[G4 General] Harlequin 80:
Morning All,

Thought I would share my thoughts on the LG G4 after owning it for a month. I use the in a business environment where I will spend 2-4 hours per day talking on it, so my review will come from that perspective more that from a gaming perspective. It was this difference in usage pattern that I thought may interest people.

Currently I have made no real changes to the setup of the device, it is still running stock everything and is a Telstra H815K model.

The look and feel of the device is excellent and gives a real feel of quality. I went for the brown leather option and to date it is completely un-marked by any signs of wear. When I first picked up the phone I was really surprised by how light it was. It is not a small device but it feels very very light and initially it feels like you are holding a toy. I think if you were to hold another phone at the same time you could be forgiven for saying it felt cheap due to the lightness but away from other phones you soon forget that comparison and just appreciate the fact it doesn't weigh a tonne. And really, no one says a Macbook Air feels cheap because it's light.

The leather back is a really really nice differential and I have had people ask what the case was and where they could get something similar. At only a month in I would expect a traditional back to still be pristine, but I had some concerns over the durability of the leather. Suffice to say that it looks exactly the same today as the day I got it. I will say though that my impressions of the black leather back were no where near as positive, as it had the look and feel of the fake leather patterning you often see on the inside of car doors.

Physical layout of the phone works well and it sits well in my hand. The narrow bezel around the screen means the phone is physically small compared to others with the same viewing area, with the draw back that sometimes my pudgy palm can just cross over into the sensor area of the screen. This does only happen when I am playing a game in portrait mode with two hands though so the impacts are limited.

I only have one criticism of the physical design and that is you cannot use the phone effectively if it is on a hard flat surface. This is due to the butt seam in the leather back acting as a pivot point and causing the phone to rock side to side. A usage case for me is to have the phone sitting on my desk and to type a text message on it. This is simply not possible with this phone.

The screen is excellent. Colours are very well reproduced and the colour balance is one of the best I have come across. When I have done a colour balance comparison the phone comes up a little on the blue side. But that for me is a lot nicer than the yellow you see on most other phones. It is also no where near the saturation levels of Samsung. I get no light bleed or detectable changes in brightness or colour and if there are pixels there somewhere they are way too small for me to see :P

Battery usage for me has been fine in most usage cases. By the end of the work day my phone is reporting that voice calls are using the same amount of battery as screen time, about 30%, and a full battery at 7am will be sitting around 35% come 6pm. In the evening though I have found that the battery will get annihilated by some of the games I am playing. Clash of Clans for example will chew 25%-30% of the battery per hour. That said those games smash my Nexus 9 as well.

Even when I am playing games for extended periods, usually plugged into the mains, I don't find heat to ever be a problem. The phone gets a little warmer than ambient but nothing more. I'm not sure if that is a side effect of the leather back or if the phone actually does run pretty cool but this phone is noticeably cooler than any phone I have owned or used in recent years.

Interface wise the default LG interface is ok. It's not brilliant but it's not completely sucky. It takes more grunt than it really should and the smart bulletin thing is frankly useless but I have used worse (not really a ringing endorsement I know). I've not had any issues with touch sensitivity or lag that I have seen others report and overall the interface feels as smooth as a device this powerful should feel. I will probably dump it when a custom rom is up and running nicely but that will be more about getting rid of the LG apps I will never use. My biggest complaint is the stupid smart notification system, seriously that is an oxymoron if ever there was one. I make lots and lots and lots of phone calls to lots and lots of different people, it's my job! Just because I called a number 3 times in the last week does NOT mean I want to add them as a new contact! So stop filling up my notification tray with "Frequent calls to xxxxxxxxxxxx. Add to contacts?" No! GO AWAY! DIE!!!! Seriously DIE!!!!

Camera is frankly excellent. I particularly love the speed at which it will take the first photo. Use the setting to "take photo on app start" and you can have a photo taken in around a second from pulling the phone out of your pocket. Most of my photos are of action shots of kids running around, and as anyone with kids knows you take 100 photos in the hope of catching one with you kids not looking like complete weirdos. The phone will take photos rapidly, keep moving targets in focus and the quality of the photos are good. When it comes to the manual aspect of the camera, honestly I think that is a bit of a wank. I'm sure it is very very good, but if I am going to take the time to mess around with f-stop and iso settings I will probably just use my SLR. Cameras in phone are replacements for your snappy camera, not a substitute for a SLR.

When it comes to sound quality, I use my phone as a phone not as a media player, so I can only comment on the telephone calls and they are good. Reception is also good being much better than my Note 2 or LG G2 ever were. Talking about reception though I have found the 5g wireless reception to be noticeably worse than other devices and I have had to stick my phone on 2.4g in order for it to have connectivity everywhere in my house. Other devices haven't had that problem.

Wireless charging and quick charging are a non-issue for me in my usage case so I don't have a reason to complain about those though I'm sure they would be a nice to have. Replaceable battery and microsd cards were however a big consideration in my choice. I still have an old Note 2 in use in my house, which is still trucking along after having a new battery put in it. I have also got an Lg G2 which was my first and only sealed phone which is now a useless paperweight as it will only hold charge for about 45 minutes of screen time. (yes I know I can replace the battery but why make it hard?) Phones are getting more and more powerful and the days of needing the next generation, as opposed to wanting, are gone. I now expect my $700 device to be usable for more than 2 years.

Overall I would highly recommend this phone. The things that are missing from it, QI charging, fast charging, finger print stuff, are not core things for me. I would have liked it to have had a slightly larger battery in it but that is offset by the ability to swap the battery at any time. The lightness was an unexpected plus and the screen is excellent. It has also become one of the cheapest flagship devices on the market, making it hard to go past. OEM software is always a bit dodgy but compared to the G2 & G3 it is a big improvement and it is much better than Sumsung's offering.