[G4 General] jamtre:
Great phone

My first post but I wanted to chime in on this thread. I have read this forum a lot since I am interested in root access. I feel like there is a vocal minority that hates the phone, primarily because of lack of root, and wanted to offer perspective from someone who's mostly a regular user.

I mostly love the phone. I previously had a Galaxy S4, and have had this for 3 weeks. There are many little things that make it overall a great piece of hardware.

- No buttons on the side. I can't tell you how much of a design improvement this. Never accidentally press anything, hold it how you want, put it in any clip-type mount, no issues. It takes about a day to get used to using the back controls and then it's joy.

- Phone feels great in your hand. It's the perfect size, shape and weight, and you can switch the on-screen navigation buttons so "back" is where I was used to it on the S4 (the right side). I never really felt comfortable holding the S4. Would often flip it out of my hand while trying to one-handed operate it.

- Beautiful big screen. The slight curve feels perfect in your pocket.

- The default launcher is actually very nice. Some nice little things like you can shove 7 across on the task bar and it will shrink the icons to fit them; good folders implementation; apps/widgets tabs. It's unintrusive and gets most stuff right.

- The IR blaster actually works.

- Mine is Verizon and annoyingly they disabled some features, but the only thing I really cared about I got back with a shortcuts (native phone number blacklist). And access Lock, vital.

- Shortcut to camera with volume-down button, nice. (And of course the camera is stunning)

- Battery life has been fantastic for me. I've gone two days on a single charge with moderate use. I don't keep the screen incredibly bright, though, this is definitely the biggest power sucker.

- No overheating issues. This was infuriating on the S4, I couldn't run Waze on a summer day without it literally shutting itself down half the time.

- And of course the whole reason I got this instead of an S6 in the first place... removable battery and my 128 gig of storage :)

I haven't had any touchscreen issues. I did install the OTA update which was pushed to my phone the same day I got it. (I hope I don't come to regret this w.r.t. root...)

So while I wish I could root it, the lack of root access isn't actually making my life miserable in any way. The only reason I rooted the S4 it was because of the lack of SD card write access under Kit Kat, and because Verizon pushed an update that actually broke the S4 causing random reboots which was fixable by removing Knox.

The SD card is not an issue with Lollipop. That said, once I had root access on the S4, of course I installed the Xposed Framework and played with stuff, like adding flashlight to my reboot menu (hey, this is already on the pulldown menu built into my G4!). But there is really nothing I couldn't live without.

So I'd love to be able to root this thing, but here's exactly what I am missing without root compared to the S4:

1. Full ad blocking (I can block over wifi with a proxy, so it's just an issue for cellular data)

2. Greenify that has native access to stop apps.

I have since just started using Greenify as my screen-off button and this is satisfactory (though I still see some apps like Skype that like to just resurrect themselves randomly, not much I can do here). The ad thing is not really that big a deal for me. I don't spend a ton of time reading ad-heavy web sites over cellular data, while I've certainly noticed ads a little more than I used to, it's not making me crazy. There's no dealbreaking functional issue such as I had with the S4 that makes me feel like I will cry if I never get root.

So there you have it, very happy LG G4 user.