LG G5 Review - A true disappointment
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2017-05-06
·
1,857 words · ~9 min read
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on the surface the LG G5 has everything
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smartphone enthusiasts have been asking for so why is it then that I didn't like
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it is it possible that LG didn't pay
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enough for a positive review or hear me out on this is it possible that dbrand
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provides all of our phones anyway and that I am capable of forming opinions
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all on my own let's find
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out tunnel bear is the simple VPN app that
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makes it easy to browse the web privately and enjoy a more open internet
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spec-wise it's pretty hard for LG to have gotten this wrong with mediatech
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still playing catchup and Intel having seemingly bowed out of the smartphone
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processor race for now Qualcomm is pretty much the only choice at the
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moment unless your name is Apple so a Snapdragon 820 processor clocked at 2.1
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5 GHz on the faster cores paired with an adreno 530 GPU Beats at its heart in
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line with Halo SKS from other manufacturers the G5 packs 4 gigs of
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ddr4 memory 32 gigs of onboard storage
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with micro SD expansion and Corning Gorilla Glass 4 on its Quad HD or
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2560x1440 resolution 5.3 in panel it's
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also got Wireless AC and LTE Advanced
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for Wicked connectivity Android marshmallow yellow and it's available in
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a variety of colors including pink with a 3,000 is milliamp battery actually
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2800 milliamp hours to be precise but in
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spite of these similarities there are a great number of differences between the
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G5 and the Galaxy S7 from LG's fellow
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Korean rival Samsung that need to be addressed we'll begin with performance
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the G5 performs about like you'd expect 4 and 82 20 maybe a little better my
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usual run geek bench until it hurts throttling test gave it only a 10% gap
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between its top score and its bottom scores a very favorable result next up
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is the screen it tickles me to no end the way that LG's TV division
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is beating the OLED drum with Samsung
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positioning Quantum do LCD as the top technology of today citing concerns
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about maximum brightness and burning while Samsung's mobile division has been
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pimping OLED for years at this point and LG is still using LCD the truth of the
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matter in spite of the clear flip-flopping even within the same
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freaking company is that there are just tradeoffs to be made either way the s7's
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OLED screen saves enough power for it to have an always on clock feature and
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gives it astonishing readability in direct sunlight at the cost of some
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color oversaturation while the g5s IPS
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LCD screen boasts more true to the original content colors great viewing
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angles without the weird color shift of some oleds at extreme angles and
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shockingly an always on clock with notifications too that thanks to their
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displays surprisingly solid blacks manages to look almost as good as the
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s7s unless you're in a really dark room where you can see that all the pixels
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are back lit and doesn't even manage to drain the battery life anymore so full
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marks for the screen and a bonus point
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for the subtle curve at the top that makes the phone slide onto your face a
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little more gracefully and actually makes it so that pulling down your
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notification tray is a little bit smoother too this is the first
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application of curved phone glass that feels purely functional to me as opposed
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to a mostly just because we can sort of
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thing above the screen is a mediocre 8
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megapixel f2.0 selfie camera that that
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thankfully doesn't share the s7s makes my nose look huge fisheye lens but
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otherwise doesn't really blow me away then at the bottom of the screen below
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the on screen only no physical buttons is not one not two but three of the big
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features of the G5 first up is the
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bottom firing speaker that delivers marvelous 5.1 surround sound in spite of
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its no I'm just kidding the G5 suffers
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from cup syndrome which is curious unfortunate placement
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just like the top two smartphones right now I talking of course rather about the
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reversable more durable Quick Charge 3.0
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equipped USB type-c connector bye-bye
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microe don't let the door hit your ass on the way out two the fact that
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pressing this little catch on the bottom causes that 2800 milliamp battery to
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slide right out allowing it to be changed once it wears out without a
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fancy toolkit or even throughout the day as needed and three the way that the
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bottom charging module here disconnects from the battery allowing it to be
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replaced with other modules so dbrand
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who as I mentioned provided our skinned G5 here sent us the camera one to get a
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feel for what that's like and basically it's pretty stupid so far uh I
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had it on for a day before I realized that it's thick awkward to hold unless
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you happen to be taking a picture and aside from the extra battery capacity
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something that I could get with a sleeker battery case for most phones
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contributes absolutely nothing to the usability of the device it's a glorified
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hand grip and shutter button on a phone
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whose camera forced me to stop using it
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earlier on in my daily use review cycle
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than I normally would I mean to be clear
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the camera isn't unusable or anything and it would be a huge upgrade If You're
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Still rocking a Nexus 5 or something but when I'm coming from the Galaxy S7 or an
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iPhone 6s it is a significant kick in
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the balls there's no gesture to launch
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something that everyone not just Motorola and Samsung needs by the way
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the low light performance everything from dimly lit without Flash to very
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dark and Flash assisted frankly blows
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chunks in comparison look at the shot of my family in a hotel room compared to
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the iPhone 6s and video recording is a
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solid me and on top of all that the G5
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isn't waterproof I mean I know it's not advertised anywhere as being waterproof
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but it is amazing how much more likely I am to use my camera to capture an
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awesome moment when it's water resistant launches faster and takes better
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pictures this tradeoff for a removable battery and being able to install
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modules like a clipon shutter button is a horrible one for me personally one
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that isn't helped by LG's Android skin this time around I'm not going to hate
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on the lack of an app tray believe it or not and I even like some of LG's flare
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double tap to wake is wonderful and I didn't realize how much I missed it
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until I had it again and the addition of a recently uninstalled apps button is
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actually kind of cool let you reinstall them with like one touch but management
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of hiding apps something that you need to do since your home screens are also
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your app drawer now could be better I wish I could just drag them to a hide on
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the top of the screen after I long press or and then uninstall on the other side
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rather than digging through a settings menu for some inexplicable reason
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creating folders doesn't intelligently suggest a name as it does on other
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phones available even with the Android operating system so I'm not sure how
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they missed that and it doesn't even let you start typing right away clustered
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notification cards sometimes I'm actually not sure if I'll be able to
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recreate this on camera but they sometimes like Clump up when I try and
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expand them making them them hard to read and the rear lock button with
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fingerprint sensor while reasonably fast and easy to reach while holding the
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phone in my hand ended up being kind of a pain whenever the phone was resting on
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the desk next to me something that happens quite a bit since I use a
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password protected lock screen both Sony and Samsung's implementations and Apple
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for that matter are better here with a fingerprint sensor on the side or on the
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front which I guess leads us pretty perfectly into the conclusion there's
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nothing about the G5 that makes me say what the hell were they thinking like
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OnePlus neglecting to include NFC on the OnePlus 2 it's got a feature set that
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isn't wrong some folks are going to buy it just for the IR emitter and there's
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no right answer between swappable battery versus water resistance it's
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just not the mix that I want for myself
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and that combined with the only pretty good camera awkwardly positioned touch
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sensor lack of wireless charging and high price make it hard for me to
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recommend it in a world where the iPhone 6s and the Galaxy S7
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exist speaking of existing you know what exists dbrand they make high quality
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vinyl skins for your device which is to
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say if your device is one of the devices that they make skins for they've got
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support for iPhones Android phones actually a wide variety of Android
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phones and even computers including MacBooks and some SEL PCS like Dell's
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XPS lineup and the best thing about dbrand is you can use their configurator
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to set up your device to look exactly the way you want whether you want wood
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grain finish like this laptop here the XPS 15 we reviewed whether you want a
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sexy matte black like you saw on the G5 that I reviewed today or whether you're
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completely colorblind with no sense whatsoever and you want a you know
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multicolored iPhone SE that makes people go
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like ew when you walk past them while
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you're talking on it so check out dbrand.com we've got it linked in the
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