Gadgetory

just last week Xiaomi kicked LG off the list of top smartphone manufacturers as it took fifth place for itself clearly it's doing something right but can its newest flagship the me--for compete with what many have called the best smartphone of the year thus far LG's g3 I'm Taylor Martin this is PocketNow and this is the Xiaomi me four versus the LG g3 before we get started we'd like to thank our friends once again at 28 mobile for lending us the Xiaomi me for for review you can purchase your very own me for or browse dozens of other handsets for sale by clicking the link in the description below or going to 28 mobile comm xiaomi and LG clearly have different tastes when it comes to aesthetics while the g3 claims to have a metallic brushed weave design its casing is made almost entirely of plastic it looks and feels accordingly even though we've often stated how much we actually like the design and feel of the g3 it's one of the best feeling plastic phones around oh and lest we forget the unusual placement of the power and volume buttons which are hit or miss with consumers shammies me--for has a stainless steel core that has been machined with incredible precision and the me 4s build has often been equated to that of the iPhone 5s though we feel it also resembles the Lumia icon the power and volume buttons and the SIM tray are also made of a premium stainless steel which is awesome and uncommon in smartphones and the speaker grille is machined drilled the me--for reeks of quality it's one of the most well built Android smartphones we've had a chance to review though we wish the backside of the white model wasn't a slick glossy plastic there's also a discernible size difference between the two the me--for is 7.1 millimeter shorter and 6.1 millimetres narrower than the g3 get both or 8.9 millimeters thick and hit the scales at exactly 149 grams despite all these visual differences these smartphones are strikingly similar under the hood both come with the same Snapdragon 801 SOC with a quad-core Krait 400 CPU collected 2.5 gigahertz both have three gigabytes of RAM and 13 megapixel cameras though the g3 s is Hardware stabilized and the connectivity options are exactly the same Wi-Fi AC NFC infrared and Bluetooth 4.0 beyond that the differences are minor the me--for comes with either 16 or 64 gigabytes of storage with no microsd card slot and the g3 comes in 16 or 32 gigabyte variations with up to 128 gigabytes of add-on storage via microsd and the g3 comes with a 3000 milliamp hour removable battery but the me--for has a 30 80 million power fixed battery some would say the displays are a huge contrast but aside from the physical size of the displays we'd beg to differ the g3 of course has a 5.5 inch quad HD true HD IPS Plus display that's a total of 534 pixels per inch the me--for has a 5-inch 1080p IPS LCD for an overall density of 441 PPI color reproduction and contrast are great on both though the me--for is noticeably warmer and more vibrant than the g3 display and surprisingly the g3 s display is marginally brighter in all as far as Hardware goes we'd give the upper hand to the meet for the quad HD display on the g3 is gorgeous and we know many of you value removable batteries and expandable storage but the sheer quality of the me--for is astounding and we thought the bezels on the g3 were slim the me fours are even smaller color s impressed the software situation is a bit tricky both devices ship with Android 4.4.2 beneath heavily customized versions of software we've already covered the g3 in depth more than once LG managed to improve its software by simplifying it without removing any of its customization features you still have things like user definable navigation buttons fonts and animations and it still comes with NOC code split view multitasking and quick settings toggles in the notification shade the LGU I went from being one of our least favorite custom skins to one of our favorites seemingly overnight with the me--for you don't really get any of those features it runs me UI currently version 5 though me UI 6 is slated to launch in a few days me UI is different from most other versions of Android it doesn't have an application drawer Google services do come pre-installed and everything is centered around the me market where you can find thousands of applications and themes to purchase and download speaking of themes some are free though others will require me credits or currency within the main market you can heavily tweak the appearance of your phone software from lock screens to home screen appearance to wallpapers and different notification shades despite having chosen English as a primary language on the phone much of me UI is left in Chinese making many parts of the OS difficult if not impossible to use like me market me UI is built-in voice assistant and several different pre-installed apps fortunately there is a quick and easy albeit unofficial way to install Google's frameworks and get the Google Play Store and all Google apps up and running within a minute or two still we'd say the software isn't the strong suit of a v4 and it's one of the defining features of the g3 unsurprisingly you're going to get roughly the same performance out of both of these handsets they're both powered by the same chipset the Snapdragon 801 but that doesn't mean they're totally equal the g3 has a 1440p display while the me--for has a 1080p panel meaning the g3 has roughly 1.8 times as many pixels to push and as you all know very well every custom strain of Android affects performance in a different way as far as we can tell day-to-day performance is going to be about equal with these phones launching apps and returning home all happen in an instant but switching apps may be a tad faster on the g3 with its dedicated recent apps button we'd be hard-pressed to say one phone is definitively faster than the other but we do feel the me four runs a little more consistently than the g3 in benchmarks however it's the other way around the g3 continually scored higher than the me four across the board that's just another testament to show how synthetic benchmarks don't exactly translate to real-world performance we haven't really had a chance to put the me--for to the test yet so we're not comfortable making any final comments on stamina however with a smaller lower res display the same chipset and a slightly larger battery were hopeful it can at least withstand the same amount of abuse as the g3 which we regularly get around four hours of screen on time with and seeing as the me--for isn't optimized for use on networks here in the States comparing call quality and network performance with an AT&T g3 doesn't make a lot of sense though I've mustered some respectable speeds with a me--for own t-mobile HSPA+ and winston-salem will focus more on this in the final review of the meet Ford and you can find our full thoughts on the g3 s call quality and both of our reviews the 1 watt rear firing speaker on the g3 has more oomph than the bottom mounted speaker on the me 4 no question about it that's likely due to the dedicated amplifier but it's not only louder it's also clearer even if you have to do the old hand cupping method to bring the sound around front and although both cameras are 13 megapixels the g3s actually seems to take slightly better shots we miss focus board with the me--for and its images weren't as lively and were far warmer and even though we found the g3 to be just mediocre in low-light its noticeably better than the me for import lighting which produced an insane amount of noise and artifacts so for the rear cameras we definitely give the edge to the g3 but the front cameras is a different story entirely the g3 only has a 2 megapixel front camera and it's exactly what you would expect just good enough for a noisy low-quality selfie or video call the 8 megapixel front camera only me--for isn't necessarily good enough to compete with primary 8 megapixel cameras but it's leagues better than the g3 s front camera leagues so with all that in mind which is the better Buy which gets our vote of approval well both depending on what you're looking for we feel the g3 is the better overall phone the fuller package but we also feel starting at just for 59.99 the me--for is a better bargain with far superior build quality still me UI and its idiosyncrasies like the Chinese text throughout and no Google services built in solely the experience a bit although you can unofficially add Google Play services with ease it feels like an add-on and never truly feels like an integrated function if you need the absolute best specifications money can buy go for the g3 but if you're looking for a solid piece of hardware for less money the me 4 is a fancy little piece of kit thanks for watching everyone if you enjoyed the video and want to help us out be sure to click the thumbs up button below and subscribe to the channel to see more videos like this one in the future including more me for coverage be sure to follow us around the web on Twitter Facebook and Google+ at pocket now I'm Taylor Martin you can find me on twitter at casper tech and i will see you next time