So for what it's worth, I asked LG's corporate PR team (who we talk to all the time) about this after seeing the JRE video a few days ago. LG's Ken Hong (who I know pretty well, for who may question his legitimacy — YouTube cracks me up sometimes) replied in the YT comments.
Code:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyP_cEpp2Zo&lc=z13xhhhazxvkyhu2q23qihewipujznj0g
Short version is that's paint and primer coming off first, before you get to the metal. Here's Ken's comment:
Hey, this is Ken from LG. What you're seeing there is primer, not a plastic cover. As you know, primer is used to get paint to bond to aluminum, which is what we used for the G5's body. The aluminum alloy we sourced is known as LM201b (patent pending) and was developed at the Korea Institute of Industrial Technology for use in automobiles and aircraft. LM201b, unlike the aluminum used in other smartphones, is diecast unibody which makes it very sturdy while still maintaining lightweight properties. We figured out a way to integrate the antenna bands into the aluminum seamlessly so you can't feel the lines and covered the LM201b with primer and paint using a process called microdizing which means that tiny particles of metal are infused in the coating and bonded to the aluminum. I think it's incorrect to say that a product isn't all metal if paint is involved. That's like saying cars and airplanes aren't metal because they're also painted. For the record, even metal that's anodized will scratch off. Our process may be different but it achieved what we were aiming for, which is a smooth, seamless metal finish that's durable and lightweight. We weren't interested in doing what has already been done. When did this become a bad thing?
All that said, I completely agree that the phone doesn't particularly feel like metal. And that makes sense, because you're feeling paint and primer on the outside. The metal's on the inside. I think the marketing lines are definitely a little vague (as they tend to be), and perhaps borderline misleading.
From the
current G5 product page: "The LG G5 ... boasts a metal alloy body." And it does. Just, uh, not on the outside. And I think that's pretty apparent the second you pick it up. If if was metal through and through, it'd be about the cheapest metal I'd ever felt.
Ken points folks
toward the press release, too. You get lines like "sleek, metal uni-body" and "sleek metal aluminum body."
A more damning line in the presser may be "Third, the 3D Arc Glass featured in the smartphone’s 5.3-inch display creates a gentle curve and a smooth colorful metal surface through an advanced microdizing process which takes anodized aluminum to a whole new level." That's definitely confusing at best.
In addition to vague marketing language, I think part of the problem might be that folks were poring over the press releases and marketing message (which — by the way, are designed to make everything sound great!) before actually holding the phone. For what it's worth, I (and others) did the opposite. We saw the G5 in Barcelona before the press release was sent out.
I'm still working on our review. But I don't mind sharing that it absolutely is going to say that the G5 may be metal unibody, but it definitely feels not like anything you've used from Apple or HTC or Huawei, or even Honor (the Honor 5X has some cheap-feeling metal in the scheme of things).
tl;dr It's metal, coated in primer and paint, as part of this "advanced microdizing process," — which LG never really explained to us in our briefings (even when pushed). Guess we know what that is now.
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