I' ve always been a fan of LG's past devices. I loved the G3 for its crazy good looking display and design. The G4 was sort of a spinoff of the G3 (only more refined). But then, LG introduced the G5 two months ago. If you paid any attention to most of the media, it's been getting mixed reviews. So let's talk about the LG G5 openly and honestly in this LG G5 Review.
First thing we need to talk about is the new design. The old G4 carried over the G3's design idea but infused it with a little bit of an LG G Flex 2 design by making it a little bit more squared off on the corners. The new G5 has adapted an entirely new design concept and some of the design cues from the LG G3, in my opinion. The rear of the G5 looks nothing like any previous LG phone. The only thing carried over is the backward facing power button. To me, it actually reminds me of the LG 5X but way more premium. And speaking of premium, there's been a lot of talk about this paint coating on the G5 making it less premium. While to me, the coating provides a fair amount of grip on what would be an extremely slippery phone due to the curved edges. Does it feel as premium as an iPhone 6s or the S7 or the HTC 10? No but it does feel hundreds of dollars more expensive than the last two G models from LG.
Hardware on the outside of the phone has also changed. Physically, the phone has decreased in size, which means the 5.5-inch display is no more. It now has a 5.3-inch QuadHD IPS LCD panel with a rating of 900 nits of brightness. It's extremely bright and clear and it's probably one of the best IPS panels I've seen in a very long time. Volume buttons have been placed on the left side of the device, which took some time getting used to. But after a few days, it felt like every other Android phone. Though most importantly, the G5 has a new 16MP camera on the rear next to an 8MP wide-angle camera. When paired up, these two will give you a 134-degree field of view for those ultra wide landscape photos. But beware, the crazy amount of distortion increases when using it.
Spec-wise, the G5 has it all. The Snapdragon 820 is running the show next to the latest Adreno 530 GPU, 4GB of RAM and 32GB of built-in storage make up the rest of the G5's internals. MicroSD card expansion still exists and now it's right next to the nano SIM card. And the huge thing with the G5 is its removable battery. Well, the G5 this year went unibody. That means that the death of removable batteries-- well, not exactly. The G5 is “The first modular mainstream device” you can buy today. So this little button on the left side of the phone will allow for the bottom piece of the LG G5 to slide out along with its 2,800 mAh battery. While this is a genius idea, the rest of the story lies with its “Friends.” These little things are all the different kinds of modules you can attach and get for your LG G5. And unfortunately, I don't have any to try out so I really can't comment on them. But the camera grip is definitely one of the most intriguing for me personally.
And while the hardware makes the muscle of the LG G5, the brains come from the software. Android-wise, it's running the latest install of Marshmallow but out of the box, it comes with a custom LG UI. And while it's decent to use, I've opted out for the Google Now Launcher, mainly to regain my app drawer. There were a couple of faults with the original software but it was mostly related to the app organization. This became a nightmare finding all of my applications on the numerous home screens I had. Though in both cases, the software runs flawlessly. You seriously can't go wrong with this amount of power packed in a phone. Though its stock software isn't exactly on par with the rest of the flagships, though the Google Now Launcher is a pretty good alternative for anyone.
Now let's talk about the camera. So unlike a lot of other flagships, the G5 sticks true to its 16MP camera size is slightly tweaked for better performance iteration of the LG G4's camera. However, next to its 8MP secondary camera, when those two are paired it's capable of taking a photo with a mega-wide 134-degree field of view. While it's a pretty neat party trick, it does distort like crazy and the quality isn't nearly as good as the 16MP unit on its own. I'll have a separate video comparing all the flagship camera soon. But in a few words, the G5's camera is good but not the best in 2016. The images are full of sharpness and detail but I wouldn't rank it number one in photo quality. Its 4K video, on the other hand, is pretty good. It has some insane stabilization that works wonderfully.
And the last thing I want to mention in this review is battery life. The G5 has a 2,800mAh, down 200 from the G4. It doesn't quite last all day, perhaps around 4 hours of onscreen on-time if you're a heavy user. Though when that does happen to you, you can either plug in and quick charge or you can slide the bottom and insert another battery.
So to wrap it all up, the LG G5 is a side step from the norm of a super smartphone. It packs all the same hardware you'd expect but has some caveats and the same software quirks. When compared to the S7 and other Android flagships on the market, the G5 seems like an alternative choice for those who want to keep the removable battery in the expense of expense. Money-wise, I'd choose the S7 any day. It's just a much nicer device to use. But if you really want a removable battery, then the G5 is basically the only device for you currently. But it's just not our top choice for an Android flagship.