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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SleepyFE - Friday, July 4, 2014 - link
An Android phone works without SIM, so why does pulling it out reset it? Does the flight mode reset it as well?And you can't tell me that's a non-excuse. If you pay 200€ for a phone and you can't use it after a freeze. I would be very pissed off. A power off switch under the cover that physically cuts power would be the best way to go, but no review ever mentioned that, as far as i know.
ZeDestructor - Friday, July 4, 2014 - link
Some form of security perhaps? I just noticed it in the manual where it states that removing the SIM-card from a powered phone will cause it to reboot.If I pay any amount for a phone and it freezes unreacoverably, I would be pissed too, but like I said, there is a key you can press to power off, or you can implement some form of key combo or long-press. Be pissed at the implementation and manufacturer, not the concept.
Besides, just about the only time I've had an android phone lock up was when I overclocked or ran very early custom ROMs, something I don't do since I got a Sony phone, their ROM being so lighweight and bloat-free (admittedly after uninstalling/disabling bundled stuff like facebook) in comparison to the usual Touchwiz/Sense4 bloat
SleepyFE - Friday, July 4, 2014 - link
At the time i did not know about the factory reset button combo, but removing the battery was so easy i didn't give it a second thought (until now). Factory reset means that you have to install all the apps and change the settings. Your google account has that stored but it still takes time to download everything.ZeDestructor - Friday, July 4, 2014 - link
It doesn't do a factory reset, just a hard reboot, similar to what happens when you press the reset button on desktop computers. If it has one...What I would like on the other hand would be that the back cover would be bolted to the frame, rather than glued... means I could swap the battery when it wears out, like current lightweight laptops/ultrabooks have.
SleepyFE - Friday, July 4, 2014 - link
It did a factory reset for me on LG L5. Or maybe i pressed the wrong combo (volume up + power off). Who know anymore. I didn't have to do it since.The possible battery swap sounds perfect. Kind of like a removable battery, but only the cover holds it in place, so the phone can stay thin. Is that what you meant?
ZeDestructor - Saturday, July 5, 2014 - link
Yup. I don't mind pulling wires or carefully avoiding PCBs (And I bloody well should be, given I'm a Computer Engineering student!), and I understand why the batteries are sealed (less redundant casing), but I would like the replaceability to remain. Thus some screws holding things together looks like a good compromise to me: things can stay thin for marketing, I get my repairability, everyone is happy.ZeDestructor - Friday, July 4, 2014 - link
How do you measure up the Sony Xperia Z line? They all have strict "bands" in the phone body for different elements between the screen and the back panel: top is just enough room for a double-sided PCB containing almost all the electronics, the very bottom contains a speaker, microphone, vibrator, camera button and some antennas which leaves the middle as a large battery block, which as of right now is the biggest battery in a non-phablet phone.phoenix_rizzen - Friday, July 11, 2014 - link
Xperia Z: 2330 mAhXperia Z1: 3000 mAh
Xperia Z2: 3200 mAh
G2: 3000 mAh
G3: 3000 mAh
So, out of the complete Z line up, only 1 has a larger battery, and each of the phones is physically larger (taller and wider) with smaller screens (diagonal) than either the G2 or G3.
rxzlmn - Tuesday, July 15, 2014 - link
Well, the current one (who would care about past models?) does have the bigger battery. And the screen has the same diagonal as the G2.H20_mike - Saturday, July 5, 2014 - link
The slight increase in volumetric efficiency doesn't make up for the loss of capacity over time that all LIPO batteries suffer with enough charge cycles. As a heavy user having the option to replace the battery with a new one is a huge benefit. Also nice if buying a used and not knowing the state of the battery.