So it looks just how it was rumoured and the majority of reactions that we saw were negative. Are we just jumping the gun and passing our views without knowing the whole picture? That was the case during the Nexus 6P by Huawei with many throwing shade at the Stormtrooper visor. In the end, we warmed up to the idea and design.
Will we embrace the same scenario this time? Well, let’s take a look at what the LG G5 has to offer.
Let’s first start on paper and where else better to start than the screen it has: a 5.3-inch Quad HD (2560 x 1440) display. Handling all its computing is Qualcomm’s crème dela crème Snapdragon 820 processor and it gets some help with plentiful of RAM – 4GB to be exact. There’s only one storage option listed at 32GB of internal memory but that’s when the special Magic slot comes into the picture.
The South Korean manufacturer has done away with its plastic removable backs and the G5 is proof that they’re warming up to the metal unibody design language – metal is the new black after all. But when companies go for metal they have to sacrifice some nifty features that had fans of Samsung devices going berserk: a removable battery and microSD card.
LG could’ve taken some inspiration from HTC seen on the Legend, they’ve done a much better job here as it looks a lot better. Popping the bottom chin off will allow you to swap out the battery and add some of its LG Friends accessories. They’ve also found a way to keep the microSD slot on board with expandability up to 2TB in theory.
Since the pop out is on the chin now the rear has nothing to swap about but the familiar back placed fingerprint sensor is still there, also doubling as a home button. LG did away with their usual volume rockers and power button with only the volume toggles now on the left side.
They’ve also decided on a horizontal camera module setup for the main camera(s) that provide a 135-degree wide angle stills. It’s possible thanks to two cameras a main 16-megapixel sensor complete with OIS and 8-megapixel secondary camera. Selfies, on the other hand, is taken care of an 8-megapixel shutter.
Powering all this and charging via the port of the future (USB Type-C) is a small-ish 2800mAh lithium ion battery. We’re lucky that the G5 arrives with Quick Charge 3.0 and LG claims it’ll charge from 0% to 80% in only 35 minutes. While, the sole screen on the device has an always on display feature. Despite having the rather small battery, you’ll definitely appreciate that the always on display that only uses 0.8% of battery per hour.
On the software front, as we expected it’ll run Android Marshmallow out of the box with LG’s own UI skin laid on top. Sadly the model that they showed off at MWC 2016 was a single-SIM 4G LTE model but we have our fingers crossed that they may be a Dual-SIM variant for other markets.
Whenever you buy a smartphone you’re not only buying one device, it’s usually accompanied by accessories that make the experience better. We looked at the awesome add-on modules and peripherals that was called LG Friends here.
LG’s latest flagship will come in four colours, Silver, Gold, Titan (Charcoal) and Pink.
