the G3 from LG is the first of their phones I've reviewed so it's actually my
first experience with their particular flavor of Android it's got the usual
topof the range spec Snapdragon 801 quad core 3 gigs of RAM on my Korean model
well this is unusual actually a 5.5 in
display with a 2560x1440 16x9 aspect ratio LCD display
that is a stunning 530 plus pixels per
inch
with its Factory tuning and data center DNA an Intel 730 series SSD is an
amazing choice for gamers and performance enthusiasts physically the
phone floats my boat mostly the top features an IR blaster and a noise
cancelling microphone Port the bottom has a micro USB charging port the main
microphone and a 3 and 12 mm Jack and here on the sides we have well actually
not a whole lot of anything I've been asking someone on the Android side to
create a phone without side buttons that are POS position such that I constantly
mash them by accident for a while and I I guess LG's solution is to completely
remove them like the G2 the g3s buttons are on the back and this ergonomic shift
while a little jarring at first was something that I actually got used to
fairly quickly and if it enables thinner bezels then I like the decision the
buttons back here are a lock button and volume up and down that you can use to
quick launch the camera or Q memo if you long press them also on the back we find
a laser distance finder for the camera the 13 megapixel camera itself a
two-tone Flash and a speaker port with one watt amplified speaker or something
like that anyway that might have impressed me if it was mounted on the front of the phone it's loud enough but
nothing can sound quite right pointed away from your ears this seems like as
good a time as any to mention that I think LG nailed it with the backing
material on the phone though it looks great it's lighter it's more difficult
to stain and it can be removed and replaced unlike most metal designs on
top of that the phone is still very solidly built it doesn't it doesn't feel
like a compromised brushed plastic for to win mang under it there's a user
replaceable 3,000 milliamp battery whose performance I can't really comment on
because my Korean unit doesn't work for cellular data here there's a Sim slot a
micr SD slot and contacts for optional accessories like a wireless charging
compatible back plate which brings us to the front of the phone aside from an LG
logo 2.1 mapel selfie camera and a
dimmer than I would like RGB LED
indicator this is one clean design the
bezels are slim it's nearly completely symmetrical with a very small chin and
it is very obvious that LG wants the experience of using this phone to be all
about that 5.5 in Quad HD IPS screen
unfortunately the screen didn't really float my boat it's got a lot of pixels
and I'm a major advocate of pushing the envelope technologically but there's
much more to a great screen than res resolution the G3 screen has a warm
yellowish cast that I don't find pleasing and a noticeably worse contrast
ratio than the 1 M8 that makes it less
Pleasant to use than my current daily driver especially Outdoors now I've been
informed by others that to fully take advantage of it I need highres content
like 1440p wallpapers but I don't really care about wallpapers and neither do a
lot of people so the only practical benefit for me is that text is ever so
slightly sharper when it's extremely small something that LG seemed to pretty
much design their stock keyboard to take advantage of with its tiny symbol
indicators when it comes to moving pictures though whether we're talking
about games or shows I can hardly tell the difference between 720p and 1080p at
this screen size anyway so 1440p feels
unnecessary when other things could have been improved about the screen instead
which leads us to the software we got off to a rough start here prompting me
during setup to enter a backup contact phone number that sits on my lock screen
is genius but the hardcore Ula that I had to sign made me super uncomfortable
and it's not all bad though LG skin has an attractive flat appearance that
differs in subtle ways from stock Android but didn't require a crazy
learning curve to get the hang of one thing that impressed me was that it
offers a great degree of customizability for a stock skin you can change the home
screen switching animations change screen off Fade Out effects you can
tailor make your own power saving schemes adjust vibration ation strength
choose between a bajillion different unlock methods my personal favorite of
which is not code where you just tap certain parts of the screen and then
finally and this one's a killer you can customize the functions and locations of
the bottom buttons and even choose whether they are hidden or persistent it
feels like a great balance between a vanilla interface and the tricked out
ones that Android Geeks tend to use the included keyboard is also surprisingly
solid you can tweak a couple of buttons and alter the autocorrect aggressiveness
and backspacing one undo auto correct swift key are you listening but there
are still a few issues keeping me away like lack of a customizable long press
duration being able to adjust the size though is great especially with the very
small chin on the G3 it made more of a difference than I expected to get it
tuned just right the settings menu where all of these tweaks reside actually
annoyed me at first it's inefficient use of all that screen real estate even at
the smallest font size felt very TouchWiz like but then I found out you
can switch to a completely different view in list mode I actually found it quite efficient to navigate so thumbs up
there but not everything about the UI is
fast and whether it's the high resolution or something else
multitasking is very noticeably slower
than the 1 M8 and it makes the device feel considerably slower for me given
how often I switch between recent Windows I also really dislike the way it
puts your most recently used application in the top left corner it should be the
opposite because the fastest part of a smartphone screen to act access for
right-handed users is the bottom right it's not all bad though you can zoom in
and out unlike sense it allows more than nine items and compared to stock Android
it's much faster to find things that are buried deeper in the list uh other
complaint time now I guess uh LG health
and smart tips about using the phone are a complete waste of an entire home
screen I turned that off right away adding extra stuff with overlapping
functionality to the Google Now swipe up is a big no no and managing apps is
really weird instead of hold dragging to
delete within the app tray that does absolutely nothing as far as I can tell
instead you go through the top right menu where you can change icon size and
hide or uninstall apps from there but
there's more good stuff too dual window seems crazy useful if you chat while
watching videos the multi-item clipboard is a freaking godsend if you do a lot of
copy pasting and replying to incoming texts without having to minimize the
current APP is a big time time saer and and I mean the stunning number of user
accessibility options make sense look stupid invert colors change colors for
higher contrast send a custom message for hearing impaired users change
headphone output so that one side is unbalanced for folks who hear better in
one ear flash alerts for hearing impaired and I guess I guess easy home
is the kind of thing I would enable for my grandpa if I thought he needed a top-of-the-line phone in the first place
and I wanted to hide all the functionality from him for some reason
okay that last one didn't make a ton of sense but the other stuff is great onto
the camera the laser focus does seem to deliver very fast autofocusing Auto HDR
actually was pretty pleasing to use for me um and aside from the unlabeled
settings button I found the app quite easy and more importantly fast to use
dedicated photo and video buttons without needing to switch modes is great
that's something that drives me bananas about the M8 it is so slow to switch
modes and all of the usual topof the line nice to have modes are here so you
got the 13 megapixel still camera 4K video capture and 120 FPS 720p but while
it's cool that the slow-mo on the camera records sound unfortunately the
recording quality is noticeably worse than the One M8 for video lots of
jaggies it's not a huge issue but one to be aware of if you love taking slow
motion videos of your cats what are you going to do what are you going to do I
vacuumed your tail which leads me to the
conclusion some overheating issues aside I didn't encounter them here in the
great white North By the way but it's fairly well documented on the web the G3
is a solid Contender LG delivered a phone that looks beautiful and feels
solid but still managed to deliver optional wireless charging a Micro SD
slot and a high-capacity removable battery the hardware spec is up there
with other Flagship devices and even though I'd probably prefer a more
vanilla Android experience personally LG's skin really does feel like a solid
Middle Ground between stock Android and those tricked out custom launcher custom
everything Android setups that some people use all of that said the G3
didn't quite win me over it's not really LG's fault but in spite of the very sexy
very thin bezels the phone is still a touch too wide for me to use comfortably
it's just too big for me to handle if you know what I mean but that doesn't
mean it won't be perfect for you and wouldn't you know it we've got an
opportunity for you to own your very own to try it out and find out if it's any
good LG is giving us not one not two not three not four not five but
25 LG G3 phones to give a away to our
audience yes 25 now there are some caveats they are pre-production Korean
units which means that unless you're on AT&T or in the US or a number of other
carriers worldwide you won't be able to get certain aspects of the phone working
so maybe you won't get cellular data for example and you'll only be able to use
it on Wi-Fi and to make phone calls which is what I can do with mine on the
Bell network but it's still an LG G3
it's still the Real Deal fully-fledged phone and you get to keep it so check
out the link in the video description on linest Tech tips.com for full details
about how you can get one of those sent to you pretty freaking cool anyway guys
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