Today, consumers have a broad selection of premium phones ranging from the Apple AAPL -0.42%
iPhone 6 to the Samsung Galaxy S6 to the LG G4. What’s common between
most of these phones is their focus on wireless performance, user
experience, battery life and photography. However, they do vary in these
categories in ways that set them apart from one another, in sometimes
good ways and sometimes bad ways. The differences between these phones
has also been illustrated by what SoCs they
use and vary from 2 to 6 to 8
CPU cores. Some SoC manufacturers are even taking these high CPU core
count designs and pushing them towards 10 cores, a somewhat
counter-intuitive approach. For my evaluation of LG’s G4, I used the
device beyond the standard two weeks and actually used it for a month. I
carried this phone with me and used it along with my Apple iPhone 6
Plus and will be referencing other reviews to back up any of my own
experiences.
LG puts a heavy focus on the camera
The thing you first notice when you start using this phone is really
how much effort LG has put into making the LG G4’s camera as good as it
is. As a result, they’ve effectively made the camera the focal point of
the phone and created an awesome overall photo and video experience.
They do this with a 16MP f/1.8 camera with a 1/2.6 Sony
sensor and an 8MP f/2.0 front-facing camera. The main camera fires up
in under half a second after firing up the camera icon, but feels a much
slower ~2 seconds when you hold down the volume down button.
One
of the reasons for the LG G4’s fantastic camera performance is because
LG has implemented their second generation of hardware OIS (optical
image stabilization). This feature allows you to zoom in on an image
while recording a video or taking a photo without the massive camera
shake you normally expect. This “hovering” functionality of the G4’s OIS
is better than anything I’ve ever using, including the Apple iPhone 6.
The camera also has a manual mode, which allows you to manually control
the shutter speed, ISO, exposure compensation, white balance, manual
focus and even save the images as RAW files. The higher-end camera
features are great for experienced photographers, but I’ll stick to the
already very capable auto mode.
The LG G4’s camera is also capable of 4K video recording, which is
also made possible in part by the fact that the phone has removable
storage and can support up to 2TB of MicroSDXC removable storage. The LG
G4 also has 4K slimport support, making sharing 4K content easier than ever before.
LG’s design decisions
The LG G4 has a very simple plastic body that can be sophisticated and distinctive
when you add the optional stitched real leather back. The real leather
is a welcome change from the pleather of the Galaxy Note line of phones
from Samsung. The phone also has a curved back to more comfortably fit
the natural curvature of the hand, which is the exact opposite of the
Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge whose display is curved, but back is not, the
exact opposite of the G4. Having a curved back seems like more of a real
design benefit rather than a gimmick. As in previous generations of the
‘G’ family of phones, starting with the G2, LG has put the physical
buttons of the phone on the back. These buttons include the power button
as well as the volume up and down button. One of the ways that LG works
around not having front-facing buttons is with their tap-to-wake
display technology which allows you to wake up the phone with a simple
double tap of the screen. Even with all of this, I wish that they had a
fingerprint reader somewhere on the back.
Before LG launched the G4, they actually announced the display
that it would be using. The panel that LG created for the LG G4 has
some of the most accurate colors on earth with a 120 percent color gamut
that works at a resolution of 2560 x 1440 at 5.5” delivering a PPI of
538, nearly double that of the Apple iPhone 6 with a PPI of 326. They
also increased the brightness by 30% without increasing power
consumption and have a 50% higher contrast ratio than panels of the same
resolution.
As a result of the design and this display, the LG G4 is a 5.5” phone
that fits in your hand like a 5.2” or smaller phone. It has a fantastic
screen brightness of 500 nits, which is virtually unheard of in a phone
and significantly helps in outdoor direct sunlight conditions. It also
has a 1500:1 contrast ratio, whereas most phones generally still have a
1000:1 ratio. As a result, of all this, the LG G4 simply has an awesome
display, which is incredibly important nowadays as people put more and
more focus on the quality of their displays.
Connectivity
The LG G4 with the Snapdragon 808 has some of the fastest connectivity on the market with Qualcomm QCOM -0.07%’s X10 LTE modem, capable up to 450 Mbps (Cat 9) with 3x CA CA -0.7%. According to our tests,
Qualcomm is both faster and more energy efficient than Samsung. Apple
also uses a Qualcomm modem, so modem performance is similar between LG
and Apple. While most carriers in the world don’t support Cat 9 LTE,
there are already 13 networks in deployment, trial or testing. There
are, however, already 38 Cat 6 networks in deployment or trial and 64
commercially launched CA networks.
The
LG G4 also supports 802.11AC Wi-Fi as well as Bluetooth 4.1 LE which
results in some fantastic use cases. It also has features like NFC which
one would expect to be standard nowadays, but isn’t always, and will
become more important as Google GOOGL +0.92%
rolls out their second iteration of Google Wallet. Last but not least,
the phone also has Slimport 4K support, which means that showing the
phone’s 4K content should become a lot easier than transferring it to a
storage device and playing it from there.
Battery life and charging
The LG G4, like its predecessor is
packed with an enormous battery. The LG G4’s 3000 mAh yielded me a day
of active use, which is impressive when you consider that the G4 has a
500 bit, QHD display and a Cat 9 modem. I suspect some reviewers that
may have found the battery life lackluster may not have been honest
about how they tested their display brightness.
Contrary to previous rumors, the LG G4 does support QuickCharge 2.0,
but you need to have the right charger to enable it and the fact that LG
doesn’t supply one is a little disappointing. The phone also has a
Super Power Saver Mode, which works great for getting extra usage out of
the phone. I kinda wish more reviewers would test the longevity of this
mode and see how much it really improves battery life. It would also
have been nice for this phone to support wireless charging, like Qi or
Rezence.
Storage
As mentioned before, the LG G4 is one of the few phones out there
still with removable storage and battery. The reason for this is because
LG understood that having a camera capable of 16 MP photos, RAW photos,
and 4K video would require a phone to have more storage. This extra
storage is easily accessible and upgradable thanks to having a removable
MicroSDXC card slot. The MicroSDXC card slot in the G4 is capable of
supporting up to 2TB of capacity, however those capacities do not
currently exist yet in the MicroSDXC form factor. As a result, the
biggest you can buy right now is 256 GB and that’ll set you back about $350, but that also means you have double the storage of any phone in the world.
A more reasonable purchase would be a 128 GB memory card because
those can be had for between $78 and $99 and automatically put your
phone’s storage in the highest tier of phone storage sizes for a
fraction of the cost. In fact, many 128 GB phones generally will end up
costing close to $1000 while the G4 with 128 GB of storage won’t cost
you more than $700. Beware of counterfeit cards and those mis-labeled as
“micro” but as long as you buy from a reputable retailer you should be
fine. Also, for a short period of time, T-Mobile is throwing in a 128 GB MicroSDXC card in for free, which is essentially a $100 value.
Software features I liked and used
When it comes to pre-installed software, more software doesn’t
usually mean a better experience. In fact, Samsung has removed much of
the ‘bloatware’ they had pre-installed in the past, while Apple has none
and LG never had a lot of it. LG has done a pretty good job of only
loading the things that are necessary, which both reduces clutter,
performance hits and wasted storage capacity.
I also particularly liked LG’s knock on feature which allows you to
turn on the display with a simple double tap of the screen. If you’re
feeling adventurous you can also unlock the phone’s screen with a knock
code instead of a passphrase or pattern. LG also included the QRemote,
which is a very useful application of the IR blaster on the phone which
can allow you to remotely control your HDTV, AV setup, projector, STB,
AC and other appliances from your phone. It worked great with my Samsung
HDTV and Time Warner Cable TWC -0.94% cable box.
Wrapping up
The LG G4 is an overall fantastic phone that is made so fantastic by
its incredible camera, great display and leading connectivity. The phone
stays awesome thanks to its good battery life and fast charging, both
of which are supporting a Snapdragon 808 SoC, which some people may
forget is actually a 6 core SoC. The LG G4 is a perfect example of how
having more cores, be they 8 or 10 will not improve the user experience
in any meaningful way. I also suspect that we will see more Qualcomm
Snapdragon 808-based flagship phones before the year is over, simply
because of how well LG’s G4 utilizes an SoC that many criticized on
paper as being ‘weak’. The LG G4 is no slouch and you’d never guess how
many cores it has inside of it if you simply compared it against the
Apple iPhone 6 and Galaxy S6.
You can chock up yet another phone with less CPU cores, like the Apple iPhone 6 that delivers a really good experience.
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