Gadgetory

for years LG smartphone division has been chasing Samsung each move that Samsung made would invariably be followed by a less successful move from LG but this year LG is doing something different than Samsung that something different is the new g4 the g4 has nearly the same level of experience of Samsung's Galaxy s6 but it offers things like a removable battery and microSD card support both of which are missing from Samsung's phones this year if you want something different than Samsung or you're just looking for those specific features the qi4 is a great option while Samsung radically changed the design materials and features in the galaxy s6 LG's g4 mostly stays the course it's very similar in design and appearance last year's g3 and it's still made of plastic as opposed to the glass and metal in the s6 for the most part the g4 doesn't look or feel any different than the g3 and it doesn't feel as nice as the s6 the iPhone 6 or HTC One m9 the few design differences from the g3 can be reduced to an exceptionally slight curve and slightly sharper corners the curve is not extreme it's not a G flex 2 but it does make the g4 a little more comfortable to hold than a flatter phone but none of this is to say the g4 is just the warmed up g3 there are two major upgrades here and a couple of smaller ones that add up to making a much more compelling smartphone the first of these major upgrades is the new screen it's still a 5.5 inch qHD panel with 2560 by 1440 pixels but it's brighter more color accurate and more efficient than the g3 screen LG uses a whole bunch of marketing mumbo jumbo to explain this new screen but all that really matters to us is that it's one of if not the best smartphone screens to date it's super bright not oversaturated amazing in direct sunlight and just a pleasure to look at the other big upgrade in the g4 is the camera it's a new 16 megapixel camera with an ultra bright F 1.8 aperture lens it still has that laser assisted autofocus from the g3 but now has a new secondary sensor that supposedly makes for better color and white balance it also has a new optical image stabilization system the LG says it's up to twice as good as other smartphones but marketing claims aside the g4 is cameras really great it's great in bright light and low light has natural color and lots of detail there's a new camera app lets you manually control a lot of features like shutter speed white balance ISO and focus and it's a lot of fun to shoot with if you know what you're doing but not everything is perfect here even with that laser system the g4 can still for focus more than other phones and even occasionally miss focus white balance isn't as warm as es6 the most accurate results come when you override the automatic settings and despite the bevy of manual controls LG still doesn't let you adjust sharpness or saturation and the default sharpening is too aggressive but if this bothers you as much as it bothers me you can actually shoot in RAW and process your images on a computer for better results the g4s new six core Snapdragon 808 processor and three gigabyte of RAM make it plenty fast for virtually anything you need to do it doesn't have the stutters or slowdowns that we saw with the G flex 2 and while it doesn't really feel as blistering fast as the m9 or the s6 you'd only really notice that when you're comparing the phone side-by-side the removable 3000 milliamp hour battery is big enough to get through a full day of heavy use - if you're less demanding than I am but it doesn't have the built-in wireless charging or the quick charging features of Samsung's phones for software the g4 has android 5.1 lollipop it's got LG's custom interface on top of that LG says it's toned down the changes to Android and includes fewer duplicate absent before but it doesn't really feel any different if you're looking for a nexus like experience you won't get it here and LG software design skills aren't nearly as good as Google's HD CS or even Samsung's those complaints are pretty minor overall and while the g4 isn't as popular as the s6 nor is it as pretty as the m9 it's still a good smartphone that gets the important things right it's got a great display great camera and all-day battery life if that's what you're looking for the g4 is worth your time