LG G4 Review from Heavy Samsung User

[loepa]

A little background for this review:

• I was a heavy Samsung user for the past few years (my first Samsung phone is S3 near launch day and my last is Note 3 which I also bought at near launch day) and on those years I used Samsung tablets (multiple). My whole family use Samsung phone other than me and my dad's blackberry (he have 2 other samsung gadget)
• In where I live (Indonesia) 3G and 4G signal drains battery quite fast.
• I bought LG G4 with the brown leather back

 

LG G4 have been released for a short time. I have not been using this phone for a long time, but I think I would give it a review since I am pretty Impressed with this phone.

 

Build Quality : 8.5/10

The Good

Grip and Feels

The Grip on this Phone is better than my grip on my Note 3. my index finger rest quite comfortably on the back button. my other finger also feels better. my pinky doesn't get tired when holding this phone (usually my pinky get tired quickly when I hold Note 3).

 

You can see by the way I hold the phone, The phone weight on my pinky finger which gets uncoformtable on Note 3 but have yet to have problem with LG G4.

 

*check the album link on the bottom*

 

Material Choice

 

 

A HUGE thumbs up to LG for putting A REAL leather on this phone. I was dissapointed with Note 3's Pleather. I don't feel the premium feeling when I hold my Note 3. This comes down to the fact that Note 3 use a lot of plastic and make the phone feels cheap pretty quick.

 

On the other hand LG's Leather back makes the phone not only feels but also looks premium.

 

The Bad

The Leather

I'm kinda afraid of damaging the back leather because it looks and feels fragile in some ways (feels easily scratch, tear apart). the only other leather backed phone I had is Blackberry Bold 2 8970 and the leather holds pretty well. I really hope the leather on this phone will hold as well as the leather on my blackberry.

 

Phone Shape

This is my first curved phone. Usually when I play with tap intensive games I put my phone on a flat surface and tap away until my finger hurts. Sadly, LG G4 is not a flat phone at all. The back of the phone is curved on all direnctions. This makes the phone move around when I tap vigorously while the phone is on a flat surface.

 

 

Screen : 9/10

The Good

Screen Quality

The smaller bezel on the screen, combined with the QHD display and vibrant color blows my Note 3 Screen to the water. Hell this phone have better screen than my PC. The color reproduction is pretty good (Not the best) but doesn't really matter at this point. The text is a lot more crisp than my previous gadgets.

 

Before I doesn't buy the more PPI is better thing. But this phone opens my eye. the QHD actually helps with the little details that I never noticed before. so a thumbs up to LG for the screen quality.

 

Screen Brightness and light sensor

This is where Phone and gadget usually fails me. But the LG G4 wins my hearts and my eye. The screen is really-really bright on maximum brightness, and can get really dim on the lowest setting. The brightness impresses me. I don't know about S6 but at this price point the screen brightness is pretty good.

 

What about the light sensor? well it works. It works well only fails me once so far. My Note 3 light sensor fails me in multiple conditions. Where the screen is always too dim on normal light condition. And the maximum brightness still makes me struggle to use my phone on direct sunlight use on sunny day.

 

Camera : 7.5/10

 

First of all I'm not a camera and photo guy but I just would like to write about my experience and stuff. So please be nice to me on this part.

 

The Good

Great Image Quality

The first comment I got from my family members about the Image is the picture quality is pretty good. blows away my Note 3, my bro's Note 4 and S5. The Image is very crisp (the screen might contribute on this, but on further inspection it seems the image is actually good). The selfie (front facing) camera is 8 Megapixels which is pretty good. it captures my not-smooth face pretty well, it shows the detail of my face which makes asphalt looks pretty smooth compared to my face.

 

(I am not sharing my face on this forum)

 

Manual Mode

Can't speak too much about this feature since I'm not a camera guy. I'm still learning on how to use this feature. The Manual Focus helps on capturing macro picture or blurring background and stuff (DSLR does better job).

 

 

The Bad

Camera Speed and AutoFocus

This is where the phone dissapoint me. The laser auto focus dissapoint me. The Autofocus and camera speed is slow (about 1-2 sec wait) on Weird light condition.The environment is lid with 2 LED lightbulb which leaves quite a lot of shadows in the environment. And most of the time I can't snap picture as fast as Iphone 6 camera.

 

This problem also occurs on my Note 3 so I don't really know if this problem is caused by software or hardware side.

 

Connectivity : 10/10

The Good

Well no complains here. only good things :

1. Dual SIM slot with 4G LTE on both slot.
2. Supports Huge range of mobile data frequencies which is very useful if You travel a lot.
3. Have NFC, Bluetooth, IR.
4. Great Wi-FI.
5. I have no problem of using USB 2 instead of USB 3 since I rarely use it to transfer data. I prefer AirDroid.

 

Software : 8/10

The Good

Feel and experience

UX 4 actually feels pretty good. Have additional security feature which I actually use (Knock lock). Hide sensitive notification on lock screen by default. Can switch user or make new user which is pretty Neat (Better implementation than Samsung Knox IMO).

 

Less bloatware than my Note 3. I Prefer the Icon on LG G4 rather than on my Note 3 (Lollipop).

 

I have better accuracy on the keyboard (I don't like swiftkey, so my previous experience is Samsung's keyboard). The only downside is if I switch to symbols on the keyboard, the backspace takes a bit of space which makes me misclick sometimes.

 

I switch off text prediction from the start so don't ask me how good is it.

 

The Smart setting is also pretty Neat. it's like tasker but a lot less feature.

 

The Bad

Usability

some settings are definetily harder to find (Mobile Network setting IMO should be integrated to the Sim card option in the setting,etc). I prefer Samsung's Implementation of the setting page here.

 

Battery : 8 /10

The Good

Battery Pack

When I bought this Phone, I got free battery pack. The content of the battery pack are :

• 1 Extra Battery
• Travel Case for the Extra battery
• Charga Case for the battery

It doesn't come with additional charger or cable, but It's ok for me. Usually when I got home I just swap the battery and charge the depleted battery so I have no problem with just 1 Charger.

 

Removable Battery

I hope this ancient feature won't change in the future. This helps a lot. Since in a single day I can go through 2 battery (If i'm not using wifi and using my phone intensively).

 

A removable battery means I can quickly swap my battery to get my phone to fully charge at any time.

 

Also if my battery go bad I can just buy a new one and saves me a lot of time.

 

*I'm Looking at you S6*

 

The Bad

Quick Charge

This Phone doesn't come with quick charge capable charger. So charging time is longer than my Note 3. This could be a problem if there is no spare battery which means I have to spend longer time to charge my phone. I really hope LG would include quick charge capable charger.

 

The phone itself actually supports it or I think so (Charging using Note 3 charger is faster than using the standard LG G4 charger).

 

* since I made the review I've found out what is eating my battery life so bad. it's dropbox's automatic photo upload *

Battery Life

Battery is like oxygen for any phone. without it, it is basically a brick or an-overly-expensive-paperweight. let me put this straight. the battery life so far is not very good

 

(you can see the battery usage graph on the album I'll link it at the bottom)
 

My Note 3 also struggle in this part, even though I have extra battery I don't think I can give any thumbs up to LG in this part of the review. Even though my country 3G and 4G draining habit affect quite a lot in this part, I still thinks this could be done better. (larger battery maybe?)

 

Conclusion : 51/60

This Is my Next Phone. For the price of around $600 (for US people) and me originally its around $700 but there is a discount so I got it for cheaper price (I don't live in the US) this phone definitely worth every penny. Great Build, Screen, Camera.

 

Even though there are some bad things here and there. overall not bad at all. Great Phone. I would recommend this phone to almost anyone.

 

 

to see photo sample that I took and battery usage graph provided by the phone you can visit this link

http://imgur.com/a/rn5Ur/titledesc

[GrimNeo]

No quick charge

[Nineshadow]

IMO this phone has nothing wrong with it.

Ok, maybe not having QuickCharging. That's the only thing I can find wrong about it.

 

Phones with curved backs are better to use in hand, especially if they're big. Yes, you can't really use them "extensively" on a table, but your smartphone is designed to be used in your hand. Ergonomics matter.

 

The LG G4 is a jack of all trades and master of none smartphone cameras.

 

Dunno how the battery is on the LG G4, but my  LG G3 has amazing battery life.

I charge it every 3 days currently.

[Zefues]

Wow, never realized it had a thick curve from the side view.

[Arty]

IMO this phone has nothing wrong with it.

Ok, maybe not having QuickCharging. That's the only thing I can find wrong about it.

 

Phones with curved backs are better to use in hand, especially if they're big. Yes, you can't really use them "extensively" on a table, but your smartphone is designed to be used in your hand. Ergonomics matter.

 

The LG G4 is a jack of all trades and master of none smartphone cameras.

 

Dunno how the battery is on the LG G4, but my  LG G3 has amazing battery life.

I charge it every 3 days currently.

rear speaker *cough*

[Suika]

No quick charge

It has quick charge, however it doesn't come with quick charge capable chargers, you have to buy them separate.

[Nineshadow]

rear speaker *cough*

Oh, that one. Yes, it doesn't have front-facing speakers. Almost forgot.

It's a good rear speaker at least.

[GrimNeo]

It has quick charge, however it doesn't come with quick charge capable chargers, you have to buy them separate.

My Samsung Galaxy s6 came with one and I got my s6 for free.

[loepa]

IMO this phone has nothing wrong with it.

Ok, maybe not having QuickCharging. That's the only thing I can find wrong about it.

 

Phones with curved backs are better to use in hand, especially if they're big. Yes, you can't really use them "extensively" on a table, but your smartphone is designed to be used in your hand. Ergonomics matter.

 

The LG G4 is a jack of all trades and master of none smartphone cameras.

 

Dunno how the battery is on the LG G4, but my  LG G3 has amazing battery life.

I charge it every 3 days currently.

 

Yeah I think I'm gonna investigate further about the battery life. I just found out that mine is significantly worse than my friend's (he also have LG G4). I'll edit the review as soon as I know what cause the bad battery life.

[Technic77]

I got a G4 about three days ago and I'd say the battery life is pretty freakin' awesome. My Galaxy S3's battery life was horrid though so I might have a bias ^.^

[loepa]

I got a G4 about three days ago and I'd say the battery life is pretty freakin' awesome. My Galaxy S3's battery life was horrid though so I might have a bias ^.^

 

 

IMO this phone has nothing wrong with it.

Ok, maybe not having QuickCharging. That's the only thing I can find wrong about it.

 

Phones with curved backs are better to use in hand, especially if they're big. Yes, you can't really use them "extensively" on a table, but your smartphone is designed to be used in your hand. Ergonomics matter.

 

The LG G4 is a jack of all trades and master of none smartphone cameras.

 

Dunno how the battery is on the LG G4, but my  LG G3 has amazing battery life.

I charge it every 3 days currently.

 

well since this review is made. I've located the problem of my phone poor battery life. and it's my fault.

 

I turned on dropbox automatic photo upload. and I found out that it's silently uploading a sh*t ton of picture for days. Using my phone's internet quota and my home internet's bandwith. and also the battery

*my upload speed at home is 70~ish kb/s

 

since I turn the automatic photo upload thing off. I found out that it increased the battery life dramatically.

 

Now it last for a day on normal use (automatic brightness enabled, location enabled, rotation enabled, smart setting off, smart bulletin off, no gaming).