Both Samsung and LG held press conferences on Sunday to announce their latest flagship phones: the S7 and S7 Edge for Samsung, and the G5 for LG. Excitingly, the two Korean companies took radically different approaches when designing their new phones.
The Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge are sensible iterations on last year’s redesign, with smoothed-off edges and fan-requested features. Conversely, the LG G5 feels like an entirely new phone, with a radical modular design and some incredible new capabilities. Where Samsung has refined, LG has reinvented — and for me, that’s by far the more interesting story.
A cleaner, stronger design
The LG G5 is the company’s first all-metal flagship phone, with an anodised aluminium design that immediately outshines last year’s textured plastic. The G5 retains the distinctive rear-mounted lock button of its predecessors, which this year has a fingerprint sensor built in (a la the Nexus 6P). The volume keys have been relocated to a more traditional location on the left, too.
A truly modular smartphone
You’ll find another change near the bottom of the phone: a tiny button that does something extraordinary. Press it, and the bottom of the phone will pop out, revealing the battery within. That lets you rapidly replace a spent battery with a fully charged backup, but you can also slide in new modules that add new features to the G5… modules that LG are sweetly calling ‘Friends‘.
For example, you could pop in the Hi-Fi Plus DAC module, providing you with a powerful 32-bit DAC and headphone amp produced in concert with audio experts Bang & Olufsen. Or you could slide in the Cam Plus, a chunky camera grip that provides a two-stage shutter button, a zoom dial and 1,200mAh of extra battery power. The possibilities here are impressive, and one can imagine that LG won’t hesitate to add new modules in the future.
Camera
Pluggable modules aren’t the only crazy addition to the G5. LG have also included a radical new dual-lens camera system, with a wide-angle 8-megapixel camera supporting the main 16-megapixel camera. That lets you capture an impressively wide field of view: 135°, far higher than the usual 75° you’d expect from a smartphone camera. Both cameras feature optical image stabilisation, too, which should make for some impressive photos.
Hardware
The 5.5-inch IPS display of the G4 shrinks to 5.3 inches on the G5, making for a denser 2560 x 1440 display with better viewing angles. Like Samsung’s S7 and S7 Edge, LG are also providing an always-on display, meaning you can always see the time, notifications and other black-and-white information. LG are using new ‘local backlight illumination’ tech to minimise the amount of battery consumed by the always-on screen; they peg it at 0.8% per hour.
Underneath the screen, you’ll find a Snapdragon 820 octa-core processor, backed with 4GB of RAM and 32GB of UFS storage expandable via Micro SD cards. The 2800mAh battery is smaller than last year’s 3000mAh model, although being able to swap batteries should partially obviate longevity concerns.
Software
The G5 will run Android 6.0 Marshmallow out of the box, with a few changes… like Samsung, LG have toned down their changes considerably over the past year, resulting in an experience much closer to stock Android. One change is LG’s launcher, which doesn’t have an app drawer, instead opting for an iOS-style home screen. However, replacement launchers should still be easy enough to install, so this isn’t a massive deal.
Accessories
As well as the plug-in modules, LG announced a nice range of ‘Friends’ for its new flagship phone. These include a super lightweight VR headset called the 360 VR (which uses its own display instead of your phone’s) and a 360° camera for recording VR footage.
LG also announced a Sphero-style smart ball, called the Rolling Bot. It’s essentially a remote-controlled (and partially autonomous) rolling ball, with a camera, microphone and even a laser. LG are billing it as a combination of mobile security camera and cat toy, which sounds pretty awesome to us.
Of course, LG are also supporting their new phone with a range of official cases, and numerous third parties are already making their own covers too. We’ll be stocking as many as we can get our hands on; check out our current stores via the buttons below.
LG G5 cases > LG G5 accessories >
Conclusion
The LG G5 is a refreshingly different smartphone, thanks to its clever modular design and intriguing dual-camera system. It’s not slacking on the fundamentals either, with extremely good performance and a beautiful all-metal design in gold or silver.
The G5 will go on pre-order next month for £500, with the first shipments starting in April. That’s a little later than the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge, which ship in March, but this impressive smartphone could definitely be worth the wait.
What do you think of the phone? Let us know in the comments below!