LG G3 Thoughts & First Impressions

First thing's first - I love this phone. For $50 on contract (Best Buy) or if you were lucky, $.01 on contract through Amazon for Black Friday, this phone is an absolute steal. It's blazing fast with the Snapdragon 801 processor combined with 32GB of storage and 3GB of RAM. It also has a 3000mAh battery to last...well, forever for my uses. There is also an SD slot that allows expanded storage of up to an extra 128GB. But the crowning pièce de résistance is the 5.5", 1440p (the first to market in a phone) IPS screen. It's...well, it's just gorgeous.



The other interesting feature on this phone is carried over from the LG G2 - the rear power button & volume rocker. This is much more intuitive than you might think and you can adapt to it very easily. When holding the phone, it's the perfect position. No reaching around to the sides, or worse yet the top corner. Of course, if you don't feel like picking the phone up to turn it on/off, LG has its 'double tap' feature, where you just tap anywhere on the screen twice to wake it up...and if you're at your home screen, you can also put it right back to sleep that way.



That also clears out the sides so that there aren't any buttons at all; just the mic, power & headphone ports on the bottom...



...and the top mic & IR blaster on top.



On the lower rear is the 1W speaker, which isn't as nice as front-facing speakers on phones like the HTC One M8, but it does well for a rear-facing speaker for sure.



Here's another look at the rear controls. On the bottom left is the camera's laser focus system. In the upper right is the dual-LED flash. In the middle is what so far seems to be a very nice 13MP camera. I don't have any sample photos worth showing (my DSLR goes pretty much everywhere I would want to take real photos), but will try to get something to show in the near'ish future.



I'll leave you with a shot of the big, beautiful screen in action.



I'll post more soon'ish, but for now...sleep.

Thanks for posting Hokie, I've been considering switching from my I Phone to either this or the Samsung S5.

How's the battery life?

My Samsung S5 has over 1 day with all the bells and whistles running, but I keep it in Ultra Power Saving Mode for 12 days of battery life. I can change to full power on the fly when I need to run the higher level apps. UPSM only works as a phone/text/calculator/internet browser/alarm clock/memo pad. It's also monochromatic in that mode.

I need the larger screen due to aging eyes.

So far it's very impressive. I can't get it to go below 45% by the time I go to sleep after being unplugged at 7:30. I always just plug it in when going to bed and it lasts all day without fail.

There isn't a selectable power saving mode like the S5, but it does have one you can engage at certain battery percentage. Haven't needed to do so yet.

Cool looking phone, very interesting design choice with the power/volume rocker on the back.

You can probably get an app to manage the power better. Just make sure it isn't crapware like so many of them are.

Janus67 said:

Cool looking phone, very interesting design choice with the power/volume rocker on the back.

Click to expand...

It's definitely different, but a good different. It took all of a few minutes to get used to it. Now it seems just smarter to have them there, especially on a larger phone like this.

Audioaficionado said:

You can probably get an app to manage the power better. Just make sure it isn't crapware like so many of them are.

Click to expand...

There isn't anything to better manage really. When asleep, the Snapdragon 801 processor is just awesome; battery drain is barely perceptible. The thing that drains the most battery is this massive 5.5" screen with 1440p worth of pixels.

I took a couple more shots the other day and thought I'd comment on my minimum level of protection. This phone, like all phones, is very much designed to be used as-is. It feels perfect in-hand and I can use it single-handed without issue - though I'd grant if people's hands are smaller than mine, that could be a problem. I don't like giving any of that up for protection, which is why I had an Otterbox Commuter for my Galaxy S3 but never used it, favoring a thin Diztronic TPU case. Sure, the protection wasn't as good, but the phone felt much nicer in-hand and it still made me feel better.

Which brings me to my new case - the Diztronic Matte Black TPU case for the LG G3.



It has holes perfectly placed for the mics, headphone/USB jacks and the IR blaster. There is plenty of clearance on the back for the speaker, camera, buttons, flash & laser AF sensor.



On the front it doesn't diminish the experience at all, just wrapping around enough to hold on to the phone. The only problem I have with this I would have with any case - it collects pocket lint/dust between itself and the phone. Every case does that, so it's not Diztronic's fault, it's just an annoyance one has to live with in exchange for protection.



The best part is that the case is thin enough that I can still use the phone one-handed. Any bigger and that would definitely be a problem. For $10, I have peace of mind and it even looks decent (though admittedly not as good as the phone without a case).

I got an Otter case. Not as nice a feel as the original phone, but one mishap and I'm on the hook for $660 replacement. Even with insurance, it's a hassle I don't want to deal with.

I've heard nothing but good things about the G3. Congrats on getting a great phone.

Hokie, thanks- the G3 caught my eye somewhere recently, good to get some first person feedback on it.

Still loving it so far. When I have more time, I'll take screenshots of some of the LG-type software stuff and post it. That's already around the 'net though, and easily found if you're interested in getting one.

I did manage to get the battery down to 30% one night...by installing about half-a-gig of apps. Aside from that I'm still hard pressed to go below 45%. Heck, yesterday I went to bed with it at 67%. If you watch a ton of TV/movies and play games on it the screen will surely start to eat that battery, but it hasn't happened to me yet with browsing/forums/facebook/twitter.

bad battery life for me no lollipop and bad performance in games !

There is AOSP lollipop if you want it, but I'm waiting for official. I've never had either of the other two problems at all.

I saw it in the store and decided to grab one to play with. So far so good as an alternate phone, the battery life isn't bad, but it's certainly not great considering my personal use. The performance as a whole is pretty fantastic, no lag when flipping through messages, gallery, and so on, however, there is significant and quite horrible lag when using the camera that is honestly near unbearable comparing side-by-side with the iPhone 5S that is my daily driver for my primary number.

That said about the horrible camera screen performance, the pictures it took were quite good all things considered. The screen seems to be the most appealing thing aside from performance. The buttons were a bit awkward at first as it was different for me having buttons on the back, but after using it for a bit I actually started to like the buttons being on the back.

As an android user who only this year moved to iPhone for my main phone, I may have gotten too used to the iPhone setup, but the G3 leaves me... Well, not particularly impressed. I don't know if this is in part due to actually liking iOS better than Android, or if the phone itself didn't give me the wow factor. It is a good phone though and glad I picked that up instead of the Galaxy S5.

There was a camera update in the 12b update. If you want to root and install custom ROMs, do so on 10b (probably what it came with, or you may need to downgrade). No way to root or install custom recovery on any others.

your right i shouldn't include that Does G3 have anything like samsung knox?! for warranty voiding!

Not sure what Knox is, sorry.

its just turns on permanently once you flash non-stock stuff like recovery(CWM or...) or an custom rom!!

Not that we are aware of. There are at least two different ways to restore to undetectable straight stock.

:O thats awesome ! Samsung flash counter can't be reverted in new phones (at lest for now )

maybe i will buy g4 (if i don't buy shield, i haven't decided yet and made a thread )

Hey another G3 user

So far I love mine. Nice screen, decent camera, good battery life - manage to get 4-5 days out of a charge. Then again, that's lighter use, as I carry two phones and alternate between them (one personal, the G3 is for work). My only real complaint so far, and I don't know if this is a hardware issue or a setting I have to change, is that it thinks every set of earbuds I plug in has a remote/mic. This causes music to randomly pause, the LG voice command app to copen at times, etc.