Gadgetory

back in February we were briefed by LG the company claimed that the main inspiration for the g5 was quote-unquote to wake up our play instinct and end the boredom surrounding smartphones lately the era of experimentation had ended in 2007 and the market is currently in desperate need for a shake-up whether LG has achieved that goal has been a major topic of both debate and controversy over the last few weeks and it's now time to reach our final thoughts and conclusions I'm hi never leave a tie with pocket now when this is our review of the LG g5 innovation is kind of hard to come by these days ever since the first iPhone launch competitors have stopped experimenting and focusing more on simplicity the newer surge of technology has served more to make smartphones prettier and not really to make them more useful from a design standpoint the LG g5 could easily pass as any other pretty phone the micronized aluminum is kerf ergonomics and meets a curved sheet of Gorilla Glass 4 that LG dubs 3d art glass this micronized treatment is a clear form of experimentation and has led to a lot of controversy with a lot of channels even calling it plastic in reality this is a premier coat of paint over the aluminum like the average paint job protecting any vehicle it serves as a shield for the metal which in turn covers the horrible antenna lines that most of us hate the result is a very solid finish in the Titan color of our LG g fiber view unit even if warmer to the touch compared to standard aluminum the experimentation continues in the bottom separation LG has ingeniously designed this to be a modular smartphone and the bottom slot is actually replaceable the company has designed the set of accessories at stubbing as friends to serve to extend what the phone can do if you want a camera grip that also extends your battery there's LG Chem plus if you want a high quality audio deck there's a friend built in conjunction with bhagava Lipson even better if you want to replace your battery the slot can also help you out with that the process of replacing parts just feels like taking a weapon apart and LG hints the durability by recommending that you do so that way the whole idea is genius elevating the potential of the g5 to additional usage scenarios sure we've seen some of this in other devices through cases or sleeves but none of these solutions are as elegant as on the g5 sadly the experimentation comes at a price and the g5 is not exempted paying it the bottom slot doesn't sit flush with the chassis and the Shatford bottom can really feel rough on the palm the separation also picks up lint rather easily and we wonder how long the plastic battery holder will last and then there's the problem that paint isn't really designed to take a beating as a minor fall from a height of a chair will attest the whole idea is great but it clearly needed more polish under the hood the g5 brings the standard combo of specs we have a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 match with four gigs of ram and 32 gigs of expandable storage via microSD day-to-day operation is a breeze and the phone handles graphics intensive games like a champ with little to no evident heating showing the specifications is a 5.3 inch quad HD IPS display which LG claims to be the evolution of the quantum dot we saw last year blacks are in deep much deeper on this display and the color accuracy is still top-notch it's also capable of an always-on mode that provides notifications for third-party applications through icons LG also claims that there is no risk of screen burn so it remains static and sucks on less than 1% of battery every hour sadly the display isn't perfect and brightness is my biggest complaint LG claims that it's capable of going up to 850 myths but I actually find it to be dimmer than competitors I always see myself setting it up to 70% of brightness just to be comfortable and in direct sunlight it continues to be a challenge even if the use of polarized lenses has improved significantly when compared to the G for experimentation also extends to the software LG's new UX 5.0 running on top of Android 6.1 has become another clear form of contour see the app tray is now gone and US carrier models don't really have an easy way to bring it back I personally don't mind not having it but the UX really needs better options to organize applications a quick shortcut within folders to add more apps would be lovely or at least some way to select a few apps at a time in order to move them around in stacks you also can't switch your default home screen and multi window also set it by with this change pretty much the only thing that's left this qslide applications which allows you to hover a few apps on the screen but it's limited to LG services and Android and could not come soon enough and everything else the software approach is actually not that bad the UX is more cohesive and some of the flexibility from last year remains untouched I love being able to reorder navigation keys and add some more you can still switch animations in the homescreen and if you don't like the tab view on settings there's also the option to go back to ListView if you're after a flexible UI out-of-the-box this continues to be a good alternative even though theming would really help it out we've tested the LG g5 for eight days around New York City phone calls have been solid through the earpiece and it's also one of the loudest speakers in the business so long as you don't block it with your finger essentials like the fingerprint scanner mounted at the backer quit to the touch even if I do miss the volume buttons being back here it's also great to see the IR blaster make the cut at times when OEMs just continue to remove it data speeds on AT&T are great in the suburbs but it's really unreliable in Manhattan even for streaming music the fumbling goes as far as to affect your battery life with mixed results depending on where you spent your day whenever I spent the day in the suburbs the battery life lasted a full day with up to four hours of screen on time take the phone to the city and slice that number by a third thankfully the g5 supports fast charging through USB type-c if that's not enough just swap the battery and charge the spare using the cradle that was bundled in the box when it comes to the camera the d5 is simply the g5 the optically stabilized combo includes scene megapixel camera with F 1.8 aperture and a wide-angle 8 megapixel camera with F 2.4 this wide angle camera can be used to complement the primary but it's actually designed to be independent do not confuse this as a fisheye lens as that one do it justice the camera is capable of providing 135 degrees of field of view even dwarfing what the human eye can do it 120 degrees what this means is that if you're in Manhattan the only way you can really capture what your eye can see is using this wide-angle camera that being said the resulting photos of both cameras are just gorgeous LG continues its trend of providing one of the best cameras in the industry challenging point-and-shoot sand color saturation contrast depth the field and low-light performance the 8 megapixel selfie camera also brings some decent photos and you can actually use all three cameras at once for convenience manual controls are also available even though we don't understand why manual video controls didn't make the cut and speaking of video the primary cameras have a neat little trick where you can begin recording with one camera and finish the shot with another 4k video recording is great even if stabilization seems more effective on the wide-angle sensor experimentation has really paid off as a common problem for standard cameras is the loss of field of view when recording video or in wanting to take a photo in the city and the word experimentation is the best segue to end our review the LG g5 may bring a lot of controversy to the table but so does every single product that tries to be disruptive the phone is probably a little too early for its time and that's clear and how much LG needs to polish the fit and finish and also tune the display and everything else it's really hard to just bash LG for trying new things the g5 tries to solve some real-world problems and figures out a way to do so with both creativity and elegance even comparing the g5 to other smartphones would be unfair given the phone's potential it's a bold move into a new concept of what smartphones should do even if the first attempt needs a little more work if you're okay with the typical trend of slabs then maybe the g5 is not the phone for you now if you're a geek like most of us and you're looking for a phone that's capable of doing more than the LG g5 is the first step in that right direction even if the next step will probably be a lot better folks we already have a few videos of the LG g5 and more comparisons to come so make sure you follow us on social media and hit that subscribe button down below for more videos like this one in addition you can also catch our videos on vessel at vessel.com/nerdist quarterly better on instagram at high metal data please give this video a thumbs up if you like what you saw I am hi Mary better thank you very much for watching we'll see you on the next one