Gadgetory

it's Josh regard from Android authority what's going on everybody and here we are spending some quality time with the LG g5 we wanted to bring you a look at the software because over the years LG has been trying to streamline what we used to think was a pretty bloated operating system but this year they have taken some really big strides in order to create this a new version of the LG UI that is actually probably the leanest that we have ever seen the first thing we're going to start out with before we even get into the elements of the home screens and any of the menus underneath is the fact that we have the always-on display now the first thing I'll show you there is that if you go into the settings and you head down to the display you'll see the always-on display option right here and you can change it up so that it shows only that area with the time and some of the icons for your notifications or you can actually have it show a signature now the thing about the signature however is that it only takes up so much and it kind of doesn't really have too many characters on there so even the default signature has a couple of letters grayed out and it doesn't even show up in the actual area right there so we probably will tend to leave it at the time so that we can always see that and ultimately it is a time display as you can see very lightly in the sunlight right here and it is always going to be on this IPS display does have this area always on equal when you have the phone unlock and it's always going to show so you'll have an easy access to seeing the time of course you can turn off the always-on display if it's not something that you want to have on every time you lock the phone but now we can talk about the rest of the interface and the operating system as we unlock the device and of course you still have access and the ability to use the knock-on feature to double tap the display and turn on the display and unlock the device from there and of course you always have the NOC code as well which we have seen in previous versions of the LG G line already going through the menus real quick we do have all of the different settings right here everything from the smart cleaning which is still available so that you can see what it is that you can remove from the device of things are starting to get a little bit too saturated and we already showed you the always-on display but now we can take a look at the actual interface and heading over to the home screens the first thing you guys are probably going to notice and I can hear some of you to get your pitchforks out already it's that there's no app drawer that's right LG is taking a pretty bold stance this year with the g5 in stating that they wanted to create the simplest type of interface and make it as intuitive as possible so there is no app drawer here that you need to fiddle with including the fact that when you're holding an icon you don't need to have the uninstall or remove options on the top which they felt was a little bit convoluted but you are going to have to contend with the fact that you put all of your icons on the home screens and you're going to have to create folders as you can see right here that will house all of your different applications so you can actually categorize them and clean up the interface of course we understand that you would be able to put a custom launcher on here and that is of course the power of Android but no a.ab drawer will not be available on here anymore but actually it doesn't just stop at the app drawer there are plenty of features from previous LG phones that actually aren't making it onto the g5 if I bring down the notification drop-down you'll notice here that there are no qslide applications and if you don't remember qslide were those little applications that overlaid on top of your current workspace so you have tools that were small enough to not take up the whole screen but you are still able to get some multitasking done that way if I head over to the extra features on here they don't show up in this area so no more qslide applications on the g5 there's also a lack of dual window on here now if we go into the recent apps screen like we're seeing right here we can pin certain applications so they aren't going to be cleared out but even then we don't have the dual window functionality for even better multitasking like that so things are really getting much more simplistic on the LG g5 and if we go through if you go through the various options in the home screen for the home screen right now in these settings we can turn on the smart bulletin which I'm sure it's familiar from the LG g4 where we have a number of these different applications that are available but other than that a lot of the things that may have been familiar from the LG g4 are not on here anymore we know that for a lot of you guys out there the lack of an app drawer is going to be maybe somewhat of a deal-breaker I know some people really want their app drawers on here but after a lot of market research and whatnot LG did say that this is a more simplistic interface that a lot of people were wanting to have in their smartphones moving forward so it kind of speaks to what LG is trying to do with the g5 not only with this new dual camera setup but also with the modular design by being able to remove this bottom portion and actually add on some new features on the g5 that LG is really trying to think outside of the box and do things that are different compared to everybody else out in the market right now and we'll see how you guys respond once we have our hands on a review unit and we actually put this phone through its paces and see if all of these changes are actually for the better or perhaps maybe for the worse so keep it tuned to Android thority for that and even more about the LG g5 and don't forget to check out all of our coverage here at MWC 2016 because we are your source for all things Android