Score: 8/10 (Great)
Pros 5.2-inch 1080p HD display is one of the best we've ever seen, Snapdragon 800 CPU blows all other processors out of the water, 13MP camera with OIS takes beautiful photos, surprisingly great call quality. | Cons Plastic body feels quite cheap, rear button placement is awkward, inconsistent battery life, LG's custom software feels bloated and intrusive. |
This holiday season, you are going to have a lot of options to choose from if you are looking to buy a loved one a new smartphone. While choice is a great thing to have in a market, it can also make deciding what phone to get a very daunting task. One of the phones that you will have the choice of choosing is the LG G2. The G2 was released by LG back in September, and is still packing in some of the most insane specifications we have yet to see on a mobile phone. Can the G2's specs carry it through this holiday season as the best gift for your tech-savvy friend or family member? Find out in our full review!
Design/Build Quality
Although the LG G2 is packing in impressive specs, the same cannot be said for its design. The LG G2 is made entirely out of a glossy, black plastic, and to be frank, it looks quite ugly. The back and sides of the phone attract fingerprints and grease without any issue, and can make getting a firm grip on the G2 a bit of a challenge. Thankfully, there are two gentle curves on both sides of the back, and make the G2 rest fairly nicely in the palm of your hand. With that said, I miss the flat, glass back of the original Optimus G. Although the glass attracted fingerprints as well as the plastic on the G2, it gave the phone a bit of an elegant feel to hold in the hand. The glossy plastic on the G2 just feels cheap, and very reminiscent of a Samsung product. And while the G2 may feel like a Samsung phone with its plastic construction, it is still lacking expandable memory. The G2 is available in both 16/32GB storage options, but you won't find any microSD card slot on this phone here.
When it comes to the design of the G2, the real story lies in the placement of the hardware buttons. Unlike standard smartphone designs where manufacturers place the power button and volume rocker on either the sides of top of the phone, LG has taken those buttons, and thrown them onto the back of the G2. Below the camera lens you will find the G2's volume rocker and power/lock button in the middle of that. LG justifies the unconventional placement of the buttons by saying that it is more ergonomic to have buttons on the back of the phone, rather than on the side. So, does LG's claim hold true in real-world use? The answer, is no. Even after using the handset for more than a week, I still found it incredibly awkward to adjust my volume or lock my screen by pressing a button the back of the phone. It also caused for some frustration when I would lock my phone when I meant to adjust the volume of a video I was watching. LG gets some props for trying to bring a unique design element to the table with the G2, but I have to hold out for hope that LG will return the buttons to their standard spot with the G3, whenever that is released.
Hardware
Although the placement of the hardware buttons on the G2 aren't the best for adjusting your volume and locking your phone, they do bring along one huge benefit. And that benefit, is the screen bezel (or rather, the lack there of it). Since there are no hardware buttons on the side of the G2, LG has managed to create an edge-to-edge display on the G2 unlike anything we've seen before. Combine this with the 1920 x 1080p FHD resolution with 424 pixels per inch, and you're looking at a damn nice display. Watching videos, playing games, and browsing the Web feels outstanding on the G2's display. We've seen 1080p FHD screens before, but the G2 is easily one of the best I've used to date.
You know how I said that playing games on the G2 is outstanding? Well, while part of that has to do with its display, another big part of it has to do with its processor. The LG G2 is one of the first phones in the US to be rocking Qualcomm's Snapdragon 800 quad-core CPU clocked at 2.26GHz. This, along with the G2's 2GB of RAM, make it one of the snappiest phones I have ever used. Playing graphically intense games like Riptide GP2, streaming HD video, browsing the Web, taking pictures, multi-tasking, and more is all an incredibly fast and smooth experience on the G2.
The LG G2 hits a high point yet again with its camera. The G2 features a 13MP rear-facing camera with Optical Image Stabilization, as well as a 2.1MP camera on the front. The inclusion of OIS with the rear-camera allows for more stabilized and crisper images, as well as clearer low-light photos. In my testing with the phone, I was very impressed with the camera performance of the G2. Colors are represented accurately, details are sharp, and everything just turns out looking great. The camera is also no slouch when it comes to software features. The LG G2's camera packs in features for HDR, Panorama, VR Panorama, Beauty Shot, Time Catch Shot, and Cheese Shutter, just to name a few. If you're looking for a great performing camera in your next smartphone, the G2 is most definitely worth checking out.
The version of the LG G2 that I reviewed was running on Verizon's nationwide 4G LTE network. Call quality was surprisingly great for an LG phone, with excellent quality on both ends of phone conversations and never running into a dropped call. Data speeds were great as well. My download speeds on Verizon's 4G LTE network averaged out at 24Mbs with upload speeds averaging out at around 6Mbps.
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The LG G2 is packing in a rather large 3,000 mAh non-removable battery. In one of my full days of use with the phone, I was able to squeeze out 15 hours and 32 minutes of usage time with heavy-to-moderate texting, social networking, emailing, streaming YouTube videos, and playing Riptide GP2. With that said, I ran into some pretty big issues on another day of use with the phone. On one of my other full days of use, I only got 8 hours and 22 minutes of total usage time from the G2. This included the exact same usage as the previous day, with the inclusion of about 30 minutes of picture-taking. I ran into this same type of inconsistent battery drainage throughout my entire week of using the phone. For a phone who's other hardware specs are all at the top of their game, it was very disappointing to see the battery perform so weakly.
Software
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The LG G2 is running Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean out of the box, and is planned to get updated to Android 4.4 KitKat in the near future. However, LG has layered their Optimus UI over Android, and brings along buckets of software features and a cartoony appearance similar to that of Samsung's TouchWiz. Unfortunately, LG's custom interface just seems to get in the way of the overall Android experience. One of the best examples for how LG's software intrudes on Android is in how it handles multi-tasking. Along with the standard multi-tasking feature with Android Jelly Bean, LG has included QSlide and SlideAside for your multi-tasking needs. QSlide allows you to use a handful of smaller apps (e.g. Calendar, Calculator, Voice Mate, Email, etc.) over whatever else you have going on with the phone. The second multi-tasking feature, SlideAside, allows you to hide apps by swiping on the screen to the left with three fingers. After you've done this to three applications, you can swipe with three fingers to the right to hop into them again. While they may sound good on paper, I did not use these features even once when testing the phone. I toyed around with them when I first got the phone in to review, but soon forgot about them as they are far less productive and proactive than the standard multi-tasking feature found on all Android phones. Other software goodies thrown in by LG include Richnote, Quick Remote, Quick Translator, Notebook, Voice Mate, Smart Screen, Smart Video, and more. Using the LG G2 for a little more than a week made me desperately miss the simplicity of stock Android.
Final Verdict
In the intro to this review, we posed the question of whether or not the LG G2 would be a good choice of a gift for someone you know who wants/needs a new smartphone. And to answer that question, it certainly is worth taking a look at. The G2 has some of the absolute best hardware specifications we've seen on a phone this year, and they should be more than enough to carry you through two full years of use. However, because of its flawed design, battery life, and overall software experience, the G2 is held back from being a home run.
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