Galaxy S6 vs. LG G4 vs. iPhone 6: Which is Fastest?

The Samsung Galaxy S6, LG G4 and iPhone 6 are all excellent phones, each offering rich displays and unique camera features. But which one is flat-out fastest? That's what our friend Austin Evans sought to find out, as he pitted the three flagships against each other in a multi-round speed test.

Evans began his showdown by putting the three phones through two graphics benchmarks: 3DMark Ice Storm Unlimited and GFXBench 3.0 Manhattan. The Galaxy S6 was the clear winner in both 3DMark and GFXBench off-screen performance, though fell to the iPhone when it came to GFXbench on-screen performance.

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The next round measured CPU performance via Geekbench 3. The Galaxy S6 beat the competition in terms of multi-core performance, though the iPhone proved superior in single core performance. Evans explained that the iPhone's individual cores pack more power, but the Galaxy S6 has more cores for extra-demanding tasks.

The LG G4 finally got its chance to shine during the GFX Bench battery test, in which it outlasted both the iPhone 6 and Galaxy S6 while running a demanding graphics benchmark. Interestingly, the G4 proved to be the worst of the bunch in our own, less-intense battery test, which consists of continuous web surfing over LTE.

Evans' final test was in the heat department. After running a gaming test, the iPhone proved to disperse heat the most evenly at a manageable 31 degrees celsius. The G4 grew to a hotter 36 degrees, but the heat was concentrated at the top, away from where most users' hands would rest. The Galaxy S6 was the hottest of the three at 38 degrees throughout.

Despite getting a little hot, the Galaxy S6 was dubbed the overall fastest phone. We have to agree; in addition to its stellar design, display and camera, the Galaxy S6's blistering performance helped make it our current smartphone to beat.

Michael Andronico

Mike Andronico is Senior Writer at CNNUnderscored. He was formerly Managing Editor at Tom's Guide, where he wrote extensively on gaming, as well as running the show on the news front. When not at work, you can usually catch him playing Street Fighter, devouring Twitch streams and trying to convince people that Hawkeye is the best Avenger.