LG G5 review

A better approach to battery swapping

The company’s materials choice notwithstanding, I think LG has finally landed on a good compromise for its battery-swapping scheme.

In the new system, you power down the phone, press a button on the side of the body, wiggle out the “chin” that serves as an end-cap for the chassis, and then slide out the cartridge that holds the G5’s 2800 mAh battery. From here, you unseat the battery by sort of “breaking” it off the chin. It feels like a violent motion that will damage the chin’s seating point, but I tested the procedure ad nauseum, and the materials appear to hold up. I have confidence in the new swapping system, overall.

At first glance, the chin doesn’t look horribly incongruous with the chassis to which it connects, especially when you’re looking at the front of the phone. However, if you look at the back of the phone, you’ll see a prominent seam between the two pieces—it immediately telegraphs that you’ll never be dunking the G5 in water.

If you go one step further, and hold up the G5 to a bright light and look very closely, you’ll see that there are slight gaps between the chin and the unibody. I can imagine some loose clothing threads—or, in my case, dog hairs—getting snagged in these crevices. I think the real-world impact of the gaps is marginal, but simply from a philosophical design perspective, this is the kind of thing that would have gotten an Apple designer fired during the Steve Job era.

I never found myself swapping batteries with the G3 and G4 because prying off the plastic back panel was a pain in the ass. So, for this reason alone, the improved system might compel me to finally to get with LG’s swapping program. But here’s an even more compelling reason for battery swaps: The G5 falls behind its competitive set in terms of raw battery life.

With a time of 6:33 in the PCMark battery life test, the G5 has noticeably less longevity than the Galaxy S7 (7:15) and Galaxy S7 Edge (8:17). Accordingly, the G5 lagged behind in the Geekbench 3.3 battery test as well, lasting for 6:03 to the S7’s 6:56 and S7 Edge’s whopping 7:59.

Beautiful display with a near-useless always-on feature

LG’s battery has to drive an insanely high-resolution 5.3-inch “Quad HD” display. Last year’s G4 has the same 1440x2560 resolution, but measures 5.5 inches. I typically like my phones as large as possible, but during testing I never noticed the G5’s slight dimension decrease, and LG’s IPS LCD display is as beautiful as ever. I did notice a small amount of backlight bleed with the Fullscreen Display Test app, but my review unit didn’t suffer enough bleed to be a tangible problem issue during real-world use.

On the flipside, LG’s new always-on feature—which shows the current time and notification icons when the phone is sleeping—is insanely dim compared to the Galaxy S7’s similar implementation (which benefits from Samsung’s Super AMOLED screen).

Just as troubling, LG’s always-on feature doesn’t share helpful information: You can only see which apps have waiting notifications. I much prefer Google’s Ambient Mode, a similar feature in pure Android Nexus phones, which presents much more granular detail, like the content of texts and Hangouts messages.

LG still supports its Knock Code feature to wake the display from sleep, but now the system requires six screen taps (instead of four) to unlock the phone. I’ve always loved Knock Code, but throughout testing I used LG’s new fingerprint sensor almost exclusively to unlock the phone. Like the Nexus 6P’s sensor, LG’s is superfast and accurate, and sits on the back of the phone.

It’s a slightly less convenient position than the front-of-phone sensor orientation you’ll find on Samsung and Apple phones, but it undoubtedly helps preserve the G5’s compact dimensions. Indeed, LG’s display seems to make use of every millimeter of available space, and putting the sensor in the front would probably just increase the G5’s height.

LG’s fingerprint sensor is smaller than the Nexus 6P’s sensor, but the decrease in size never posed any problems during a week of use. LG’s sensor also integrates directly with the power button—which means the power button remains stuck on the back of the phone. But at least LG finally moved its volume controls to the side of the body. This makes adjusting music volume during the middle of a workout a bit less awkward.

Strong performance with a missing app drawer

Armed with the same Qualcomm 820 processor that appears in Samsung’s Galaxy S7, the LG G5 performs similar to its direct competitor. In PCMark’s Work Performance productivity test, the G5 scored 5686, where the Galaxy S7 hit a slightly higher 5774. In 3DMark’s Sling Shot ES 3.1 gaming test, the G5 scored 2309 to the Galaxy S7’s 2554. Throughout all our other benchmarks, the G5 trailed the Galaxy S7 by similarly small margins, and none of the performance deltas were wide enough to be of any concern. More importantly, the G5 doesn’t stutter or lag during real-world use.

On the software side of the equation, LG mostly executed small tweaks to its skin of Android Marshmallow. There are some changes to the Settings interface, but they won’t piss you off. You’ll just think, “Hmmm. That’s different.”

But when you get to the bottom of your home screen, brace yourself. Out of the box, the G5 ships without an app drawer—and that’s just madness if you’re a long-time Android user who’s come to rely on the app drawer for finding, sorting, and simply storing apps.

In its reviewer’s guide, under a section titled “Advanced UX,” LG says managing apps has become more and more complicated, and asserts its new “integration” of home screen and app drawer is “expected to provide a more straightforward approach to app management.”

In LG’s new world order, you can sort apps by name or download date; create different grid arrangements (4x4, 4x5 or 5x5); and hide apps by checking which ones you want to banish from the home screen. But, no, you can’t have an app drawer unless you download a separate launcher.

Installing the Google Now launcher brings back the app drawer. You can also download LG SmartWorld, do a search for Home 4.0, and install that add-on to bring back the app drawer. LG tells me this will become an over-the-air update later this month, so, clearly, LG’s Leeroy Jenkins foray into “Advanced UX” is being reconsidered.

Next: Camera