South Korean giant LG has been improving its G series of smartphones since they started with it. The latest iteration G5 has industry first features which will definitely compell you to have a serious look at this device if you are in the market for a premium smartphone. We have used LG G5 for few days and find this phone to be very impressive and is capable of giving stiff challenge to other premium smartphones such as Samsung’s Galaxy S7 and HTC 10.
In this article, we shall discuss five cool features of LG G5 which are its camera capabilities, Always on Display, performance, removable battery and of course its price factor.
In its preimum phones, LG is focussing a lot on the camera features as more and more users now turn to their smartpones to click images for all purposes. They do not want to carry with them bulky DSLR cameras even for important events. The highlight of G5 is that it comes with two cameras on the rear: Standard 16MP with a 78-degree lens, OIS and f/1.8 aperture which will be good enough for capturing most of your images. The second camera has 8MP sensor with f/2.4 aperture and wide-angle 135 degree lens which makes it easier to capture more landscape, taller buildings or larger groups.
We reproduce below two images clicked with different lens and see the difference. With normal lens:
with wide-angle lens:
With normal lens:
with wide lens:
This phone also houses an 8MP front camera with f/2.0 aperture, which is decent enough for capturing good selfie in daylight or even in the fading light or in the night. The camera of G5 also provides different modes such as multi-view, panorama, slow-motion and time-lapse.
On this camera, you can shoot videos even in 4K resolution and results of full HD videos are also excellent. The Optical image stabilisation (OIS) is quite useful feature when you are capturing videos while on the move or can’t keep the phone in stable holder for shooting video. All in all, the camera of G5 has all the ingredients to be dubbed as superb camera.
The LG G5 features a collection of powerful photo effects including Pop-out Picture, Film Effect and Auto Shot. Pop-out Picture combines images taken by the standard and wide angle lens to create a picture-in-a-frame effect.
The camera is embellished with many features and color reproduction is excellent. It produces sharp and bright images with excellent details. We have clicked few images with this camera in different lighting conditions, which are reproduced below and you can see your self how vibrant they look:
The LG G5 features a 5.3-inch Quad HD IPS Quantum display (2560 x 1440 / 554ppi) with Always-on feature, the first on a mainstream smartphone display. The size of the display is an ideal for a smartphone. The concept of the Always-on Display was first introduced by LG only in the LG V10 as the Second Screen and now that feature has been introduced in G5 also, to show the time and date continuously even when the G5 is in sleep mode. This means that you can always see the time at a glance even when you are occupied with important work.
The display of this phone gives excellent viewing for enjoying movies and playing games as it reproduces vibrant colors which are not oversaturated. The other advantage of this disply is that it is quite legible even in sunlight.
The G5 has a sleek, metal aluminum uni-body featuring a Slide-out Battery and a Modular Type design. With its Slide-out Battery feature, one can easily swap out a depleted battery for a fully charged one in seconds. This is an innovative feature and we have seen this feature for the first time on a premium phone. This phone is packed with 2800mAh removable battery which incorporates Quick Charge 3.0. Desspite the fact that it has become a norm now to power the smartphones with 3000mAh battery upwards yet we have observed that in our daily usage for making calls, accessing social media platforms, gmail accounts quite frequently and playing games for around 30 minutes and occasional checking Youtube, the battery has lasted for around 10 hours, which is quite satisfactory performance.
This phone has been provided with very powerful processor and good RAM and storage capabilites. It is powered by the latest Snapdragon 820 processor which offers advanced features such as 64-bit performance and Adreno 530 graphics, which has capability of up to 40 percent faster graphics performance and up to 40 percent more power efficiency compared to the previous generation. To test the performance of the phone, we have played various heavy intensive games and this phone gives you very good performance without any lag. Surprisingly, we did not experience any heating issues in this phone. This phone runs on Android Marshmallow 6.0 OS and switching between the apps and multitasking on this phone works like a breeze.
The LG 65 comes with 4GB LPDDR4 RAM which is more than sufficient and 32GB of internal storage which is little bit let down as 64GB is normal for premium devices, but the saving grace is that it can be extended upto 2TB via microSD card. This phone has hybrid sim slot which means you can either use two sims or one sim and one microSD card.
The G5 also scores high points on connectivity as it supports 4G LTE on both TDD Band 40 and FDD Band 3. We have used this phone with our Airtel 4G connection and never faced any problem with the networks. This phone also offers other connectivity options of Bluetooth 4.2, NFC, USB Type-C port. This phone has very good call reception and audio quality is also good despite the fact that it has single speaker. This phone also incorporates fingerprint sensor on the back home button, which is very fast and has never failed us in recognising our registered fingers.
The LG G5 was launched in India in the month of June at Rs. 52,990 and that time it was looking a bit expensive. But currently, it is available for around Rs. 41,000 and to be frank with you, at this price this phone is certainly very attractive if you want a compact phone in with powerful camera and other impressive hardware features.
