Here are my first impressions of the LG G4 after a day of using it the way I normally would.
1) The phone is big. It's slightly bigger than the G3 but it's easier to hold than other 5.5-inch phones. The leather back definitely does help with grip. The brown one seems to offer the best grip but my black one is also pretty grippy, even if it's a little bit smooth.
2) The screen is drop-dead gorgeous. The first time I powered it on, I thought I was looking at an AMOLED screen. Colors are really vibrant, contrast is amazing, screen is very bright (perhaps brighter than I need it to be) and there's a lot of detail.
3) The phone flies throughout the UX. Whatever LG has done to their typically bloated G UX, it's faster, snappier and to me, more aesthetically pleasing than previous versions. I love how it's possible to change the app icons in the home screen to your custom ones. Honestly, despite having a Snapdragon 808, it feels like it has a non-overheating 810 or even the Exynos 7420. I put it next to a Galaxy S6 Edge and the G4 not only kept up with it with a 0.5 second difference but when it came to Chrome and the camera, along with some other apps, the G4 was actually faster.
4) The speaker is......surprisingly good for a rear-facing unit. It actually sounded clearer and better than the downward-firing unit on the S6 and actually sounded nearly as good as my M7, while only the M9 so far beats it in quality partly due to Dolby software but mainly because its front-facing.
5) The camera is killer. If you're an amateur, the Auto mode is simple enough to use but most importantly, it's fast. AF was really quick and taking photos look less than a second from focus to fire. The manual mode is just pure icing on a delicious cake. I managed to take some nice shots with the manual mode. OIS 2.0 did a fantastic job of stabilizing my shots and recording video as well.
6) Battery life is good but not great. It lasted pretty much the whole day for me on a single-charge with 5 hours of SOT but with a quick-burst of charging power in between. Bear in mind that's with 40-50% brightness and 4G LTE switched on for nearly the entire day. It might get great battery life if you're frugal, but the bonus is that you can easily swap it out for a freshly charged one.
7) On the topic of battery, standby time is killer. I went to bed with an 82% charge and when I woke up 7 hours later, my charge was...82%. The battery hardly drained at all. That was with Wi-Fi off, but by comparison, my old phone (HTC One M7) drained about 5%, even with Wi-Fi off and the Extreme Power Saving mode enabled.
8) The leather backs are simply nice to hold and they feel good.
9) Performance in games was alright. It's not on the same level as a non-throttled G Flex 2 or HTC M9, and definitely the S6, but for the games I play (Temple Run 2, PPSSPP, etc.), it runs alright. No stuttering, no hiccups, nothing.
10) Multitasking is a breeze. All my apps stayed in memory and switching between apps was extremely snappy and quick.
1) The phone is big. It's slightly bigger than the G3 but it's easier to hold than other 5.5-inch phones. The leather back definitely does help with grip. The brown one seems to offer the best grip but my black one is also pretty grippy, even if it's a little bit smooth.
2) The screen is drop-dead gorgeous. The first time I powered it on, I thought I was looking at an AMOLED screen. Colors are really vibrant, contrast is amazing, screen is very bright (perhaps brighter than I need it to be) and there's a lot of detail.
3) The phone flies throughout the UX. Whatever LG has done to their typically bloated G UX, it's faster, snappier and to me, more aesthetically pleasing than previous versions. I love how it's possible to change the app icons in the home screen to your custom ones. Honestly, despite having a Snapdragon 808, it feels like it has a non-overheating 810 or even the Exynos 7420. I put it next to a Galaxy S6 Edge and the G4 not only kept up with it with a 0.5 second difference but when it came to Chrome and the camera, along with some other apps, the G4 was actually faster.
4) The speaker is......surprisingly good for a rear-facing unit. It actually sounded clearer and better than the downward-firing unit on the S6 and actually sounded nearly as good as my M7, while only the M9 so far beats it in quality partly due to Dolby software but mainly because its front-facing.
5) The camera is killer. If you're an amateur, the Auto mode is simple enough to use but most importantly, it's fast. AF was really quick and taking photos look less than a second from focus to fire. The manual mode is just pure icing on a delicious cake. I managed to take some nice shots with the manual mode. OIS 2.0 did a fantastic job of stabilizing my shots and recording video as well.
6) Battery life is good but not great. It lasted pretty much the whole day for me on a single-charge with 5 hours of SOT but with a quick-burst of charging power in between. Bear in mind that's with 40-50% brightness and 4G LTE switched on for nearly the entire day. It might get great battery life if you're frugal, but the bonus is that you can easily swap it out for a freshly charged one.
7) On the topic of battery, standby time is killer. I went to bed with an 82% charge and when I woke up 7 hours later, my charge was...82%. The battery hardly drained at all. That was with Wi-Fi off, but by comparison, my old phone (HTC One M7) drained about 5%, even with Wi-Fi off and the Extreme Power Saving mode enabled.
8) The leather backs are simply nice to hold and they feel good.
9) Performance in games was alright. It's not on the same level as a non-throttled G Flex 2 or HTC M9, and definitely the S6, but for the games I play (Temple Run 2, PPSSPP, etc.), it runs alright. No stuttering, no hiccups, nothing.
10) Multitasking is a breeze. All my apps stayed in memory and switching between apps was extremely snappy and quick.
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