Gadgetory

and if you had any doubt that LG was falling behind in the competition the g4 is surely an example that they haven't lost their touch but that was then and this is the LG g4 now with Mobile World Congress just around the corner we also have the LG g5 just around the corner and with that we wanted to bring you a look back at the LG g4 after all we've had this phone for a little bit over a year now the LG g4 at the time of its release was boasting certain features that other flagships just weren't providing and that's of course removable battery and expandable storage and it was going to do so in some style after all we have this curved device due to a curved slightly curved to display that was adopted from the G flex line and of course you have the back button layout that originated from the LG g2 and there was some extra style injected into this phone as the backings some of them rather were made of vegetable tanned leather but unfortunately for me I still had to just have this gray plastic backing but overall the design aesthetic has really paid dividends because the slightly curved device itself rests so nicely in the hand that it's one of the most comfortable phones to use and even then it looks just that little bit different from a lot pretty much every other Android phone out there that doesn't have this kind of aesthetic but there is one little issue when it comes to the sides and the grip because the slightly curved sides and also the very thin profile of the phone make it so that this phone is actually a little bit tough to actually pinch and grip and I thought of one main situation where that actually became a problem now I did want to harp on the design aspect just a little bit more because with the LG g5 if the rumors are to be confirmed when the g5 comes out we might actually see the back button layout go away and also the curved phone itself now the g5 might actually have a radically different design language this year and honestly that might be a bit of a shame because I personally really like the g4s design language because it makes it just that little bit different from every other phone out there without actually needing to try all that hard not to mention how comfortable it is to use even in one hand getting underneath the surface however we get everything that a flagship by LG should be a quad HD display IPS play has pretty much the coloration that you would expect and the good brightness in broad daylight and it continues the tradition that was started by the g3 the Snapdragon 808 is what powers everything and yes that is a slight step down from more powerful devices that use the Snapdragon 810 or anything comparable but overall I've been able to have a really good time throughout my usage of the g4 getting everything done from GPS navigation to playing music YouTube even Netflix and doing all my messaging and my emails on the g4 has been nothing short of reliable the only time that it actually had some slowdown was in gaming and in this case I'm using Star Wars Galaxies of Heroes as my example and you can already see that there is some slowdown not only in the menus but in the gameplay itself which has that little bit of stutter going along but of course hardware is the main draw the main claim to fame for the g4 after all it has the replaceable battery and the expandable storage but I have to make one little confession I actually have not used a replaceable battery since the Galaxy Nexus and that was quite a bit a while ago after that expandable storage is not something that I feel like I have to use until I actually run out of space on the device and the 32 gigabytes that I had in the LG g4 were more than enough for me in terms of actually getting everything that I need done as far as battery life goes it is still kind of par for the course to have one full day's worth of battery life in my case I had about three and a half hours on average of screen on time but I was able to make it to the very end of the day the 16 megapixel F 1.8 aperture camera proved to be pretty reliable and it comes with laser autofocus so it is able to pinpoint exactly where the focus should be and when using the simple mode I actually found this to be the most fun you just have to tap on the screen in order to get the shot off and most of the time the shot is actually pretty good but when it is not quite where you want it to be that's when the manual mode came into play now 2015 was the year of the manual mode and the LG g4 showed us what it could be like with real minut details even the Kelvin readings inside of the white balance were available so if the auto mode was unable to get the shot that I wanted I was able to tweak it inside of the manual mode my only qualm with it however is that your while using a touchscreen in order to change all the settings and that can be a little bit cumbersome not to mention take up some of the time if you actually need to get a shot off quick but that's pretty much what you expect out of a camera like this overall however picture quality has been really good all the photos are nice and detailed even if the coloration could use that little bit extra punch that I'm used to from other phones and finally in software you probably saw already in the earlier clip that I put the Google now launcher on this phone now that might not come as much of a surprise because LG's GUI unfortunately just didn't have that many useful features and have quite a few too many of them that I never did use for example the smart widget that went on the home screen which pretty much just reminded me to put on a jacket when it was raining outside there's also the smart cleaner which I only used maybe once or twice and of course the multitasking capabilities like the qslide which thankfully I've been able to hide in the notification drop-down even though I already put Google now launcher on here so overall the experience of the LG g4 has been very good this is still a reliable device to have and if you are able to leverage the replaceable batteries and expandable storage you could very well go the distance that said the design aspect is what I enjoy the most about this phone and I really hope that even if in the g5 we don't necessarily see the curved display or the back buttons that much anymore that we still get to see it in other parts of LG's lineup and hopefully the g5 will actually give us some real compelling features moving forward so that the g4 can be a very very nice and positive memory back so as always keep it tuned to android authority and you can see the full review of the LG g4 the one that I did a little while back here at the Android Authority YouTube channel and if you head on over to Android or decom you'll see all of the coverage of the g5 and everything from MWC 2016 after that make sure you watch even more content from my brothers and sister and Android and you can download the Android or the application on your Android device so you 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