phones you know what I love about them I love how they fit perfectly in that
handy little pocket in the front of my box or shorts for storage the pleasing
vibration sensation from incoming calls is more important than reproduction
anyway and furthermore oh sorry just a secondus minus that's not a pocket what
that's not a pocket no there's not enough space what do you mean there's not supposed to even be enough space in
there to store a phone well maybe you just have a very small problem going on
down there hey
Corsair delivers real MEC or nothing with their new strafe mechanical
keyboard featuring genuine german-made cherrymx key switches click right here
to learn more I don't really know where to start with the LG G4 so I guess I'll
lead with a drop a like if you want to see me take my electric unicycle review
to the next level by adding aerial footage to the selfie stick footage we
already have and I think that's all the stalling I can get away with here's the
problem I usually sit down to script my review with two or even four pages of
notes mostly complaints for a mobile device video Point form today I have
half a page which is actually a really good sign for the G4 which I've been
using as my daily driver for a little over a week so let's kick off with specs
and I'll start with the processor controversy the G4 is a $600 phone off
contract so it has the top-of-the-line qualcom Snapdragon 810 CPU right wrong
while it's unclear whether the reason was one of cost reduction or one of
thermal control LG has opted for a Snapdragon 808 which features the same 4
a53 cores for lower power background tasks but two fewer high performance a57
cores something that in theory damages performance in heavily multi-threaded
workloads but based on some fascinating
testing done by Android authority may actually not affect real world results
that much thanks to the 808's far lesser
thermal throttling the rest of this phone is pretty standard Fair though on
paper at least adreno 418 GPU 3 gigs of
ddr3l memory 32 gigs of internal storage
Corning Gorilla Glass 3 on the 5.5 in
IPS display active noise cancellation for phone calls a 16 megapix rear and 8
megapix self camera a 3,000 mAh battery
with Quick Charge 2.0 allowing a 60% charge in about half an hour dualband AC
Wi-Fi and an FM tuner which I see I got
you there the FM tuner is a little unusual these days actually but some
folks will appreciate it specifically those with low cap data plans who don't
want to use the micro SD expansion slot to hold up to 128 gigs of extra music or
anything else and yes that is another one under the removable backing which is
available in plastic and leather other options not to mention the of course
dbrand skinned one that we have on ours is the aforementioned SD slot contact
points for optional Chi wireless charging rear plates and ah that 3,000
milliamp battery is removable something we used to take for granted on the
Android side but that Samsung did away with on the Galaxy S6 and as we dig away
under the skin of the G4 we can actually find some other things that make it more
than just another G3 for starters while
the G3 had a 1440p IPS display I
criticized it at the time because there were phones with 1080p displays that
smoked the G3 in spite of its extra resolution in important use case
scenarios like standing Outdoors thanks to their high contrast ratios not this
time the G4 screen has gotten some serious upgrades including integrating
the touchscreen and LCD panel into a single layer for better color
reproduction and utiliz in quantum display technology not to be confused
with quantum dot which requires a separate layer and thicker bezel to
improve color reproduction with LG quoting 98% DCI coverage increase image
brightness substantially and crank contrast to the point where I forgot
sometimes that I wasn't using an AMOLED display all of this without affecting
battery life and it looks really good I
still don't think 1440p is necessary in a handheld but at least besides the
extra strain on the GP to power it in games and whatnot there is no drawback
now so let's talk day-to-day use ergonomics of the phone are a strong
point considering its size I generally have trouble with anything above 5 in if
you know what I mean but it seems like I'm not the only one out there who feels
like whether it's by Merit of its gently curved shape oh yeah I guess I forgot to
mention that the screen is very subtly curved or the positioning of all of the
physical buttons so up down and lock on
the rear of the phone it's some how less unwieldly for me than most 5 and 1/2 in
devices and we probably have to give LG's Optimus ux software layer some of
the credit here though some stuff like double touching to wake which really
does help with the size has been so well
received that others have adopted it and
while there's definitely more bloat than even Samsung's latest iteration of touch
whz I didn't find any of it particularly objectionable in no particular order I
liked the contextual information smart notice widget on the home screen
by default it's visible enough to be convenient with weather upcoming
birthdays contact suggestions and other updates but not so in your face that
it's annoying the clipboard for copy pasting is awesome the accessibility
options continue to be outstanding for LG dual window is Handy for multitasking
and little touches like smart settings let you customize some behaviors like
Wi-Fi or Bluetooth on and off if you want but otherwise completely stay out
of the way and you don't have to to look at them at all and additionally most
importantly I didn't notice any performance chugging which used to be my
primary complaint about these skins so kudos for that and on the subject of
Kudos let's get into the best thing about the phone finally the camera check
out this selfie I took yeah baby what a great C no sorry while the front-facing
camera is actually good and that selfie aside from the stupid face I making is a
pretty good one it's the rear camera that truly rocks here it's laser focus
mechanism and built-in color spectrum sensor enable the GeForce 16 megapixel
camera to consistently nail the most
important things about cell phone camera pictures focus and white balance giving
surprisingly great results in auto mode but throwing in raw shooting and then
surprisingly fine manual control for the shutter bugs out there as well and while
I could criticize the camera apps slow
startup time uh double touching volume down to launch the camera is good and
video recording it just took a picture
and video recording is excellent as well
the preview window is very fluid and doesn't resize when you switch modes and
thanks to three-axis image stabilization it's surprisingly easy to get Rock Solid
footage out of it with all the usual modes including Ultra HD at 30fps and
slow-mo supported so the conclusion here
is pretty simple the G4 does a lot of things right and did nothing to offend
me the horrendous rear-facing speaker notwithstanding unlike Samsung and Apple
LG doesn't have their own Flagship class mobile processor design so the G4 uses
an off-the-shelf debatably not top tier
CPU but honestly I felt like phones have been fast enough for a while now and it
never felt like an issue to me the whole time I was using the device so congrats
LG the G4 wins a recommendation for me
as long as its buyers are willing to accept the relatively plasticky build
quality that comes with the flexibility of a replaceable
battery and on the subject of the replaceable battery some of you are
probably wondering what exactly that sexy carbon fiber skin that I have on
the back of the phone in all of our b-roll is that my friends is a Precision
cut skin from dbrand Skins there are
buds over there and man do they ever do a great job of these things you know the
funny thing about it is is my first dbrand spot that I ever did I was
talking about how how precisely they managed to get the fit so that it really
did look like a piece of the phone and remarkably they have actually managed to
improve it quite a bit since then as you guys probably noticed in the b-roll you
canot see the seam in spite of the fact
that that vinyl wrap actually doesn't even go around the edge of the back
plate it stops right at the edge of it you just cannot find the seam once you
put the phone together so if you guys are interested in check checking out
some of the cool stuff they do whether it's for phones tablets they even do
laptops game consoles game controllers head over to the link in the video
description so check out dbrand.com and
uh yeah pick it up they're actually very reasonably priced and they're Canadian
companies so of course we love our Canadian Canadian Bros actually didn't
realize they were Canadian until sometime into the relationship and I was
like oh no way they're in Toronto and it was awkward because I was in Toronto and
he was like hey why didn't you visit us I was like yeah so there you
go so I guess that's pretty much it guys if you disliked the video bam I think
you know what to do but if you liked it then go ahead and slam that like button
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to shop at Amazon buying a cool t-shirt like this one or with a direct monthly
contribution through the community Forum now that you're done doing all that
stuff you're probably wondering what to watch next so click that little button
in the top right corner to check out scrapyard Wars 2 which is finally
finished all five parts are up including the stunning conclusion where we
discover who wins lonus or Luke a lot of you have probably watched it already but
if you haven't do definitely check it
out