LG Unveils The LG G4, Its Next Generation Flagship Smartphone

[alex davies]

LG announced its latest flagship, the LG G4.

LG Unveils The LG G4, Its Next Generation Flagship Smartphone : Read more

 

[Caffeinecarl]

LG... Officially smarter than Samsung.

 

[dvanburen]

What's with the obsession with metal/glass clad phones? I'll take the microsd slot, removable battery, and plastic case, thank you very much.

 

[jimmysmitty]

LG... Officially smarter than Samsung.

I wouldn't say so. Samsung created something that common people will drool over. I have an S6 and I can say it feels like a great quality phone and looks great. As well the screen is just beautiful.

The problem is that most tech savvy people, like ourselves, look into the details of the product and always know what we want when we get it. On the other hand, common folk do not nearly as much. When I go to buy something, even groceries, I know exactly what I will be buying. Most common people don't until they go and look at the items.

What's with the obsession with metal/glass clad phones? I'll take the microsd slot, removable battery, and plastic case, thank you very much.

I used to think the microSD was super important but then again those phones never had a lot of storage space to begin with. MY S4 had 16GB of storage but after the OS and everything was done I had 9GB of free space. Sure I had a 64GB SD card I loaded and even though it was a top of the line Samsung UHS-I playing high bitrate audio or games from it was sluggish.

As for the battery, same sort of thing. I never had to replace a battery yet and I actually really like the wireless charging. Plus the phone last me from 7AM till at least 7PM most days with pretty decent usage.

Of course to each their own. Some people will want those features even if they may never truly need them while others will not care.

The one downside I see to the G4 is the weaker SoC. It is interesting as LG was saying there were no heat issues yet they went with the 808 Hexacore for their flagship instead of the 810 octocore.

 

[Mac266]

"808 pairs these CPUs with an Adreno 418 CPU"

I think there's a problem here.

 

[wildkitten]

"808 pairs these CPUs with an Adreno 418 CPU"

I think there's a problem here.

No, the real problem is with the 810. To avoid the overheating the 810 throttles down quite soon and only goes back up in small jumps. Arstechnica has a very good article that talks about the problem. In sustained work the 805, even the 801, beats the 810. Yes, the 418 GPU may not be as good as the 420 in the 805, but the 805 is a 32 bit part and the 808 is 64 bit.

It will likely turn out that the 808 will leave the 810 far behind in sustained tasks. Will be interesting to see it against the 805.

 

[wildkitten]

LG... Officially smarter than Samsung.

I wouldn't say so. Samsung created something that common people will drool over. I have an S6 and I can say it feels like a great quality phone and looks great. As well the screen is just beautiful.

The problem is that most tech savvy people, like ourselves, look into the details of the product and always know what we want when we get it. On the other hand, common folk do not nearly as much. When I go to buy something, even groceries, I know exactly what I will be buying. Most common people don't until they go and look at the items.

What's with the obsession with metal/glass clad phones? I'll take the microsd slot, removable battery, and plastic case, thank you very much.

I used to think the microSD was super important but then again those phones never had a lot of storage space to begin with. MY S4 had 16GB of storage but after the OS and everything was done I had 9GB of free space. Sure I had a 64GB SD card I loaded and even though it was a top of the line Samsung UHS-I playing high bitrate audio or games from it was sluggish.

As for the battery, same sort of thing. I never had to replace a battery yet and I actually really like the wireless charging. Plus the phone last me from 7AM till at least 7PM most days with pretty decent usage.

Of course to each their own. Some people will want those features even if they may never truly need them while others will not care.

The one downside I see to the G4 is the weaker SoC. It is interesting as LG was saying there were no heat issues yet they went with the 808 Hexacore for their flagship instead of the 810 octocore.

You could have had a 32GB or 64GB of the S4 just like you can get the 64GB and the 128GB of the S6. The difference is, the bump in storage was only $50 per tier and is now $100.

And if you had sluggishness in playing music off the SD card, then your phone has other issues. Even the slowest SD card will play any audio format just fine as the bit rate doesn't come close to what the SD cards are capable of. As for games, of course you saw lag. You never should install apps to SD cards. You should have spent the $50 and gotten the 32GB S4.

As for the SoC, if you had kept up with it you would know that there is no heat issues per se. The reason is that the 810 throttles down so soon to avoid the heat issues that even the 801 SoC will beat it in benchmarks.

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/04/23/in-depth-with-the-snapdragon-810s-heat-problems/

The 808 was the perfect stop gap solution since they don't have an in house solution like Samsung does. It will likely outperform every 810 phone out there.

 

[jimmysmitty]

LG... Officially smarter than Samsung.

I wouldn't say so. Samsung created something that common people will drool over. I have an S6 and I can say it feels like a great quality phone and looks great. As well the screen is just beautiful.

The problem is that most tech savvy people, like ourselves, look into the details of the product and always know what we want when we get it. On the other hand, common folk do not nearly as much. When I go to buy something, even groceries, I know exactly what I will be buying. Most common people don't until they go and look at the items.

What's with the obsession with metal/glass clad phones? I'll take the microsd slot, removable battery, and plastic case, thank you very much.

I used to think the microSD was super important but then again those phones never had a lot of storage space to begin with. MY S4 had 16GB of storage but after the OS and everything was done I had 9GB of free space. Sure I had a 64GB SD card I loaded and even though it was a top of the line Samsung UHS-I playing high bitrate audio or games from it was sluggish.

As for the battery, same sort of thing. I never had to replace a battery yet and I actually really like the wireless charging. Plus the phone last me from 7AM till at least 7PM most days with pretty decent usage.

Of course to each their own. Some people will want those features even if they may never truly need them while others will not care.

The one downside I see to the G4 is the weaker SoC. It is interesting as LG was saying there were no heat issues yet they went with the 808 Hexacore for their flagship instead of the 810 octocore.

You could have had a 32GB or 64GB of the S4 just like you can get the 64GB and the 128GB of the S6. The difference is, the bump in storage was only $50 per tier and is now $100.

And if you had sluggishness in playing music off the SD card, then your phone has other issues. Even the slowest SD card will play any audio format just fine as the bit rate doesn't come close to what the SD cards are capable of. As for games, of course you saw lag. You never should install apps to SD cards. You should have spent the $50 and gotten the 32GB S4.

As for the SoC, if you had kept up with it you would know that there is no heat issues per se. The reason is that the 810 throttles down so soon to avoid the heat issues that even the 801 SoC will beat it in benchmarks.

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/04/23/in-depth-with-the-snapdragon-810s-heat-problems/

The 808 was the perfect stop gap solution since they don't have an in house solution like Samsung does. It will likely outperform every 810 phone out there.

Actually at the time, and when a lot of people, I got the S4 there was only the 16GB. The 32GB and 64GB came later on and I was in a 2 year contract (this was before the Edge program and such).

As for the SD card, it was an issue with the phone and/or the SD card. The only songs that had issues were my lossless FLAC songs. My MP3s didn't have any issues.

I didn't want to install apps on the SD card, however that is something people are saying they want the SD card for. Some of the apps these days are getting pretty big and when a 16GB (14GB formatted) phone only gives you 9GB to install apps with, it gets annoying to uninstall and reinstall apps. The purpose of expandable storage is to be able to install apps to it, use it for music and pictures.

The 810 is having heat issues. That is the only reason to throttle it. In fact the Exynos 7 is the same configuration of cores as the 810 with a big.LITTLE config of A53 and A57 cores yet it doesn't throttle nearly as badly or as often.

To me that says there is something wrong in the 810. It could be their process or some configuration that is having issues.

And again, the SD card is all preference. I don't miss it nor will I probably. If they add it back into my next phone, possibly a Galaxy S7 or who knows, I wont hate it.

 

[salimbest83]

now thats look like we have the smartphone everyone shud buy for 2015.

 

[falchard]

Why do people even bother mentioning the camera on these as exciting or leading? Are they 41 MP? No? Nuff-said.

 

[alextheblue]

Samsung created something that common people will drool over. I have an S6 and I can say it feels like a great quality phone and looks great. As well the screen is just beautiful.
...
I used to think the microSD was super important but then again those phones never had a lot of storage space to begin with.
...
As for the battery, same sort of thing. I never had to replace a battery yet and I actually really like the wireless charging. Plus the phone last me from 7AM till at least 7PM most days with pretty decent usage.

Spoken like a good Apple, err, Samsung fanboy. 😛 Sorry I get them mixed up a lot lately, since the S6 really captures the iPhone design elements. I even see the same arguments. "It's a beautiful design with the best display and everyone wants one. Who needs an SD card, I've got enough storage. My battery works fine, why would I want a replaceable one? Plus it's got the latest most processy processor."

The G3 was great, the G4 looks to be awesome. Better all-around than Sammy's iPhone 6- I mean S6. No doubt diehards will clutch to the SoC specs tightly to fend off critics. But frankly I can't think of any real-world situations in which the SD 808 would be an issue. Even the last gen SoCs will be more than enough for the forseeable future. Regardless the removable battery and SD card, along with that camera are all big selling points.

 

[lpedraja2002]

I like LG's specs on their hardware but their quality assurance is lacking severely. My only 2 smartphones have been LG and both have showed hardware defects after a year and some months. My current LG G2 has a massive horizontal dead zone on the upper part of the screen and it seems that LG has faulty digitizers since a lot of people are suffering from this. My brother also has an LG G2 which is only a few months old and it started showing erratic screen behavior paired with the horizontal dead zone, but since it was early in his contract they gave him a new one.

I think I'll try my luck with HTC or Samsung next.

 

[thundervore]

Great phone, too bad its LG, most customers do not associate LG with smartphones. The only issue I have with this phone is its size. I have an S6 and after one day of playing with it I went back to my old phone just because the phone is so big slippery to use with one hand.

LG did the right thing!
removable SD card . nice!!

 

[dvanburen]

What's with the obsession with metal/glass clad phones? I'll take the microsd slot, removable battery, and plastic case, thank you very much.

I used to think the microSD was super important but then again those phones never had a lot of storage space to begin with. MY S4 had 16GB of storage but after the OS and everything was done I had 9GB of free space. Sure I had a 64GB SD card I loaded and even though it was a top of the line Samsung UHS-I playing high bitrate audio or games from it was sluggish.

There was something off with your phone and/or card. I've never had this issue with my Note 3 and Samsung MicroSD. Personally, I like to have everything with me. I have lots of apps installed, and I just around a lot if I get stuck somewhere with nothing to do. I also have a lot of comics/manga/books available at all times.

As for the battery, same sort of thing. I never had to replace a battery yet and I actually really like the wireless charging. Plus the phone last me from 7AM till at least 7PM most days with pretty decent usage.

Wireless charging and removable batteries aren't mutually exclusive. I have both. I also plan on keeping my phone for more than a year or two, so a user replaceable battery is a big plus.

Of course to each their own. Some people will want those features even if they may never truly need them while others will not care.

While I do agree with this on principle, unfortunately the manufacturers cater to the 90%. So many people pay insane prices for Apple devices with larger amounts of memory and don't think twice. Now Samsung is going down that same road. Pretty soon we won't even have a choice. Who wins? Manufacturers. Every new device will have a storage tax.

 

[dvanburen]

Why do people even bother mentioning the camera on these as exciting or leading? Are they 41 MP? No? Nuff-said.

Misinformed or trolling?

 

[ammaross]

Why do people even bother mentioning the camera on these as exciting or leading? Are they 41 MP? No? Nuff-said.

Misinformed or trolling?

Misinformed. The Lumina he's referring to is 44MP, but it does take really nice shots.

 

[captaincharisma]

LG should send a pic of that phone to Samsung to show them how you can wrap a phone in leather without it looking like a day old band-aid

 

[misousa]

This is really the best good looking phone out there.
Samsung should have gone this way with Galaxy S6, I hate the glass and metal feeling and its very easy to break the glass on the phone.

The only thins that make me consider Samsung are:
1) Probably have a better screen (AMOLED is great)
2) Battery saving mode (it really works)
3) Better CPU
4) Faster android updates

 

[thundervore]

This is really the best good looking phone out there.
Samsung should have gone this way with Galaxy S6, I hate the glass and metal feeling and its very easy to break the glass on the phone.

The only thins that make me consider Samsung are:
1) Probably have a better screen (AMOLED is great)
2) Battery saving mode (it really works)
3) Better CPU
4) Faster android updates

While all this is true and spot on why Samsung is great. On the S6 the Touchwiz interface sucks, the app drawer is a PITA because its like an IOS phone where the aps does not auto arrange after uninstalling and app. The auto rotating bug is annoying when trying to play PvsZ. The phone becomes too hot to hold when playing a game and charging at the same time. They removed the expandable storage and removable battery (reasons why many customers likes the Samsung phones). I could go on.........so im back to my Android HTC phone from 2011

 

[jimmysmitty]

Samsung created something that common people will drool over. I have an S6 and I can say it feels like a great quality phone and looks great. As well the screen is just beautiful.
...
I used to think the microSD was super important but then again those phones never had a lot of storage space to begin with.
...
As for the battery, same sort of thing. I never had to replace a battery yet and I actually really like the wireless charging. Plus the phone last me from 7AM till at least 7PM most days with pretty decent usage.

Spoken like a good Apple, err, Samsung fanboy. 😛 Sorry I get them mixed up a lot lately, since the S6 really captures the iPhone design elements. I even see the same arguments. "It's a beautiful design with the best display and everyone wants one. Who needs an SD card, I've got enough storage. My battery works fine, why would I want a replaceable one? Plus it's got the latest most processy processor."

The G3 was great, the G4 looks to be awesome. Better all-around than Sammy's iPhone 6- I mean S6. No doubt diehards will clutch to the SoC specs tightly to fend off critics. But frankly I can't think of any real-world situations in which the SD 808 would be an issue. Even the last gen SoCs will be more than enough for the forseeable future. Regardless the removable battery and SD card, along with that camera are all big selling points.

I will admit that Samsung has always been a favorite of mine. They make good products. Their TVs are normally some of the best and they have great memory and SSDs, although I prefer Corsair RAM and Intel SSDs.

That said, I am just speaking based on experience when working in sales and customer service. I can explain to people how something works or why it is better but that doesn't mean they see it like I do. Marketing and public opinion sways more than a superior product. If not then instead of everyone buying iPods they would have been using the much superior Creative Zen Blaster. But Apple had better marketing (most common people don't know who Creative is) and everyone liked the design.

I was originally considering a Asus Zen Phone II because I wanted to try out the Atom SoC in it as it has decent reviews but it doesn't have support for CDMA (Verizon) so I didn't.

I still like my S6 but still want to try different products out.

What's with the obsession with metal/glass clad phones? I'll take the microsd slot, removable battery, and plastic case, thank you very much.

I used to think the microSD was super important but then again those phones never had a lot of storage space to begin with. MY S4 had 16GB of storage but after the OS and everything was done I had 9GB of free space. Sure I had a 64GB SD card I loaded and even though it was a top of the line Samsung UHS-I playing high bitrate audio or games from it was sluggish.

There was something off with your phone and/or card. I've never had this issue with my Note 3 and Samsung MicroSD. Personally, I like to have everything with me. I have lots of apps installed, and I just around a lot if I get stuck somewhere with nothing to do. I also have a lot of comics/manga/books available at all times.

As for the battery, same sort of thing. I never had to replace a battery yet and I actually really like the wireless charging. Plus the phone last me from 7AM till at least 7PM most days with pretty decent usage.

Wireless charging and removable batteries aren't mutually exclusive. I have both. I also plan on keeping my phone for more than a year or two, so a user replaceable battery is a big plus.

Of course to each their own. Some people will want those features even if they may never truly need them while others will not care.

While I do agree with this on principle, unfortunately the manufacturers cater to the 90%. So many people pay insane prices for Apple devices with larger amounts of memory and don't think twice. Now Samsung is going down that same road. Pretty soon we won't even have a choice. Who wins? Manufacturers. Every new device will have a storage tax.

I thought it was the card. I had a basic Class 10 that had issues but again, it was only the larger FLAC music files that had issues playing. They would play but they would also skip. And it could have been the phone but again it was only certain file types. My point is that most people are not going to buy the top of the line UHSI/II SD card and the slower transfer rates of the cheap ones will cause issues.

I also never said wireless charging and removable batteries were mutually exclusive. I just said that I like it. And again, that works for you. I said that some will want features, for others they wont care. Most people upgrade in two years and now people will do sooner thanks to programs like the Verizons Edge Program.

That is my exact point though. In order to stop slumping sales they have to cater to the majority. Otherwise they would only have a small amount of people who would even care. It is either that or they would keep losing business to the "magical" iPhone.

I would love it if the S6 was the same build quality with the extra features. I don't even mind plastic. If I did I would have gone with the HTC One M8 when I got my S4 instead. However, I wont hate on a phone that is actually good because of it. The S6 is a nice phone. So is the LG G4. Again, I only see the SoC as the one downside to the G4. Everything else is great. Well I don't really like the leather but again, to each their own.

This is really the best good looking phone out there.
Samsung should have gone this way with Galaxy S6, I hate the glass and metal feeling and its very easy to break the glass on the phone.

The only thins that make me consider Samsung are:
1) Probably have a better screen (AMOLED is great)
2) Battery saving mode (it really works)
3) Better CPU
4) Faster android updates

While all this is true and spot on why Samsung is great. On the S6 the Touchwiz interface sucks, the app drawer is a PITA because its like an IOS phone where the aps does not auto arrange after uninstalling and app. The auto rotating bug is annoying when trying to play PvsZ. The phone becomes too hot to hold when playing a game and charging at the same time. They removed the expandable storage and removable battery (reasons why many customers likes the Samsung phones). I could go on.........so im back to my Android HTC phone from 2011

I haven't had one phone that doesn't get hot while charging and playing a game. You are using the CPU/GPU and at the same time pushing power into the battery. Hell just watching a show while charging makes it get even hotter. A case does help though.

I haven't run into any rotating bugs yet so I guess I can't say but I like the new TouchWiz. There can still be improvements of course but it is leaps better than what my S4 had.

 

[wildkitten]

"I thought it was the card. I had a basic Class 10 that had issues but again, it was only the larger FLAC music files that had issues playing. They would play but they would also skip. And it could have been the phone but again it was only certain file types. My point is that most people are not going to buy the top of the line UHSI/II SD card and the slower transfer rates of the cheap ones will cause issues."

A class 10 SD card's transfer rate will handle any size FLAC file fine. So would even lower class. The only trouble cards lower than class 10 would have would be with some forms of hi def video and then most of it would just be with 4k video. So if you had problems, it was with something other than the SD card. Class 10 has a minimum transfer rate of 10 megaBYTES per second. Even FLAC files are still rated in the kiloBITS per seconds. I've seen some FLAC files with a bit rate of 800+kbps and that wouldn't make a dent in it as a class 10 would handle 80,000kbps.

"Again, I only see the SoC as the one downside to the G4. Everything else is great. Well I don't really like the leather but again, to each their own."

The SoC isn't the downside to the G4. No, it's not as good as the Exynos in the S6 but the Exynos has the same configuration as the 810 but done at the 14nm process whereas the 810 is done at 20nm and that is where people think the issues lie with the 810. It is likely that the G4 will beat most every 810 phone out there in any sustained workload benchmarks because of how fast the 810 throttles down to avoid overheating. That isn't LG's fault, and not the fault of the OEMs who have been using the 810. That is squarely on Qualcomm who got caught flatfooted by Apple releasing a 64 bit chip about a year before anyone expected them to and so Qualcomm did no customization to the design of the chip the way they always have previously. But LG and these other OEMs do not have an in house solution to fall back on like Samsung did, but at the same time, the real world differences between the Exynos and 808 are not going to be that great.

 

[alextheblue]

I thought it was the card. I had a basic Class 10 that had issues but again, it was only the larger FLAC music files that had issues playing. They would play but they would also skip. And it could have been the phone but again it was only certain file types. My point is that most people are not going to buy the top of the line UHSI/II SD card and the slower transfer rates of the cheap ones will cause issues.

OK you say "most people" won't buy a fast SD card. I've got news for you... "most people" don't even know what "a FLAC" is, let alone why you'd want one. Nor do they know anything about lossless vs. lossy encoding. Any logical person using lossless music should get a decent card and not a cheap piece of of barely functional plastic and silicon. They're not THAT much more. It's like running lossless 96/24 through a set of $10 speakers - it doesn't make sense.

 

[gggplaya]

Depending on how good the camera is, i may trade my S6 solely for shooting in RAW.

 

[g-unit1111]

What's with the obsession with metal/glass clad phones? I'll take the microsd slot, removable battery, and plastic case, thank you very much.

I used to think the microSD was super important but then again those phones never had a lot of storage space to begin with. MY S4 had 16GB of storage but after the OS and everything was done I had 9GB of free space. Sure I had a 64GB SD card I loaded and even though it was a top of the line Samsung UHS-I playing high bitrate audio or games from it was sluggish.

As for the battery, same sort of thing. I never had to replace a battery yet and I actually really like the wireless charging. Plus the phone last me from 7AM till at least 7PM most days with pretty decent usage.

Of course to each their own. Some people will want those features even if they may never truly need them while others will not care.

The one downside I see to the G4 is the weaker SoC. It is interesting as LG was saying there were no heat issues yet they went with the 808 Hexacore for their flagship instead of the 810 octocore.

I upgraded from an HTC One to a Samsung Galaxy S6, I generally have only had phones with fixed storage dating all the way back to the first gen iPhone. So coming from the HTC One I don't really miss the removable memory card, though having a phone with a 128GB one would be nice to have. I wanted the Note 4 because of the removable memory but not having it, I really don't miss it. The camera though is leaps and bounds above anything else I've ever used. It will be interesting to see how the S6 compares to the G4.

 

[MasterMace]

This phone should turn out great, but when you compare it to the market, points are deducted from the competition that has nonremovable batteries and lack microsd cards

Considering that
Apple iPhone 6 plus loses points for both
Samsung Galaxy S6 loses points for both
HTC One M9 loses points for the battery
Motorola Moto X loses points for both
Sony Xperia Z4 loses points for the battery

Top that off with generations behind resolutions. Samsung and LG are the only ones with 1440 screens, and LG kept their removable battery and microsd. LG has had their resolution for 2 generations now. Samsung flopped their S5 because they stuck to the 1080 resolution.