[G4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] monrovian:
I primarily use my phone to video concerts as well and it's way above most other android phones in that regard, imo. Now, I wouldn't necessarily say that equates to much since non-HTC android phones have been known to record garbage at concerts. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out why my old HTC One X could record concert sound so much better than any newer phone I got and I'm finally satisfied with this phone. I tried to look over some concert videos I've been to, comparing videos recorded with the native camera app and with an app like ProShot. I can't definitively say one has better sound quality than the other but it sounds like the native app tries to soften certain louder noises (this could be a good or bad thing depending on what you want and the exact sound conditions). I don't think the phone has a bad mic either but I have experienced distortion in videos, for parts of a second - nothing too long, which I don't think can't be expected when recording in such loud environments. Otherwise, my videos have been pretty distortion free. You will want to watch where your hand is around the recording mic, at the bottom of the phone though. I've had varied results when I'm not paying attention and my hand is covering or partially covering the mic.

I don't think you'll have any better results with the Samsung phone and I've never heard particularly good things about their phones recording in concert environment. These companies don't put as much effort into their audio recording capabilities like Apple, Nokia or HTC do but LG did a pretty good job with this one. Although, the iPhones record in mono (and you can absolutely distinguish between that and how this phone records in stereo) and the feedback on HTC's camera has been pretty negative so you gotta balance the good with the bad.

This is an absolute software issue since the third party camera apps don't experience the audio zoom. Ideally, LG should have provided a way to toggle the audio zoom in the camera app like they did for the LG G2. I originally posted this hoping someone went through the camera code and found a flag to toggle to control the audio zoom as well but it doesn't look like anyone has put any effort in there or that flag is not exposed in the code?

Anyway, I don't think you're gonna find a much better, or anything better, in terms of recording concerts if you want to stick with Android. If you stick with it, I would again recommend using a third party camera app like the two I previously suggested since it eliminates the audio zoom and allows for EASY EV control. Video with the phone isn't too bad when it comes to auto-EV compensation but the photos can be horrendeous, especially if you're focusing on the lead singer's face where they usually have a spotlight. I can't even count the amount of photos I've tried to take where the lead singer's face is almost completely "whited out", if that makes sense, until I found one of these apps with easy EV control. Now, whenever I recognize that happening, I turn the EV compensation down (sometimes all the way down to -2) and I get pretty good results.

Check out my instagram if you want some real examples. Keep in mind, there's a ton of compression thrown on them from IG. The ones on there from this phone will be the ones dated July of this year and later. I can guarantee the last 9 posts on there were with the ProShot app.

instagram (dot) com (slash) monrovian (I don't know how they handle URLs around here so I'll put it like this to be safe)