After having both a Galaxy S6 AND an iPhone 6 Plus/6s, the GS6 took AMAZING pictures and video.... Under the right conditions.
In well lit areas, the Galaxy front and rear cameras took amazing pictures, however in low lighting things got abysmal quickly for the front camera.
For some reason in low lighting, the Galaxy front-facing camera makes everything look... like a water color painting essentially. A blurry mess. Pictures just weren't sharp at all, and that was one area the iPhone really succeeded in. Even in low lighting, my iPhones still took sharp and somewhat detailed front facing pictures.
Front facing videos were a mess too in low lighting.
Another thing with the front camera is while it does have a much wider lens, and is capable of capturing more in an image than the iPhone's front facing camera, anything on the ends of the picture will be stretched out.
This is detailed here along w/ examples:
http://forums.androidcentral.com/sam...istortion.html
This became super annoying because when taking group pictures with the front facing camera, if everyone squeezes into the shot, the people at the ends had their faces distorted.
The rear camera was all around great for the most part. But I have two major gripes. One complaint was while the flash was amazing and powerful, the color in the resulting picture could be VERY off at times. This is where the iPhone's True Tone flash system comes into play.
When I would take a picture with the flash on using the Galaxy, the color warmth would be off in the pictures. Sometimes they would be accurate, but many times I ended up with pictures that were WAY too warm, and seldom too cold. With the iPhone I never really have this issue because of the dual lighting flash system in place.
My second gripe with the rear camera also affected the front camera. One thing I've noticed with the Galaxy is if a subject is in motion, the motion blur effect is a lot stronger than it is on the iPhone. This also affected the front camera too and made for some really frustrating situations when trying to capture a group photo using the front camera if your hand isn't perfectly steady.
Videos with the S6 look amazing, but the iPhone knocks it out of the park. The major thing that the iPhone allows you to do that the Galaxy WON'T is tapping to set the focus and exposure while recording on a certain area.
For example, you're at a concert shooting, and the lights during the show get super bright for a section and it completely throws the exposure off in your video leaving your subject washed out in the lighting. Often times in these situations the phone doesn't readjust to the lighting change well enough to capture your subject clearly. Coming from an iPhone, on the Galaxy I found myself many times trying to tap on my subject to adjust the focus and exposure to it while recording, but it just wouldn't. I don't believe the camera is capable of it because no 3rd party app I tried was able to recreate that either. On the iPhone it's as simple as tapping on the area you want to focus on, and the iPhone's camera automatically readjusts itself leaving your subject in the right amount of lighting.
The audio in the Galaxy's camera is also superior in terms of picking up bass and depth in the audio, but that's a double edged sword. In loud settings things quickly get distorted where I've never had those issues with the iPhone's camera.
Overall I do think the Galaxy S6 has a great camera, and from what I've seen firsthand, the S7's camera is very similar. The S6 I had took some really amazing pictures under the right conditions. I'll pick up an S7 Edge later this year and I'll compare the two again and see what has changed and what has stayed the same.