[rwp-review id=”0″]
One of the things LG had to take into consideration was building a flagship device and feel they don’t fall in the shadow with the likes of Samsung or HTC and considering that the HTC M9 was a good follow up and the Samsung s6 was a design game changer, LG certainly needed to impress in a market that Samsung and Apple dominated by following up to their own popular G3 last year. That being said, the G4 is now here and I’ve decided to go in depth and more than just reviewing the device, I chose to have the G4 as my primary phone for little over two weeks so I can be for sure that I’ve thrown all sorts of punishment at it.
The LG G4 still has a few familiarities from the G3 but more on that later. It’s a facelift of the G3 but more importantly it has decided to break away from unibody devices and give both expandable memory and removable battery. So it comes down to whether LG should have taken more risks in building an iconic flagship which should have stood out making it harder to convince users if they should go for an incremental upgrade rather than get a new rehashed look. In my opinion, however, I’m convinced this is now a case of function over form without compromise and here’s why.
Device Images courtesy of Lakshik Pereira
Design
On the exterior, the G4 has retained its iconic design with the rear mounted volume control. LG has given a choice offering both plastic and leather backs with varying colours depending on what you prefer. We received a leather back case but before I get into that, it’s worth noting that the plastic back case too does have its bonuses, namely that it’s really smooth and doesn’t attract fingerprints and has a cross hatched diamond imprinting on the back which is nice to look at and you may want to prefer it if you tend to do work out but I don’t know too many people who would want to put a case on a phone with a leather case that demands attention. Best to get a phone bumper case instead.
“The leather back case gives the G4 a premium look, but keep in mind that with all things leather, you’d be advised to keep it out of any wet surfaces. Get a phone case if you tend to work out and use your phone as a music player. It’s a small compromise to pay for fashion.”
The leather option for the G4 is LG’s way of standing out from the seas of an all metal, all glass devices that have come out so far. I can go as far to say that the plastic G4 and leather G4 will look like two entirely different devices on first glance. When I used this device in a park, it certainly piqued the curiosity of a few people who liked the way the G4 looked. More importantly if you want to switch, you can because the back cover does come off and you can switch it when you prefer a change in flavor, an old school nod to previous generation devices which I love. The G4 ‘s color schemes come with three different kinds of material for the back cover and on the leather side, light blue, black and tan brown. The rest have either a ceramic paint or metallic design.
The G4’s display curves take the cue from the LG G Flex 2 however the curve is more subtle and you won’t realize it until you see it from a horizontal perspective. You can still put your phone on a flat surface but it won’t roll and this is one factor that makes the phone quite comfortable to hold and when you’re on a call. This however results the phone being heavier than the G3 and heavier than other phone manufacturers exception being the HTC One M9, this isn’t a nitpick though given that the LG has a 5.5″ screen, a comparison to this would be the iPhone 6 Plus, it has the same screen size but is also heavier.
It may not beat Samsung on looks or design but, batteries and memory are something that’s important in equal measure and it also increases your life on the investment on you device. You’re potentially going to save up on repair costs by just getting a spare battery.
On the Inside
On the inside, this may seem a turn off to people who don’t like to see something old in something new but I consider this to be a boon to power users. Expandable memory up to 2TB and a removable battery give the G4 its strongest case to purchase. It does have on board storage up to 32 GB which will be sufficient for the average user but for someone who wants to have a lot of media on the device, an external SD card comes in handy. Especially with LG’s 4K video recording mode, you’re going to need it. You can also move apps around for storage don’t I see why that’s a good idea in theory as it just increases app load times and performance especially if you don’t run it on a high end microSD card. Since I’ve been speaking on how this is Samsung’s rival, it may not beat Samsung on looks or design but, batteries and memory are something that’s important in equal measure and it also increases your life on the investment on you device. You’re potentially going to save up on repair costs by just getting a spare battery.
Display
The color saturation is spot on, red and blue tones are near accurate as opposed to being overly saturated which we’ve seen before in other models this year.
The G4 retains the 5.5″ LCD display from the G3. However, LG says the phone’s screen is now a first of its kind IPS Quantum Display. It’s noticeably brighter than the G3 (25%), has a wider color range and 50% better color contrast putting it squarely in between the Galaxy S6 and HTC One M9 and beats the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus on paper. To the average user, you’re not going to recognize the slight differences in terms of sharpness. Comparing it to the G3, the differences are evident.
The screen is ultimately pretty good and also very bright which is does without the expense of battery life. On automatic brightness settings it varies the brightness quite impressively. The color saturation is spot on, red and blue tones are near accurate as opposed to being overly saturated which we’ve seen before in other models this year. However unless you’re picky about your colors, in a realistic scenario you’re not going to find too many noticeable differences. Photos and HD videos will look stunning on the G4.
Hardware and performance
On the hardware side, the G4 comes with Qualcomm’s 64-bit, hexa-core Snapdragon 1.8GHz 808 processor, a 3,000mAh removable battery, 3GB of RAM and standard NFC support. It’s loaded with 32GB of onboard storage and a microSD card slot that can hold up to 2TB. It’s got a 16 MP back camera, improved from 13MP and a 8MP front camera bumped from 2.1 MP ideal for selfie and video chat.
Why did LG chose the Snapdragon 808 processor instead of 810 was addressed in the press conference we had earlier given that the 810 had varying heat issues plaguing it. The LG G Glex 2 has the 810 and Snapdragon has said that the 810 processors are more aimed towards better resolutions while the 808 is designed for the G4’s screen. With 3 GB of ram however, the G4 is lightning fast but again different scenarios may say otherwise. There were heat issues more less however with the leather back because of its natural insulation. The heat issues proped up when using LTE, in fact LTE is one of the biggest culprits in the G4 to drain the battery more quickly than usual. Audio wise, you’re going to enjoy playing music but you’ll find yourself lowering the volume, the G4’s external speaker is really loud, it does loss bass clarity in places but the packaged QuadBeats earphones takes care of that. There were also minor issues with the UI, the touch sensitivity seemed to stutter which I’ve been told by LG is a common issue affecting their devices and will be fixed in the coming software updates.
The device I tested was a dual sim device and naturally will be more taxing on battery when both sims are actively being used. LTE is great but as I’ve already mentioned I switched it off unless I absolutely had to play a video stream on the go. The G4 is zippy and the only performance drop I noticed was when I connected Android Wear, was on a chat application along with GPS and running mobile data at the same time and the drop happened for a mere second before everything was running smoothly again. Safe to say, performance on benchmarks doesn’t neccssarily reflect a device when used in real time.
Software
The G4 runs Android 5.1 Lollipop, overlaid with LG’s UI UX 4.0 which is more in line with Material Design sensibilities. It’s a refreshing change which is both user friendly and clean without too many gimmicks. and is preloaded with Google default apps such as Gmail, Chrome, Google Now and the updated play store. Voice search can be triggered by saying “Ok, Google.” even if the phone’s screen is off and on stand by. LG’s smart bulletin lets you take a home screen page to display widgets such as music, calendar and LG Health which is a fitness tracker. You can also use your phone as a universal remote with the QRemote. It automatically syncs with email and social media so events are put in your calendar timeline. Lolipop on the LG G4 has made it so much easier to use, one particular feature I enjoyed was the smart settings which lets you turn off or turn on phone setting based on your location or if you’re synced with a device such as Android Wear.
The LG World store lets you put additional themes as well. I didn’t quite like what they had on offer and for someone who likes to keep things simple, it was hard to find a nice theme to suit. There’s a lego inspired skin though which was designed well. For those who just can’t sit right with LG’s themes, there’s always the option to just use the Google Launcher instead. Dual Window also lets you divide your screen so that you can run two apps at the same time and of course LG’s KnockOn and KnockCode feature keeps your device secure and I found it more convenient to open it rather than putting a pin in.
Camera
There’s several things about the G4’s camera that attract a certain niche and those are photographers. It’s the only Android flagship device that shoots in RAW essentially allowing your images to come close to an entry level DSLR camera.
Let’s talk about the biggest reason why I’ve chosen to stick on with the G4 and that’s the camera. A bit of numbers first, LG G4 has a 16 megapixel camera with f1.8 aperture lens making it the widest aperture on a phone so far so it can take in a lot of light while the larger image sensor also puts a strong front which works especially at night. The Galaxy S6 has a f1.9 and while that doesn’t make a big difference for the average consumer, there’s several things that attract a certain niche where I fit in and those are photographers. LG’s camera app comes with manual camera controls which let you adjust white balance, focus, brightness and ISO along with manual focus, shutter speed. The only other phone that does this well is Nokia, I mean Windows Phone, Lumia 1080. The difference being on the Lumia, you had a phone case that you can snap a tripod on to. The G4 could sure use that and bring us an add on to give us some nice long exposures. Here’s how the app looks, it’s intuitive and it does have simple and auto modes for those who just want good snaps and nothing more.
The G4 also happens to be the first Android flagship device that can shoot in raw which take the image directly from the sensor and you can open these in editing software’s such as Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom. RAW images let you get more detail and change white balance, it cuts out a major portion of noise and record more information in highlights and shadow. On the left of the camera is a laser auto-focus and on the right, there’s an LED flash and that also comes with a color spectrum sensor for accuracy in color reproduction which essentially allows your images to come close to an entry level DSLR camera. Here’s some examples of that.
First we begin with exposure compensation, the results speak for themselves, the camera lets you shoot in both RAW and JPEG simultaneously. Take for instance this shot in DIFC, the RAW image converted to JPEG in lightroom clearly retains color information and highlights.
Now here’s how the LG G4 handles HDR, needless to say it does HDR well. I was impressed when it raised surrounding colors around the white areas so you don’t see loss of detail over the edges.
To get a sense of this colour change, I shot the Emirates Towers in RAW and you can see the details here in the second image.
Moving on to white balance correction, in a dark scene like this, it’s refreshing to see more natural lightness in the image.
Manual Focus was a cinch to use, you’ll be using it to get those nice macro focus shots. The first shot was shot in a moving car and I used a fairly low shutter to get the detail right, stabilization helped with the minimal shaking it was put through.
And finally here are the long exposure shots, if you have steady hands you can pull the shutter to a second before shakes start to get noticeable, so it’s best to get a tripod to get a really solid long exposure shot.
All in all, the G4’s rear camera will just be a joy to use and it will tackle most scenarios with relative ease, here’s a few more shots I tested using a variety of manual modes, flash and the quick trigger camera which can shoot images up to 0.07 seconds.
The panorama mode on LG will do well in day time and well lit scenarios, while it still works on generating a decent image at night, it won’t be as accurate if there are multiple light sources with varying degrees of brightness.
Front Camera
The G4’s 8MP front camera has the ability to shoot pictures via hand or voice control. With the voice control you can snap a photo by saying “Cheese,” “Smile,” or “LG” and the hand gesture, which I personally love, perfectly triggers a timer that countdown to the snap which is done by making your hand into a fist, doing it twice lets you take multiple shots and you can pick the best ones. Here’s one featuring our gaming writer, Daniel, and photographer friend, Lakshik Pereira, selfies in low light never looked better.
4K Video
LG’s video is 4K capable. I took it out for a test run in the car with my father who has a penchant for the greatest hits by Queen. I tested manual focus and it tracked pretty well. More impressive still was the way it handled noise at night, I shook it a little as well and you can see a bit of rolling shutter as it stabilizes automatically.
Battery
Probably one of the biggest turn off’s for the G4 is a better battery, it still keeps the same 3,000 mAh battery. It’s not a major complaint it will last you the whole day with moderate use. I noticed that LTE is one of the biggest issues for the battery drain, so unless you want speedy internet for web browsing or multimedia, I recommend you just turn it to HSPA+. I juggled bttween mobile data, GPS and bluetooth at the same time and brightness at 50% auto. It’s also recommended that you auto brightness does also slowly reduce battery if you’re moving from well lit to low lit areas often. It may not have a wireless charger and I hope they come out with that accessory unlike the Galaxy S6 but a removable battery is very welcome regardless.
So should you get the LG G4 ?
Well, that depends on what phone you currently have. LG G3 users will find many familiarities and won’t be as tempted to get one since the G3 on its own is a solid device as is. The G4 will come across as a tweaked successor of what they already have, they are more likely going to have to wait it out to be truly impressed by LG next year when they do eventually churn out a flagship G5. Simplicity being key, the G4 does have high points in places, especially with UI and little to find fault in the camera. The audio is pretty good too and extremely loud. The design while unconventional from the rest, still is pretty unique and it gets due notice and if you’re a camera enthusiast, there’s absolutely without a doubt that you should pick up the G4.
But the important question to ask is if it’s the Android phone of 2015 and I staked claim that this will be but ultimately it plays second fiddle to the Galaxy S6. Not that it’s a bad device, but it looks and feels far too familiar to its predecessor and performs just under it. However, this is a phone that will truly reflect any Android power user that gives them the flexibility to do so and I’ve learned that you can acquire the G4 in the UAE market for AED 1890 ( Retail price officially stands at AED 2799 for the leather option) which puts this device, the Android of 2015 that gets more bang for one’s buck.
