LG G4 Quick Review

LG continued to ride on their success with the G3 from last year so this year’s flagship, the LG G4, improved on that with refinements that went as far as incorporating an authentic leather design. Check out our initial review of the LG G4 below.

Design and Construction

Without looking much closer, the G4 and the G3 might not have huge cosmetic difference between each other. LG already has that signature look and form factor that is distinctly associated with the G-series. The G4 retains the same 5.5-inch form factor but with less rounded corners and arched shape. The lightly curved look is achieved by creating a rounded back cover, a chiseled edge leading towards the flat front panel. This gives the perception that the front glass panel also arches inwards.

The layout and placement of buttons and ports of the G4 is exactly the same as the G3. And because there are no physical buttons around the sides, the G4 looks very unified and solid.

The huge 16-megapixel camera is at the back, flanked by the LED flash, color spectrum sensor and the laser auto-focus on both sides with the Rear Key for the power and volume controls directly below it.

The Rear Key was slightly re-designed to follow the style of the G Pro 2 with its pill-type power button and recessed volume keys with rough textured buttons to easily distinguish it from the middle button.

The back panel is covered with authentic leather providing a smooth and uniquely textured feel much like the leather interiors of a brand new BMW. There’s a double stitch that runs across the middle right thru the camera system giving it that bold yet refined character.

Depending on how you look at it, the leather back cover introduces two opposing views — on one side, it can get easily scratched (you can even run your nail and it will leave a mark). On the other side, it’s quite unique and elegant with every scratch and chafe becoming part of character. Likewise, leather generally looks better as it ages. Otherwise, you can just go and buy another leather back cover to replace it.

Peel out the back cover and you have the 3,000mAh removable Li-Ion battery and access to the SIM card and microSD card. The Philippine variant that will be released in the Philippines will have dual-SIM support.

Camera

The new 16MP camera with f1.8 aperture and 1/2.6″ sensor size. The aperture is fixed at f1.8 but the manual mode allows you to manually set the ISO (50 – 2700), shutter speed (1/6000 sec to 30 secs), white balance (2400K – 7400K) and, of course, the manual focus.

While most people would just resort to the Auto Mode when taking shots, the Manual Mode offers a lot of possibilities that you would not get in most smartphone cameras. Among them is the ability to do prolonged exposure, a technique photographers used to do using dSLR cameras.

The ability to manually control some aspects of the camera allows the user to take unusual photos that’s almost impossible to get in Auto mode. In the shots we took here, we were able to set ISO to 50 and shutter speed to 0.5 seconds.

Auto Mode: LG G4, hand-held, ISO 50, f1.8, 1/2 secs (click image to see full photo)

Auto Mode: LG G4, hand-held, ISO 50, f1.8, 1/2 secs (click image to see full photo)

In Auto Mode, you would normally get this type of results.

Auto Mode: LG G4, hand-held (click image to see full photo)

Auto Mode: Samsung Galaxy S6, hand-held (click image to see full photo)

You will see a lot of noise as the camera tries to compensate for the low-light environment.

Light trails such as the one below are only possible when you have Manual Mode and control the shutter speed.

Manual Mode: LG G4, hand-held, ISO 50, f1.8, 8 secs (click image to see full photo)

Here’s our complete set of sample photos:

[fancygallery id=”211″ album=”254″]

The G4 also has a double-click on the bottom volume keys to quickly launch the camera app but it’s limited to only when the phone is in sleep/idle and is a tad difficult to reach.

Performance and Benchmarks

As for the performance, this is also the first time we encountered a Snapdragon 808 chip which is a hexa-core platform composed of four ARM Cortex A53 running at 1.44GHz and two ARM Cortex A57 running at 1.8GHz.

The Qualcomm reference design has 2 x 2.0GHz and 4 x 1.5GHz for the Snapdragon 808 but LG slightly lowered the clock speed to 2 x 1.8GHz + 4 x 1.44GHz in order to better manage heat issues originally discovered with Snapdragon 810 in the G Flex 2.

Although we ere not expecting the benchmark results to go thru the roof like the Snapdragon 810, the Snapdragon 808 did very well in all of the results. The chart below compares the scores of the LG G4 vs. the LG G3.

The slightly better and new processor also contributes to a more efficient battery life. While we have not yet done our full suite of battery tests, we’re expecting the G4 to be slightly better than the G3 in terms of battery performance (which was around 10 hours), perhaps even up to par with the LG G2.

Everything else we liked about the G3 were inhereted by the G4, especially the Knock Code and the Laser Focus.

We will do a more exhaustive and complete review of the LG G4 once we’re done with the rest of the benchmarks and tests we do with our review units.

LG G4 specs:
5.5-inch QHD IPS Quantum Display @ 1440×2560 pixels, 538ppi
Corning Gorilla Glass 4
Qualcomm MSM8992 Snapdragon 808 1.8GHz hexa-core processor
Adreno 418 GPU
3GB RAM
32GB internal storage
128GB via microSD card
Dual-SIM, dual-LTE, Cat 9
X10 LTE 450Mbps
WiFi 802.11n/ac
Bluetooth 4.0, A2DP, LE, apt-X
NFC
Infrared
FM Radio, RDS
GPS with aGPS support, GLONASS
16MP f/1.8 AF rear camera with LED, color spectrum sensor
8MP front camera
2160p video recording
Camera RAW support
Android 5.1 Lollipop
3,000mAh removable Li-Ion battery

The LG G4 is set to be launched in the Philippines on Thursday (May 28) and released to the public by June 3. Pre-orders are already available here.

The package comes with an extra battery and charging kit, a 32GB microSD card and extended 2-year warranty.

LG G4 (32GB, Metallic Finish): Php31,990
Available in Shiny Gold, Black Titan & Ceramic White

LG G4 (32GB, Genuine Leather Variant): Php32,990
Available Colors for Genuine Leather: Brown, Black, Red