The LG G3 Review
by Joshua Ho & Anand Lal Shimpi on July 4, 2014 5:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- LG
- Mobile
- Laptops
- G3
Platform Power
In the weeks leading up to this review there seemed to be a litany of headlines crowning the G3 as the new king of the battery life hill in the Android space. Our own battery life results disagreed with the conclusions but I wanted something a bit more concrete. Thankfully with a removable back cover and removable battery, instrumenting the G3 for power analysis is just as easy as it is on the Galaxy S5. Just like we did in our Galaxy S5 review, we measured device level power (with the display enabled) running a number of workloads. As always, all displays were calibrated to the same brightness level (200 nits, full white). Note that we are looking at average power here, not energy consumption. The latter is really what you want to report but for our needs here average power should be good enough.
At idle looking at a white screen the G3 uses more power than a Galaxy S5. Here we see the real burden of using LG's 2560 x 1440 panel, lighting up that many pixels definitely takes its toll on power consumption. Compared to the GS4 however, LG's G3 is an improvement. When asleep and in pocket the GS5 has a negligible advantage, the G3 is fairly close and is clearly better than the Snapdragon 600 based GS4.
The SunSpider results give you the other datapoint that should put to rest the G3's power consumption story. Under a heavy CPU load, the GS5 still manages lower overall platform power although the G3 again is better than the GS4. The SunSpider numbers combined with the idle/white screen numbers are enough to tell the story about G3's battery life vs. Galaxy S5. The G3 has a 5% larger battery but the potential gap in power consumption is much larger.
The video capture, camera preview and GFXBench results are interesting to look at but I wouldn't conclude much here other than to say that the G3 as a platform can consume quite a bit of power under load. For a better look at these scenarios we'd need to integrate power consumption over time to calculate energy usage, which as I mentioned before was beyond what we really needed to do for this review.
The main point here is to settle the debate about the G3's battery life. Yes, it has a larger battery than the Galaxy S5, but that doesn't mean it'll last longer on a single charge. I won't comment on reasons that other battery life tests would conclude differently.
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ZeDestructor - Friday, July 4, 2014 - link
They have said before that they will only review what Sony sends them. If sony sent the Z1s, then the Z1s is what will get reviewed.Also, is the Z2 even out in the USA yet?
ZeDestructor - Friday, July 4, 2014 - link
And by out, I mean non-gray-marketpiroroadkill - Saturday, July 5, 2014 - link
Don't know, live in the UK so I could pick a Z2 up no problemZeDestructor - Sunday, July 6, 2014 - link
I live in Asutralia, and yeah, I just walked into my nearby Telstra store and bought one outright to use with my Virgin Mobile SIM card. Took like 15minutes to go from house, to store and back. US on the other hand I think is still all gray market, and no carriers have picked it up yet :(DIYEyal - Friday, July 4, 2014 - link
With these bad contrasts and low maximum brightness, I would guess that this display is a worse experience than a good 1080p display. even when not factoring the shorter battery life and the lower performance.Although I would like to get my eyes on this display and see how small of a text I can read comfortably, I have a 5" 1080p smartphone and I have no problem reading most desktop sites without zooming in. I wonder how much will a 1440p display at that size will improve..
Not going to buy this phone, but I would like to get my eyes on it..
Also, the camera on this phone seems top notch by these tests. I would like to see how does this camera performs against the sony Z2 and the nokia 1020, or the oppo find 7 (50mp software enhanced).. Not going to lie, I don't know much about cameras. a good auto is very important because you can make bad photos on an expensive DSLR and you can make nice photos with a phone. But all I know is tap to focus.. I expect the auto settings to do the rest. How well does this camera perform on auto in a variety of conditions?
Taracta - Friday, July 4, 2014 - link
300 DPI is a MINIMUM! Stop treating it as an end-all measurement. It is quite obvious that 600 DPI is better than 300 DPI at 12 inches away. Try it with your desktop printer (this is probably the only device that can vary DPI as this level). When has a minimum ever been good enough? Double it an then it MIGHT be good enough. This is what desktop printers have done. So until displays are 600 DPI, and this includes DESKTOP MONITORS, I for one will not be satisfied enough to call them good enough.piroroadkill - Friday, July 4, 2014 - link
Why do you hate pixels? You made them sad.mkozakewich - Saturday, July 5, 2014 - link
Naw, we just like more of them working together!DIYEyal - Friday, July 4, 2014 - link
Doesn't mean that we should trade contrast and brightness in favor of high resolution. Not to mention battery life and performance..SleepyFE - Friday, July 4, 2014 - link
DPI, PPI doesn't mean shit!! You should be worried about PPD. What is the point of having 600DPI if your ocular sensor can't capture enough data for your brain to tell the difference? We, the consumers, have to convince reviewers and manufacturers to use PPD. I am using a 1080p 21'' monitor which makes 102PPI. At about 3feet away (1 meter) i can't see a single pixel. Why would i need more PPI?