Suggestions for G4 hardware accessories?

[MikeDeTiger]

Okay, two different questions here, please feel free to weigh in with any knowledge or opinions and purchase experiences. I recently got a G4 and I'm now looking for a car charger and a micro-SD card.

LG appears to not utilize the Quick Charge technology with their wall chargers, so a car charger would probably be the same drawback. Everything I've found is 3rd party manufacturer. I've read some good reviews about a few of those, but my last LG phone had to be replaced when an inferior non-OEM car charger blew it up. I was advised then that OEM was the only safe way to go with chargers, and so I found an OEM car charger for my old Optimus G. I'm wondering if battery technology has improved such that problems like I had are prevented, and if non-OEM chargers are okay. If anybody has purchased a good one with no problems, preferably one with Quick Charge, please let me know.

I'd also like to expand my storage so that I can load my entire music library on to my phone and let it replace my worn-out iPod (currently ~30 gigs worth of music files). I've never had a phone with a microSD expansion slot, and I've heard that they can lag and run slower than the internal storage. What I'd like advice on is the type of card I need so that accessing those music files is as quick and non-laggy as possible. I see there are Classes 2-10 and UHS categories 1 and 3, and SanDisk has the ExtremePro which says 95MB/s and UHS-3. But it's a bit pricey and I have no idea if those are specs that affect what I'm looking for or not. I just want an expansion card to store my music that won't lag when I use it, and one that communicates the fastest with my PC which I will use to load up all the music. My reading says that the Class affects the card's writing speed, but I don't know if that means the initial transfer of music on to the card or not....none of the articles have been very helpful in describing what those specs affect specifically.

Hope these questions are clear. Thanks for the help!

 

[Darrell Cyphers]

Well the only two LG made Qi devices i know are the LG Mobile WCP-300 and LG Mobile WCP400 (Nexus orb). I have the WCP-300 and its a lil touchy on where and how you place the phone. Also if you have a case it seems to struggle getting a charge on thicker cases.
As far as SD card storage....i think the G4 can handle up to a 2TB micro sd card. Those are pricey and and lil overkill imo. I have a 32gb uhs class 1 that is fast enough imo. If you want a fast card you have to pay the money. Best Buy in my area had 64gb uhs class 2 on sale for $40.

Also for a quick charger use the Samsung quick charger.

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[Allen Brandt]

I have both a Samsung wall charger and an Anker wall and car charger, all quick charge compatible. I'd recommend either brand. Amazon is a good source, but watch the descriptions carefully, as there are plenty tht look and sound like an original Samsung or other brand, which are not. Anker is easier.

For micro SD cards, stick to name brand, class 10 cards. Even though class 10 speeds vary widely, from about 48 mbps to over 90, I'm not sure if you would be able to tell the difference listening to music or filming video. I'm using a 64GB card, also Samsung, since they were offering deals the day I was looking, and I think it's about in the middle of the speeds above. Either way, I've not seen any delays in retrieving music or saving photos as I'm taking them.

And a note: the G4 charges much faster with the screen off. So even with the quick charge technology, don't expect to be impressed until you walk away from the phone for a few minutes after the screen dims, then you will see the fast charging speeds.

 

[MikeDeTiger]

Darrell and Allen, thanks for your replies....this information helps me!

 

[Carl_L]

I should warn you first that I don't have much knowledge but I'll chime in with my (possibly ill-informed) opinions & let you decide whether you can glean anything from them.

I have both an Anker wall charger & an Anker car charger (both capable of fast charge). I also have a Choetech 3-coil wireless charging pad (capable of fast charge but wireless fast charge cannot be utilised by my G4 + Quick Circle case). I am very pleased with the quality of both makes & wouldn't hesitate to recommend either.

Beware of blaming the charger for your 'exploding' phone - you're possibly shooting the messenger. I'm fishing for an expert to chime in here but I believe that the responsibility for 'gate-keeping' the charge lies with the phone itself, not the charger. The phone should regulate the charge & throttle back when it detects any excessive heat issues.

Of course you should always buy decent quality chargers but that's more because you don't want an exploding charger - not to prevent an exploding phone. Stick to a reputable make from a trusted source (ideally High St), don't fall into the trap of > must buy (say) Samsung > Ooohh, they're pricey > let's have a look at an auction site > Bargain!! High St budget is often better than fake clone with a fancy label!

Similar warnings apply to SD cards - there are many crap clones out there.

As far as SD speed ratings go, I only know what I've read & you will have read the same. I'll only say that read speed is not an issue for music files - the data for a 3 minute song will load into RAM within the blink of an eye - you're not accessing the card in real-time. For me, write speed isn't an issue either - if I were doing a one-off transfer of a music library, I'd set it in motion & walk away. It's been nearly 3 decades since I found file transfers compelling viewing

I'm gonna get flamed for this but, being fairly new to the world of Android, the G4 was the 1st on my my shortlist because of a great camera + expandable storage. Now I've realised that the latest versions of Android let you do diddly squat with the expandable storage so all the things you might want fast write speeds for aren't permitted & the expandable storage I considered such a big deal is now a bit of a 'so what'.

Next phone I buy, expandable storage won't be a consideration. Your use of it replacing an ageing Ipod is a compelling case but I don't think I could manage my battery life if my phone took over this duty.

 

[stet]

I'm gonna get flamed for this but, being fairly new to the world of Android, the G4 was the 1st on my my shortlist because of a great camera + expandable storage. Now I've realised that the latest versions of Android let you do diddly squat with the expandable storage so all the things you might want fast write speeds for aren't permitted & the expandable storage I considered such a big deal is now a bit of a 'so what'.

I'm curious as to what your expectations for expandable storage are that are not being fulfilled. I have a 64Gb card installed and have most of my downloaded apps installed on it (currently 64 apps). I have the camera app configured to save pictures and video to the card (great if you use RAW pictures and take a lot of HD video). I have the Podcast Addict app configured to download and save podcasts that I subscribe to on the card. I have a few kids movies stored on it too for when I need to occupy/distract my 4 year old and we're not in an area where we get a great signal. I could use it for my music collection too but I typically just stream that from my home NAS (one of the advantages of unlimited data with Sprint).

The only thing I use the internal storage for is the OS and built in apps, the few apps that can't be moved to the card, and as a temporary place for new apps since Google Play always downloads and installs to internal memory so you have to move the app afterwards.

 

[Carl_L]

I'm curious as to what your expectations for expandable storage are that are not being fulfilled. I have a 64Gb card installed and have most of my downloaded apps installed on it (currently 64 apps). I have the camera app configured to save pictures and video to the card (great if you use RAW pictures and take a lot of HD video). I have the Podcast Addict app configured to download and save podcasts that I subscribe to on the card. I have a few kids movies stored on it too for when I need to occupy/distract my 4 year old and we're not in an area where we get a great signal. I could use it for my music collection too but I typically just stream that from my home NAS (one of the advantages of unlimited data with Sprint).

The only thing I use the internal storage for is the OS and built in apps, the few apps that can't be moved to the card, and as a temporary place for new apps since Google Play always downloads and installs to internal memory so you have to move the app afterwards.

OK, I'll try to clarify & admit that this is just something I've spat my dummy out over & need to do a bit of homework before dismissing it completely.

Sure, a good fast SD card is still useful for photo & video but I would have preferred to store most of of my apps to SD & used the phone's storage for photo & video & then backed up what I needed to keep. I note that you say you store your apps on the SD card, but are you on Marshmallow yet? You can only do this on MM if you set your SD card as adopted storage. I'm sure many people will welcome the ability to make your SD card part of the adopted storage - I simply don't have enough faith in SD cards to trust my phone's performance & stability to any SD card.

It's a fair chance that I'm over-cautious and I did say at the start that my knowledge was limited - I'm just throwing ideas into the hat to provoke thought & discussion.

 

[stet]

I'm on MM and don't have adopted storage enabled. You can still move most installed apps to the SD card but the menu to do this is not as nice as in L. With L, when you went into Settings/Apps you could see a nice checklist of all apps that can be moved. MM doesn't have this for some reason. Now you need to go into each app's individual setting screen and select Storage (top option which also displays the app's size). From this screen, if it can be moved there will be a Change button that you can use in the Storage used area of the menu. Because MM made this more difficult than it needs to be I'm currently using an Apps 2 SD app to simplify the process.

 

[Mooncatt]

And a note: the G4 charges much faster with the screen off. So even with the quick charge technology, don't expect to be impressed until you walk away from the phone for a few minutes after the screen dims, then you will see the fast charging speeds.

This can't be stressed enough on the G4. LG set the thermal charge throttling pretty aggressive. I start seeing charge rates go down at 90°F, which isn't even warm for a battery, and severe reductions kick in at about 95°F. I'd never seen that kind of throttling on other phones. Usually it they don't throttle until about 110°F or so.

I also wouldn't worry about third party chargers much, but I would stick to the well known brands like Anker or Aukey. Phone manufacturers tell you not to use them to limit their liability more than anything. I've yet to find a good reason not to use one as long as it meets the minimum needs of the phone. 1.8A or QC2.0 in the G4's case.

For sd cards, again just stick to name brands from reputable dealers. If all you're putting on there is music, I wouldn't worry much about the speeds. The only time that would come into play is for that initial 30 GB transfer from the computer. That's going to take some time no matter what, so I'd personally just throw it in a card reader on the computer and let it do its thing while I go take care of something else.

Even the fastest card will be slower than the internal memory, but card speed is really only an issue when it comes to recording HD video. The lag most people talk about is if a card isn't playing right with the phone. If it gets a defect, it can cause the entire phone to become laggy. Don't ask me why that is, but I've seen many posts where people had a lag problem and removing the sd card fixed it.

 

[Carl_L]

I'm on MM and don't have adopted storage enabled. You can still move most installed apps to the SD card but the menu to do this is not as nice as in L. With L, when you went into Settings/Apps you could see a nice checklist of all apps that can be moved. MM doesn't have this for some reason. Now you need to go into each app's individual setting screen and select Storage (top option which also displays the app's size). From this screen, if it can be moved there will be a Change button that you can use in the Storage used area of the menu. Because MM made this more difficult than it needs to be I'm currently using an Apps 2 SD app to simplify the process.

Brilliant! Thanks a lot for that - it's good to get proper advice from a real-world user. I'd read something on the internet and assumed it was true - time for me to start experimenting then.

P.S: Apologies to OP for the slight diversion but maybe some of this interests you too?

 

[MikeDeTiger]

Yeah, it all interests me. This is my first phone with an expansion slot, so it's a whole new world for me. Also, assuming Verizon ever gets a MM update, it's good to read about changes in the OS for managing a micro-SD card. I do use Google's Play Music cloud as one backup to my music library and to do most of my playing at home over wi-fi. But I often drive in areas where service drops, plus I don't have unlimited data, and I also use an mp3 device (formerly my iPod) to run split tracks at the church I play at, and there's just no way I'll ever trust a live performance to a stream. That's utter disaster if it ever stops or even buffers in the slightest for any reason. For those reasons, I'm committed to having my music collection locally stored on a device. Though I'm not a huge fan of the Apple ecosystem, I'd have been happy to continue using an iPod, but Apple no longer makes the iPod classics, and anyway it will be nice to only carry around one device instead of two.

I've been doing some more reading, and also from what you folks say here, it sounds like QC 2.0 tech is QC 2.0 tech no matter what. This is interesting to me because I'm used to different manufacturers having different rated chargers as well as different physical inputs. My mom's Samsung S6 came with a wall charger that says "adaptive fast charge" and now I've learned that it's all just QC 2.0 and that it or something like it can be used on my G4. What was really surprising was that her USC cable also fit my G4. I read that the cable makes no difference, the converter that's plugged into a wall or lighter outlet in a car is what matters. But I didn't expect the G4 and S6 to have the same size ports for plugging in. I'm 99% positive that different manufactures used to have ports that wouldn't even fit a cable that wasn't specifically made for that particular brand.

 

[MikeDeTiger]

Carl_L,

I was wondering if an app like ES File Manager would also help you effectively move apps and files around to wherever you want them to be? I still don't have an SD card to play with, but I'd think that should give you another visually friendly way to put your stuff where you want it.

 

[Mooncatt]

I've been doing some more reading, and also from what you folks say here, it sounds like QC 2.0 tech is QC 2.0 tech no matter what. This is interesting to me because I'm used to different manufacturers having different rated chargers as well as different physical inputs. My mom's Samsung S6 came with a wall charger that says "adaptive fast charge" and now I've learned that it's all just QC 2.0 and that it or something like it can be used on my G4. What was really surprising was that her USC cable also fit my G4. I read that the cable makes no difference, the converter that's plugged into a wall or lighter outlet in a car is what matters. But I didn't expect the G4 and S6 to have the same size ports for plugging in. I'm 99% positive that different manufactures used to have ports that wouldn't even fit a cable that wasn't specifically made for that particular brand.

QC2.0 is a specific Qualcomm certification. It's not a generic term like "quick charging" or "rapid charger." It's one of the few charger terms that actually has any meaning, so it's easy to think it's nothing more than a marketing buzz word. Android phones also use the micro-USB standard plug, with some of the newest going to USB C. It's been like this for quite some time outside the Apple environment. I actually miss the old days with dedicated charging plugs. USB cables don't seem to hold up well at all. I've thrown away more USB cables in a year for one phone than all cables combined with my two phones before moving to Android.

I was wondering if an app like ES File Manager would also help you effectively move apps and files around to wherever you want them to be? I still don't have an SD card to play with, but I'd think that should give you another visually friendly way to put your stuff where you want it.

The G4 has a built in file explorer and I keep to that. I used to use ES, but it's becoming more bloatware than anything lately. They've added a lot of junk, some of which can hurt the overall performance of the phone.

 

[MikeDeTiger]

Just out of curiosity, does the G4 give a specific notification when it's quick-charging? That Samsung QC2.0 charger I mentioned, on the S6 it will say in the pull-down menu "Fast charging." When I tried it on my G4 my pull-down menu simply says "Charging" as normal. Wondering if I should be seeing a different message to know it's working.

 

[Mooncatt]

Out of the box, no. I've seen a few people that took the MM update already say that one of the changes was adding an indicator distinguishing if it's quick charging. I'm not sure if that'll be true across all variants, or even what the notification looks like. I don't have MM and not sure if I'll accept the update when it comes out on Verizon.

 

[Carl_L]

Carl_L,

I was wondering if an app like ES File Manager would also help you effectively move apps and files around to wherever you want them to be? I still don't have an SD card to play with, but I'd think that should give you another visually friendly way to put your stuff where you want it.

Sorry Mike but I wasn't aware of ES File Manager & it's not something I've had a chance to look into. I am now fairly sure though that, although Stet has apps running on his SD card, it's only because he had moved them prior to MM & they therefore continue to work. I'm now pretty sure that it's not possible to add any more apps to SD once on MM unless you format your SD card to adoptable storage (not something I would be happy doing). Seems that Google like to sell this move as an enhancement though I think it's primarily to a) restrict piracy, and b) to sell very cheap (limited storage) phones to emerging markets.

I only know what I've read, so I suggest you search something along the lines of "Marshmallow adoptable storage" for more info, unless you already have.

In answer to your other question, yes MM does tell you via a card (drop-down) that you're in fast charge mode but my Anker wall charger already confirms that to me via a different LED colour on the charger so it's no big deal to me. (My phone is an unlocked UK variant).

 

[stet]

I've had MM for over a month and frequently install new apps to try. The steps that I mention above do work for MM for apps that can be moved (not all can).

edit: It works on my wife's G4 too, and we didn't install an SD card until after she took the MM update.

We're on Sprint if that matters. Maybe some carriers are removing this option?