Phone Review (LG G2)

Hello everyone,

I recently upgraded from the Verizon Samsung Galaxy Nexus to the Verizon LG G2 so I thought I would provide a review in case anyone is looking for a new phone.

Background

The Nexus and I had some problems. Previous to the Nexus I had a Blackberry so going to the Nexus was quite an upgrade. Almost immediately, however, I noticed some problems. First among these was the battery. The battery life on the Nexus was somewhere south of abysmal. I bought the extended battery and if I was planning on being out for more than 6 hours with any kind of use I knew that I would have to take my spare battery because the Nexus wouldn't survive the day. Secondly, the Nexus had very mixed feelings about staying connected to a data source. It would constantly be disconnecting from either 3G, 4G, or wi-fi and take about a minute to reestablish the connection each time. My last major complaint about the Nexus is that it did not like to be a phone. When I made calls there was about a 25% chance it would just randomly reboot in the middle of the call. As you can imagine, that was quite annoying.

There were things I loved about the Nexus though. We had some good times. I loved the stock implementation of Android without all the cruft that Samsung usually tosses on their phones. That being said, it was very annoying when Jelly Bean came out that I had to wait 6 months for Verizon to get the update out as you buy a Nexus device with the thought that updates should come far more quickly than that. The phone had a great screen and was fast (at the beginning at least).

Near the end, I rooted and unlocked the phone and installed CyanogenMod which helped with the phone issues, but not really any of the others.

I realized that I was off contract the other day (a weird quirk through Verizon's system that occurred after we added my wife's parents to our plan) and I found an offer to get the LG G2 completely free. I was really dissastifed with the Nexus at this point, so I jumped at it.

Hardware

The LG G2 is a beautiful phone. It has a 5.2 inch 1080p IPS display (big for sure, but not so big that people are aghast). The screen is gorgeous and really looks beautiful. It gets really dim and crazy bright with no trouble at all to see in direct sunlight. It feels like a sturdy phone though other phones do have slightly better build qualities. It has a great camera with Optical Image Stabilization that I am getting some great pictures with. The processor is a beast. Snapdragon 800 running at 2.3 mHz. It flies through any task that I give it. I have seen virtually no lag as it just sails through every screen change, app opening, whatever.

One interesting design feature you all may have heard about is that there are zero buttons on the side, top, or bottom of the phone. All of the phone's buttons are located on the back of the device. On the back, right below the camera, you will find a volume up, down, and power button. It is an interesting decision and one that I don't hate. The power button's location is of almost no consequence because of the "knock on" feature (more on that later). The volume up and down buttons pose more of a problem, however. If I am on the phone or just walking with my phone, I have no trouble navigating my finger to the desired button to turn the caller or music up/down. It does become fairly natural. However, if I'm in the car and want to turn something up, I find it somewhat difficult to do without looking at it (never a good thing in a car). All in all, I would give the button placement a qualified positive.

Lastly, I'd like to mention the battery. Woah. 3000 mAh and power sipping features from the Snapdragon 800 make this an all day phone for sure. The battery is non-removable so that is definitely a necessity. In my days of moderate usage, I've taken it off the charger at 7:45a and put it back on at 11p with over 40% battery left. These days have included lots of screen time, calls, 4G usage, etc. I am totally in love with this feature. It doesn't matter how fast/awesome your phone is if it is dead after all.

Software

The software on this phone isn't bad. I am a stock Android guy for the most part. When I look at Samsung's TouchWiz interface it sends chills down my spine. All of that piled on top of stock Android has to have an effect on the phone's performance and I like my phone to be lean and powerful. LG has a layer on top of Android like Samsung and HTC and it can be a bit annoying, but they also let you customize the phone a bunch to eliminate some of these features. For instance, the notification area is sacred to me and I want to see as much of my actual notifications as possible and not have a bunch of sliders, app launchers, and persistent notifications that clutter it up. Out of the box, the G2 was pretty bad about this. It has a top row of quick toggles for brightness, GPS, etc. . . that is fairly useful. The next thing it had was a row of apps that you could launch quickly from the QSlide collection. These were really annoying and I wasn't going to use any of them and to LG's credit I was able to completely remove that section.

The rest of the software that isn't stock is okay. There are some definite winners though. The knock on feature (it allows you to double tap on the screen to turn it on or off) is really useful considering the button placement in the back and works fairly well. Knock off works 100% of the time and knock on about 90%. Another feature that I am loving is the Quick Remote feature. This phone has an IR blaster and it allows itself to become a fully functional universal remote (akin to a Harmony). I currently have it set up to operate my TV, Directv Box, Sony Blu-Ray player, and my random HDMI switcher that it had the ability to learn the buttons from. This was a great software addition and has truly proven itself to be crazy helpful.

Bottom Line

This is a fantastic phone and I would recommend it to anyone. It is insanely fast, has a great camera, has some interesting software tweaks, and the battery will give you all you want and some.

A must buy if you are looking at a new phone.

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