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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boe - Thursday, July 10, 2014 - link
This is a nice review but it would be great if the battery life chart showed talk time. I know it is crazy, but I use my phone to make phone calls.AncientWisdom - Thursday, July 10, 2014 - link
No way! oOHrel - Thursday, July 10, 2014 - link
Pretty glad I got the G2 this year, this phone sucks. 5.5" really? The G2 is already a bit too large and I have huge hands. 4.7" is probably the ideal size. They need to stop going beyond that.Perhaps because of LG's slim bezel chassis they can go larger, but certainly no larger than 5".
CampoX - Friday, July 11, 2014 - link
I was up for a G3 but after my Ultra died in my pocket this review was the reason I went for an M8 this week.goobersnatcher - Saturday, July 12, 2014 - link
If LG would have kept the size of the G2 and went 1080, QC 805 and made it the next Nexus .... I'd be all over this phone!andredogg - Tuesday, July 15, 2014 - link
Just bought this phone 4 days ago and I must admit it grows on you quickly. Selfie cam looks like a mirror my s5 active selfie cam is not in same league. And if your LG g3 is dim turn off auto brightness. Also like that every icon can be replaced by any pic or icon you find by holding down icon and releasing it and touching little paintbrush. overall experience is great. Also the 2k screen is amazing if you find content to play on it. Knock codes are also useful.yvn - Tuesday, July 15, 2014 - link
I had a chance to check out the display of LG G3 yesterday and oddly I have to disagree with Anand on its color reproduction. Not sure about the charts and other tests he did but it extreme close in color reproduction to my iPhone 5s and with just a tad more on red tones but then I know the iPhone 5s has a little weakens with reds and greens hues, so in other words the colors on G3 is spot on! hmm....Samsung even in "movie" mode looks way off so I am not sure how Anand claims in the review that Samsung has best display??? I am sure it is not so!soldier4343 - Thursday, July 17, 2014 - link
Handled one yesterday in store and its a great device. Waiting for the Note 4 in September to see what changes they made before upgrading which I do once a year.SpartyOn - Saturday, July 19, 2014 - link
Not a single Windows Phone for battery life comparison. It's like being a parent: I'm not upset... just... disappointed.Thanks Anandtech for continuing to promote a mobile phone OS duopoly.
deV14nt - Sunday, July 20, 2014 - link
I'm surprised the Galaxy S5 brightness was not measured with auto on. DisplayMate measured the max brightness at 698 nits with auto on, the brightest display they've tested, beating out the Note 3 by about 50 nits.It also would have been nice to see the G3 auto focus tested at less than 2 feet, to see the laser AF at its best conditions.