OFFICIAL LG G3 Thread: Lets talk about the G3....

[cmdrdredd]

How locked down is the G3; I'm still on an unlocked verizon note 2; not sure I will stay with verizon might switch to tmobile but prefer a phone that does not have carrier junk.

If the s5 is anything to go by, at&t and Verizon both had more heavily locked down models. I believe that on Verizon you need a Dev edition of the s5 to flash roms on as the standard one doesn't work yet. If you are looking for things like root.

 

[richierich1212]

AT&T can root. Not sure what else is available since I'll stick with stock for a few months since I just switched to Nova Launcher, switched to ART from Dalvik, and reduced animations to 0.5x.

 

[cmdrdredd]

AT&T can root. Not sure what else is available since I'll stick with stock for a few months since I just switched to Nova Launcher, switched to ART from Dalvik, and reduced animations to 0.5x.

ART is extremely buggy IME and a lot of apps don't work with it yet so I am sticking to dalvik for now.

 

[jimv1983]

Except the s5 doesn't lag and stutter.

The few S5's that I have played with did lag a little.

 

[jimv1983]

Do you actually own one or a similar phablet? The Note 3 has a large screen but IMO is still acceptable for daily use. I can carry it in my jean pockets, and though you feel it, it's never a problem or distraction unless I need to jog/run. However, it's close to that fine line where just a few mm in the wrong direction can make it uncomfortable on a daily basis.

I checked out the Z Ultra back when the Sony stores first carried them and let me tell you, that went off the deep end regarding daily portability. Same with the Mega 6.3.

So if the Note 4 has similar gains in size as S4 -> S5, I do think it has a decent chance of being on the wrong side of the daily driver balance. Just to be clear, I'm not talking about the G3.

Just because I don't own one doesn't mean I'm clueless about it. I have used it in stores and know people that have it.

Those GSM Arena battery life scores are no where close to real world usage. I seen GSM Arena's battery endurance score being much better than real world usage of several phones that I have experience with.

What in the hell would you considered great ???
The G2 has one of the best if not the best battery life among the current smartphone.

What would I consider "great"? Two full days of heavy usage. Since "heavy" usage is very subjective I'll be more specific. 38 hours off charger with 10-12 hours of screen on time with 50% brightness, a little gaming, streaming video, camera usage(taking many pictures and a few videos), streaming audio, a mixed usage of wifi and 4G data and maybe an hour or so of actual phone calls.

To be considered "good" I would say the same type of heavy usage for one day or 18 hours off charger with like 6 hours of screen on time.

Do a Google image search for "lg g2 real world battery life" and look at some of the screen shots. From what I found ~2 hours of screen on time after about 9 hours off the charger brings the G2 down to about 20% battery life. That matches the battery life that the 2 people I know with a G2 actually get.That is far from what I would call good.

 

[cmdrdredd]

The few S5's that I have played with did lag a little.

Maybe they need to turn off the double tap for s-voice so it doesn't have a delay when you hit the home button. If you do not, it will always have a half second delay between pressing home and going to the home screen because it's waiting to see if you double press for s-voice. Then reduce animations to .5x.

These two things helped a ton.

I consider this pretty good for real world battery life. Over 6 hours screen on (auto brightness), and over 15 hours off the charger until it dropped to 1%.

 

[dawheat]

Just because I don't own one doesn't mean I'm clueless about it. I have used it in stores and know people that have it.

I had to dig back to what this was about - and it was your comment that once you lose one-hand ability, you might as well go as big as you can. I was simply trying to illustrate that there's another threshold around pocketability that phablets can cross. The Note 3, G3, and G Pro 2 are on the right side of the threshold, IMO the One Maxx, Mega 6.3, and Z Ultra are on the wrong side of the threshold.

Do a Google image search for "lg g2 real world battery life" and look at some of the screen shots. From what I found ~2 hours of screen on time after about 9 hours off the charger brings the G2 down to about 20% battery life. That matches the battery life that the 2 people I know with a G2 actually get.That is far from what I would call good.

That's not a very scientific way to measure battery life. I've owned a G2 and in general, I'd say other owners on xda find battery life to be quite good and on par, if not better, than the Note 3. Battery life threads on xda at least have a sample size of hundreds of users, if not thousands.

Every phone will have problematic users - there are Note 3 owners on xda who can't get 3 hours of on screen time for whatever reason.

 

[jimv1983]

Maybe they need to turn off the double tap for s-voice so it doesn't have a delay when you hit the home button. If you do not, it will always have a half second delay between pressing home and going to the home screen because it's waiting to see if you double press for s-voice. Then reduce animations to .5x.

These two things helped a ton.

I consider this pretty good for real world battery life. Over 6 hours screen on (auto brightness), and over 15 hours off the charger until it dropped to 1%.

That is the best battery life I've ever seen anyone get on a Samsung phone ever. What is the typical screen brightness? You said auto-brightness but what was it most of the time? Rooted with tweaks? Custom kernel? Wifi the entire time? I wouldn't call that "great" but in my experience pretty impressive for a Samsung phone. From what I've seen that is FAR FAR better than the Galaxy S4 battery life.

I had to dig back to what this was about - and it was your comment that once you lose one-hand ability, you might as well go as big as you can. I was simply trying to illustrate that there's another threshold around pocketability that phablets can cross. The Note 3, G3, and G Pro 2 are on the right side of the threshold, IMO the One Maxx, Mega 6.3, and Z Ultra are on the wrong side of the threshold.

I guess I forgot to mention pocketability. I meant to. Any phone that loses one hand usability also tends to not be pocketable either, at least not comfortably. Even my Nexus 5 without the case isn't comfortable to carry in my front pocket and I don't even where tight pants. I actually buy carpenter pants so I can use the side pocket on the right leg for my phone. I would go nuts if I had to carry my phone in my front pocket.

That's not a very scientific way to measure battery life. I've owned a G2 and in general, I'd say other owners on xda find battery life to be quite good and on par, if not better, than the Note 3. Battery life threads on xda at least have a sample size of hundreds of users, if not thousands.

Every phone will have problematic users - there are Note 3 owners on xda who can't get 3 hours of on screen time for whatever reason.

That is XDA. How many of those people had rooted phones with a custom ROM, custom kernel, under clocked CPU/GPU, etc?

Sure, the examples aren't the best but they were the only ones I could find at the time. I'm not saying the G2 has terrible battery life but far from what I would call great from what I've read since it came out.

There is also the test I personally did with two different G2s in stores shortly after it came out. I admit it isn't the perfect test but it did give at least some indication of what would be the average expected battery life.

I tested with the following conditions: unplugged the phone at 100%, brightness at a comfortable level of about 60%, wifi on but not connected, location on, bluetooth on. I used the phone for 30 minutes doing a verity of things from streaming video(YouTube and Netflix), streaming audio(pandora), browsing and a bit of game playing(about 5 minutes). At the end of that 30 minutes the battery was down to 94%. Based on that battery drain if I had continued to use it the same way until the battery had died it would have lasted about 7.5 hours and that is constant usage so no stand by time. That is a discharge rate of about 15% per hour on average. If I had stopped after 5 hours of usage(which I would consider pretty good but not great) the battery likely would have been at about 25%. That would have resulted in an overall off charger time of about 20 hours with 5 hours of screen on time under what I would call normal usage. Of course that isn't a "scientific" test but it is a real usage test using rough calculations and at least a decent estimation on what I would actual expect owning one.

I also know 2 people that own one and tend to get a little closer to what you see from the Google search I did. My best guess is that the coverage at the stores I went to was better than their typical average daily coverage.

From the reviews I have read the G3 gets noticeably lower battery life which is expected considering the slightly bigger display and the 1.78x as many pixels with the same size battery as the G2.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Its WiFi on all the time, I dunno what the screen is typically at, I don't look at where the slider is set. This was stock kernel and ROM. Just rooted with some Samsung apps frozen.

I now run koonsez kernel set to interactive governor at 2.9ghz max CPU frequency and 674mhz max GPU running XtreStoLite ROM based on NF6 T-Mobile release. Battery life is slightly less due to the increased CPU frequency, but enough for my day.

I am sure the g2 or the g3 would be enough for my day of usage as well even if they aren't as good overall in battery life.

 

[jimv1983]

So, yesterday night I went to the AT&T store near where I work. I played around with the G3 for 45 minutes.

I did the same test as I did with the G2(and other phones) in the past. Took the phone off the charger at 100%.

Here is what I experienced:

The phone stayed at 100% for ~30 minutes. During this time the "Estimated Time Remaining" just said something like "Calculating". Once it finally gave an estimate the charge finally dropped to 99%.

At this point I was pretty impressed but that is when things changed. After being at 100% for 30 minutes the phone went from 99% to 93% over the last 15 minutes. I don't know how consistent that drain would be(except that I know it would increase somewhat) but 6% drain in 15 minutes does seem really high to me.

Anyone with a G3? Is my experience consistent with what you are seeing?

 

[jimv1983]

Nope, but I'm ever hopeful of something more iOS like from one of these manufacturers. Apple got the approach just right with iOS and more options like it would be great. I already know what Android is and I'm finding it very boring seeing slab after slab running that same tired old OS.

What about iOS do you like more about Android?

If anything is "the same tired old OS" it's iOS. Android has improved and changed for more than iOS has.

 

[cmdrdredd]

What about iOS do you like more about Android?

If anything is "the same tired old OS" it's iOS. Android has improved and changed for more than iOS has.

lol pretty much

 

[Rdmkr]

So, yesterday night I went to the AT&T store near where I work. I played around with the G3 for 45 minutes.

I did the same test as I did with the G2(and other phones) in the past. Took the phone off the charger at 100%.

Here is what I experienced:

The phone stayed at 100% for ~30 minutes. During this time the "Estimated Time Remaining" just said something like "Calculating". Once it finally gave an estimate the charge finally dropped to 99%.

At this point I was pretty impressed but that is when things changed. After being at 100% for 30 minutes the phone went from 99% to 93% over the last 15 minutes. I don't know how consistent that drain would be(except that I know it would increase somewhat) but 6% drain in 15 minutes does seem really high to me.

Anyone with a G3? Is my experience consistent with what you are seeing?

The LG G2 also does the 30 minutes stuck at 100% thing. I've always thought of it as a trick to fool people who test the battery life very superficially just after taking it off the charger at 100%. Either that or it's some kind of mechanism to prevent a constant current from being sent into the battery when the phone is on the charger while at 100% power.

unrelated ps.:

In this thread I brought up the issue of how Anandtech and Erica Griffin were getting a much lower maximum brightness reading than Gsmarena for the LG G2 and LG G3. This is possibly because there is a difference between the maximum manual brightness setting and the highest the brightness can go while on Auto Brightness for some phones. Maybe Anandtech picked the former number whereas Gsmarena picked the latter.

 

[jimv1983]

The LG G2 also does the 30 minutes stuck at 100% thing. I've always thought of it as a trick to fool people who test the battery life very superficially just after taking it off the charger at 100%. Either that or it's some kind of mechanism to prevent a constant current from being sent into the battery when the phone is on the charger while at 100% power.

unrelated ps.:

In this thread I brought up the issue of how Anandtech and Erica Griffin were getting a much lower maximum brightness reading than Gsmarena for the LG G2 and LG G3. This is possibly because there is a difference between the maximum manual brightness setting and the highest the brightness can go while on Auto Brightness for some phones. Maybe Anandtech picked the former number whereas Gsmarena picked the latter.

While it was at 100% the estimated time remaining still said calculating. I'm wondering if it just stays at 100% until that calculation is finished. Why that calculation takes so long is another issue.

 

[Commodus]

What about iOS do you like more about Android?

If anything is "the same tired old OS" it's iOS. Android has improved and changed for more than iOS has.

Not to turn this into too much of a debate, but Android hasn't really seen that big of an update since 4.1... some would say 4.0. The Android L release is the first in a while where the OS is going to have obvious changes. Most of the real tweaks have come from OEMs adding their own features on top, whether or not they're useful.

The G3 looks awesome, don't get me wrong. But I would say that Apple is still the champion for local media playback, ease of use for newcomers and overall responsiveness.

 

[jimv1983]

Not to turn this into too much of a debate, but Android hasn't really seen that big of an update since 4.1... some would say 4.0. The Android L release is the first in a while where the OS is going to have obvious changes. Most of the real tweaks have come from OEMs adding their own features on top, whether or not they're useful.

Still more update than iOS.

The G3 looks awesome, don't get me wrong. But I would say that Apple is still the champion for local media playback, ease of use for newcomers and overall responsiveness.

I totally disagree.

 

[npaladin-2000]

Not to turn this into too much of a debate, but Android hasn't really seen that big of an update since 4.1... some would say 4.0. The Android L release is the first in a while where the OS is going to have obvious changes. Most of the real tweaks have come from OEMs adding their own features on top, whether or not they're useful.

The G3 looks awesome, don't get me wrong. But I would say that Apple is still the champion for local media playback, ease of use for newcomers and overall responsiveness.

I think you mean "visible" changes rather than "obvious." KitKat had some very obvious changes, but they're under the hood for the most part, except for battery life increases. JB had Project Butter. But what you're looking for is a drastic UI change, and yes, that hasn't happened in a while. I'm fine with the Android UI as it is thank you. Drastic UI changes are risky and don't always work well. Take Windows 8 for example.

 

[Wingznut]

But I would say that Apple is still the champion for local media playback, ease of use for newcomers and overall responsiveness.

The was a time when I would agree with that statement... But that was quite some time ago.

 

[dawheat]

The was a time when I would agree with that statement... But that was quite some time ago.

Just curious - I haven't personally used an iPhone for a couple years but last I remember, it was pretty finicky about file types and resolutions. It was kind of a pain having copies of a bunch of media - my full size video files on my home computer and "iOS" versions.

Being able to copy the exact same files I have on my computer over to my 128GB micro-SD card is pretty convenient. MX Player auto detects them and I can play them flawlessly.

Not sure it can get much easier to rotate through two dozen HD movies/shows every month.

 

[jpeyton]

Just got my Verizon G3 today.

First impressions: a lot like the G2, perhaps a touch faster in day-to-day tasks, not noticeably bigger size-wise, charges fast, but also discharges faster than the G2.

 

[bigben2wardpitt]

Just got my Verizon G3 today.

First impressions: a lot like the G2, perhaps a touch faster in day-to-day tasks, not noticeably bigger size-wise, charges fast, but also discharges faster than the G2.

that begs the question... how long did it last? Honestly, if this thing can get through a day (8 AM to 10-11 PM) easily, I have no problems. I charge my phone every night.

 

[Anubis]

that begs the question... how long did it last? Honestly, if this thing can get through a day (8 AM to 10-11 PM) easily, I have no problems. I charge my phone every night.

almost 12 hours unplugged, 6 of those hours spent streaming music

 

[Wingznut]

But I would say that Apple is still the champion for local media playback, ease of use for newcomers and overall responsiveness.

The was a time when I would agree with that statement... But that was quite some time ago.

Just curious - I haven't personally used an iPhone for a couple years but last I remember, it was pretty finicky about file types and resolutions. It was kind of a pain having copies of a bunch of media - my full size video files on my home computer and "iOS" versions.

I guess I was thinking about the majority of iPhone users who are 100% in the Apple ecosystem... Buying all their media through iTunes.

 

[Apex]

I'm still on the G2, but switched to the G3 keyboard today. Wow, great keyboard. Love it.

 

[jimv1983]

that begs the question... how long did it last? Honestly, if this thing can get through a day (8 AM to 10-11 PM) easily, I have no problems. I charge my phone every night.

Depends on your usage. 8am to 11pm is 15 hours. At that amount of time I would expect that you would get maybe 5 hours of screen on time. Maybe 6 if you keep brightness low and stay on wifi the entire time. If you do heavy power usage tasks like any amount of gaming then probably closer to 4 hours screen on time.

almost 12 hours unplugged, 6 of those hours spent streaming music

Based on the current usage shown I'd say you might get 24 hours off charger with maybe 2-2.5 hours screen on time. That is disappointing.