The LG G7 Review: A Rushed Attempt?
by Andrei Frumusanu on August 9, 2018 11:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- LG
- Mobile
- LG G7 ThinQ
- LG G7
Battery Life
Performing the battery life tests on the G7 was a daunting task as the display makes it extremely difficult to maintain a set brightness. While in daily usage this is not an issue, it has extremely aggressive APL brightness scaling / CAB (Content adaptive brightness) with swings of up to 100nits on the backlight intensity.
For the browsing test, I actually had to set the display brightness to a level that took into account the average APL over the duration of the whole web test cycle as to maintain an overall average 200 nits brightness on the backlight. Least to say, battery testing on the G7 is extremely challenging due to this.
The resulting battery life run for the web-browsing test was quite good as the G7 ended up with a runtime just shy of 10 hours. Considering the phone’s 3000mAh battery, this is an overall good result and well in the range of other Snapdragon 845 devices. As expected, the smaller battery didn't handicap the phone in comparison to the G6, as the SoC efficiency gains compensate for the 10% smaller battery and actually goes beyond that, outlasting the G6 by an hour and a half.
PCMark’s battery run ended up with only 7 hours, although because of the aforementioned display brightness variations I’m not all that confident in this result as I adjusted the screen to the best of my abilities.
Overall the G7 perfromed quite well in the battery tests. Again it’s to be noted that subjective battery life of the phone will very much depend on your screen brightness usage patterns, and the lower brightness you will use, the worse will the G7 fare against other devices. The brighter you drive the phone, the better it will fare against other competitors.
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johntmosher - Thursday, August 9, 2018 - link
My LG G4 died from Boot Loop a little over a month after the warranty expired. Verizon and LG did not offer anything to make up for the fact that it was sold to me at a time when they already knew about the Boot Loop failure rates. LG and Verizon are both on my shit list and will stay that way for quite some time.takeshi7 - Thursday, August 9, 2018 - link
I don't care about waterproofing on my phone. LG needs to bring back removable batteries. That's the whole reason I bought their phones. If I want waterproofing I'll go out and buy a waterproof case.UtilityMax - Friday, August 10, 2018 - link
Just buy a power bank. Removable battery as a run time extender is as inconvenient as it gets. Also, some of those low-end smartphones with A53 CPUs as their main cores can get an amazing run time. I can forget to charge my honor 6X and it can still last through the day with just 40% in the morning.jabber - Saturday, August 11, 2018 - link
Yeah I have a LG G4 which has been a great phone but this September I am coming up for three years with it and was going to replace it (probably a G6). However, I remembered I could change the battery and really the G4 still does everything I need so I just got a new battery. Sorted for another year at least...Dragonstongue - Thursday, August 9, 2018 - link
so even higher specs with a low Mah battery, for shame..."modern" smartphones IMO especially the ones that have high to very high end (for phone) specs should not hamper them with "normal" size batteries that tend to be in the range of 2200-3200 they should be targeting a minimum of 3200-4200 range, especially when they have the space to cram a larger battery in there (which many of them do)I just don't get t when "knock off" brands manage to often use a better display AND larger battery, shame of the bigger companies expecting as much $ as they can think to get away charging and using a dinky little battery....example even lower spec G4 Play had a 2800Mah battery REMOVABLE, this is much higher spec but barely any increase in battery capacity, I do not give a crud what OS version it is using, the capacity of the battery matters very much >:(
Xex360 - Thursday, August 9, 2018 - link
The notch again no innovation especially from LG, I had the V20 and the second screen can be very useful and didn't ruin the whole experience, the G6 were nearly perfect beside the decision to use a year old SOC plus no wireless charging.hirschma - Thursday, August 9, 2018 - link
The LG V35 is what should be the flagship. Better specs, better display, more memory, plus the audio, wide angle camera and 845 from the G7. I've had mine for a week, and it's definitely the best phone I've ever had.Hubb1e - Thursday, August 9, 2018 - link
I got this phone after some bad experiences with Samsung and this is the most accurate review of it I've seen to date. The biggest downside for the G7 is the unreliable camera. Some shots are okay, some are downright bad. And most reviewers don't shoot pictures of moving subjects, but the G7 consistently misses focus on moving subjects. All the issues with the camera in this review I've seen in my use. Most of it I think is related to it's inability to auto focus on the correct subject. When using manual focus, the camera actually takes good pictures.The rest of the phone is actually really great. I don't notice the color calibration in regular use, and the speaker is great even if other flagships also offer great speakers. The size of the phone is the best out there. It is comfortable and has a large screen without feeling too wide to hold and use in one hand. While I do mostly use BT headphones, I have a range of wired headphones and when I use them they sound amazing on the G7 in comparison to other phone's weak headphone output.
And the last great feature, but one that was not touched on in this review, is the outstanding idle battery life of the G7. Even with the always on display enabled, the G7 barely loses any charge when idle. If I don't use my phone very much, I can end the day with 80% of my battery life left. Most days I have 40-50% of battery left over even taking pictures, making calls, watching videos, and browsing the web. In comparison to Samsung phones I've had that can lose 5% an hour at idle, the idle power use of the G7 makes it outlast every other phone I've ever used.
SkyBill40 - Thursday, August 9, 2018 - link
I have a V30 after having upgraded from a V10 a while back. Personally speaking, I'd rate the V series above the G series but that's just me. I can say that I've been quite satisfied with my V30 and given how close to each other these phones happen to be, it wouldn't be worth it to "upgrade."LG has come a long way with their phones (that boot loop issue was a killer) and are genuinely competitive with every other high end device out there.
Lavkesh - Thursday, August 9, 2018 - link
Its amazing how average these so called Android flagships are when compared to the iPhone where every details is thought out. The worst thing is that they arent cheap either.