The LG G3 was and still is a fantastic device. It came at a time where one of their main rivals, Samsung, was a bit confused on the Galaxy S5 and the other main rival, HTC, had just hit a home run with their HTC One M8. But LG wanted to do something a little more special so it may have taken them an extra month or two but the LG G3 shipped early summer of 2014 with the first Quad HD display and a design that was favored by many because of the lack of large bezels. So now it’s been a year and it’s time to take a look back at the LG G3 and see how it fares in 2015. Welcome to the LG G3: One Year Later.

To start off, let’s look at all the things that made the LG G3 so good. The first thing is that 5.5-inch Quad HD IPS LCD display. It was the first available Quad HD display here in the States, which means you can give thanks to this phone for pushing the pixels per inch envelope. The G3 came with a resolution of 2560 x 1440 all packed into a 5.5-inch display, which meant 538ppi. The display was also one of the best for 2014. I must admit thought, it was warmer than usual and did not probably top the HTC One or OnePlus One display but it was definitely up there on the best displays.

Next was how this display was presented. LG basically cut almost all the bezels of this phone by housing the drivers on the bottom of the G3’s front. The display really has an edge to edge feeling and I definitely love that look.

Next up is the hardware powering the LG G3. Packed inside is a 2.5GHz quad-core Snapdragon 801 processor with 3GB of RAM, the Adreno 420 GPU. Now compared to today’s octa-core monsters, it may sound weak on paper but in actuality, it’s still a beast of a phone. It still runs ferociously fast. Multi-tasking, gaming, 1440p YouTube videos and plenty more are all done in a breeze for this thing.

Next up is the software. The LG G3 shipped with Android KitKat with LG’s custom skin and back then, I liked it a lot. Now, most LG G3s will be running Android 5.0 Lollipop with a slightly customized and even lighter version of LG’s UI and I like that a lot as well. It retains plenty of Android bits but still has a bit of LG with knock code and other features.

The camera on the LG G3 was also a game changer. It’s a 13MP unit which came equipped with optical image stabilization and something called laser auto focus. OIS was a huge deal because, well, the Galaxy S5 and HTC One M8 both did not have OIS and the new feature, laser auto focus, changed the game on how fast this phone could auto focus. Another good feature within the camera was OIS HD video, which resulted in smooth looking 4K video off your smartphone.

The last thing to mention here is battery life. The LG G3 came equipped with a 3000mAh removable battery, which provided enough power to run this thing for 4.5 hours of screen on time. That’s pretty darn good for someone who uses their phone heavily and takes advantage of all those pixels on a constant basis.

Now it’s time to shift gears and look at the things we didn’t like with the LG G3. Before the G3 was announced, we thought it was going to be all metallic but it wasn’t. It’s still made out of the same plastic LG G and G2 were made out of. But that’s not such a bad thing because it really didn’t feel that cheap in the hand plus it’s very lightweight.

Secondly, the software was very buggy at times. We definitely didn’t enjoy some of the hiccups during its early stages. But most of those have been worked out. But one software bug that still lingers around is right on startup lag. When things are loading like widgets, the phone is really unusable when you start it up.

Lastly, this phone was completely fragile. The screen picked up micro scratches from day one, major scratches if you really weren’t careful with it. And we’ve seen shattered and destroyed LG G3s all over the internet.

But all in all, the LG G3 was a major success for the company. Many of you enjoyed the phone last year and that was proven by all the smartphone rankings and all of your comments on our videos. And if I was looking for a last generation flagship pickup, this one would be high on my list of options. In my opinion, the LG G3 is still quite relevant in today’s market even with the LG G4 being days away from debut. But as phones go, the LG G3 has done quite a nice job of aging over the past year and will continue to do so for at least the next year or so.

But I’d like to hear what your thoughts are on the LG G3 and how it’s been aging over the past year in the comments below.