Introduction

Did you know that once upon a time pineapples were a status symbol? People place great importance on strange things sometimes, but we're sure that having the best flagship matters - we're not just imagining that it's important to have two cameras, a best-in-class display and a beastly chipset caged in a metal unibody. Those are not passing fads like a modular design, right LG?

These flagships - the LG V20 and the Huawei Mate 9 - live and breathe trendy tech terms, many of which were invented by their parents to describe the cool new tech they've developed. LG pioneered some of the current trends, like dual cameras, though some of its projects prove more popular than others.

Huawei is a phone company with something to prove. Sure, Huawei, the network equipment maker, is a juggernaut. Huawei, the phone maker, isn't there yet but wants a status in the West similar to that of Samsung. This is usually the best time to buy from a company - when it's working hard to impress everyone, some of the old dogs tend to rest on their laurels (you know the ones we mean).

That's why there's hardly a chink in Huawei Mate 9's armor. The bezels of its metal unibody shrunk by 30% since its predecessor, the camera on the back stems from Huawei's new partnership with Leica. The company also whipped its in-house chipset division into shape and the Kirin 960 is the most impressive HiSilicon chip yet. Perhaps even the Snapdragon 820 isn't good enough.

The LG V20 (and V10 before it) remind us of BlackBerry - in a good way! BB itself failed to transition its business phones to the touchscreen era, but the V20 has that "no nonsense" feel to it. A MIL-STD-810G military rating, a removable battery, many first-party apps that show off the best of the hardware (the audiophile-level DACs, the high quality mics). The second screen is one of the best tools to keep you up to date on notifications.

Both flagships are fairly similar, but it should be easy to see they have a different outlook on life. You need to look only as far as their dual cameras - one is wide (135° on the V20), the other is narrow (43° 2x zoom on the Mate 9).



LG V20 Sharper display: 513ppi vs. 373ppi

Secondary always on screen

Dual-camera: wide-angle

User-replaceable battery

B&O headset (region dependent)

Lossless audio recording

MIL-STD-810G rating

Huawei Mate 9 Larger display: 5.9" vs. 5.7" (+ secondary)

Dual-camera: quality digital zoom and bokeh

Better selfie cam: 8MP AF vs. 5MP fixed focus

Larger battery: 4,000mAh (82h Endurance) vs. 3,200mAh (68h)

More storage as standard: 64GB vs. 32GB/64GB

We won't ponder the symbolic meaning of this, we just wanted to point out that the LG V20 and Huawei Mate 9 are not as similar as they may appear initially. Different is good, but which is best?