OFFICIAL LG G3 Thread: Lets talk about the G3....

[Sable]

the two issues that I have not seen covered in the reviews is how well the display works outside and the quality of the sound (which totally sucked on the G2).

http://www.theverge.com/2014/6/4/5778556/lg-g3-review

Additionally, unlike Sony’s Xperia Z2, which struggles outdoors, the G3’s IPS display is bright enough to remain useful on a sunny day.

I was pleasantly surprised by the G3’s loudspeaker. Having recently sung the praises of the front-facing speakers on the HTC One and Xperia Z2, I have to commend LG for coming very close to both of them with its more conventional, rear-mounted single speaker. Its clarity and volume are excellent for undemanding but common uses such as listening to podcasts and watching video streams. The bundled QuadBeat 2 earphones are unchanged from the G2 and for good reason: they’re significantly better than what you typically find in a smartphone box and make it superfluous to buy a new pair for listening to music on the move.

 

[dawheat]

As a Note guys (N2 and N3), I have to say I'm really tempted with what LG has been doing recently.

While I don't want to step down in screen size to the G3, if the Note 4 ends up growing noticeably larger to achieve waterproofing (a la S4 -> S5), then I may very well jump ship to the G Pro 3 assuming LG follow's their recent pattern.

A 5.9" G Pro 3 with a 1440p screen, even smaller bezels so that it's about the size of the N3, and whatever the current top line hardware is would be killer.

 

[pete6032]

This phone looks great, can't believe there isn't more chatter about it.

 

[Apex]

This phone looks great, can't believe there isn't more chatter about it.

http://www.gsmarena.com/100_thousand_in_5_days__lg_g3_in_south_korea-news-8714.php

There probably will be at least some chatter.

While the rest of the world is waiting for availability those lucky enough to be in LG's home South Korea have been buying the LG G3 at a crazy pace. In its first 5 days of selling the LG flagship has reportedly passed the 100 thousand unit mark.

That makes sense since we knew it was outperforming its rival Samsung Galaxy S5 in a whopping fashion - 25-30K a day versus 7-8K for the Samsung flagship.

Last year's LG G2 saw around 10,000 units sold per day in its first 5 days which means the LG G3 is twice as good a sales performer.

 

[richierich1212]

Competition is great for us consumers 🙂.

 

[Rdmkr]

A 5.9" G Pro 3 with a 1440p screen, even smaller bezels so that it's about the size of the N3, and whatever the current top line hardware is would be killer.

that might be asking a bit much. There has hardly been any improvement in screen to body ratio from the G2 to the G3 and the Note 3 has a ratio that is very close to the G2's already. It also packs capacitive buttons so none of the screen area is sacrificed to a navigation bar.

I don't know the screen to body ratio of the G Pro 2, but my guess it's almost the same as the G2 and G3's already.

 

[Rdmkr]

From the GSMArena review of the LG G3:
http://www.gsmarena.com/lg_g3-review-1086p3.php

ok, this is where I'm jumping the bandwagon about QHD being a bad choice at this point. A 763:1 contrast ratio, down from the LG G2's 1300+ (gsm arena's number for the G2 is higher than what I more commonly see), is too much of a sacrifice for something with so few concrete benefits. And look at that browser endurance score; 6:40 down from the LG G2's 11:22 hours..!!

If making LCD QHD screens requires such a sacrifice in contrast ratio, QHD Amoled might be the thing to look out for. Those, by definition, won't have contrast problems.

Notice also that they're doing something really weird with the brightness slider calibration: 50% outputs only 1/6 of the brightness of 100% on the slider and about half as much as the average other phone does on 50%. This is probably a trick to hide QHD's impact on battery life. They're hoping that uncritical reviewers will put the slider at 50% or below in their battery life tests and then compare it to phones on the same slider percentage setting and call the test "fair".

http://www.gsmarena.com/lg_g3-review-1086p8.php

"We didn't notice any significant focus speed improvement brought about by the laser autofocus compared to other flagships" - disappointing, although if it matches the S5 it's still pretty damned good.

Looks like I'll be holding on to this G2 for a while longer.

 

[mnewsham]

"We didn't notice any significant focus speed improvement brought about by the laser autofocus compared to other flagships"

I thought the laser autofocus was to allow the OIS to focus faster, the problem with the G2 was always the focus speed. If it is now up to S5 in speed that is a MAJOR improvement over the G2. and it still has OIS where the S5 doesnt. I'd say that they got exactly what they wanted, the focus speed of other flagships, but including OIS. (unlike most other flagships)

 

[Rdmkr]

A pretty extensive Korean review for you to put through a translator (link to the conclusion; the combobox selector links to more pages):
http://www.playwares.com/xe/index.php?mid=maingame&document_srl=42190375

They're finding some problems with excessive heating and thermal throttling and brightness limiting resulting from it.

Their battery life results are terrible. These guys seem very meticulous about equalizing the brightness output between the devices they test. This is important when OEMs try to "game" the brightness slider calibration like LG does.

On the plus side, their contrast ratio measurment yields a more normal +/- 1000:1.

 

[cmdrdredd]

A pretty extensive Korean review for you to put through a translator (link to the conclusion; the combobox selector links to more pages):
http://www.playwares.com/xe/index.php?mid=maingame&document_srl=42190375

They're finding some problems with excessive heating and thermal throttling and brightness limiting resulting from it.

Their battery life results are terrible. These guys seem very meticulous about equalizing the brightness output between the devices they test. This is important when OEMs try to "game" the brightness slider calibration like LG does.

On the plus side, their contrast ratio measurment yields a more normal +/- 1000:1.

Well since all the other reviews are pretty positive and don't mention these specific things...I think it will still be the device to have. Google translate makes this almost unreadable and I can barely tell what they are saying about the device at times. Plus it is super short IMO, doesn't seem like they gave it any time. I don't see anything extensive. Maybe that's just because of the poor translation.

What devices did they compare this to? If they used anything not available here in the US I consider their review invalid for my usage. The direct comparison I am making right now is to the galaxy s5 and from what I have read I would be happier with the g3.

 

[Rdmkr]

I haven't seen anything from Anandtech or Erica Griffin yet. Other reviewers tend to be on the sloppy and uninformative side. I expect most to get fooled by LG's brightness calibration tricks and to not even notice things like a low contrast ratio or thermal throttling. I mean, if there's good positive reviews out there you want to discuss, provide a link.

you can see for yourself which models the koreans tested; their list has the most recent samsung, LG and apple models and some non-western ones.

The battery life test is here: http://www.playwares.com/xe/42190367

I think those battery life results from the Koreans could be a real deal breaker. For most people battery life is THE most important spec. Not an area where you can just brush off a near 3 to 1 disadvantage vs rival flagships.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Their list on your first review link isn't translated by Google. Maybe if you know just list it here.

..."good reviews" you say? What's to say that any positive review would be considered good for you?

How come the reviews here didn't show bad battery life eh? Oh its because thwy use it as most people would use it, not trying to force higher brightness all the time which would kill the battery life of any device. Thats a given. They say in at least one review that brightness lowers when you are doing something intensive with the device. Can you prove that no other device does this too? I bet you can't. Each of these reviews are much longer and provide much more info that is relevant to the average user than your supposed gold standard Korean review. I can predict what you will say now "all those reviews suck and don't provide tech details" yet every one of them has more information in multiple pages and are told from the perspective of a user and from that standpoint which makes much more sense to me. Use the device and tell us how good it is compared to another device or devices. Telling me the brightness level doesn't explain how it looks, telling me it throttles doesn't tell me if it is slow, and telling me the battery drains when you watch videos all day isn't surprising... That's been the standard for phones for a long time. I don't expect the battery to last 20 hours when I'm watching Netflix.

Note: I am on my phone so I have some mobile sites posted. Sorry

http://www.engadget.com/2014/06/05/lg-g3-review/
http://mobile.theverge.com/2014/6/4/5778556/lg-g3-review
http://m.androidcentral.com/lg-g3-review
http://m.techradar.com/reviews/phones/mobile-phones/lg-g3-1250581/review

 

[s44]

The idle and talk time will be fine due to battery size and chipset, but screen on is below phablet/current flagship standards. Going up a resolution was a mistake.

Check GSM Arena.

 

[cmdrdredd]

The idle and talk time will be fine due to battery size and chipset, but screen on is below phablet/current flagship standards. Going up a resolution was a mistake.

Check GSM Arena.

I dunno about you but I never use my phone web browser for 6 hours in a row on wifi (gsm arena tests on wifi) without being able to plug it in. 9 hours video time is perfectly fine too. Again I don't watch videos for 9 hours at a time without plugging my phone in or being able to.

Acceptable? Very much so IMO. Much better than what I am dealing with currently.

 

[dawheat]

Wow I seriously hope that web browsing numbers are wrong or there's a fix that LG is going to have before a US launch because it's just killer bad. Hopefully Anandtech's review can settle it as they do a good job at equalizing brightness between phones. It's almost embarrassing how bad most sites are about this. The high reflectiveness of the screen won't help outdoors either, which means you'll have to ramp the brightness to max to make it just OK.

These test values under ideal wifi conditions are NEVER representative of real life and only make sense in comparison to each other. On my work S4, I'll get 3 hours of web browsing when not on wifi.

If the G3 is worse than the S4 (which I thought was bad), then that's really bad. Standby and calltime on all phones these day are great - but that's not how most people use their flagship smartphones.

If having to play these brightness games and simply having poor on-screen battery life is the current trade-off for a 1440p screen, then I'm going to change my mind about the Note 4 having one unless AMOLED doesn't have the same tradeoffs. LCDs do need a stronger backlight as resolution ramps, which doesn't apply to AMOLED screens. However the drain on the SOC will be similar.

GSMarena web browsing:
Z2 11:32
G2 11:22
S5 9:36
M8 9:06
S4 7:24
G3 6:40

 

[cmdrdredd]

I have to ask...do you browse the web via wifi for 6 hours straight with no chance to charge? I am guessing no. These numbers are way beyond normal usages. Why do you care that a phone lasts 10 hours on wifi when running a web script? For normal usages it lasts all day. Don't people charge their phones at night? In the car? I don't get it.

If you are stuck like me and lose 10% battery in 20 minutes there is a problem. Otherwise...no. I don't see how GSM arena is anywhere close to real world usage conditions.

 

[dawheat]

I have to ask...do you browse the web via wifi for 6 hours straight with no chance to charge? I am guessing no. These numbers are way beyond normal usages. Why do you care that a phone lasts 10 hours on wifi when running a web script? For normal usages it lasts all day. Don't people charge their phones at night? In the car? I don't get it.

If you are stuck like me and lose 10% battery in 20 minutes there is a problem. Otherwise...no. I don't see how GSM arena is anywhere close to real world usage conditions.

Please read my post more carefully. My point is that these ideal tests are never representative of real life usage when you have background services running and syncing and you're using cellular data. So these are useful only in relation.

My work S4 in real world usage will get about 3 hours of on screen usage over say 8 hours before it's down to 15% , mostly surfing and checking email. That's bad and I need to consciously remember to charge it in the late afternoon. My personal Note 3 is substantially better and can get me to late night normally, though it still struggles on heavy days.

If the G3 is worse in usage tests, it paints a poor picture for real world usage. The S4 is just plain bad and 2014 flagships all got much better in this respect, along with the G2. It's close to a deal breaker for me for a new flagship to go back to the level of an S4.

 

[Commodus]

I would just take battery life estimates with a grain of salt for one key reason: as a rule, these first reviews are of Korean models that typically don't support local LTE, and even their 3G may be less than perfect. I'd like to see how they fare when they're not straining themselves so much by hunting for cellular signals.

 

[Rdmkr]

The idle and talk time will be fine due to battery size and chipset, but screen on is below phablet/current flagship standards. Going up a resolution was a mistake.

Check GSM Arena.

I suspect it's because they're not testing with QHD resolution video, meaning that LG's adaptive resolution trick kicks in. There's nothing really wrong with that; if anything it's positive. But I get the impression that whenever you do anything that makes use of QHD your battery life tanks.

 

[cmdrdredd]

I would just take battery life estimates with a grain of salt for one key reason: as a rule, these first reviews are of Korean models that typically don't support local LTE, and even their 3G may be less than perfect. I'd like to see how they fare when they're not straining themselves so much by hunting for cellular signals.

In one review, I forget which. They mention that LG warned them that the software that the Korean version has isn't 100% when it comes to battery optimization. Something to do with the radio. Will the localized one in the US fair better? Could be...and it can get better with future updates as well maybe too.

Still I like real world usage numbers. One review said that for real usage day to day it lasts all day before the low battery warning pops up. That included texting, talking, youtube, & web browsing. Not a continuous script that doesn't emulate someone's actual usage anyway. If I can sit there and watch videos for 9 hours like GSM Arena suggests that is way beyond what I'd ever do and it would last probably a good 80% longer than my S3 does now due to what is probably a combination of custom rom not optimizing the battery enough and the age of the battery. For me, browsing the web on LTE on my S3 eats up 10% in no time. This would be a night and day difference and the G3 has a slimmer OS package than some other options. That might be nice as well.

It seems to me that there are some unrealistic expectations for battery life these days. You know that guy who swears his iPhone lasts two days? I bet he doesn't have the screen on more than 20 minutes of that time.

 

[s44]

It seems to me that there are some unrealistic expectations for battery life these days. You know that guy who swears his iPhone lasts two days? I bet he doesn't have the screen on more than 20 minutes of that time.

You must have an old or battery-guzzling device. Certain phones since the Note 2 have actually delivered two days of real device use... and the current flagships/phablets can hit two days of heavy use.

Of course no one sits there just watching video on the phone without doing anything else. But what that test result tells you is that screen-on, generally the biggest limiting factor for battery life, will rip through the G3's capacity faster than its competition's. That's a major step back from the G2.

 

[Dari]

You must have an old or battery-guzzling device. Certain phones since the Note 2 have actually delivered two days of real device use... and the current flagships/phablets can hit two days of heavy use.

Of course no one sits there just watching video on the phone without doing anything else. But what that test result tells you is that screen-on, generally the biggest limiting factor for battery life, will rip through the G3's capacity faster than its competition's. That's a major step back from the G2.

Phones only do that brand new. You cannot get two days after 6 months. One day, max.

 

[dawheat]

Phones only do that brand new. You cannot get two days after 6 months. One day, max.

Unless you can change the battery 🙂

 

[dawheat]

You must have an old or battery-guzzling device. Certain phones since the Note 2 have actually delivered two days of real device use... and the current flagships/phablets can hit two days of heavy use.

Of course no one sits there just watching video on the phone without doing anything else. But what that test result tells you is that screen-on, generally the biggest limiting factor for battery life, will rip through the G3's capacity faster than its competition's. That's a major step back from the G2.

I don't think my usage pattern is that unusual, but between a S3, Note 2, Nexus 4, Note 3, G2, and S4, only the Note 3 and G2 have been able to get me comfortably through a reasonably busy full day (down to 15-20% at midnight, 4-5 hours of on screen time).

Even they can't get me through a full heavy day of use (say at the US Open all day). The S4 can't even get to the evening of a normal day before dying.

So to me Note 3 battery life is the minimum now - anything worse is unacceptable.

 

[BassBomb]

I don't even know what to get now