We are officially switching to the retail LG G6 in preparation for our full review. While we have spent several weeks with the pre-production model, we'll be looking closely to see if LG has managed to improve the software experience in the final version. Please let us know if you have any questions you'd like us to answer in our full review.

Today I will be taking the SIM card out of the LG G6 I have right here and putting it into the LG G6. So I’ve been using the pre-production LG G6 for several weeks now, ever since I released the 24 Hours with LG G6 video; which has been a little over a month ago. Now it’s a pre-production model so the software and hardware are not finalized. So LG sent me the official LG G6, the retail version so I’ll be switching to that.

There are some things I’ve noticed right away since I’m switching from the black LG G6 to the silver or platinum LG G6. I liked the platinum color as it already seems like it picks up less fingerprints than the black model I was using prior and you can see the glass back appears to have a brushed metallic appearance that I think looks really good. The black LG G6 doesn’t really show that brushed metal finish at all.

I’ve also noticed some drawbacks. Up front, you’ll find that beautiful almost edge to edge 5.7-inch display. But since the bezels are silver (the whole phone is silver), you actually see the slight black border around the display, which ultimately takes away from the experience. You’ll see a very apparent 1mm or so border around the display and I don’t find that very aesthetically pleasing. That border becomes invisible when the bezel and the phone itself is black. So if you’re thinking about color choice, you might want to go with the black LG G6, even though it does pick up more fingerprints.

The software is also different. Both devices are running the most up-to-date software and we’ll see that if we go to the About section of each device, we’ll see that the Android security patch level on the retail G6 has been updated on March 1^st also the base band version, Kernel version and software version, are also newer. Whether or not that translates to an improved experience is to be determined, of course.

What I want to see improved is app scaling and app compatibility, in general. Most of the issues I’ve experienced are result of the app itself and not really LG. For example, Snapchat runs horribly on the pre-production LG G6 but I do know that it doesn’t run that well in general on Android smartphones. Android Nougat brings an app scaling feature to the operating system so the ball was in the developer’s court so to speak. They are the ones that ultimately have to update their applications to appropriately scale them for 18:9 displays like the display on the LG G6.

I’m hoping the camera app is improved. Image quality is very good but the app itself is very slow to load. I was at a concert last week and every time I wanted to take a photo, I had to wait several seconds before the app loaded before I was actually able to take a photo. There’s a preview option so you can see the last five or so images above the camera app when the app is loaded that I had enabled so maybe that’s what slowed the performance down. I’ll try to disable that feature to see if the performance improves.

But those are my main concerns. I look forward to testing this phone out and producing a full review in the next week or so. I already feel like I know how to rate this phone based off my time with it, my time with the pre-production model that is. But I do want to spend some time with the retail variant to see if anything has been noticeably improved.