LG G2 and MSM8974 Snapdragon 800 - Mini Review
by Brian Klug on September 7, 2013 1:11 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- LG
- Mobile
- LG G2
- Android 4.2
- MSM8974
- Snapdragon 800
Display
We've been very pleased with what comes out of LG Display as of late, and the G2 doesn't disappoint. It's a 5.2-inch diagonal LCD with 1920x1080 resolution for 423 PPI density. Of course, it isn't just resolution that matters, but of course calibration, viewing angles, and other quality measures. What's interesting about the G2 is that it has two discrete touchscreen matrices which get routed to the top and bottom and out two different connectors. LG says this allows it to get the bezels on the G2 down to 2.65mm. I find a lot of what constrains device size lately is really width rather than height, and maximizing the amount of the front area used by display helps devices include bigger displays without getting too large.
Saturations:
Grayscale Sweep:
GMB Color Checker:
I measured the G2 display and was very impressed with how things turned out. The panel goes nice and bright (around 400 nits) but not quite as high as the 460 from the 720p LG Display panel from the Nexus 4. On the bright side however it comes in close to 6504K in temperature, and has some of the lowest DeltaE 2000 scores we've seen, with the iPhone 5, HTC One, and G2 clustering together in the GMB color checker test and saturations sweep.
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KurianOfBorg - Saturday, September 7, 2013 - link
What about the suttering and lag? I used the Optimus G Pro and it stuttered and lagged everywhere. No where close to the smoothness of the Nexus 4.Brian Klug - Saturday, September 7, 2013 - link
I find it to be really smooth, of course if you want absolute smoothness, you can just wait for 8974 in the Nexus 5 :)-Brian
htotfalitm - Saturday, September 7, 2013 - link
good. I'm glad they ditched capacitive controlsI hated onscreen controls too but I've been completely sold on the idea since I tried Paranoid Android and discovered Pie Control
baronmog - Saturday, September 7, 2013 - link
I feel like a broken record: only 32GB onboard storage and no microSD? No thanks. I really, really, really, wish someone other than Samsung would get their heads out of the cloud. It's ok when you're someplace with decent, or any, wireless connectivity. Otherwise, useless.HideOut - Saturday, September 7, 2013 - link
I want to trade off my S4 for this...but no microSD? FAIL.BabelHuber - Saturday, September 7, 2013 - link
Exactly my thoughts!When I see reviews at Anandtech, often my first thought is 'wow, what a nice phone!'-
Then I see that the SD-card is missing and the phone has died for me.
Samsung seems to be very smart in this area. They always have removable batteries, SD-card support and unlocked bootloaders.
And while Samsung breaks one sales record after another quarter by quarter, LG and HTC are wondering why most customers prefer their competitor's devices.
I don't think that this is coincidence. E.g. I personally like the look and feel of the HTC One, but the lacking flexibility turned me off immediately.
Android games like the Asphalt-series consume about 1.5GB meanwhile. A 16GB phone without SD-card support is a joke meanwhile.
32GB are OK, but still inferiour to an external 64GB SD-card. Once you root your device, you can set mount points to the external SD-card or - in case you are lazy like me - use an app like FolderMount to at least move the apps which are memory-hogs to the external SD.
How much can it cost to support such a feature? LG, HTC etc. are clueless and deserve their low market share with their crippled devices, really.
They should wake up and support SD-cards so we get more competition. But no, instead the champaign flows at Samsung while the managers laugh about the competition.
maximumGPU - Saturday, September 7, 2013 - link
You're talking as if LG and HTC's low market share is attributable to lack of SD support. It has practically nothing to do with this.You do understand that people requesting SD support are a minority that barely register in sales number?
BabelHuber - Saturday, September 7, 2013 - link
This is what I always hear. But I do not believe this.Why are people buying 70 Million Samsung smartphones per quarter, then? Just because 'Samsung' is printed on them?
In basically every store, HTC, Samsung, LG and Sony phones are sold. People walk in and mostly buy Samsung.
And this has nothing to do with the additional features Samsung offers for the same price? Come on!
UpSpin - Saturday, September 7, 2013 - link
Just take a look at how much money Samsung spends on advertising, then you'll understand why the Samsung smartphones are the most sold ones.http://www.imore.com/samsung-spending-ludicrously-...
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100014241278873240...
Most people really don't care about SD-Cards, for some it's even an annoyance because you can't combine the phone storage with the SD-Card storage, so you can't use it for apps and other stuff. And it's much slower than eMMC and another part which can and will fail after extensive usage.
Thus a phone with 8GB internal + 64GB SD-Card is almost as worthless as a phone with 8GB only for the !majority of people!
The big advantage comes with storing music libraries, movie libraries, ... on the SD-Card, but there again, the majority of users does not have a 64GB music library, and barely DVD/Blu-Ray rips, they rather rely on streaming.
BabelHuber - Saturday, September 7, 2013 - link
First of all, I already have posted that using the SD-card for apps is child's play after the phone has been rooted. Just root, install FoulderMount and off you go.Then you can use the SD-card for Music, movies etc., while music probably being the major use-case for most people, as a solt of people use their phone as 'walkman' or use it as music data storage in their cars.
So simply stating that an SD-card does not give you benefits ist BS.
And yes, marketing is an explanation for higher market share. But this alone does not explain why Samsung has ten times the marketshare of its competitors.
Tomi Ahonen called the smartphone market 'Samsung, Apple and the nine dwarfes', which is correct IMO.
A lot of people walk into a store and don't have much clue. Then the sales guy shows them the phones and explains the advantages/ disadvantages.
So, if you are not much interested in the HTC One's speakers, you can also take the SGS4. It has a removable battery and an SD-card slot and costs the same.
Why take the phone with less options? It simply does not make sense - after all, if you never use the SD-card slot it does not matter because you payed no premium for it.
But simply stating that customers are too stupid to properly use SD-cards falls short when Samsung has so much success with phones equipped with such features.