Review: LG G2

Where the Nexus 5 is the pure Android enthusiasts crown jewel of 2013 and the latest iteration of what the perfect (mobile) Google experience is, the LG G2 is what a true spec hound is after. While it is indeed far from pure Android and marred by a manufacturer skin (and hampered by slow updates), is the hardware inside enough to outweigh the aforementioned issues? Because let’s be honest, the hardware is class leading. It checks all the right boxes on paper (well, most) and does so for a reasonable price. All pieces of the puzzle that many of you are no doubt looking at.

Hardware: Design & Features

The most noticeable thing about the G2 is what’s missing – bezels. For a phone of this size, LG managed to cram in a larger than average display (5.2 inches) whereas competitors are flirting with ~5 inches. Is 0.2 inches really all that noticeable (or needed)? Not immediately. But use it for a few days to a week or two and the added size makes itself pleasantly known. The second part of this is the use of smaller than normal bezels. Seriously, they’re tiny. The G2 is mostly display with only small slivers at the top and bottom reserved for things like microphone, camera sensor, ear piece, etc.

The second most noticeable thing you’ll notice about the G2 is the unique/odd button arrangement; all of the buttons are located on the back of the device. On the AT&T model I’ve been using, the buttons are flush enough to not become annoying or burdensome but also not so flush that they’re overly hard to find without looking. (Verizon users might find the tweaked buttons on their model are actually a bit harder to find by feel.) At first the button arrangement was “odd” to me. But after a couple weeks, I’ve found them to be rather useful. Dare I say I prefer this layout better than traditional side mounted buttons? Speaking of which (side mounted buttons), there’s not a single one to be found. The uninterrupted sides, top and bottom of the G2 flow nicely into the front of the phone and it’s massive slab of glass covering the display.

Design wise the G2 isn’t a bad looker. It won’t win any beauty contests or captivate techies like the HTC One did, but… they managed to make a better looking device than Samsung. Granted, that’s not particularly hard. Still, it’s something to walk away with, no?

The back of the G2 is, like Samsung’s flagships, plastic, only on the G2 it has a faux carbon fiber-ish pattern. It doesn’t really add any value or increased perception of quality. It’s just…there. That said, the faux texture looks better to my eyes than the S4′s plain plastic back.

Mobile photographers will find the G2′s cameras a cause to celebrate. With 13 megapixels on tap and looking through an OiS lens, pictures can be great.

Wrapping up hardware, the rest is pretty textbook at this level: Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 CPU @ 2.2 GHz, Adreno 330 GPU, 2 GB of RAM and 32 GB of storage.

Camera, Software & Experience

Whereas Samsung has finally started to learn the art of refining instead of endless cramming more crap (software and hardware) onto their latest device, LG still has some room for improvement. For starters, the UI skin they slap on top of Android isn’t very well designed, it’s slow and it’s rather clunky, causing even this spec’d out power house to get laggy here and there doing even minor tasks. Feature wise there aren’t too many note worthy things to talk about either. Similar to Samsung, LG has built-in a feature that tracks your eyes and keeps the display from dimming and/or completely turning off when you’re looking at it. In my testing, the little icon that would appear to let you know the phone saw your eyes and was keeping the screen on accordingly rarely popped up. Granted, I have my lock time set rather high because I always manually lock it when I’m done doing whatever task at hand at that moment.

Really, LG has looked at what Samsung has done and tried to mimic many parts of their recipe. The note drawing functionality found on Samsung’s Galaxy S and Note devices is also present on the G2 and can be activated a myriad of ways, stored, saved, shared, etc. There’s a voice assistant, notes app, picture modes within the camera that look awfully similar to Samsung’s and more…that look like they were inspired by Samsung. Bad, not necessarily. But when you stop and really examine what LG is offering, it always ends up feeling very “me too” and not really anything unique.

Speaking of the camera…being that the G2 packs a pretty hefty camera that also features optical image stabilization, I was hoping for some pretty spectacular pictures. And for the most part, I wasn’t disappointed. The camera hardware combined with the rather stacked camera software makes taking pictures relatively easy and fun. The only qualms I had with the G2′s camera software/hardware were a tendency to actually over-brighten images (not necessarily a bad thing) and slow focusing at times. Other than that, the G2 is just as capable as the 5s, 1020 and Galaxy S4 for most scenarios.

As mentioned above, the scene mode selections (and even how they’re laid out) are very similar to the Galaxy Note and S series’ camera layout. Make of it what you will. It’s either a pro or a con depending on where you stand regarding Samsung’s camera software.

Battery Life

I’ve used and tested a lot of phones. And aside from a few models (most iPhones and a couple Android phones here and there), battery life on Android phones generally sucks. The G2, however, bucks the trend. Part of this is almost certainly thanks to software and hardware optimization by LG and of course “brute force” actions such as jamming a massive 3,000 mAh battery under the hood. Thanks to that massive battery and assumed optimization I rarely saw the G2 fall more than 1%/hour in standby or fail to make it at least 16-18 hours with 10%+ left in the tank. And for the first time, I’ve routinely found myself getting over 1 day of battery life with a combination of screen-on time and standby – something that is pretty much unheard of for me with pretty much every other Android phone to date.

For a heavy user such as myself, the only phones that come close to matching this type of battery life are the Motorola “MAXX” devices which also incorporate larger than average batteries in order to reach lengthy runtimes. Even the Galaxy Note 3 (one in house at the moment) which has a large battery itself and features most of the same battery conscious hardware doesn’t last quite as long as the G2. Seriously, whatever LG did at the hardware and/or software level really pays off. The G2 is a marathon runner without the typical bulk that one might expect.

Possibly the best Android phone on the market…

That title will either resonate well with you or get discarded as a load of B.S. You see, if all you care about is stock Android and timely updates, the LG isn’t the best phone for you. If, however, you’re also looking for other things such as battery life, a camera that doesn’t suck and some (at times) genuinely useful software additions, the LG G2 is quite the contender. It’s 90% of the Nexus 5 with a better battery and camera, if another view is needed. And if you’re somewhat versed in the world of rooting and custom ROMs, the G2 then jumps ahead of the Nexus 5 as it has access to all of the stock Android you could want with the notable improvements in hardware noted above.

While it’s been revealed that LG has sold far less G2s than they planned for, the fact remains that the price ($100-$200 on a two year contract) combined with class leading specs and awesome battery life make this an easy recommendation to most Android users, and easily one of my favorite Android devices ever. LG has a winner (albeit a sleeper) on their hands.