Time to see how the two flagships perform according to synthetic benchmarks. Well, not two but three - remember that the Galaxy S4 has two versions (one with Snapdragon 600 and one with Exynos 5 Octa), but both were tuned to have about the same performance.
So, the LG G2 should take an easy victory here because it has a newer chipset, the Snapdragon 800. By the way, Samsung has a Galaxy S4 with Snapdragon 800 too, it's just not available internationally (but crucially, it's available in South Korea).
Let's list the parts for those who don't know them by heart.
The Krait 400 cores are faster than the Krait 300 ones even at the same clock speed, which is obviously not the case. The GPU on the Snapdragon 800 is also more powerful as well.
Then, there's Exynos 5 Octa that has four powerful Cortex-A15 cores at 1.6GHz and four power-efficient Cortex-A7 cores at 1.2GHz. At the moment only the A15s or only the A7s are active at any one time, but Samsung is working on an update to enable all 8 cores to work simultaneously. There's also 2GB RAM and a GPU of a different family - the PowerVR SGX544MP3.
Note that we're missing a few benchmarks for the Exynos 5 Octa version of the Galaxy S4.
Let's kick off with CPU benchmarks. The LG G2 is the first phone we've tested that goes under 100ms on BenchmarkPi, beating even the Sony Xperia Z Ultra, which has the same chipset. The Samsung Galaxy S4 (both versions) is about 30% slower in single-threaded performance.
Lower is better
Linpack puts the multi-threaded performance a hair above that of the Z Ultra and well ahead of the Galaxy S4s again by about 30%). Geekbench 3 doesn't quite agree - it puts the Sony Xperia Z Ultra on top, but the LG G2 is still ahead of the I9505 Galaxy S4 by about 20%.
Higher is better
Higher is better
Quadrant puts the LG G2 on top, with the Samsung Galaxy S4s trailing by quite a bit. AnTuTu scores confirm that the gap in overall performance is noticeable.
Higher is better
Higher is better
Moving on to the GPU benchmarks to try and see how both versions of the Adreno do against each other and against the Power VR.
The first offscreen test - GFXBench 2.5 Egypt - shows a solid 10fps lead for the new Adreno 330 in the LG G2 and even more in the Xperia Z Ultra. Meanwhile, the PowerVR SGX544MP3 practically matches the Adreno 320.
The newer 2.7 T-Rex benchmark shows a closer gap - 5fps - but proportionally it's the same (25-30%). Keep in mind that 1080p is the actual screen resolution on these devices.
Higher is better
Let's see how Epic Citadel does - it's based on the Unreal Engine 3, same as the new Infinity Blade III, which unfortunately isn't available for Android. Still, it shows real-world gaming performance.
The LG G2 scores 51fps, which is very close to the 60fps software limit. The Samsung Galaxy S4 (with Snapdragon 600) meanwhile achieved an average of under 40fps, meaning complicated scenes are not all that smooth.
Higher is better
The JavaScript performance gap and the HTML5 one measured by SunSpider and BrowserMark 2 respectively isn't all that big, considering the CPU and GPU performance demonstrated so far.
Vellamo, however, found it easier to tell the two phones apart - the LG G2 scores around 2,900, while both Galaxy S4s are around 2,000 (that's nearly a third less).
Lower is better
Higher is better
Higher is better
Section winner: LG G2
The benchmarks results are unanimous and it was hardly unexpected. The Snapdragon 800 inside the LG G2 is easily the most powerful mass market mobile chipset. A Snapdragon 800 version of the Galaxy S4 (and S4 Active if the rumors are to be believed) will make things more interesting in this department.
That's not to say the I9500 and I9505 Galaxy S4 phones are slow - they are not, they're just slower than the G2 when the chipset is pushed to the limit.
We've covered the positioning of the loudspeakers on both phones and explained the pros and cons. Now let's look at just how loud those loudspeakers are.
The Samsung Galaxy S4 is louder in two out of three tests than the G2 and scores a Good mark, while the LG G2 only managed a Below Average. Note that this is with the loudspeakers not muffled - if you place the Galaxy S4 and the G2 on a table, the difference between the two gets smaller. As we already explained, the S4 loudspeaker tends to get muffled on flat surfaces.
Speakerphone test | Voice, dB | Ringing | Overal score | |
60.1 | 58.3 | 61.6 | ||
LG G2 | 65.7 | 62.2 | 66.2 | |
HTC Butterfly S | 66.7 | 61.9 | 72.2 | |
66.3 | 64.8 | 75.1 | ||
HTC One | 69.3 | 66.6 | 75.9 | |
HTC One mini | 68.0 | 68.7 | 78.1 | |
Samsung I9505 Galaxy S4 | 70.6 | 66.2 | 77.3 | |
72.7 | 66.6 | 78.1 | ||
74.6 | 71.3 | 82.7 | Excellent |
Section winner: Samsung Galaxy S4
If you don't completely muffle the poorly designed loudspeaker grille, the Samsung Galaxy S4 will be easier to hear when ringing or playing music out loud. It's not by a big margin, but there is no two ways about it, the LG G2 is quieter.
The LG G2 and the Samsung Galaxy S4 showed perfectly clean output in both parts of our traditional audio quality test. The smartphones got excellent scores all over the field with the Galaxy S4 taking the slightest of edges.
The scores stay close to perfect even when you plug in a pair of headphones. The stereo crosstalk of the G2 worsens a bit more than on the Galaxy S4, which combined with the slightly higher volume levels on the Samsung flagship gives the Galaxy s4 the win here.
And here go the results so you can see for yourselves.
Test | Frequency response | Noise level | Dynamic range | THD | IMD + Noise | Stereo crosstalk |
LG G2 | +0.03, -0.28 | -91.9 | 91.9 | 0.0097 | 0.011 | -91.3 |
LG G2 (headphones attached) | +0.07, -0.03 | -91.5 | 91.8 | 0.037 | 0.041 | -54.3 |
Samsung Galaxy S4 | +0.03, -0.08 | -95.9 | 93.2 | 0.0030 | 0.0092 | -96.4 |
Samsung Galaxy S4 (headphones attached) | +0.03, -0.08 | -96.0 | 93.3 | 0.0031 | 0.089 | -77.5 |
LG G2 frequency response
Samsung Galaxy S4 frequency response
You can learn more about the whole testing process here.
Section winner: Samsung Galaxy S4
The Samsung Galaxy S4 wins this one around, courtesy of its slightly louder and cleaner output. Again, it's a win by a small margin.
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