Samsung Galaxy S6 vs. HTC One M9 camera battle

You can have an excellent design, great battery, and a killer screen, but that’s all for nothing if you don’t have a good camera. We saw how much a poor camera can impact the overall experience with the HTC One M9, undermining an otherwise top shelf device. But, hey, we’re willing to give it another chance.

Now that we have our hands on the Galaxy S6, we figured we’d pit the two against each other to see which flagship wins on image quality alone. The results probably won’t surprise you.

After all the hoopla over its UltraPixel technology, HTC jumped back into the megapixel race by including a 20-megapixel sensor in its One M9. But, as we found out, it’s not just about megapixels, something HTC has preached in the past. Images produced by the company’s newest flagship were oftentimes overly noisy and just obnoxiously bland.

The Galaxy S6, meanwhile, sports a 16-megapixel with f/1.9 and optical stabilization, the results of which we shared earlier in the week. We think they’re among the best we’ve seen from a mobile device, and we’ll have many more thoughts in our review later this week.

Both devices offer plenty of great software options, mostly getting out of the way while giving users plenty of more advanced pro controls. In that respect, there isn’t really a clear winner when it comes to actual camera apps; folks will mostly stick to auto modes anyway—something we did for the purpose of this versus.

Mark goes into much more detail about each camera experience in the video above. For now, check out the video to learn more about the M9 and S6 cameras, and hear why HTC’s device just doesn’t cut it for us.