GADGET GIZMO REVIEW.............LG G4

GADGET GIZMO REVIEW LG G4

PRICE Rs 51,000

From LG's flagship lineup in the past two years, both the G2 and G3 impressed us. Now, LG has launched a new flagship, the LG G4. It improves on the previous versions in terms of hardware and camera. Thanks to the price, the G4 directly competes with the Samsung Galaxy S6 and HTC One M9+.

We have always loved the design of LG's previous flagships and the LG G4 gets added to this list. The G4 is heavily inspired by the G3 -it has a similar design and is just a few mm larger. The optional leather (removable) back panel looks really good and wears well too. After a month of use without a case, the leather continues to looks great. The slightly curved design makes the phone fit comfortably in the palm -a much-needed improvement over the G3. The power and volume keys are placed in typical LG style -on the back panel under the camera module. Overall, two thumbs up for the design and build quality .

The G4 has a similar display to G3. You get a 5.5-inch IPS LCD with a resolution of 2560 x 1440 pixels that gives it a 538 ppi pixel density. The screen is pin sharp, has great viewing angles and colours look richer compared to the LG G3 in a side-to-side comparison.The super-slim bezels around the screen add to the overall style of the phone. Almost everyone who saw the G4 was instantly impressed with the look and feel of the phone.

The camera is another strong point of the LG G4.You get a 16MP camera with f1.8 aperture, laser autofocus, dual tone flash and optical image stabilisation -these are the best specs on any cameraphone today .The camera instantly impresses with its performance. Daylight images are fantastic ­ on par with what you would get with a high-end point and shoot in terms of detail and colours. Even at night, the camera is able to capture images with good details -a bit of noise is visible when you zoom-in, but images are still good enough for digital sharing. The front 8MP camera is great for selfies, but suffers from a lot more visible noise.

LG has even improved the camera interface. You get three modes: simple, auto and manual. Auto mode gives you additional shooting modes -dual mode, panorama and HDR. Switching to manual mode brings up many more options including the ability to shoot images in RAW format (.DNG) as well as access to settings for white balance, manual focus, ISO and shutter speed. Selecting any setting brings up a slider to adjust the parameters and you can see a live preview of the change. However, all said and done, while the LG G4 camera is impressive, we feel that the Samsung Galaxy S6 camera still has the edge when it comes to overall performance.

Coming to the hardware, the LG G4 is one of the first phones to use the new hexa core Snapdragon 808 processor from Qualcomm. This is combined with 3GB RAM, 32GB storage and a 3,000mAh battery . You also get a microSD slot for expansion. While the Snapdragon 808 is a step down from Qualcomm's topof-the-line Snapdragon 810, there are no performance issues in terms of playing any game or even 4K videos on the device. The main issue is with battery life. Even with a 3,000mAh battery , the LG G4 struggled to last a full day . With heavy usage we had to charge the device twice every day and this is a massive letdown.

The G4 comes with LG's custom ised user interface based on Android 5.1. There are a number of useful settings and tweaks available for the home panel, notification area, lock screen as well as the app drawer. This makes it easy to customise the phone. However, we noticed that the interface tends to get sluggish at times. It takes a couple of extra seconds to load an app or to bring up the multi-tasking window. While this may not seem to be a long enough time to be an issue, it is not expected from a flagship device. Clearing background apps fixes the issue, but you don't normally expect this from this kind of device.

The LG G4 gets a majority of the things right for a flagship. You get a stylish smartphone with a gorgeous display , good performance and a great camera.However, it also has its share of quirks and we hope LG fixes them in future software updates. If you want an Android flagship, you're better off with the Samsung Galaxy S6 for the moment -and the bonus is that it's significantly cheaper than the G4.

Karan bajaj

ET24JUN15