Published by Steve Litchfield at 19:32 UTC, May 14th 2017

It's perhaps the most relevant camera phone head to head for a while - the legendary Lumia 950 XL, still relevant in terms of specs in 2017, I'd argue, even if it's harder to buy one new, against the very latest LG flagship and perhaps the best thought out of the MWC 2017 super-phones, the well-respected G6. We're not talking an exact match in terms of scope (the 950 XL has only the one rear camera, for example), but this should still be a battle royal!





See elsewhere for my thoughts on the LG G6 as an overall smartphone, but suffice it to say that it's well thought out and well made and with no gimmicks. From the MWC pool of flagships, notable also including the Galaxy S8, Huawei P10 Plus and Blackberry KEYone, the G6 is probably the best balanced in terms of components and capabilities.

In terms of comparing the G6's camera with the 950 XL's:

the resolutions best match, of course, at 8.7MP for the G6 at 18:9 and 8MP for the 950 XL in 16:9. Now, the Lumia goes up to 16MP as well, which would score it extra points in terms of detail, but I do like to match up resolutions as best possible so that I can use Rafe's fancy interactive comparator, below. Plus I'm also a fan of the PureView oversampling on the Lumias, meaning that the 8MP output from the 950 XL would be purer and clearer when viewed at most normal output resolutions. So... just be aware that I'm doing the 950 XL down a little by going for the lower resolution.

the field of view was different for each phone, with the G6 going for a significantly narrower angle, a luxury it can allow as there's a secondary wide angle (lower-specced) camera also onboard. The 950 XL's camera field of view is greater, but I've done what i can in terms of subject to try and minimise the differences and make the comparator as close in framing as possible.

all photos were taken on full 'auto' on both phones, unless stated otherwise.

But the proof of the pudding is in the eating, as they say. So let’s start snapping and pit the results against each other, using our Famed Interactive Comparator (FIC). All shots are cropped to 900x500 for comparison, but see the links for full versions.

Note that the interactive comparator below uses javascript and does need to load each pair of images. Please be patient while this page loads, if you see a pair of images above each other than you've either not waited long enough or your browser isn't capable enough! You ideally need a powerful, large-screened tablet or a proper laptop or desktop. This comparator may not work in some browsers. Sorry about that. On Windows 10 Mobile, use the 'AAWP Universal' UWP app, which handles the comparator very competently.

Test 1: Sunny scene

Always lovely to snap nature against a sunny blue sky. Here is the whole scene, as presented by the Lumia 950 XL:





In case you want to grab the original images to do your own analysis, here they are, from the Lumia 950 XL and LG G6, click the links to download. And to look at the images in more detail, here are fairly central 1:1 crops, just wait to make sure the page has fully loaded and then use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:

Now, I accept that any phone camera's image processing is a balance of sharpening and noise reduction (among other parameters), but there's a massive difference above for what should be a very simple scene to capture. On the LG G6 screen, the bush and leaves look fine, but down at the pixel level there's some very hyper-real enhancement going on and the results is something more akin to a work of art (that's not a compliment in this context). In contrast (no pun intended), the Lumia 950 XL shot itself looks a little too 'sharp' and not entirely natural, but it's doing a damn fine job in comparison to the G6, I contend.

Lumia 950: 9 pts; LG G6: 6 pts

Test 2: Artificial detail

Also in sunny conditions, here's a cluster of signs, snapped at about 3 metres. Here is the whole scene, as presented by the Lumia 950 XL:





In case you want to grab the original images to do your own analysis, here they are, from the Lumia 950 XL and LG G6, click the links to download. And to look at the images in more detail, here are fairly central 1:1 crops, just wait to make sure the page has fully loaded and then use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:

The G6 camera does slightly better here, but even so I'd contend that the brick texture has tricked the sharpening routines and the result is less realistic, while if you look closely at straight lines then you can see 'jaggies' in the G6 photo that really shouldn't be there, even at 1:1. Admittedly this is early days for the G6 and no doubt it'll get some software fixes, but at the moment the Lumia 950 XL photo is demonstrably superior.

Lumia 950: 9 pts; LG G6: 7 pts

Test 3: Zoom test

Well, neither phone claims much in the way of zoom. The 950 XL has a slight edge in theory, with the higher resolution underlying sensor, but I'm not expecting much. Here is the whole scene, as presented by the Lumia 950 XL, unzoomed, to show how far away the subject car actually was:





And then there are zoomed versions of the scene, done to approximately 2x on each phone.

In case you want to grab the original zoomed images to do your own analysis, here they are, from the Lumia 950 XL and LG G6, click the links to download. And to look at the images in more detail, here are fairly central 1:1 crops, just wait to make sure the page has fully loaded and then use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:

Both digital zooms are a mess, of course, and about what you'd expect. I'm going to be charitable and give the G6 a slight win for smoother algorithms in the face of lower ultimate resolution, but that's as far as I can go. Just don't zoom on your smartphone - really. Not unless you need to see what you're shooting more closely.

Lumia 950: 6 pts; LG G6: 7 pts

Test 4: Artificial light

Plenty of colourful detail in the supermarket, under fluorescent light. Here is the whole scene, as presented by the Lumia 950 XL:





In case you want to grab the original images to do your own analysis, here they are, from the Lumia 950 XL and LG G6, click the links to download. And to look at the images in more detail, here are fairly central 1:1 crops, just wait to make sure the page has fully loaded and then use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:

Hopefully your own eyes can see the difference above - there's a purity and clarity to the Lumia 950 XL photo that's missing from the G6's effort - the latter is crisp, thanks to the G6's OIS, but there's noise and oversharpening that's easily visible - it looks like a camera phone photo, whereas the 950 XL's image looks almost real, even at the pixel level. Amazing.

Lumia 950: 10 pts; LG G6: 8 pts

Test 5: Low light

With just a dim lamp, a low light scene indoors. Here is the whole scene, as presented by the Lumia 950 XL:





In case you want to grab the original images to do your own analysis, here they are, from the Lumia 950 XL and LG G6, click the links to download. And to look at the images in more detail, here are fairly central 1:1 crops, just wait to make sure the page has fully loaded and then use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:

The story continues - the PureView oversampling in the Lumia 950 XL camera makes for a purity to the solid areas of colour (wall, frame, etc.) that's just astonishing in these very low light conditions. Meanwhile the LG G6 photo isn't terrible, but you can see jagged edges, noise and artefacts all over....

Lumia 950: 9 pts; LG G6: 7 pts

Test 6: Night time

My suburban test scene, lit only by street lamps at night. Here is the whole scene, as presented by the Lumia 950 XL:





In case you want to grab the original images to do your own analysis, here they are, from the Lumia 950 XL and LG G6, click the links to download. And to look at the images in more detail, here are fairly central 1:1 crops, just wait to make sure the page has fully loaded and then use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:

Ah - now this comparison is harder to call - the Lumia 950 XL does its usual best to turn night into day in terms of a steady shot and great OIS, and does a decent job in terms of keeping noise down and detail usable - though at the expense of a yellowish cast that wasn't there in the original scene. Meanwhile the G6 nails the colours and feel of the scene, but look closely and you can see that details are fuzzy and that noise and artefacts abound. I'm going to give the Lumia the win, but only by a nose here, for the quality of its image, if not its accuracy.

Lumia 950: 8 pts; LG G6: 7 pts

Verdict

As usual, adding up the points gives us a feel for how the two phone cameras did:

Lumia 950 XL: 51/60pts LG G6: 42/60pts

Overall, there's no real comparison. Despite dating from late 2015, the Lumia 950 XL camera demolished the G6 overall in terms of image quality in all light conditions. Does the 2016 G6 have a response? Well, there's the wide angle camera, allowing a different view of each scene, though note that this is fixed focus and has no OIS, so is of lower quality again.

I was disappointed by the G6 here - its photos looked great on the phone screen (and will please those people who only really look at images this way), but once you start cropping in and looking in detail at the images produced, you start to see horrors that really shouldn't be there.

Meanwhile the Lumia 950 XL retains its crown at the top of the phone imaging tree... again. Can the Galaxy S8 compete? That's next on my list, this week*.

It still beggars belief that the like of DxOMark can proclaim recent phones as top of the imaging tree (e.g. Google Pixel), when my on-screen tests here, which you can verify with your own eyes (e.g. my Pixel test), prove otherwise, that the much-ignored Nokia/Microsoft Lumias are massively underrated in terms of image quality.

* I'm desperately trying to restrain myself from throwing the Lumia 1020 into the mix too - this would probably be close to winning overall, but that's a phone from 2013, four years ago, and at some point I guess we have to draw a line under it?

Thanks to Clove for the loan of the review LG G6.