there’re loads of 4K content on YouTube, the YouTube mobile app itself only lets you select up to 1080p. Even Sony’s own video store only lets you buy full HD movies for the Z5 Premium. Obviously you can load your own 4K content, but a one and a half hour movie is going to eat around 100GB of storage. Quality-wise, the Z5 Premium’s display is pretty great. Blacks are deep and colors are vivid and bright, although they’re nowhere near as good as the Note 5 or Nexus 6P’s AMOLED panels.
As with other Xperia phones, white balance is a bit on the cool side by default, but you can tweak this manually in the Settings menu.The Z5 Premium is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 octa-core processor with 3GB RAM. It only has 32GB internal storage, but does come with a microSD slot that supports cards up to 200GB (for all that 4K content you’ll want to load on your phone).
The Z5 Premium has the highest megapixel camera (23MP) in our shootout.
The power button on the side of the Z5 Premium is a fingerprint scanner too.
The rear of the Z5 Premium has a shiny, mirror-like finish not seen on the Z5 or Z5 Compact.
AT A GLANCE
Operating System: Android 5.1.1 Lollipop, Display: 5.5-inch 3,840 x 2,160 pixels LCD, Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 v2.1 octa-core processor, Dimensions: 154.4 x 75.8 x 7.8mm, Weight: 180g.
Sunspider Javascript
(lower is better)
SunSpider JavaScript measures the browsing performance of a device when processing JavaScript. It not only takes into consideration the underlying hardware performance, but also assesses how optimized a particular platform is at delivering a high-speed web browsing experience. Two phones did particularly well here, the Galaxy Note 5 and the Apple iPhone 6s Plus. The iPhone was the overall winner on this benchmark thanks to Apple’s great optimization between its hardware and software.
Quadrant
(higher is better)
Quadrant is an Android benchmark that evaluates a device’s CPU, memory, I/O and 3D graphics performances. As this is an Android benchmark, the Apple iPhone 6s Plus is not included. Samsung’s in-house Exynos 7420 is the only non-Qualcomm processor in this benchmark, but still ran circles around the competition, with the Note 5 massively outscoring all of its Qualcomm-equipped rivals. The 808-equipped V10 lagged behind everyone else.
3DMark 2013 – Ice Storm Unlimited
(higher is better)
3DMark 2013 - Ice Storm is designed to test the gaming capabilities of a device, putting its GPU through a rigorous OpenGL ES 2.0 benchmark test that uses fixed off-screen rendering with high quality textures and post-processing effects. The Unlimited version of the benchmark disables v-sync, display scaling and other OS factors, making it ideal for chipset comparison.This gaming benchmark was quite closely contested with the Apple A9, Exynos 7420 and Snapdragon 810 all performing well, with Apple’s A9 leading the pack. Once again, the V10’s Snapdragon 808 lagged quite far behind.
Battery Life
(higher is better)
Our standard battery test for mobile phones involves looping a 800 x 480-pixel video with screen brightness and volume at 100%, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity turned on, and constant data streaming through email and Twitter.Both AMOLED-equipped smartphones (the Note 5 and Nexus 6P) were able to outlast the competition here, with the Nexus 6P running for 11 and a half hours and the Note 5 lasting just under 15 hours. By comparison, the phones with LCD displays didn’t fare as well, and the Z5 Premium in particular suffered due to its ultra high resolution UHD display, lasting just nine hours.
MODEL : APPLE IPHONE 6S PLUS
OS : iOS 9
DISPLAY: 5.5-inch IPS LCD
RESOLUTION: 1,920 x 1,080 (401ppi)
PROCESSOR: Apple A9 64-bit dual-core 1.8GHz processor
RAM: 2GB
REAR CAMERA: 12MP with OIS
FRONT CAMERA: 5MP
INTERNAL STORAGE: 16/64/128GB
EXPANDABLE STORAGE: None
BATTERY: 2,750mAh
DIMENSIONS: 158.2 x 77.9 x 7.3mm
WEIGHT: 192g
PRICE: From $1,218
MODEL : HUAWEI NEXUS 6P
OS : Android 6.0 Marshmallow
DISPLAY: 5.7-inch AMOLED
RESOLUTION: 2,560 x 1,440 (518 ppi)
PROCESSOR: Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 v2.1 (quad-core 1.55GHz & quad-core 2.0GHz)
RAM: 3GB
REAR CAMERA: 12.3MP
FRONT CAMERA: 8MP
INTERNAL STORAGE: 32/64/128GB
EXPANDABLE STORAGE: None
BATTERY: 3,450mAh
DIMENSIONS: 159.3 x 77.8 x 7.3mm
WEIGHT: 178g
PRICE: From 949
MODEL : LG V10
OS : Android 5.1.1Lollipop
DISPLAY: 5.7-inch IPS LCD
RESOLUTION: 2,560 x 1,440 (518 ppi)
PROCESSOR: Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 (quad-core 1.44GHz & dual-core 1.82GHz)
RAM: 4GB
REAR CAMERA: 16MP with OIS
FRONT CAMERA: Dual 5MP
INTERNAL STORAGE: 64GB
EXPANDABLE STORAGE: Up to 2TB
BATTERY: 3,000mAh
DIMENSIONS: 159.6 x 79.3 x 8.6mm
WEIGHT: 192g
PRICE: From $1,088
MODEL : SAMSUNG GALAXY NOTE 5
OS : Android 5.1.1Lollipop
DISPLAY: 5.7-inch Super AMOLED
RESOLUTION: 2,560 x 1,440 (518 ppi)
PROCESSOR: Samsung Exynos 7420 octa-core (quad-core 1.5GHz & quad-core 2.1GHz)
RAM: 4GB
REAR CAMERA: 16MP with OIS
FRONT CAMERA: 5MP
INTERNAL STORAGE: 32/64GB
EXPANDABLE STORAGE: None
BATTERY: 3,000mAh
DIMENSIONS: 153.2 x 76.1 x 7.6mm
WEIGHT: 171g
PRICE: From $1,088
MODEL : 1,088SONY XPERIA Z5 PREMIUM
OS : Android 5.1.1Lollipop
DISPLAY: 5.5-inch IPS LCD
RESOLUTION:3,840 x 2,160 (806 ppi)
PROCESSOR: Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 v2.1 (quad-core 1.55GHz & quad-core 2.0GHz)
RAM: 3GB
REAR CAMERA: 23MP
FRONT CAMERA: 5.1MP
INTERNAL STORAGE: 32GB
EXPANDABLE STORAGE: Up to 200GB
BATTERY: 3,430mAh
DIMENSIONS: 154.4 x 75.8 x 7.8mm
WEIGHT: 180g
PRICE: From $1,098
THE BEST FLAGSHIP SMARTPHONE IS
SAMSUNG GALAXY NOTE 5
As mentioned at the start of this shootout, this category is extremely competitive. We can confidently recommend all of the phones and each one has its merits. If you’re at the pool or beach a lot, or really like the idea of a UHD display, the Sony Xperia Z5 Premium with its IP68 build is ideal. For photographers and especially videographers, the LG V10’s camera and software is one of the best combinations out there and the amount of manual control it has is amazing.
If you don’t want to spend over $1K and prefer a bloat-free experience, the Huawei Nexus 6P is the best Nexus phone ever. And if you want a revolutionary feature in your next smartphone, Apple’s 3D Touch display is easily the single best improvement to the touchscreen since it was invented. However, there must be a winner, and the phone that stood out consistently was the Samsung Galaxy Note 5. While the rest have areas they’re not great at (price, performance, battery life etc.), the Note 5 is practically flawless.
It boasts a gorgeous metal and glass build, it has a powerful and more importantly power efficient processor, it has the best display, with deep blacks and gorgeous colors and its unique S-pen stylus is practical and easy to use. Unless you have specific usage needs, this is the best smartphone you can buy right now.
