LG G5 – a phone launched by the South Korean company is already being referred by its fans as ‘The best smartphone of the year 2016”. After facing many questions with regards to the design and built of LG G4, the company has revolutionised its smartphone productions.
The new G5 which was launched in February has overcome the plastic and leather finishes of LG G4 and has come up with the new all metallic body but still has kept the customer’s favourite Micro-SD slot and the removable battery.
All these changes have posed a significant competition to Samsung S7 as Samsung has removed the feature of removable battery. Although Lg hasn’t come up with infused glass finish like Samsung or Aluminium body like Apple, the company has still made a positive stride towards changing the outlook of its smartphones.
Design and Look The phone tends to possess look and design that is very much different from its predecessor. All thanks to its full metallic body. Although the body doesn’t look as premium in outline as Apple, due to the paint which the company has used to colour its smartphone, still it doesn’t look cheap.
Although you would get an impression of this phone being made out of plastic, you would begin to feel the aluminium finish the more you use it. The metallic frame has been curved around the edges to make it sturdier to hold and utilise. Apart from this, the changes that have been incorporated include volume button on the left and the back facing power button doubling as a fingerprint sensor. One of the other shifts in the design that LG G5 has seen includes battery slot in the bottom, which means you can remove the battery without having to remove the back panel.
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Software Much like the other premium phones in the market, the company has come up with an up gradation in Android version and LG G5 hence comes with Marshmallow 6.0 with UX 5.0 on top. This UI is customizable to the most extent but doesn’t feature an Android drawer. This lack of Android drawer results in loads of tiny icons spread around your screen.
Also, LG has come up with a new layout in its Settings option and they are grouped into numerous categories such as Display, Network, etc. To sum up UX 5.0 is decent enough that the users can understand and utilise it straight out of the box. There have been some key modifications in the dialer and the contacts layout too.
Display LG hasn’t tried to incorporate too many pixels in 5.3 inches screen which is something worth appreciating. You don’t require a resolution of more than 1440X2560 in a smartphone of this size. However, turning on the phone, you wouldn’t feel much of the difference and the brightness levels offered are still the same. Pixels per inch have increased due to a smaller size. The display isn’t as vibrant as Samsung’s but colours are still vibrant and bright. The company has also upgraded its LCD to have an always on option in which the screen is mostly dark but has little information such as date and time etc.
One advantage that LG G5 has over Samsung is that the similar ‘always on’ feature in Samsung would only show missed calls and text messages notifications while this phone shows all your notifications.
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Camera LG always tends to incorporate something new in its smartphones, and hence, this time, it has made changes to its camera. There are two back cameras of 16 MP and 8 MP each and both can be utilised individually. It is super easy to switch from one camera to other. Just by a single click you can go from 16 MP snapper to wide angle camera.
In its wide angle layout, the camera captures more than a human eye can and can provide depth to images. However, the 8MP camera offers a bit washed out images as compared to 16MP camera which produces more bright and vibrant colours. Compare to S7- the images produced using this camera are more natural and do not have artificial levels of contrast.
Battery Life This is one area where LG has come down. The LG G5 is powered by a 2800mAH battery, which is less as compared to its predecessor and its competition i.e. Samsung S7. While LG remains one of the few premium smartphone manufacturers to still provide a removable battery, it has rolled an improvement in the battery slot provided. Now you can remove and insert the battery without opening the back cover of the device.
Also, if the battery life is considered, then the phone with moderate usage tends to die out till the evening and you would require charging it if you want it to last the whole day. So in case you are a heavy mobile user then you would need to carry a power source along with you.
Technical Specifications As far as the technical specifications of the phone are considered, the phone is powered by a powerful 4GB RAM and the Snapdragon 820 chip processor. The phone tends to have a storage capacity of 32 GB and a theoretical expansion of memory up to 2TB. The phone tends to score high on performance even if filled with loads of applications.
Phone Accessories Upon unboxing the new device apart from the smartphone, one gets a warranty card, a user manual and a type C USB cable. Also, the wall charger is provided into the box. Music lovers would be left disappointed with the device as no earphones have been provided.
Variants The phone is available in four different colours i.e. Silver, Gold, Titan and Pink. According to me, the best variant of this phone is the silver one. It provides a more beautiful and professional feel. However, you can go for any colour which you feel suits you best. The price group of this phone lies in between 49-53,000, hence is aimed at high ranged customers.
My Verdict LG surely has come up with something different this time, be it, their new design or the new camera features. The phone is smooth and the Snapdragon processor and 4GB RAM makes it all the faster. The improvement in image quality and wide angle cameras are the best we have seen so far.
However, what we didn’t like about this smartphone was its battery life and it could have come up with a battery of greater capacity. The ‘always on‘ mode of this smartphone is too dim as compared to Samsung and also results in a power drain.
Therefore, if you can cope up sufficiently with the less battery life, then you can go with this device. This phone raises the standards to the new level, but one thing that it lags is encapsulating everything neatly into one single device.
So, in case you are searching for alternatives, then you can surely try and go for other smartphones such as Samsung S7 and IPhone 6s, which provide a more premium outlook and sturdier finish.
