Gadgetory

LG's newest flagship for 2016 is looking to move on from the philosophies of the past in order to piece together a new future it's Josh of a guard from Android authority what's going on everybody and this is the LG g5 a radically different design is what you see first in the g5 as many of the design aspects from previous iterations are no longer here and that includes the back button layout as well as the curved bodies and curve displays but we have this all-metal body that has a modular design to it and we'll get into that more when we talk about the battery but we do see some new design cues here as the power button is still on the back but now has the fingerprint reader embedded inside and the volume rocker has been moved to the side now this as LG told us is so that they were able to keep the phone as sleek as possible now this phone comes in at 159 grams in terms of heaviness so it is actually pretty easy to use still and with a 5.3 inch display up front it is a little bit easier to use in one hand speaking of that display though it is a IPS screen that comes in a quad HD resolution and as we were able to spend some quality time with the g5 we found the display to actually kind of give a really good experience it is quite bright especially in broad daylight and it manages to be very legible even under the highest of glare and the always-on display lights up only a certain portion of the display in order to show the time or a signature as you can see in the settings that you can customize however it only shows so many characters so the Freys might actually be cut off and if you're wondering the always-on display only will take a point eight percent of the battery every hour the last thing that's really noticeable on the front of the g5 is a 3d art glass design which provides that little bit of a curve on the top which LG told us is really just for looks but also makes it a little bit more comfortable to use on the ear when talking underneath the surface is a Snapdragon 820 one of the first to come out with this new powerful Snapdragon processor and has the Adreno 530 and 4 gigabytes of RAM to help with all of the multitasking but all of these specifications are going to help power what will be a brand new ecosystem for the G line that said however we do have a good time with this phone thus far as we have had no issues with the way that it moves along very smoothly and very nicely let's return to the backing and you can see above the power button that there is a new dual lens setup now this camera which is taking a lot of inspiration from the successes of the g4 and to the v10 is taking the dual lens setup and putting it on the back in order to bring a wide-angle view alongside all of the other bits that you will probably expect from a high-end camera like this getting into the actual interface what we have here is the manual mode that was already pretty great in the g4 it has only gotten better you still have the granular controls that include manual focusing Kelvin readings in the white balance but now when you're zooming in and out it'll actually seamlessly change between the two lenses so that you can go from a more conventional narrow view and then go to a hundred and thirty-five degree wide angle view as well the lenses come in at 8 megapixels for the wide-angle lens on the back 16 megapixels for the more conventional narrow lens and then up front you have an 8 megapixel shooter it is a pretty drastic change going to the wide-angle view when compared to the regular more narrow view and you're able to fit in a lot more as far as the picture quality goes we are going to reserve our judgment on this because the software for the camera we were told is still not fully final and we do think that there might be some improvements when the phone actually goes on sale so we give you these examples more as a preview of what you can expect the quality to be like if it's anything like the g4 in the v10 we think it's going to be pretty great but until then you can see what you might be able to look forward to in the g5 when it finally comes out the software is also a very radical change for the g5 as the GUI has been changed to remove a lot of the different features that we probably saw in the g4 and thought we're over saturating the overall suite not only are features like the Q slide ABS Q memo and even the dual window seem to be missing here we also have a missing app drawer now what we were told by LG is that after a lot of market research this change was made to reflect the fact that people are looking for even easier experiences in their operating systems but overall the experience is quite snappy and even if the app drawer might take some getting used to not being there we did find that the interface has gotten a little sleeker a little bit easier to look at and a lot easier on the eyes because it's not overly bloated with a lot of features we would never use and finally we can talk about the hardware what we have is a 2800 milliamp hour battery here that's charged by USB type-c and supports quick charge 3.0 when you need to get that extra juice you can actually replace it and that's where the fun really begins this little area on the bottom left actually has to be pushed in quite hard in order to remove the bottom panel by removing the bottom panel you actually slide out the battery itself and this battery can be snapped off of that particular panel by pulling it at an angle this is something that you probably will have to learn first in order to really take advantage of what will become the modular design of the g5 that battery which does have a proprietary connector to get into all of the different modules will be made available for third-party vendors in order for them to create their own accessories and even third-party batteries that can be used with the g5 but it's when you connect this battery to different new bits and pieces that will connect to the g5 that things really get interesting the first one that we'll show you is the camera module called the LG cam plus now this is basically a battery grip that you put on to the g5 which will then give you manual and hardware controls in order to take pictures zoom in and outs start videos and also launch the actual camera from any place on the phone the grip is quite media as well and it adds 1,200 more milliamp hours to the battery overall giving you four thousand milliamp hours so you can use the camera in particular for longer amounts of time already the phone may be a great companion to have as a daily shooter and by adding in an extra module that not only gives more battery life but gives even better Hardware control over the camera it might just make this one of the best travel companions when it comes to taking pictures and memories further modules will be created but the only other one that we did see was the hi-fi bye bang and all sim now this hi-fi module comes with a DAC a dec rather installed inside for 32 bits audio and we were able to listen to it for a little while and all of the audio did sound really great coming from the headphone jack inside of this actual module and of course with VR and 360 photos and video becoming the thing in the mobile space the 360 cam is a separate module a separate peripheral rather that can be used in order to take 360 photos and video and it's quite easy to use just snap on the actual camera into the cover so it will be able to stand on its own or you can just carry it around and take pictures using the buttons installed and all of the photos and videos that are taking can be enjoyed on YouTube 360 and Google Street View to further enjoy all of those photos and video however you can use the LG 360 VR headset now this is unconventional compared to other headsets because it connects via the USB type-c ports to the actual phone itself instead of putting the phone into a large installation and because it is doing all of the processing via the phone and is able to process a little bit inside of the glasses themselves they are not only streamlining the VR process but also streamlining its form unfortunately LG because the g5 and its new eco system are still due to be out in the next couple of months had no information for us when it came to pricing but we imagined the g5 will come in at the usual price for a flagship device though we have been told that there are going to be bundles with the various modules which should provide a little bit more of a deal the g5 is definitely LG's way of moving forward in the smartphone space where they think that there is some stagnation and by creating one of the first modular phones that can actually be expanded with a number of different peripherals this might be one of those really customizable and also very versatile systems that are out there the design might be radically changed and a lot of LG fans might find that a little bit tough to swallow but overall the moves that LG is making in the g5 really make us excited to really put it through its paces when we get a full review unit so keep it tuned to Android Authority for even more about the LG g5 including all of our coverage on it we have a couple of future focuses and some verses to show you so keep it tuned here for that and even more from MWC 2016 because we are your source for all things Android