As LG’s flagship device for the first part of 2016, the LG G5 has a lot to live up to. Unlike Samsung which chose to take a more “evolutionary” approach with the S7 and S7 Edge, LG went back to the drawing board and came up with an all new metal phone. All while keeping a user replaceable battery, and a new feature that enables certain “attachments” to the G5.
I had a chance to test out the device for a short while, and while it isn't enough to give a full review, I thought I would give my quick impressions on it.
A Familiar Face
To start off with the design, this is a pretty familiar looking phone. The bottom chin is reminiscence of the LG G3, and the back has the same design language as the LG-made Nexus 5X. It’s not going to win any design awards, but it looks decent enough.
When I picked up the phone for the first time, the first thing that struck me was that this doesn't feel like a metal phone. Apparently there is a coating on top of the metal which makes it feel like plastic.
The more worrying thing is the build quality though. Out of the box, I saw a tiny dark spot on the coating near the volume button which can't be cleaned away. There is a seam running from the camera lens horizontally to the side of the phone too, an issue that a number of other reviewers have mentioned.
Using the device, I started to notice how sharp that shiny ring around the phone feels. It's not flushed to the phone and protrudes just enough to make using the phone uncomfortable. Note the grey strip near the bottom part that looks almost like the paint peeled off? That's the antenna.
Some reviewers noted a noticeable gap between the phone and the module at the bottom. Thankfully it isn't that bad on my unit. It can only be seen when I look carefully at it. The thing I am more concerned about it whether dust and liquid will seep into the internals due to that tiny gap.
The phone features a rear-mounted fingerprint sensor that doubles up as a physical power button too. The fingerprint sensor is one of the speedier ones in the market, and the best part is that you don’t have to click the button to wake the phone up first. Just placing your fingers over the button will unlock the device.
Subpar Display
On the front of the phone, you have a 5.3-inch QHD Quantum Dot LCD display, which should look pretty decent considering the G4’s display was pretty good too. However in person the display underwhelms. While colours and contrasts generally looked good, outdoor visibility is not as good as compared to Samsung’s Super AMOLED display on the S7 Edge.
I noticed that my unit had really bad light leaks as well, which is particularly annoying since I like to use black wallpaper, which makes it more obvious. Even the Nexus 5 which was known to have light leaks didn't look as bad as this.
The single firing speaker on the bottom is actually surprisingly decent, and sounded better than the one on the S7 Edge to me.
The Dragon is Back
When it comes to performance, the Snapdragon 820 with 4GB of RAM packs a punch when it comes to day to day usage and gameplay. I did notice the phone get warm from time to time, but nothing alarming. There are still stutters from time to time, but those are definitely down to UI optimisation rather than horsepower.
(LTE speeds are great too on the G5)
Powering the device is a 2,800mAh battery, which is a small downgrade over the G4’s 3,000mAh battery. However battery longevity seems about identical in my time with it. Which is to say it doesn't last nearly as long as the S7 Edge’s 3,600mAh battery.
The good thing is, you are able to quickly swap out the depleted battery for a fully charged one on the G5. It does support Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 3.0, which charges the phone up very quickly, but you do need a compatible charger and a USB Type-C cable, both of which aren’t readily available at this point in time. While I get the appeal of a removable battery, for my needs I prefer simply having a phone that can last me a day of heavy use easily.
Friends
Of course one of the highlights of the G5 are its “friends”. The two notable ones are the Cam Plus and Hi-Fi DAC attachments, which allows you to swap the bottom part of the phone to add better capabilities to the phone. I did not get them along with the phone though because I find them to be off not much use at this point in time.
The Cam Plus add-on basically adds a bit more battery capacity and some physical controls. It doesn’t make the camera take better shots. It’s like the camera grip case for the Lumia 1020, but with the added inconvenience of needing to pull the battery out along with it.
The Hi-fi DAC add-on should theoretically make the sound better, but I am not much of an audiophile so this doesn’t really appeal to me. What is curious is that the LG V10 actually had a high fidelity DAC and Amp built-in. So essentially what LG did was to remove that great built-in audio hardware, and replace it with normal ones, and then try to sell you the better audio hardware separately.
Not to mention that both of these attachments doesn’t add any major additional functionality to the device. If you want to change them on the go, that would mean the need to carry them around with you. That would mean a reboot every time you want to change the attachment. Having tried removing the battery from the attachment, I’m not sure how the 2 plastic piece holding the battery would hold up in the long run.
LG's UI
When it comes to software, it has been improved over past LG UI. The software is leaner, and there are a lot less bloatware (The only non LG bloatware are Instagram, Facebook, and Evernote. Until you pop in a SIM card and carrier bloatware gets loaded at least). The design however still leaves much to be desired. In a time where even Samsung has gotten really good at designing the UI, LG is still stuck at reiterating poorly thought out UI choices.
(Overly bright UI, with icons that looks out of place with Google’s own apps)
I am okay with not having an app drawer, but app management is not easy on the LG G5. You are unable to simply delete a folder to take all the apps out of a folder, meaning if you want to reorganise the layout, you have to drag the app icons one by one out of folders (Hello iOS). You can also only move one app at a time. Comparing it to Samsung’s implementation, which allows for moving multiple apps at one go, and deletion of folders, it makes the lack of app drawer pretty annoying to set up.
(What is with that weird thin frame on the icons?)
(Ever since the switch to the new navigation button design, LG has been using these oversized, ill-proportioned
buttons. Comparing it to the stock Android’s proportion on the top which is more balanced.)
Other than the odd quirks in the design, there are some pretty useful settings too. Like the ability to set apps to auto launch when earphones are plugged in, or to turn off WiFi automatically when you leave home, etc. Long press the volume up button and you get straight into LG’s Quick Memo+ app, and double click the volume down button and it brings you to the camera app even when the screen is off.
While the camera is pretty quick to launch, it isn’t always very consistent with its launch time. Also while it is convenient to jump straight into the camera app, the location of the button means it’s not a very natural position for capturing images. I found it just a tad unnatural to use.
Good, but not great camera
The camera app is easy to use, and captures pretty decent looking images in both daylight and lowlight. In daylight the images look great with lots of details. Auto HDR mode also works better than the LG G4 at detecting when to use HDR mode and when not to. The capture speeds are fast too, and images has lots of nice details. Typical of LG, the images are sharpened quite a bit, apparent when you pixel peep.
In lowlight though, I notice that the camera tend to veer towards the warmer side of things, producing images that has similar colour compared to the Galaxy S7 Edge. Unlike the LG G4 which tends to stay truer to real life. Pixel peeping a couple of indoors and lowlight shots, the G4 retains more details, and are sharper compared to the ones taken by the G5. The difference is only obvious when viewing the photo on a big screen or when you pixel peep though.
G5
G4
G5 zoomed in
G4 zoomed in
(S7 Edge left, G5 right)
In lowlight, the camera viewfinder seems sluggish too, with a noticeably lower refresh rate than what Samsung has to offer. Dampening the experience while using the camera in lowlight.
(The normal 16MP image overlaid onto the 8MP wide angle image)
Full resolution images here.
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Overall, I felt underwhelmed by what the G5 offers. The attachments isn't likely to be useful to most people, at least until more attachments come along (which may or may not happen). The new “all metal” body doesn't feel all that premium, and coupled with a less than stellar build quality made me wish that they stick with the V10 or G4’s design.
The LG G5 is a good phone, but it's just no where near what Samsung has to offer. It does a few things better than the S7 Edge (the speaker quality, the QC 3.0 charging, removable battery, and wide angle camera), but in other areas it fall short of S7 Edge.
It feels to me like a lot of concession has been made to build a metal phone with removable battery. The phone despite having a 5.3-inch screen is only slightly shorter, and even wider than the S7 Edge with its 5.5-inch screen. The S7 Edge has a whooping 800mAh bigger battery in a phone that’s only 0.4mm thicker.
Last year with the LG G4, it was a phone I could easily recommend to anyone looking for a great smartphone with a removable battery. Despite the less than ideal software, the hardware package was good.
This year I can only applaud LG for trying something new here. I wished that their execution was better. I wished that they worked on getting the phone experience better first before adding in whatever innovations they want to. In a time where great smartphones are aplenty, LG doesn't have the luxury to put out their incomplete experiments and expect people to buy it.
