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

[Rdmkr]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paMb_cgVkug

see 8:15 and 8:52

Gameplay does not look very smooth on the LG G3. S805 cpu does not seem like a redundant luxury for QHD phones.

 

[Anubis]

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.



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.

it gets better battery life than my GS4 and its more than enough i dont need a phone to last more than 24 hours between charges.

 

[Wingznut]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paMb_cgVkug

see 8:15 and 8:52

Gameplay does not look very smooth on the LG G3. S805 cpu does not seem like a redundant luxury for QHD phones.

That's quite a conclusion drawn from a single YouTube video, of a single game, from a semi-professional reviewer, of a Korean model of a phone.

 

[jimv1983]

it gets better battery life than my GS4 and its more than enough i dont need a phone to last more than 24 hours between charges.

Getting better battery life than the Galaxy S4 isn't really saying much.

I don't need more than 24 hours between chargers either but unless you are a light user you won't be getting anywhere close to 24 hours on one charge.

I want a phone that can get an average screen on time of 6 hours with power intensive tasks including a mix of browsing, video, audio, brightness at about 50-70%, light gaming, no wifi, a few hours of calls, Facebook and some GPS usage and still get a full day(about 16 hours) off charger. If a phone can do that I would say the battery life is "good". If a phone can do the same for two days or 12 hours screen on time and 40 hours off charger I would call the battery life "great".

Even the G2(which probably has the best battery life of any phone today) has trouble getting what I call "good" battery life on a regular basis.

 

[Minerva]

I really wanted to like this device but could not...

First is the sharpening effect of the display. We get it. 2K isn't going to be noticeably superior on a five and a half inch display to unaided eyes. So they oversharpen it which makes text look like a TV at best buy that has the sharpness all the way up! At least allow this "feature" to be turned off! I noticed its affect on 4K local playback of thin parts like wires and screens. I'm a hobbyist sculptor so I notice this right off the bat!

Second is the sound recorded in videos. It was bad on the G2. On the G3 I think it's even worse. It gets garbled and all underwater sounding and there's no options to adjust mic gain, auto gain, whatever. As a matter of fact the camera has no adjustments available to the user at all! Lame!

Third is the laser autofocus. Sure it's fast but try taking pictures through a window, pictures of fish in an aquarium or the road going by when in a car. Everything's blurry because it's focusing on the window pane, not the subject. And no way to override this! GRRRR! My G2 pics looked better because of this.

It's too bad too, the out of the box 4K video recording looked absolutely phenomenal, I mean it's close to red performance with video in bright light! The sound messes everything up and if I'm going to stuff a digital sound recorder in my shirt pocket so I can fix this I might as well bring a real video camera. Bad, very bad, LG!

There is lag that could be a result of the higher resolution. Most of the games I tried were acceptable. White tiles 4 (that addictive game hehe) was quite jittery compared to my iphone 5s/HTC One M8, S4, S5, Note 3, etc.

The fact that you have a five and one half inch screen in a device that feels about as big as an S5 is great, back buttons be-damned. But I really like the great outdoors and the camera and video function is important so I had to send this back.

I also like to dabble with flashing and that stuff and like in the past, LG isn't very popular with the devs it seems.

Too bad. I was really looking forward to this one!

 

[Anubis]

Getting better battery life than the Galaxy S4 isn't really saying much.

I don't need more than 24 hours between chargers either but unless you are a light user you won't be getting anywhere close to 24 hours on one charge.

I want a phone that can get an average screen on time of 6 hours with power intensive tasks including a mix of browsing, video, audio, brightness at about 50-70%, light gaming, no wifi, a few hours of calls, Facebook and some GPS usage and still get a full day(about 16 hours) off charger. If a phone can do that I would say the battery life is "good". If a phone can do the same for two days or 12 hours screen on time and 40 hours off charger I would call the battery life "great".

Even the G2(which probably has the best battery life of any phone today) has trouble getting what I call "good" battery life on a regular basis.

i have a feeling you will be waiting a lifetime for such a device

 

[dawheat]

Getting better battery life than the Galaxy S4 isn't really saying much.

I don't need more than 24 hours between chargers either but unless you are a light user you won't be getting anywhere close to 24 hours on one charge.

I want a phone that can get an average screen on time of 6 hours with power intensive tasks including a mix of browsing, video, audio, brightness at about 50-70%, light gaming, no wifi, a few hours of calls, Facebook and some GPS usage and still get a full day(about 16 hours) off charger. If a phone can do that I would say the battery life is "good". If a phone can do the same for two days or 12 hours screen on time and 40 hours off charger I would call the battery life "great".

Even the G2(which probably has the best battery life of any phone today) has trouble getting what I call "good" battery life on a regular basis.

Pointless comment when no phone in the marketplace can come close to this stock. It's like complaining that smartphones aren't 3mm thick or made of unobtanium.

I agree the S4 battery life is not good, but for the vast majority of people the S5/M8 battery life is sufficient and IMO good enough on average. The G3 doesn't seem quite as good overall, but acceptable. You clearly value battery life over other attributes and this phone isn't for you.

 

[pmark]

one complaint that I have with this phone is that it charges very slowly. I'm used to the Samsung S3 or iPhone 4 phones in that you can run the battery down, plug it in for 15 minutes, and get back up to a decent charge level. If you do that with the G3 then you are only returned to around 15%.

 

[Wingznut]

one complaint that I have with this phone is that it charges very slowly. I'm used to the Samsung S3 or iPhone 4 phones in that you can run the battery down, plug it in for 15 minutes, and get back up to a decent charge level. If you do that with the G3 then you are only returned to around 15%.

The G3 has a ~50% larger battery than the S3, and more than twice the battery capacity of the iPhone 4... So, of course it won't charge to the same percentage as fast.

 

[jimv1983]

i have a feeling you will be waiting a lifetime for such a device

I think it's coming when we actually see new battery technology(like lithium-air or graphene) but I think it will be like 5 years before they come to market.

Pointless comment when no phone in the marketplace can come close to this stock. It's like complaining that smartphones aren't 3mm thick or made of unobtanium.

I agree the S4 battery life is not good, but for the vast majority of people the S5/M8 battery life is sufficient and IMO good enough on average. The G3 doesn't seem quite as good overall, but acceptable. You clearly value battery life over other attributes and this phone isn't for you.

You are right that no phone in the marketplace comes close to this. That is why I've said that current battery life is just a varying range of crap. You are right, I do value battery life over other things and this phone isn't for me. Sadly no phones are. It is very upsetting.

 

[jimv1983]

one complaint that I have with this phone is that it charges very slowly. I'm used to the Samsung S3 or iPhone 4 phones in that you can run the battery down, plug it in for 15 minutes, and get back up to a decent charge level. If you do that with the G3 then you are only returned to around 15%.

It has to do with the size of the battery. The G3 has a 3,000mAh battery. It is 43% bigger than the battery in the Galaxy S3 and 211% bigger than the battery in the iPhone 4. Getting 15% battery charged in 15 minutes is 1% per minute which is actually pretty good. That would put a full charge at only 100 minutes which is excellent. Even to get that you must be using a 2A charger.

 

[pmark]

It has to do with the size of the battery. The G3 has a 3,000mAh battery. It is 43% bigger than the battery in the Galaxy S3 and 211% bigger than the battery in the iPhone 4. Getting 15% battery charged in 15 minutes is 1% per minute which is actually pretty good. That would put a full charge at only 100 minutes which is excellent. Even to get that you must be using a 2A charger.

Ahh, that makes sense, I didn't think about the size of the battery factoring into the equation. Don't look to closely into my numbers though, they are really rough estimates so please don't take them for fact.

Does anyone else notice that the phone takes a long time to regain 4G LTE service after it loses it? I never noticed it on my old phone and I'm traveling in the same areas. I think it is more about KitKat and not the G3 in general. I heard other KitKat phones having a similar problem. I have to restart my phone in order for it to regain a connection.

 

[s44]

Does anyone else notice that the phone takes a long time to regain 4G LTE service after it loses it? I never noticed it on my old phone and I'm traveling in the same areas. I think it is more about KitKat and not the G3 in general. I heard other KitKat phones having a similar problem. I have to restart my phone in order for it to regain a connection.

I don't think this is KK generally... doesn't happen on my S4 any more than it used to... maybe less.

Try toggling airplane mode on and off instead of rebooting.

 

[Red Storm]

Got my G3 yesterday, SO glad to have an Android phone again (been using a Lumia 521 as a place holder phone, still have the iPhone 5 from work too)!

 

[dawheat]

Ahh, that makes sense, I didn't think about the size of the battery factoring into the equation. Don't look to closely into my numbers though, they are really rough estimates so please don't take them for fact.

Does anyone else notice that the phone takes a long time to regain 4G LTE service after it loses it? I never noticed it on my old phone and I'm traveling in the same areas. I think it is more about KitKat and not the G3 in general. I heard other KitKat phones having a similar problem. I have to restart my phone in order for it to regain a connection.

The G3 doesn't charge much slower than most modern flagships (though it's odd that it's a tad slower than the G2 with the same battery size), but they did not implement the newest quick charge tech that the S5 does.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8169/the-lg-g3-review/3 - see bottom chart

For having a slightly smaller battery (2800 vs 3000 mAh), the S5 charges noticeably faster. But not a big deal most of the time.

 

[Red Storm]

I'm very happy to see that LG has implemented the ability to hide the nav buttons in any app. That was one of the biggest reasons I rooted the G2 personally.

 

[jimv1983]

I'm very happy to see that LG has implemented the ability to hide the nav buttons in any app. That was one of the biggest reasons I rooted the G2 personally.

The only apps I would really care to hide the buttons in is video players(like Netflix and YouTube) and games and in those cases it already happens from within the app. Even eBook apps like Kindle and Nook hide the buttons while you are reading. On apps like a browser wouldn't you want the onscreen buttons so that you could access the back button faster? What advantage does hiding the buttons have?

If that is the way you like it that is fine I'm just trying to understand the reasoning.

 

[Red Storm]

The only apps I would really care to hide the buttons in is video players(like Netflix and YouTube) and games and in those cases it already happens from within the app. Even eBook apps like Kindle and Nook hide the buttons while you are reading. On apps like a browser wouldn't you want the onscreen buttons so that you could access the back button faster? What advantage does hiding the buttons have?

If that is the way you like it that is fine I'm just trying to understand the reasoning.

Kindle does not hide them, it simply changes the buttons into little dots, but the bar is still there. With LG's auto hide the entire nav bar actually goes away, making it a complete full screen ebook, which is nice.

Similarly, not all games and apps that should hide the bar do so, so it's nice to have that control in my hands in case a dev does a poor job of things.

 

[jpeyton]

Does anyone else notice that the phone takes a long time to regain 4G LTE service after it loses it? I never noticed it on my old phone and I'm traveling in the same areas. I think it is more about KitKat and not the G3 in general. I heard other KitKat phones having a similar problem. I have to restart my phone in order for it to regain a connection.

I noticed this too. Go to:

"Settings" --> Under Wireless Networks "More" --> "Mobile Networks" --> "System Select" --> What options do you see here?

My Verizon G3 was set to "Global" by default. I think network switching performance has improved since I set it to the domestic mode "LTE/CDMA". Maybe your phone has something similar?

I'll echo the good and bad others have mentioned.

Display: gorgeous, but QHD is not noticeable, and sharpening is overdone. Outdoor visibility is fine despite what the reviews say.
Speakers: better than the G2, but that was an easy mark to surpass.
Design: grand slam home run; this is what a premium plastic bodied phone should look like.
Size: A little too wide for comfort for my medium sized hands, but that's a tradeoff for real estate. They still packed 5.5" into the smallest possible chassis.
Camera: Near the top of the Android pack, but still not iPhone quality.
Software: LG did a great job here. It feels like a very light skin on top of Kit Kat.

Another "fix" I should mention is that LG set the default animation speed far too slow, making it feel like it was stuttering/being sluggish. I enabled developer options, then set the animation speeds to 0.5x; feels fast now. Another option would be to use a solid launcher, like Nova Launcher.

Battery life is one solid day of heavy use, or two days of my typical use.

 

[pmark]

I noticed this too. Go to:

"Settings" --> Under Wireless Networks "More" --> "Mobile Networks" --> "System Select" --> What options do you see here?

My Verizon G3 was set to "Global" by default. I think network switching performance has improved since I set it to the domestic mode "LTE/CDMA". Maybe your phone has something similar?

I'll echo the good and bad others have mentioned.

Display: gorgeous, but QHD is not noticeable, and sharpening is overdone. Outdoor visibility is fine despite what the reviews say.
Speakers: better than the G2, but that was an easy mark to surpass.
Design: grand slam home run; this is what a premium plastic bodied phone should look like.
Size: A little too wide for comfort for my medium sized hands, but that's a tradeoff for real estate. They still packed 5.5" into the smallest possible chassis.
Camera: Near the top of the Android pack, but still not iPhone quality.
Software: LG did a great job here. It feels like a very light skin on top of Kit Kat.

Another "fix" I should mention is that LG set the default animation speed far too slow, making it feel like it was stuttering/being sluggish. I enabled developer options, then set the animation speeds to 0.5x; feels fast now. Another option would be to use a solid launcher, like Nova Launcher.

Battery life is one solid day of heavy use, or two days of my typical use.

I'm on AT&T and I don't think I can switch that type of option. It does read LTE though. I dunno, maybe I just got a bad phone and I need to exchange it for a new one.

 

[bigben2wardpitt]

I really wanted to like this device but could not...

First is the sharpening effect of the display. We get it. 2K isn't going to be noticeably superior on a five and a half inch display to unaided eyes. So they oversharpen it which makes text look like a TV at best buy that has the sharpness all the way up! At least allow this "feature" to be turned off! I noticed its affect on 4K local playback of thin parts like wires and screens. I'm a hobbyist sculptor so I notice this right off the bat!

Second is the sound recorded in videos. It was bad on the G2. On the G3 I think it's even worse. It gets garbled and all underwater sounding and there's no options to adjust mic gain, auto gain, whatever. As a matter of fact the camera has no adjustments available to the user at all! Lame!

Third is the laser autofocus. Sure it's fast but try taking pictures through a window, pictures of fish in an aquarium or the road going by when in a car. Everything's blurry because it's focusing on the window pane, not the subject. And no way to override this! GRRRR! My G2 pics looked better because of this.

It's too bad too, the out of the box 4K video recording looked absolutely phenomenal, I mean it's close to red performance with video in bright light! The sound messes everything up and if I'm going to stuff a digital sound recorder in my shirt pocket so I can fix this I might as well bring a real video camera. Bad, very bad, LG!

There is lag that could be a result of the higher resolution. Most of the games I tried were acceptable. White tiles 4 (that addictive game hehe) was quite jittery compared to my iphone 5s/HTC One M8, S4, S5, Note 3, etc.

The fact that you have a five and one half inch screen in a device that feels about as big as an S5 is great, back buttons be-damned. But I really like the great outdoors and the camera and video function is important so I had to send this back.

I also like to dabble with flashing and that stuff and like in the past, LG isn't very popular with the devs it seems.

Too bad. I was really looking forward to this one!

I'd be curious what your thoughts are on the HTC One M8 compared to this. I mostly ruled out the M8 because of the camera. Seems its only "great" in pretty limited situations.

 

[Rdmkr]

http://www.gsmarena.com/lg_announces_g3_a_in_south_korea-news-9264.php

LG is doing exactly what I've been hoping they'd do: re-release the LG G2 with the G3's non-sacrificial incremental updates.

Just too bad about that snapdragon 800. Should be good enough to power 1080p, though. Hopefully they did make the touchscreen more responsive because the G2 is "meh" in that regard.

 

[jacktesterson]

Just too bad about that snapdra...though..[/QUOTE] Good enough? I think so..

 

[HumblePie]

I noticed this too. Go to:

"Settings" --> Under Wireless Networks "More" --> "Mobile Networks" --> "System Select" --> What options do you see here?

My Verizon G3 was set to "Global" by default. I think network switching performance has improved since I set it to the domestic mode "LTE/CDMA". Maybe your phone has something similar?

I'll echo the good and bad others have mentioned.

Display: gorgeous, but QHD is not noticeable, and sharpening is overdone. Outdoor visibility is fine despite what the reviews say.
Speakers: better than the G2, but that was an easy mark to surpass.
Design: grand slam home run; this is what a premium plastic bodied phone should look like.
Size: A little too wide for comfort for my medium sized hands, but that's a tradeoff for real estate. They still packed 5.5" into the smallest possible chassis.
Camera: Near the top of the Android pack, but still not iPhone quality.
Software: LG did a great job here. It feels like a very light skin on top of Kit Kat.

Another "fix" I should mention is that LG set the default animation speed far too slow, making it feel like it was stuttering/being sluggish. I enabled developer options, then set the animation speeds to 0.5x; feels fast now. Another option would be to use a solid launcher, like Nova Launcher.

Battery life is one solid day of heavy use, or two days of my typical use.

Just picked up the G# for my wife and myself. Loving it so far. I am coming from an HTC Evo 4G LTE, and she is coming from an Samsung Note 1. My family nearby has various phones from the iPhone (from 4 to 5s), Note 2/3, and Galaxys 3/4/5. So I've had a lot to compare against.

For my wife, the performance of the G3 is huge compared to her Note 1. It was one of the original big screen phones with too small a cpu for it. As such performance on the original Note is not so great. Especially since she liked to customize the crap out of it. Which made the performance suffer even worse with all the little animation crap she had packed into the phone.

As for myself, I wasn't as hurt on performance in terms of apps, although I barely added anything to my phone. I did notice that even with the little I did put on I did nearly max out the internal storage available for apps. Which only a whooping 6GB is "available" on the Evo 4g LTE for apps and most of that is used up by log files. Which leaves measly realistic amount of 1 GB for app storage.

My problem with my phone was mainly service related, Sprint SUCKS balls, and the camera on the phone was absolutely atrocious. Sure it had better very low light pictures, but comparing one slightly less bad picture to another is still stupid. I didn't use the camera that much because of the crappy pictures, but I was finding myself more than a little pissed at the shitty pictures it consistently took.

My wife's Samsung Note took pretty damn good pictures at least and left me a little envious of that.

So we both had our reasons for switching phones. After looking at everything out there and coming out within the year, the G3 seemed like the best choice to me. Although I was willing to settle for the OnePlus One had I been able to actually buy before now.

Most of the pros and cons listed by jpeyton are basically what I've encountered. I have noticed that if you lose 4G you drop to 2G and it takes awhile to get back on 4G for some reason. Not sure why. I am not exactly a fan of the plastic body though, but I that's why I buy a case. My wife is a clutz and drops hers all the time, and I have done it once or twice with my Evo. I had a case on every time I dropped mine and it was in an Otterbox. My Evo looks brand spanking new still despite over 2 years of use. My wife's phone was never in such a protective case and it shows. The plastic around all the edges has cracked. The screen has light scratches. The back looks like ass. To be fair, they never made any good cases for the Note 1. Not even an Otterbox. So the only cases she had to buy are mostly those plastic snap on the back type that break very easily and don't really protect much at all.

So even though the G3 has a plastic body, I would still buy a nice case for it even if it had an aluminum unibody like the M8 or iPhone. Everyone I know stills buys a case for those phones which basically means you are going to be holding plastic in your hands and aren't holding that metal body.


I will say that Clash of Clans drains the shit out the battery on the G3 pretty damn fast. Then again it does that with every phone I seen play that game. 100% to 0% in 2-3 hours of playing on most phones. Not sure why that game is such a drain but it is. Anything else I play will last 5-8 hours.

Basically loving the performance, the camera, the connectivity, and the screen. I don't mind the bigger phone (even bigger with the case on) and my wife is certainly used to it with her old Note 1. For reference, the Note 1 is still bigger by a significant margin than the G3.

If anyone is curious, this is the case I bought for the phone.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Which I am liking very much. As good if not better protection than the Otterbox. Smaller size than the Otterbox. It's also significantly less expensive too!

With all the possible choices (Samsung GS5, Oppo 7, iPhone 5s, HTC One M8, Xperia Z2, OnePlus One, Nokia 930) out now or coming out, the G3 to me looked like the best phone to buy.

 

[Anubis]

How do I block numbers on this. Long press on a number in recent calls brings up a menu but there is no block option. That's where it was on previous phones. On vzw if that matters