LG G3 First Day Impressions

[Relgoshan]

Just got the 32gb/3gb HK (Asia) unlocked version today. Just for reference I came from nexus 5 so my thoughts will be in comparison to n5.

-screen is def nice when content is 2k (ie there promo video they include in device) but when playing YouTube where content is 720p, it doesn't look as good as a 1080p device playing it prob due to downscaling so much

-battery life is obv better than n5. First day usage I got 4.5 hour screen on time with around medium usage. Obviously I didn't expect amazing sot with 2k screen so I think around 4.5 hr sot is pretty good for my daily usage

-I feel that the screen over sharpens a lot of the time. Not deal breaker but never encountered this on n5.

-I do feel there is a slight slight lag at times compared to fluid n5 experience. But it does not really affect experience as its hard to notice.

-camera is pretty good, not rly an enthusiast so plenty enough for me. Fast focusing etc

-screen brightness is a little wonky. Anything less than like 50 brightness looks a little dim but once you go above, its like any other smartphone out there in terms of brightness.

If anyone else have any comments on their first impression or want to ask me anything, feel free.

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That is upscaling not downscaling. It looks worse because the sharpening mask over contrasts the aliased pixels. Feature collision.

4.5hrs is liveable, decent even. But I am getting twice that on average so not likely to jump

Yes it over sharpens. It has to do with the dynamic contrast ratio and the compromises they made in the pixel design to allow enough light through the gaps between all the circuitry. The device tends to sharp up and saturate up.

Reasonable observation, N5 is easily one of the top most fluid feeling devices.

Please check for any color blowout when there is a small area that's totally different from the rest.

My phone's lowest brightness is almost *too* bright sometimes. Daytime visibility seemed fine tho? At high brightness...did black seem kinda grey in a dsrk room? Or not?

 

[Relgoshan]

Don't know if you can see it from screenshot but on screen the sharpening is more noticeable

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It should show up in screenshots, but the forum butchers images. Please upload to imgur direct from gallery and post a link to the full rez image...? Please.

 

[Relgoshan]

first thing i did was transfer over was the desolation of smaug 720p BRRip x264.ACC 3.7GB. smoooooth as a babies bottom !

no sutter at all and very impressed witht the audio as well

Thank goodness they have a decent speaker again! Did you notice any scaling artifacts too? Or was it pretty smooth...

 

[pesser]

no stutter at all nice and smooth

 

[belodion]

Relgoshan: What you were saying about the sharpening: do you think that's something that could be addressed in a future update or is it a physical property of the screen that users will have to live with?

Posted via Android Central App

 

[Relgoshan]

Relgoshan: What you were saying about the sharpening: do you think that's something that could be addressed in a future update or is it a physical property of the screen that users will have to live with?

Posted via Android Central App

As far as I know, it's a postprocessing shader. In theory it should be something that could have a toggle item. It normally is intended to increase contrast at the point where very different blocks of color touch. Such as sharpening text borders.

However just as with iPad Retina, many apps will need to be upscaled from their normal max rez of 1920x1080. On screen graphics of some programs will need to be upscaled to match the system DPI.

And of course nearly all videos need to be upscaled. 720p content is not upscaled merely to 2x2 blocks at qHD, it is softened with some form of pixel averaging or aliasing. The PROBLEM there is that some sites reported that the artifacts from upscaling were then SHARPENED by the sharpening filter. It could be as simple to solve as LG having some mask or exception that prevents video windows from being filtered for sharpness.

 

[belodion]

Thank you for sharing all this. What you say helps explain pillowcase's observation that 720p video on the G3's display does not look as good as on a 1080p. All I know about sharpening is from the days of film photography, where out of focus images could be scanned, the contrast between adjacent areas of tone increased, and something resembling an in-focus image produced. My chief interest in the G3 is in fact photographic....do photos taken by it look sharper on its 1440p display than they would on a 1080p, all other things being equal? I haven't read anything about this in reviews yet, probably because most users are not camera nuts like me.
I also wonder how the Oppo Find 1440p manages to do without (so far as we know) the sharpening feature that LG considered necessary, or desirable.

Posted via Android Central App

 

[Relgoshan]

Thank you for sharing all this. What you say helps explain pillowcase's observation that 720p video on the G3's display does not look as good as on a 1080p. All I know about sharpening is from the days of film photography, where out of focus images could be scanned, the contrast between adjacent areas of tone increased, and something resembling an in-focus image produced. My chief interest in the G3 is in fact photographic....do photos taken by it look sharper on its 1440p display than they would on a 1080p, all other things being equal? I haven't read anything about this in reviews yet, probably because most users are not camera nuts like me.
I also wonder how the Oppo Find 1440p manages to do without (so far as we know) the sharpening feature that LG considered necessary, or desirable.

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Oppo has a 1440p already? Neato.

As first gen super high rez, the G3 screen's raw contrast leaves a bit to be desired. So LG seems to be using a software mask to increase perceived contrast. However sometimes this backfires a little. I bet the Oppo, even if sometimes not as *sharp*, will have less artifacting in some content. There is a question of trade offs tho, like if the 1440p panel on the Oppo uses more conventional pixels it will need an even stronger backlight to be even as bright as the G3. I haven't seen a good comparative article yet, but maybe soon.

 

[belodion]

The backlighting may explain why the two manufacturers had followed different paths then. I haven't checked battery consumption on the Oppo...it's the Find 7 I think...because there's not much point: these and other phones of interest, like the OnePlus One, are not available from the high street stores I prefer to buy from.
I did actually see the G3 briefly today, and have mentioned it in another thread, "G3 First Sighting" I think I called it.

Posted via Android Central App

 

[Relgoshan]

The backlighting may explain why the two manufacturers had followed different paths then. I haven't checked battery consumption on the Oppo...it's the Find 7 I think...because there's not much point: these and other phones of interest, like the OnePlus One, are not available from the high street stores I prefer to buy from.
I did actually see the G3 briefly today, and have mentioned it in another thread, "G3 First Sighting" I think I called it.

Posted via Android Central App

There is precious little on the Find 7 yet. However from XDA and PhoneArena it seems the 2k-class screen could be better. Good black contrast, somewhat weak color and badly skewed color temperature. And dimmer than G3 which for its part has lesser black contrast compensated by a sharpening filter.

 

[rushmore]

first thing i did was transfer over was the desolation of smaug 720p BRRip x264.ACC 3.7GB. smoooooth as a babies bottom !

no sutter at all and very impressed witht the audio as well

Even the old 4470 in the Nook HD can play hi def video smoothly, since more an issue of codec support in the hardware rather than gpu calculation power. Will be interesting to see how long games and long web browsing is on the G3

 

[Relgoshan]

Even the old 4470 in the Nook HD can play hi def video smoothly, since more an issue of codec support in the hardware rather than gpu calculation power. Will be interesting to see how long games and long web browsing is on the G3

My old Echo with single core 1GHz Snapdragon was fine with video in h.264 High (3.1) Profile, up to at least 720p for sure. Seemed to handle peaks of more than 20mbit video rate just fine, while HTC phones with the same chip had bad firmware and bugged out at the same settings. My old phone should play that 720p BDrip smoothly.

My new phone has only had issues with certain obvious problems like super high rez .webm files and such.