LG's Top Phone for 2014 Emerges
The LG G3 is among the most anticipated phones of the year, especially among tech enthusiasts. It’s LG’s highest-profile own-brand mobile, and one out to convert a few who might otherwise buy the Samsung Galaxy S5.
In arriving a bit later than phones like that and the HTC One M8, it is able to offer a few technological advantages over the competition, without adding to the phone’s final cost. But is it worth considering over the phones from bigger phone names like Samsung and Sony?
We took a closer look at the phone’s launch ahead of our full review.
LG G3 – Design
The LG G3 is a bit bigger than most of the other flagship phones of 2014. While LG has done its best to get rid of any extraneous bulk by reducing the bezel, a 5.5-inch screen was always going to make the phone a bit of a beast.
It is 74.7mm wide, just over 2mm wider than the Galaxy S5. Is that a deal-breaker? Hardly, and if you’re used to using phones around the 5-inch mark, you shouldn’t have any problems.
Upgrading from an iPhone? Make sure to get down to the high street for a quick hands-on go before buying.
Trailers for the LG G3 suggested that it would possibly have a metallic back, but, like the LG G2, the phone has a plastic back. It does its best to provide a metal-like look, though.
It’s shiny, with a brushed effect that gets rid of the fingerprint smudging issue that some complained about in the LG G2. However, it still feels like plastic. It's no HTC One M8-beater.
In common with the LG G2, the G3 keeps buttons on its back rather than its sides. In the past LG has said this is part of what has helped it fill so much of its top phones’ fronts with screen.
These buttons have been redesigned since last year, though. They are a good deal flatter, while still offering some all-important contouring – needed to make the buttons easy to use by feel alone.
If you’re thinking back buttons are ridiculous, you won’t be alone. I had the same reaction when I first saw them back in the LG G2. However, you do get used to them very quickly, and they are conveniently placed for things like changing volume while listening to music.
Rear buttons also make such a large phone a bit easier to use. Some big phones put their on-body buttons just out of reach, but having them a way down the rear of the LG G3 will make them accessible to just about all adult fingers.
LG has made a more fundamental change to the LG G3 design this time around too. You can remove the backplate, which was sealed in place in the LG G2. It gives access to a microSD memory card slot, something missing from the G2.
Has LG thought of everything this time? I don’t think the LG G3 is likely to win a side-by-side beauty contest with the HTC One M8, but LG doesn’t seem to have made any real wrong moves here.
LG G3 – Screen
While not often recognised as such by your average gadget buyer, LG is one of the main producers of screens, whether they are for TVs or phones. It’s not great surprise that it leads the pack with the LG G3’s display.
Where the other top phones of 2014 to date, the Xperia Z2, the Galaxy S5 and so on, have 1080p screens, the LG G3 has a QHD display. This stands for quad HD, and refers to a resolution that is effectively the same as four 720p displays stitched together. That’s the resolution of four Moto Gs, crammed into 5.5 inches.
It’s impressive stuff.
But what’s it like in person? Naturally, it’s crisper than a winter morning, sharper than Oscar Wilde. We don’t really have enough naff figurative clichés to do justice to the LG G3’s 530-plus pixel density.
There remains a question – is it overkill? Unless you get up close and really strain your eyes, it’s not noticeably sharper than the LG G2. And when watching videos of playing games, many things will only be optimised for 1080p resolution anyway.
There are other things to admire in the LG G3’s screen than resolution, though. The display pops without resorting to oversaturated colours and top brightness seems to be suitably searing. We’ll look into how its black level and contrast compare to the Galaxy S5’s wonderful Super AMOLED screen when we get an LG G3 in to review.
LG G3 – Android and Software
LG is a king of screens, but it has never been thought of as a leader in phone software. A quirky UI was one of the weaker elements of the LG G2. Have things improved?
LG has made some significant changes. Like the Galaxy S5, the new version of LG’s interface tries to look flatter and simpler. The icons, the widgets and the drop-down notifications bar have all changed, getting rid of some of that old LG fustiness.
It looks better, and seemed quick in our time with the phone.
Anything less than top performance would be disappointing, though. The LG G3 uses a Snapdragon 801 processor, a top-end chipset with four cores clocked at 2.5GHz. You also get 2GB of RAM. In pure power terms, this phone can easily go head-to-head with rivals like the Galaxy S5.
LG G3 – Camera
One other part that’s important in any expensive phone is the camera. Rather surprisingly, the LG G3 has a sensor of the same resolution as the LG G2 – they have 13 megapixels a piece.
However, the LG G3 appears to use a newer sensor. The smart money is on the Sony IMX214, the same sensor used in the OnePlus One and the Huawei Ascend P7. It’s a 1/3.06 inch sensor with a special focus on HDR – capable of producing 60fps HDR video and sharper HDR stills than the last generation IM135 used in the LG G2.
Add in optical image stabilisation and you have a camera that should, in theory, be able to compete pretty well with phones like the Galaxy S5. Perhaps the most interesting extra is laser focusing. There's a laser to the left of the camera lens that helps the phone focus in low light.
It also has the usual features bells and whistles too – 4K video capture, a dual-LED flash and plenty of ‘fun’ modes.
LG has not gone overboard with the LG G3’s front-facing camera, though. Where the Huawei Ascend P7 and HTC One M8 go the extra mile with super high-res front cameras, the G3 makes do with a fairly ordinary 2-megapixel one.
LG G3 – Battery Life
One of the more interesting specs of the LG G3 is its battery capacity. It is ‘just’ 3000mAh, the same as that of the LG G2.
This at first seems a bit odd – the LG G2 has a smaller, lower-res screen, and LG normally cares a lot about battery. While I haven’t had a chance to really test the G3’s battery yet, it’s a good indication of quite how confident LG is in its new screen technology.
The G3 uses an LTPS screen, with tech the company showed off in prototype form way back in August 2013. The exact model shown off was – you guessed it – the same QHD, 5.5-inch kind of display we see today.
For real tech geeks, the efficiency of the screen is just as exciting as the increased resolution (or perhaps that’s just us).
First Impressions
The LG G3 is a phone that shows the way forward, at least in some respects. A super-high resolution screen with seemingly no cost in either price or battery life and a camera that conversely prioritises elements other than resolution are tip-offs as to what we should expect over the next year from other phones.
A great spec, solid design and reasonable price are no guarantees of success at this point, but this is every bit the worthy rival to the One M8, Xperia Z2 and Galaxy S5.