Gadgetory

the g3 from LG is the first of their phones I've reviewed so it's actually my first experience with their particular flavor of Android it's got the usual top-of-the-range spec Snapdragon 801 quad-core three gigs around on my Korean model well this is unusual actually a 5.5 inch display with a 2560 by 1440 16 by 9 aspect ratio LCD display that is a stunning 530 plus pixels per inch with its factory tuning and data center DNA and Intel 730 series SSD is an amazing choice for gamers and performance enthusiasts physically the phone floats my boat mostly the top features an IR blaster and a noise cancelling microphone port the bottom has a micro USB charging port the main microphone and a three-and-a-half millimeter jack and here on the sides we have well actually not a whole lot of anything I've been asking someone on the Android side to create a phone without side buttons that are positioned such that I constantly mash them by accident for a while and I guess LG's solution is to completely remove them like the g2 the g3 s buttons are on the back and this ergonomic shift while a little jarring at first was something that I actually got used to fairly quickly and if it enables thinner bezels then I like the decision the buttons back here are a lock button and volume up and down that you can use to quick launch the camera or q memo if you long press them also on the back we find the laser distance finder for the camera the 13 megapixel camera itself a two-tone flash and a speaker port with one watt amplified speaker something like that anyway that might have impressed me if it was mounted on the front of the phone it's loud enough but nothing can sound quite right pointed away from your ears this seems like as good a time as any to mention that I think LG nailed it with the backing material on the phone though it looks great it's lighter it's more difficult to stain and it can be removed and replaced unlike most metal designs on top of that the phone is still very solidly built it doesn't it doesn't feel like a compromised brushed plastic photo in mang under it there's a user replaceable 3000 milliamp hour battery whose performance I can't really comment on because my crew unit doesn't work for cellular data here there's a SIM slot a microSD slot and contacts for optional accessories like a wireless charging compatible backplate which brings us to the front of the phone aside from an LG logo 2.1 megapixel selfie camera and a dimmer than I would like RGB LED indicator this is one clean design the bezels are slim it's nearly completely symmetrical with a very small chin and it is very obvious that LG wants the experience of using this phone to be all about that 5.5 inch quad HD IPS screen unfortunately the screen didn't really float my boat it's got a lot of pixels and I'm a major advocate of pushing the envelope technologically but there's much more to a great screen than resolution the g3 screen has a warm yellowish cast that I don't find pleasing and a noticeably worse contrast ratio than the One m8 that makes it less pleasant to use than my current daily driver especially outdoors now I've been informed by others that to fully take advantage of it I need high-res content like 1440p wallpapers but I don't really care about wallpapers and neither do a lot of people so the only practical benefit from me is that text is ever so slightly sharper when it's extremely small something that LG seemed to pretty much design their stock keyboard to take advantage of with its tiny symbol indicators when it comes to moving pictures though whether we're talking about games or shows I can hardly tell the difference between 720p and 1080p at this screen size anyway so 1440p feels unnecessary when other things could have been improved about the screen instead which leads us to the software we got off to a rough start here prompting me during setup to enter a backup contact phone number that sits on my lock screen is genius but the hard core EULA that I had to sign made me super uncomfortable and it's not all bad though LG skin has an attractive flat appearance that differs in subtle ways from stock Android but didn't require a crazy learning curve to get the hang of one thing that impressed me was that it offers a great degree of customize ability for a stock skin you can change the homescreen switching animations change screen off fade-out effects you can tailor make your own power saving schemes adjust vibration strength choose between a bajillion different unlock methods my personal favorite of which is not code where you just tap certain parts of the screen and then finally and this one's a killer you can customize the functions and locations of the bottom buttons and even choose whether they are hidden or persistent it feels like a great balance between a vanilla interface and the tricked out ones that Android geeks tend to use the included keyboard is also surprisingly solid you can tweak a couple of buttons and alter the autocorrect aggressiveness and backspacing once undoes autocorrect SwiftKey are you listening but there are still a few issues keeping me away like lack of a customizable long pressed duration being able to adjust the size though is great especially with the very small chin on the g3 it made more of a difference than I expected to get it tuned just right the settings menu where all of these tweaks reside actually annoyed me at first its inefficient use of all that screen real estate even at the smallest font size felt very TouchWiz like but then I found out you can switch to a completely different view and listen on actually found in quite efficient to navigate so thumbs up there but not everything about the UI is fast and whether it's the high resolution or something else multitasking is very noticeably slower than the One m8 and it makes the device feel considerably slower for me given how often I switch between recent windows I also really dislike the way it puts your most recently used application in the top left corner it should be the opposite because the fastest part of a smartphone screen to access for right-handed users is the bottom right it's not all bad though you can zoom in and out unlike sense it allows more than nine items and compared to stock Android it's much faster to find things that are buried deeper in the list other complaint time now I guess LG health and smart tips about using the phone are a complete waste of an entire homescreen I turned that off right away adding extra stuff with overlapping functionality to the Google now swipe up is a big no-no and managing apps is really weird instead of whole dragging to delete within the app tray that does absolutely nothing as far as I can tell instead you go through the top right menu where you can change icon size and hide or uninstall apps from there but there's more good stuff to dual window seems crazy useful if you chat while watching videos the multi item clipboard is a freaking godsend if you do a lot of copy pasting and replying to incoming texts without having to minimize the current app is a big time saver and the enamine the stunning number of user accessibility options makes sense look stupid invert colors change colors for higher contrast send a custom message for hearing impaired users change headphone output so that one side is unbalanced for folks who hear better in one ear flash alerts for hearing impaired and I guess I guess easy home is the kind of thing I would enable for my grandpa if I thought you needed a top-of-the-line phone in the first place and I wanted to hide all the functionality from him for some reason ok that last one didn't make a ton of sense but the other stuff is great on to the camera the laser focus does seem to deliver very fast auto focusing Auto HDR actually was pretty pleasing to use for me um and aside from the unlabeled Settings button I found the app quite easy and more importantly fast to use dedicated photo and video buttons without needing to switch modes is great that's something that drives me bananas about the m8 it is so slow to switch modes and all of the usual top-of-the-line nice-to-have modes are here so you got the 13 megapixel still camera 4k video capture and 120 FPS 720p but while it's cool that the slo-mo on the camera record sound unfortunately the recording quality is noticeably worse than the One m8 for video lots of jaggies it's not a huge issue but one to be aware of if you love taking slow-motion videos of your chats are you gonna do are you gonna do a vacuum detail which leads me to the conclusion some overheating issues aside I didn't encounter them here in the great white north by the way but it's fairly well documented on the web the g3 is a solid contender LG delivered a foam that looks beautiful and feel solid but still managed to deliver optional wireless charging a microSD slot and a high-capacity removable battery the hardware spec is up there with other flagship devices and even though I probably for a more vanilla Android experience personally LG skin really does feel like a solid middle ground between stock Android and those tricked-out custom launch or custom everything Android setups that some people use all of that said the g3 didn't quite win me over it's not really LG's fault but in spite of the very sexy very thin bezels the phone is still a touch too wide for me to use comfortably it's just too big for me to handle if you know what I mean but that doesn't mean it won't be perfect for you and wouldn't you know it we've got an opportunity for you to own your very own to try it out and find out if it's any good LG is giving us not one not two not three not four not five but twenty five LG g3 phones to give away to our audience yes 25 now there are some caveats they are pre-production Korean units which means that unless you're on AT&T or in the US or a number of other carriers worldwide you won't be able to get certain aspects of the phone working so maybe you won't get cellular data for example and you'll only be able to use it on Wi-Fi and to make phone calls which is what I can do with mine on the Bell Network but it's still an LG g3 it's still the real deal fully fledged phone and you get to keep it so check out the link in the video description on - tech tips comm for full details about how you can get one of those sent to you pretty freakin cool anyway guys like this video if you liked it dislike it if you disliked it leave a comment in the bottom of the video telling me if you have any well comments about the video also in the video description is the support us link where you can buy a t-shirt give us a monthly contribution if you love our work or you can even just do something as simple as change your amazon bookmark to one with our affiliate code so we get a small kickback whenever you buy stuff I think that pretty much wraps it up guys and don't forget to subscribe if you haven't already for more 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