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LG G5 modular phone: Hi-Fi DAC, battery slide out, connection interface
- jfrumar 11y agoI'm so glad LG are sticking with a switchable battery - it's a must have feature for me. Lots of people have forgotten what it's like to grab a wall-charged battery, slip it in and run out the door with 100% power in a few seconds. Tethering your phone to the wall sucks. Clunky portable battery packs are the worst. I hope this phone sells well, it has my support.
- danielconde 11y agoI agree. I wish it had wireless charging like Qi, but metal cases apparently makes it more difficult to implement
- gameboy24 11y agoIt could be possible to add on via the modular slide out thing though
- danielconde 11y agoTrue. By the way, the Galaxy S7 is supposed to have a metal case but it still has wireless charging too so the engineering seems to be feasible. In my experience the distance between the pad and charger receiver made a big difference, thus putting on a thick case made charging difficult to proceed quickly.
- asafira 11y agoIn the past, I had a phone with wireless charging, but mostly found it a pain. Putting it down slightly in the wrong position often caused the phone to not charge overnight, and the charging was just too damn slow in the morning when I realized that it hadn't charged overnight.
- Grazester 11y agoWouldn't that have depended on that charger the placement and number of coils it had?
- ThatPlayer 11y agoI had a very similar experience with the Nexus 4, but that was a known bad implementation and I wouldn't go for a phone without wireless charging like my Nexus 5 and my LG G4 with a sticker that enables wireless charging. My Nexus 7 also has wireless charging which has been great because the USB port is broken, so I have no other way of charging. The lack of moving parts in wireless charging does mean less chance of breaking.
- sirkneeland 11y agoPalm really nailed wireless charging with the Pre. Magnets ensured it lined up correctly. And allowed it to be mounted on a stand at a great viewing angle. Too bad about Palm...
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- IshKebab 11y agoHonestly that sounds rubbish compared to just having a phone with a decent battery life in the first place. I used to think it was impossible (I had a Nexus 4) but my Z3C has an impressively good battery life - so much so that I rarely think about it. I don't even bother plugging it in for satnav duties. Also it charges at a pretty decent rate - probably takes an hour to fully charge from 0%. Battery swapping is a workaround for flawed phones.
- ryukafalz 11y agoDepends how long you plan to keep your phone. Lithium-ion cells have finite lifespans, and if you plan to keep your phone for years at a time, or if (like me) you tend to purchase slightly older phones, removable batteries are a godsend. FWIW, though I'm not happy about the non-removable battery, I currently use a Nexus 4. It's gotten worse over time, but I used to be able to comfortably get about 2 days of runtime on a full charge. Now it's about a full day, though it sometimes needs a little help if I'm in an area where reception is weak.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- Pxtl 11y agoWell, if you're talking about giving an old phone a new lease on life with a replacement battery as a once-in-a-lifetime service operation, it's fine to break out the tools to replace the battery. If you do battery swaps as a nightly workflow so you can have a day battery and a night battery, then yeah pop-out replacement is the only option
- ryukafalz 11y agoWhile it is of course possible to replace the battery in most phones with specialized tools, for some of the newer models it's very difficult to do without damaging the device. When we're talking about a phone you just bought on eBay with the intention of making it your daily driver, that's a hard sell. All other things equal, I will always pick the slightly thicker phone with a removable battery over the one that might have me breaking out the spudger.
- laacz 11y agoModularity comes with a price in form of wasted space. Nevertheless, this is something completely fresh from a major smartphone vendor. And it is done with their flagship phone. That's the spirit.
- jfoster 11y agoSome phones are at the point where I am prepared to opt for something thicker/heavier in order to get a bit more out of it. Longer battery life, swappable battery, greater durability, better camera, etc. I can absolutely handle the phone being a few millimetres thicker to get these things.
- kyriakos 11y agoIt appears that LG is the only company to dare offer real innovation on its flagship models. I don't know how well this model will do but it seems it's not just a faster rehash of last year's model.
- asafira 11y agoAt most, I think you mean specifically this year, for android phones. The iPhone 6S had some cool (hardware) updates, and I'd venture a guess that the iPhone 7 will, too.
- theon144 11y agoWell, the only thing on the 6S that isn't an incremental upgrade is the force-sensitive touchscreen, which in my opinion doesn't really bring that much new to the table compared to this kind of modularity.
- giancarlostoro 11y agoThe LG phones have been great so far, I still have my G2 years later, everyone in my house has had them.
- robocat 11y agoI have an LG Nexus 5 : common fault is that microphone stops working and power/volume buttons gets stuck (in my case due to case breaking near buttons from being in pocket). I have given Moto G phones to parents and friends - they seem more reliable.
- robocat 11y agoI have an LG Nexus 5 : common fault is that microphone stops working and power/volume buttons gets stuck (in my case due to case breaking near buttons from being in pocket). I have given Moto G phones to parents and friends - they seem more reliable.
- thebaer 11y agoAgreed -- the G3 is the best Android phone I've owned in my 6 years of owning Android devices, and will be the first one I use until it doesn't work anymore, as opposed to upgrading on the 2 year cycle.
- jkot 11y agoInternal battery is only 2,800mAh :-(
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- CountHackulus 11y agoWhich doesn't really indicate what battery life is going to be like.
- noobie 11y agoDo elaborate please. (Not /s)
- BHSPitMonkey 11y agoWe don't know how much power the phone actually draws in use.
- zootam 11y agobut also, having a weak battery life also creates demand for the battery packs. if they're hotswappable and somewhat affordable, I think people will have no issue buying the packs and swapping during the day as needed.
- mmastrac 11y agoThis might give people a taste for what really modular devices like Ara can offer, but the fact that it doesn't do battery swaps without powering down is going to make it far less interesting to people. An internal battery to give you 30-60s in an emergency hibernate mode would have been game-changing. Kudos to LG for actually taking this step though. With luck this will whet the appetite for phones that are truly modular (and show manufacturers that there is a market for swappable parts).
- post_break 11y agoI've never heard of someone needing a phone to stay on while changing the battery.
- maxerickson 11y agoI bet a huge majority would prefer it. It's just not really been a sensible compromise, so no one even thinks about it.
- hammock 11y agoOf course they would prefer it, if there were no trade-offs. But as you point out it's not currently sensible.
- jschwartzi 11y agoIt's pretty common in enterprise-grade handhelds like Windows Embedded devices to include a little bridge battery.
- goda90 11y agoWell as the article points out, adding modules involves taking out the battery. There might be other design options besides an extra battery/super capacitor, but it kinda weakens the utility of quick change modules.
- sangnoir 11y ago
- sunilkumarc 11y agoAny hints on the price yet?
- mattmcknight 11y agoNot sure why they would cripple it with just 32GB of internal storage. Too much Android stuff refuses to run from, or store data on, the SDCard.
- monocasa 11y agoNewer android releases use the SD card in a much cleaner way that allow pretty much anything to run off of them.
- mattmcknight 11y agoNot 5.0, and it's the applications, not Android. Things like the Kindle app and most Google apps refuse to run from, or store data on, the SDcard. My Galaxy S5 is constantly full, so full that the OS can't upgrade, even after I clear 5GB of space. I have a an SDcard where 100GB of 1TB is used, but am always running out of space, even after all of the apps that allow being moved the SDcard are moved there. It's a real problem.
- notatoad 11y agoIn Android 6 (the version of Android that is installed on the device this thread is about) SD cards with high enough speeds can be adopted onto the system storage and the combined size appears as a single block of internal storage to apps, they don't know they're running off an SD Card.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- digi_owl 11y agoI'm iffy about that adoption system, as it also makes the cards useless as removable/swappable storage. This because the adoption process formats and encrypts the card, thus anything stored on it can only be accessed from within the device that adopted it.
- darklajid 11y agoMy "is it worth even thinking about a particular device" litmus test is "can it run CM". Unfortunately that's impossible to tell for future devices, most of the time.
- throwaway41597 11y agoTotally agreed. Also it's hard to tell for current devices as reviewers, such as Engadget, Ars or GSMArena, never mention it. It's surprising given that tech review sites target many power users.
- ThatPlayer 11y agoLG's older LG G4 still only runs CM on two variants. The international one (H815), and the T-mobile (H811) models as these are the only ones easily unlockable bootloaders.
- mixedCase 11y agoBlame your carriers.
- noobie 11y agoRant. It really bugs me when consumers ask for more features regardless of their feasibility, here we have a great phone with changebale batteries and yet we ask for it to be still on while we swap the batteries! Hasn't it occurred to us that maybe it's technically difficult to add in a supercap. Just be thankful. This is like constentaly asking for phones with more RAM and processing power, I am really glad Moore's law has come to end, maybe now consumers will be faced with the harsh truth that it is not simple to keep on creating more powerful devices for them to watch cat videos on.
- danielconde 11y agoI agree. With automobiles, people seem to be more aware of the constraints and the balance of capabilities to make a vehicle that fits a segment. I.e. sports cars aren't always comfortable. One day, people may understand tradeoffs in phones and realize that long battery life may require a thick phone.
- maxerickson 11y agoOf course no true sports cars have it, but some cars claiming to be sports cars have dial-a-mode for their suspension. Driving to work? Select smooth and comfortable. Driving for fun? Select performance.
- theon144 11y ago>realize that long battery life may require a thick phone. I'm pretty sure most people realize that, and everyone I've ever heard complaining about battery life also added that they wouldn't mind a thicker phone.
- protomyth 11y agoTo be fair, the Newton allowed you to change batteries with power still supplied. It used watch batteries. Switch one battery or the other and keep everything. People aren't asking for the world, they're asking for something that's been a solved problem.
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- agumonkey 11y agoRandom note, I recently used an old Nexus S as a mp3 player. I was surprised by the sound texture of crappy mp3 over my 10$ panasonic earclips... I started to wonder if the hardware wasn't responsible. According to some people it embeds a Wolfson DAC (of Wolfson DAC fame ~_~). It does makes a significant difference.
- sandGorgon 11y agoReally really wish LG was making the Nexus this time around. But it seems that HTC is doing it using a fairly meh design of the M10.
- izacus 11y agoHuh? Nexus 5X is LG.
- sandGorgon 11y agoI meant 2016 - HTC is rumored to be making them.
- throwaway41597 11y ago- Replaceable battery is always good - Proper camera handle and better DAC too, but not as mutually exclusive modules What I want is: - A robust and replaceable bumper that integrates with the design (i.e. isn't ugly). The phone should not be designed as if the user isn't going to slap an ugly case on it. - A hole for a wrist strap so I don't worry I'm gonna drop my phone. All cameras have one, but now that phones are taking over, none have it. - An unlocked bootloader that doesn't void your warranty. Or even better lets you set the signing key on first use (a sort of Trust On First Use that the user is the owner).
- danielconde 11y agoThose are excellent points. Old small flip phones sometimes had a small place for a strap loop so you can fish it out of a bag by the strap, and of course also to hold on to it. Phone straps are popular in Japan, and I've seen some that connect to the headphone jack, but it doesn't really work well, so the sturdier ones connect to a bumper. A bumper-design (maybe a groove to hold a bumper) is a good idea too. One can argue that making phones easier to damage encourages people to replace it with new ones so manufacturers have hidden incentive to avoid such safety features, but ultimately if someone comes up with a better design like you state, people will flock to it.
- throwaway41597 11y agoAll agreed. I'd add that the market is slowing down, so bumpers could end up bringing more profits. First, customers would be more willing to invest in higher margin products if the device was more robust and likely to last. And manufacturers could sell official bumpers with advanced shock-proofing, a nice metal finish, perfect fit to the case, many different colors, ...
- danielconde 11y agoGood point about market maturity. If people are holding on to phones longer, sell them more accessories that people replace periodically, and make the base unit more also high margin (if they accomodate the official bumpers). But it's the consumer's choice -- they don't need to buy new bumpers if they are content with what they have. It's a variant of the razor & blades model.
- acd 11y agoI think its good of LG to design a phone that is good for the environment in the sense that users can swap the battery and upgrade the storage instead of having to buy a whole new phone when those run out of capacity. Global warming dictates that we as consumers not only our politicians are responsible for the future we create. If manufacturers can help make devices that last longer I´m going to choose such a device the next time I buy a phone. I think its bold of LG to think differently and stick out of the crowd of similar phones. Like that you can upgrade the storage capacity via MicroSD cards.
- sschueller 11y agoI agree, I think phone manufacturers should be punished for not making batteries replaceable and contributing to waste. Having a few screws to get to a battery is OK but gluing it in such a way that it requires special tools is just idiotic. Same goes for laptops.
- danjayh 11y agoInteresting phone, horrible article. Typical of the modern Engadget, the article is light on facts and heavy on superlatives. For instance, I had to head over to some random Android website (androidHeadlines) to find out that yes, it does have Micro SD card support, and that it has 32GB of built-in storage (pathetic, Engadget). I do really like the idea of extensive expandability, but I wish it could be standardized somehow (admittedly difficult in a mobile form factor). I think this would encourage the creation of interesting devices by interesting startups, which is something that would probably get everybody here excited. If you want a decent article by a respectable pub, check out the Ars version (linked below). It has all of the technical info that Engadget missed, minus the comments on how 'fantastic' the device feels. http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/02/lg-g5-hands-on-lg-may-have-made-the-most-innovative-phone-of-mwc/ http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/02/lg-g5-hands-on-lg-may...
- dang 11y agoWe can change the URL to that one if people agree that it's better.
- klausa 11y agoGod forbid a tech site writes about anything else than phones, tablet and laptops. The horror!
- danjayh 11y agoI realized the irony of complaining about Engadget going inappropriately off-topic and then doing so myself, and edited that out. Trying my best to stay on the rails :). I do stand by my opinion that even their tech-focused articles are horrible these days, including this one. To anybody reading this now -- klausa is not just writing crazy replies, I did previously have a blurb about a graphically explicit non-tech Engadget article in the parent comment.
- digi_owl 11y agoOn that note, the last time i read Engadget actively was back when they edited hockey masks on all faces on Friday 13th. Sadly all the big sites head this way. Likely because their owners are breathing down the editors necks to be more "hip and social conscious".
- ank_the_elder 11y agoSnapdragon 820 features https://www.qualcomm.com/products/snapdragon/processors/820 https://www.qualcomm.com/products/snapdragon/processors/820
- voltagex_ 11y agoI wonder if the bootloader will be unlockable. I've been spoiled by Nexus devices for years and I remember how much work the Galaxy S3 I briefly owned was. What's LG's track record like with releasing sources? Nexus devices don't count.
- mih 11y agoLooking around on forums like XDA, one sees that LG typically has different models depending on the market. The tech specs are identical, but it has more to do with carrier branding and lockdown. For instance, in markets such as the EU, LG G4 shipped with an unlockable bootloader while in the US and Asia it was not. Workarounds and custom ROMs exist, but you also see plenty of stories about bricked phones. Put simply LG simply does not have the friendliest attitude towards developers, as opposed to say HTC. They are compelled to release GPL source code for the device, but getting it to run on your device takes a bit of work.
- voltagex_ 11y agoSigh. I wish I could love the Nexus 5X, but it just didn't represent a big enough jump to justify a 2x price difference from the 5 (in Australia). I'm not sure who "lg-devs" are, but they seem to have a full source tree for the G4 at https://github.com/lg-devs/android_device_lge_h811 https://github.com/lg-devs/android_device_lge_h811. No idea if it boots, though.
- zo1 11y agoI installed Cyanogenmod on my old S3 with minimal effort. Literally as easy as connecting to the PC via USB and running the installer. Wonder why you struggled?
- SwellJoe 11y agoI want a better ADC, even more than I want a better DAC (though both would be best). I'd like a high quality recording device for the field...a phone or tablet would be perfect, but there's no good way, that I know of, to get the signal into the device at high quality.
- moreati 11y agoMy first thought is: through the micro USB port, exploiting the OTG feature. A few variations on googling 'android external microphone' lead to http://www.androidaudiorecording.com/record-from-a-usb-microphone-or-audio-interface-with-your-android-phone-or-tablet/ http://www.androidaudiorecording.com/record-from-a-usb-micro.... Sorry if you've been down this road already.
- SwellJoe 11y agoYeah, I've seen that one, and it's a clumsy solution, at best; it has a custom USB driver and only works with that one piece of software (or did, last time I looked at it). It's certainly better than nothing, and it's cool that something exists, but the lack of general purpose USB audio interface support in Android is frustrating as hell, especially since iOS has had it for so long.
- userbinator 11y agoPress a tiny button on the G5's edge and the bottom and battery easily separate from the phone. Incidentally, several years ago Chinese manufacturer Jiayu made an iPhone-looking phone also called the G5 and having a dedicated button to release the back cover: http://amirexpress.ir/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=161 http://amirexpress.ir/index.php?route=product/product&produc...
- omonra 11y agoI've been a loyal Samsung owner since S3. Didn't upgrade to S6 because they dropped removable battery. Was waiting to see if it's brought back with S7 - it's not. Will be getting this phone as an upgrade. For me removable battery and SD Card in a flagship phone are a must. Then comes camera quality, then price.
- namocat 11y agoI was in the same boat as you (loyal Samsung owner, still using my trusty S3) until a few months ago when I decided to go for last year's LG flagship, the G4, and I gotta say I've been extremely displeased with LG. Particularly, the way LG Mobile has handled the many problems that have plagued the G4. Apparently, catastrophic bootloop failures of the G4 were such a widespread problem, that a petition has so far gained a couple thousand signatures [0] to get LG to officially recall the bricked phones. I personally experienced the bootloop of death on my G4 only a couple of months after getting it, and their customer service has been atrocious - even refusing to fix my phone after they've now admitted its due to a known hardware defect [1] because mine was the international, unlocked version. So, just a heads up to beware LG's "Caveat emptor" practices. [0] - https://www.change.org/p/lg-mobile-launch-a-replacement-program-for-defective-lg-g4s/u/15477570 https://www.change.org/p/lg-mobile-launch-a-replacement-prog... [1] - http://www.androidauthority.com/lg-admits-g4-bootloop-problem-hardware-fault-669603/ http://www.androidauthority.com/lg-admits-g4-bootloop-proble...
- omonra 11y agoThank you. Funny enough I experienced a similar issue with my S4 a few years ago. One day it just died - no messages, no nothing. Completely out of the blue, no falls or anything. I took it to Samsung repair, they sent it off and returned it to me in a few weeks. I looked on the forums and apparently it was a fairly common (ie thousands of people affected) issue. Same reason - a random hardware chip malfunction that manifests itself after 6-9 months of use. I think this was the issue: http://forums.androidcentral.com/telus-samsung-galaxy-s4/380081-samsung-galaxy-s4-won-t-turn.html http://forums.androidcentral.com/telus-samsung-galaxy-s4/380... So basically I think any manufacturer can fall prey to this - a faulty component that takes months to manifest itself.
- shams93 11y agoI wonder if we'll finally get sub 2ms audio latency from an android device via this dac, or whether its just going to be very nice quality audio with 100ms latency.
- nix0n 11y agoSwitching the DAC will only help with quality, not with latency, because the latency is a software issue. Samsung has implemented software workarounds to skip some parts of the audio processing path and reduce latency, but I'm not sure how low it gets. See http://superpowered.com/androidaudiopathlatency http://superpowered.com/androidaudiopathlatency and https://github.com/felixpalmer/android-visualizer/issues/5 https://github.com/felixpalmer/android-visualizer/issues/5 for more info on all this.
- mrmondo 11y agoI guess the battery swapping could be useful, but I'd rather spend the money on quality components in it from the get-go than have the option to buy extra, replaceable components.
- happywolf 11y agoI had a LG Nexus 4 and the battery got bloated after a year of use. When I tried to get help, LG just ignored me even though that was a safety issue. Thumbs down on it.
- threeLetters 11y agoI don't know what a DAC is. What's a DAC?
- charlieglass 11y agoDigital to Analogue Converter. It converts digitised discrete samples to an analogue signal that you can listen to.
- pmlnr 11y agoThe Fairphone2 was already modular before this... http://shop.fairphone.com/spareparts.html http://shop.fairphone.com/spareparts.html
- shadowfax92 11y agoBeginning of a new Era! I hope google launches it's Project Ara soon.