LG G4 Smartphone Review : A visual treat to consumers

With a slight curve in its screen and an leather back the LG G4 is a refreshing change from the traditional flat and metallic phones. The LG G4 is the also the first smartphone to use a new 5.5-inch IPS Quantum Display, which offers 20 percent greater color reproduction, 25 percent improvement in brightness and 50 percent greater contrast. The 2,560x1,440-pixel resolution and 534 pixels per inch (ppi), puts it above the Apple iPhone 6, Galaxy S6 and HTC One M9. The device offers 2GB of onboard storage and a microSD card slot that can hold up to 2TB.

The LG G4 runs Android 5.1 Lollipop and on top is LG's latest UI, UX 4.0. Bright, colorful the UX 4.0 is easy to navigate and to understand. We also liked the fun animations on the lockscreen, the charming app icons and call dialer is clean and simple.

One new feature on the LG G4 is Smart Bulletin. It is on the left-most page of your homescreen and display widgets of certain apps, including the music player, your Calendar, the LG Health fitness tracker, QRemote.

Even Pocket syncs with your calendar allowing you to easily drag and drop events right into the calendar and can provide suggestions for venues and things to do based on the information provided.

As with traditional smart phones that have power and volume buttons either at side or at top, the LG G4 houses power button, volume controls at back leather panel. The volume controls can also be used to scroll down or up web pages while browsing.

Although the smart phone feels slightly heavy but can be easily operated with one hand. The leather cover at back makes a comfortable grip in hand and protects it from slipping or frequent falls.

Quantum display and how is it different from other displays?

The extra color in Quantum Display comes from two things. Firstly, The G4 screen has been designed to closely match on the standards used by Hollywood movie studios, dubbed DCI or Digital Cinema Initiatives and offers wide array of visible colors that can recreate a rich overall image. Thus LG G4 has been tuned to offer 98 per cent of the DCI color gamut with deeper saturation in the reds and blues, and generally looks better than the common sRGB standard.

Apart from this LG is also using Advanced In-Cell Touch technology that combines the LCD and touch sensor into a single layer, thus LG has been able to offer better color reproduction as well as touch-sensitivity. With this advanced tech, it removes a layer that is found in many smartphones making the screen more thinner and allows through more light and makes the screen more responsive.

Camera

With a 16 MP camera, the LG G4 can shoot both raw and jpeg file format and is good and fast. Raw is beneficial when additional computer processing is intended and produces high fidelity images. You will also have many more shades of colors compared to JPEG files and RAW records between 4,096 to 16,384 levels of brightness as compared to 256 in jpeg.

The shots have rich colors, fine details and the images look just brilliant. The 8MP front shooter utilizes LG’s fun and convenient Gesture Shot and Gesture View features.

The camera integrates OIS 2.0 (Optical Image Stabilization) to capture stable shots if you are in motion and that works quite well and reduces camera shake. The LG G4's f/1.8 lens captures shots with beautifully defocused backgrounds. Turn on Voice Control in the settings and say words like “Cheese”, “Capture”, “Smile”, “LG”, “Whiskey” to instantly take a photo hands-free without touching the screen.

Performance

The IPS Quantum Display produced higher contrast, vibrant images that are rich in color. The In-cell Touch Display technology provides a smooth and super-responsive feel and comes to life with slightest touch.  The 1.8GHz processor with 3GB RAM is capable of playing high end games, apps and offers a zero lag computing performance and there is nothing that can’t be run on the smart phone.

Using Dual Window the 5.5 inch display gets splits into two screens so you can use two apps simultaneously. With GlanceView, you can also check the time, date and any missed notifications on the sleeping screen by swiping your finger downward from the top edge.

We were able to get a 12 hour back-up with calling, social media applications, music playback, browsing, and light gaming and everything looked wonderful on screen.

The 3000 mAH battery is removable and lasted for 5 hours 10 minutes in our battery test wherein we looped a video at full brightness until the battery drained out. However we did noticed heating up of smartphone when plugged in for charging and also during continuous usage.

We used the review unit for almost around 15 days and did not face any difficulty with the call quality or with the smart phone. And the small speaker unit at the bottom edge delivers loud and clear sound.