Gadgetory

on the surface the LG g5 has everything smartphone enthusiasts have been asking for so why is it then that I didn't like it is it possible that LG didn't pay enough for a positive review or hear me out honest is it possible that D brand provides all of our phones anyway and that I am capable of forming opinions all on my own let's find out Tunnel bares the simple VPN app that makes it easy to browse the web privately and enjoy a more open Internet to try tunnel bear for free check out the link in the video description spec wise it's pretty hard for LG to have gotten this wrong with media techs still playing catch-up and Intel having seemingly bowed out of the smartphone processor race for now Qualcomm is pretty much the only choice at the moment unless your name is Apple so a snapdragon 820 processor clocked at 2.1 5 gigahertz on the faster cores paired with an adrenal 530 GPU beats at its heart in line with Halo SKUs from other manufacturers the g5 packs 4 gigs of DDR 4 memory 32 gigs of on-board storage with microSD expansion and Corning Gorilla Glass 4 on its quad HD or 2560 by 1440 resolution 5.3 inch panel it's also got wireless AC and LTE advanced for wicked connectivity Android marshmallow and it's available in a variety of colors including pink with a 3000 ish milliamp hour battery actually 2800 milliamp hours to be precise but in spite of these similarities there are a great number of differences between the g5 and the galaxy s7 from LG's fellow Korean rival Samsung that need to be addressed we'll begin with performance the g5 performs about like you'd expect for and 820 maybe a little better my usual run Geekbench until it hurts throttling tests gave it only a 10% gap between its top score and its bottom scores a very favorable result next up is the screen it tickles me to no end the way that LG's TV division is beating the OLED drum with Samsung positioning quantum dot LCD as the top technology of today citing concerns about maximum brightness and burnin while Samsung's mobile division has been pimping OLED for years at this point and LG is still using LCD the truth of the matter in spite of the clear flip-flopping even within the same freaking company is that there are just trade-offs to be made either way the s7 s OLED screen saves enough power for it to have an always-on clock feature and gives it astonishing readability and direct sunlight at the cost of some color over saturation while the g5 s IPS LCD screen boasts more true to the original content colors great viewing angles without the weird color shift of some OLED x' at extreme angles and shockingly and always on clock with notifications to that thanks to their displays surprisingly solid blacks manages to look almost as good as the s7 s unless you're in a really dark room where you can see that all the pixels are backlit and doesn't even manage to drain the battery life anymore so full marks for the screen and a bonus point for the subtle curve at the top that makes the phone slide onto your face a little more gracefully and actually makes it so that pulling down your notification tray is a little bit smooth there - this is the first application of curved phone glass that feels purely functional to me as opposed to a mostly just because we can sort of thing above the screen is a mediocre 8 megapixel F 2.0 selfie camera that thankfully doesn't share the s7 s makes my nose look huge fisheye lens but otherwise doesn't really blow me away then at the bottom of the screen below the on screen only no physical buttons is not one not two but three of the big features of the g5 first up is the bottom firing speaker that delivers marvellous 5.1 surround sound in spite of its no I'm just kidding the g5 suffers from cup syndrome which is curious unfortunate placement just like the top two smartphones right now I'm talking of course rather about the reversible more durable quick charge 3.0 equipped USB type-c connector blow-by micro B don't let the door hit your ass on the way out to the fact that pressing this little catch on the bottom causes that 2800 milliamp hour battery to slide right out allowing it to be changed it wears out without a fancy toolkit or even throughout the day as needed and three the way that the bottom charging module here disconnects from the battery allowing it to be replaced with other modules so D Brent who as I mentioned provided our skinned g5 here sent us the camera one to get a feel for what that's like and basically it's pretty stupid so far I had it on for a day before I realized that it's thick awkward to hold unless you happen to be taking a picture and aside from the extra battery capacity something that I could get with a sleeker battery case for most phones contributes absolutely nothing to the usability of the device it's a glorified hand grip and a shutter button on a phone whose camera forced me to stop using it earlier on in my daily use review cycle than I normally would I mean to be clear the camera isn't unusable or anything and it would be a huge upgrade if you're still rocking in Nexus 5 or something but when I'm coming from the galaxy s7 or an iPhone 6s it is a significant kick in the balls there's no gesture to launch something that everyone not just Motorola and Samsung needs by the way the low-light performance everything from dimly lit without flash to very dark and flash assisted frankly blows chunks in comparison look at this shot of my family in a hotel room compared to the iPhone 6s and video recording is a solid net and on top of all that the g5 isn't waterproof I mean I know it's not advertised anywhere as being waterproof but it is amazing how much more likely I am to use my camera to capture an awesome moment when it's water-resistant launches faster and takes better pictures this trade-off for a removable battery and being able to install modules like a clip-on shutter button is a horrible one for me personally one that isn't helped by LG's Android skin this time around I'm not going to hate on the lack of an app tray believe it or not I even like some of LG's Flair double tap to wake is wonderful and didn't realize how much I missed it until I had it again and the addition of a recently uninstalled apps button is actually kind of cool but to reinstall them with like one touch but management of hiding apps something that you need to do since your home screens are also your app drawer now could be better I wish I could just drag them to a hide on the top of the screen after I long press or and then uninstall on the other side rather than digging through a settings menu for some inexplicable reason creating folders doesn't intelligently suggest a name as it does on other phones available even with the Android operating system so I'm not sure how they missed that and it doesn't even let you start typing right away clustered notification cards sometimes I'm actually not sure if I'll be able to recreate this on camera but they sometimes like clump up when I try and expand them making them hard to read and the rear lock button with fingerprint sensor while reasonably fast and easy to reach while holding the phone in my hand ended up being kind of a pain whenever the phone was resting on the desk next to me something that happens quite a bit since I use a password-protected lockscreen both Sony and Samsung's implementations and Apple for that matter are better here with a fingerprint sensor on the side or on the front which I guess leads us pretty perfectly into the conclusion there's nothing about the g5 that makes me say what the hell were they thinking like oneplus neglecting to include NFC on the oneplus 2 it's got a feature set that isn't wrong some folks are going to buy it just for the IR emitter and there's no right answer between swappable battery versus water resistance it's just not the mix that I want for myself and that combined with the only pretty good camera awkwardly positioned touch sensor lack of wireless charging and high price make it hard for me to recommend it in a world where the iPhone 6s and the Galaxy S seven exist speaking of existing you know what exists D brand they make high quality vinyl skins for your device which is to say if your device is one of the devices that they make skins for they've got support for our iPhones Android phones actually wide variety of Android phones and even computers including MacBooks and some select pcs like Dells XPS lineup and the best thing about D brand is you can use their configurator to set up your device to look exactly the way you want whether you want woodgrain finish like this laptop here the XPS 15 we reviewed whether you want a sexy matte black like you saw on the g5 that I reviewed today or whether you're completely colorblind with no sense whatsoever and you want a you know multicolored iPhone se that makes people go like yeah when you walk past them while you're talking on it so check out D brand comm we've got it linked in the video description customize your device the way that you want and order because they're affordable and they ship world wide so thanks for watching guys that this video sucked you know what to do but if it was awesome get subscribed hit that like button or even consider supporting us directly by using our affiliate code to shop and Amazon buying a cool shirt like this one or with a direct monthly contribution through our community forum which is linked in the video description now that you're done doing all that stuff you're probably wondering what should I watch next that's a great question why don't you go watch this video over on channel super fun just click that little button in the top right corner to check it out