A few G4 disappointments so far - Camera, performance etc

sfla99

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Hi all,

So I have been going back and forth between the S6 and G4 now for a while, I returned my S6 which I had for about a month and decided to go G4, with that said there are a few things I am ok with with but feel they are somewhat disappointing.

Let's just jump into camera which is great and while I say it's a somewhat of a disappointment it's still a great camera, let me e plain.

In auto mode in perfect conditions you can point and shoot and get an decent to great shot mostly and if you stand very still. However, if you are moving bit like walking and trying to snap a shot forget it, the camera can not keep up, it takes to long to focus and what you will most of the time end up with is a junk blurred photo.

Another area that disappoints me with the camera again point and shoot is the exposure levels, it seems the G4 is trying so hard to keep shots light that it often blows out a great shot and makes it worse due to the fact it is overcompensating when it does not need to.

Now before the use manual mode choir chimes in, let's be honest, how often are you ever going to do that, most cell phone shots are all about capturing that quick moment, or the food Instagram pic etc.

Sure manual is cool, but it's not exactly practical.

Next, video...

Forget it, this phone can not do videos, it tries, but its OIS is so aggressive that even when standing still it makes video look terrible, thankfully I do not record much video.

Front camera, gestures are slow to respond, the first motion works but it's too long, also I wish they chose a lesser MP and copied Samsung with the wide angle.

Now with that being said, I am not saying the camera does not take amazing pictures, which it does, but, as far as point and shoot goes the S6 takes the win easily. Sure it's colors are overly punchy, but as good as this camera is (and it's great), point and shoot is a gamble unless it's in ideal conditions.

So performance,

Well I am in Disney right now so I am using the phone for many tasks, and one area driving me insane is google maps and GPS, for some reason I keep needing to restart the phone since after a few uses of maps it does not start navigation unless I restart the device . Maps shows the route, starts as normal but does not speak or begin turn by turn unless I restart the phone and start again.

Another area is the image gallery, this is clearly where I can see a performance hit, the S6 can process an image to display with out letting me see it scaling in real time, what I mean is on the G4 when I look at certain images I get these vertical bands of transparent pixelated white lines scanning over the screen, after a second the image sharpens and looks great, but it bothers me to see this.

I also notice certain apps like Tapatalk feel sluggish while scrolling through for categories and posts.

As for battery, I can last a day , I seem to average about 2.5 - 3h SoT with light to moderate use and put it on the charger with abut 35% left late in the evening.

Also a quick note,I touch sensitivity, my phone does ok but it's not flawless, I would say double tap to wake works about 80% of the time.

I will say, overall, I think the S6 is the better device for me since I do,not need the extra battery and removable SD card, but what I missed on my S6 is the bigger screen (even though I feel robbed a little with them on screen buttons taking up so much space).

LG could have easily done some capacitive buttons or something in the bottom bezel which is rather large. Since they do,nothing with it they should have tried hard to either retain the form factor of the G3 or even strive to get smaller,while,maintaining the 5.5 screen.

And about the screen,,mi am enjoying it, it's not as punchy as the amoled on the s6 but it has its ow thing going on and it looks quite nice.

All in all, I am in the G4 camp as I own the phone now and no longer have my S6, here's to hoping they patch this phone some over the next couple of months.

Sorry for the rambling, just wanted to share my thoughts, as said for,me I needed the bigger screen so that's what drew me in, but I wish it did a few things a little better.

Cheers



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Shepx13

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If you're trying to take photos while walking, you're doing it wrong. No phone camera will do this well.

The issue with the maps is not an LG issue, it's android, and multiple phones have it. It's because of the memory leak on lollipop.
 
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Boston Powers

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It is a shame that so much has been made about the camera by LG and that they would make the little mistakes stack up so high.

The auto mode on mine does take decent pictures (coming from the terrible G3) but yes, they are overexposed and as a result, you miss out on detail and depth.

The 2 clicks on the back button for instant picture does require you to be steady, motionless even, to get a non blurred photo. Heres hoping for future updates to the software. LG however are great at leaving stuff "as such". Perhaps they can change their motto to "Life's Goodenough"

For the manual mode, I love what you can do and hate how long it takes to do it. For the life of me I cant find a button I can hit to come back to start postion (meaning the start point when you reboot and open the manual options).

When I over correct something or move on to a target that has different needs, I can never remember where the basic starting point is. Is it ISO 400 is it SS 1/30 or 1/8. There is a reason that the manual mode has a start point out of the box that was not Max SS and Min ISO. A "reset" to that would be nice. Unless I'm blind or have misunderstood the help section of the app.

I'll chime in with you on the video capture. The crazy aggressive OIS should come with an air sickness bag.

Again, in 2015 on a flagship phone, should my eyes have to watch the picture I just took, render? How about just waiting the one second for the phone to finally render the picture before allowing me to see it. Watching it scale the picture is a bit cringworthy compared to other well equiped phones.

I noticed that when I'm in auto mode and I touch to focus in on something, the G3 handled light better. Lets say I'm in my office and I want to take a picture of something funny I see out the window from my desk, I would just touch the G3's screen indicating the bright window is the focal point and it would down the light so that the focus is not on my office with a big bright washed out window. Not happening on the G4 I'm affraid. Where it trys too hard on OIS, its rather lazy on focal focus in auto mode.

No camera is perfect or will be loved by all. Its a good camera, a selling point for the phone. The little things add up fast though.

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sfla99

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I'm not shooting all images while walking haha, just saying you need to be standing very still in ideal conditions to get consistently good shots.


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belodion

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You'll have seen GibMcFragger's and sswitzer's scientificationalistical™ explanations of the scaling here. :)
http://forums.androidcentral.com/showthread.php?t=550106

I have to say, looking at my own Auto photos, that the exposure is spot-on in most, and that when it errs, it tends to underexpose rather than overexpose. Editing comes to the rescue.

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belodion

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...says any person with a camera...

Heh heh. :)

You don't have to stay still for long, either. I think the earliest photograph needed an exposure of about 1 day at f16, but there have been one or two advances since then.

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sfla99

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So basically if I don't drool all over the G4 and gush with praise I am wrong about my experience with the phone, I assume my dislikes of some things it does less than ideal invalidates my opinion ha-ha.

I'm not trying to start a war, just give some honest feedback..

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Shepx13

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So basically if I don't drool all over the G4 and gush with praise I am wrong about my experience with the phone, I assume my dislikes of some things it does less than ideal invalidates my opinion ha-ha.

I'm not trying to start a war, just give some honest feedback..

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I don't have a g4 so I don't care if you bash it. But you're not giving honest feedback. You're putting down something due to user error (yours).
 

GibMcFragger

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Lol scientificationalistication™ is not an exact science!

I disagree with all his findings save one. The camera (just like me previous G3) takes stellar shots of still objects, but it's horrid at moving objects. You have to anticipate a good 1 second ahead of when you want the pic taken because it takes that long to focus, stabilize, shoot a moving object.
 

belodion

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So basically if I don't drool all over the G4 and gush with praise I am wrong about my experience with the phone, I assume my dislikes of some things it does less than ideal invalidates my opinion ha-ha.

I'm not trying to start a war, just give some honest feedback..

Sent from my LG-H810 using Tapatalk

All opinions and experiences are welcome. But my own experience of the G4 camera is not the same as yours. That's the only feedback I can give. It's certainly the best Android camera I've ever had, and compares favourably to my Lumias 930 and 1020.

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sfla99

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I'm not bashing the phone , I own it, its now my daily driver I just wish it did some things a little better :) a perfect example, I just went through the drive through at star buck's, since I am on vacation I wanted to quickly snap a pic of the drive through to mess a buddy who is a Starbucks junkie , I grabbed my phone double tapped the down button, any tried to get a pic quickly with out annoying the people behind us. The issue was that it took a bit long to properly focus, I did get the shot but its not great.

With that said, I went to Hollywood studios today and got a few shots in ideal conditions that made me say - Wow!

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sfla99

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Here are two examples, the one of Starbucks took the auto focus an extended amount of time to find its self , the fountain and flower were ideal and super sunny and clicked instant.
2058275e913b3ee632988a2ab70a9cef.jpg
d7f37b2eed54e6299ab56c2f4ec59d8e.jpg
172a669e89091cb47b6022de49d2d083.jpg


So as you can see, it can and does take amazing shots but again, for my findings it does best when conditions are perfect.

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MDMcAtee

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There are some things that the s6 does better and there are some things that the g4 does better for the cameras... This has always been the case.

Is either phone perfect... no... neither is.. and folks can always have differing opinions on that too.

Point and shoot goes to the s6 and for manual mode the g4 takes it.

I will say that I never had your issues with the camera on mine but don't doubt you about yours.

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BBSeattle

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Two sides to that coin; I can't "rah rah" your post like you seem to want. My experience with G4 has been very positive and I tend to be very critical about items I spend my hard earned money on. At the same time it's only fair for me to mention that my expectations of a Phone's camera are not nearly as high.
It seems of late that many of the negative experiences are a result of one specific function or feature not related to the phone actually being a phone.
If the camera is the most important feature, get the phone with the best camera... gaming, etc

So basically if I don't drool all over the G4 and gush with praise I am wrong about my experience with the phone, I assume my dislikes of some things it does less than ideal invalidates my opinion ha-ha.

I'm not trying to start a war, just give some honest feedback..

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belodion

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I'm not bashing the phone , I own it, its now my daily driver I just wish it did some things a little better :) a perfect example, I just went through the drive through at star buck's, since I am on vacation I wanted to quickly snap a pic of the drive through to mess a buddy who is a Starbucks junkie , I grabbed my phone double tapped the down button, any tried to get a pic quickly with out annoying the people behind us. The issue was that it took a bit long to properly focus, I did get the shot but its not great.

With that said, I went to Hollywood studios today and got a few shots in ideal conditions that made me say - Wow!

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Yes, on those few occasions I've used that double tap to try to grab a quick shot, I've also found it to be slow. :(

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sfla99

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On a more positive note, it feels like my AT&T G4 charges crazy fast with the stock charger :) I did order the Aukey off Amazon but i plug in for a few mins and it juices up quickly.


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oldschoolsig

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These phones are going to be an exercise in prioritizing what's important to you... If you don't care about sd an replaceable battery, I would think the s6 would be a great way to go due to being a better seller and having more accessories and items available for it.
Remember this though, the s6 has a few month lead in being out and the first few months always have updated with refinements.
 

sfla99

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I had the S6 for a month, it was for all intents fantastic, however I prefer a larger screen size so returned it and kept the G4

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