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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sherlockwing - Friday, July 4, 2014 - link
You listed Nexus 4 in the first Display Brightness graph then Nexus 5 in all the rest, could it be a typo?sherlockwing - Friday, July 4, 2014 - link
Nvm, I misread and didn't see Nexus 5.Niteowl360 - Friday, July 4, 2014 - link
Thank you for an awesome review.Technically better than most reviews whilst ensuring the layman remains in touch.
Only thing I found a little strange was the lack of excitement over the display.
Particularly most reviews have pointed to a slightly undersaturated display, in contrast to your findings.
Whilst your review states audio quality on per with the M8, I would have liked you to spend more time on this. After all we are still talking about a device which is primarily a phone!
I'm an HTC purist, but I believe HTC have continued to disappoint in the Camera department.
At the same time I believe the HTC logo and speakers however good, do come at an unacceptable wastage of display real estate.
I have always loved the realistic color saturation of HTC devices, and again raise reference to your findings on the over saturated G3 which seems to be a view shared by yourselves.
Thank you for an excellent overall review. Refreshingly detailed in substance.
Alexey291 - Sunday, July 6, 2014 - link
The display is of below average quality, albeit with higher resolution which reduces performance and battery life.Its a lot of tradeoffs for a small gimmick which is barely visible in reality.
zodiacfml - Friday, July 4, 2014 - link
Nahh, LG knew everything about this and just wants to compete with Samsung. How can LG beat Samsung's AMOLED display?I don't know but LG is probably not going the OLED route because Samsung's tech is superior.
peterfares - Friday, July 4, 2014 - link
This phone looks really awesome, especially finally going back to removable battery and SD card.But what's putting my off is the QHD screen. It's just a waste in every way. Waste of money. Waste of battery power. Waste of CPU and GPU resources. Waste of RAM. Shame. Everything else about this phone is AWESOME.
flyingpants1 - Friday, July 4, 2014 - link
Having onscreen buttons costs you 7% in screen are, and defeats the whole purpose of having a larger screen.Buttons should be capacitive, no bezel, and the browser UI and notification area should be cut down by about half.
Should have made a G2 with front speakers..A
UpSpin - Friday, July 4, 2014 - link
I disagree with you. On screen buttons vanish in full screen apps like games, video players, browser if you like, photo viewer, ... so practically no screen area is lost at all.On screen buttons allow a larger level of customization if you root. For example left right arrow in text fields once the keyboard shows up.
On screen buttons allow edge to edge displays. So practically you get a larger usable display at a smaller physical smartphone size.
If you feel too much space is wasted, I recommend you to root your smartphone, reduce the lcd density value, reduce the on screen button size and use the immersive mode of android.
Death666Angel - Saturday, July 5, 2014 - link
My on-screen buttons disappear when I'm not using them and almost all apps are good enough to use that space to display more stuff. Only means I have to swipe up or down to active them again, which hasn't been a hassle when using the G2 for the past 2 months. The design is much nicer as a result as well. My wifes SGS3 looks so ancient even compared to my Galaxy Nexus.Cruisecontrol - Friday, July 4, 2014 - link
Too bad about the display. That was one of the things I was hoping would make this phone stand out. I guess I'll have to wait to see if Samsung delivers an S5 Prime and what that has to offer.