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LG G3 review: A great phone with too many pixels

38 points by sizzle 12y ago

sillysaurus3 12y ago
How long does the battery last on average for their typical usage? I carry around an external battery in my pocket along with my phone. You can buy one for pretty much any phone. Whenever I'm low on battery, I just plug in the external and continue using it, even if I'm walking. It's really convenient. I think I'd prefer the big screen size even if the battery dies after only a few hours.
- gstamp 12y ago
  Battery life on the second page.
- imaginenore 12y ago
  7 hours 20 minutes browsing on Wifi. Not bad at all.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 12y ago
    If the battery will last long enough for me to get from my 3 metre charge cable in the kitchen to the charger in the car to the charger at work, it'll do.
    - lozf 12y ago
      Meanwhile, those of us who "get out more" would appreciate any improvements that can be made.
- tkubacki 12y ago
  oh my, I'm old I remember Nokia's 3310 battery lasting for a whole week :)
  - Joeri 12y ago
    Turn off data, wifi, gps and all background apps. You'll be surprised how long your battery lasts.
    - kalleboo 12y ago
      I have a couple year old Android I use with the SIM card from my home country when traveling to receive emergency calls from work. It usually lasts just over 2 weeks with roaming data turned off.
    - thaumasiotes 12y ago
      The screen itself draws a large amount of power; making heavy use of the kindle app used to threaten to exhaust my phone.
pling 12y ago
That's kind of crazy. The thing that gets me with all these things is the energy density in your pocket. 3Ah is a lot of energy. When a LiPoly goes off, it goes off in style. Even the 2Ah one in my Moto G is scary. And in this 3Ah behemoth, the battery life sucks!?!?
- hackerboos 12y ago
  Battery life on the G3 is better than most other smartphones. I'll be purchasing a G3 as battery life is becoming a nuisance on my Samsung Galaxy 4.
- higherpurpose 12y ago
  From a rough estimate, a 2x increase in resolution reduces the battery life by 30 percent overall, if everything else is equal. But they usually increase battery size and get a more powerful (therefore more efficient with high resolutions) GPU, to mask that. That's how a 1440p phone can get the same, or almost the same battery life as a phone with 720p screen and a significantly smaller battery. Now the question that most OEMs don't seem to ask themselves is - how much better would the battery life be, if they kept the old "standard" resolution, and increase the battery life and used a new GPU, too? It could be up to 50 percent longer. Not to mention that focusing on resolution, and making the screen more expensive that way, takes away from them focusing on other aspects of the screen, such as viewing angles (there was a comparison around between LG G3 and Galaxy S5 viewing angles, which I can't find now, but LG G3 viewing angles were pretty bad). Focusing on needlessly expensive higher resolution screens also takes component money away from investing in even better cameras, more storage, and so on. For example, instead of paying $70 for a 1440p display, they could be paying $50 for a 1080p one (which are pretty abundant now), and get a $40 camera sensor instead of a $20 one. I, for one, would appreciate such a component choice much more.
  - msh 12y ago
    The answer to your question is here: http://www.anandtech.com/show/8031/huawei-ascend-mate-2-review/2 http://www.anandtech.com/show/8031/huawei-ascend-mate-2-revi...
  - 12y ago
megablast 12y ago
> Android OEMs have shown time and time again that they design, not for a great user experience, but for the showroom, spec sheet, and marketability. You see this with a lot of their ardent fans, they talk up the specs, as if we are back in the old days.
- georgemcbay 12y ago
  > You see this with a lot of their ardent fans, they talk up the specs, as if we are back in the old days. Depends upon which fans. Ardent Android fans are, well, fragmented into at least two groups: Those who are all about the specs of the latest flagship phone from the various high-end phone manufacturers (Samsung, HTC, LG, etc) and those who wouldn't touch a non-Nexus Android phone with a ten foot pole. The second group generally doesn't care about specs as long as they are reasonably decent for a modern phone.
neals 12y ago
Running a game on this thing means that the gpu has to work that much harder to render those extra pixels. I'd rather have a higher framerate than more pixels.
neverminder 12y ago
My reasoning is this: if 4K is a new standard resolution for media (TVs, desktop monitors, laptop screens), phones should not be excluded, so there wouldn't have to be any upscaling/downscaling/converting which increases energy consumption and results it lower quality. LG is taking the right path and this screen should be just a test run for an upcoming 4K one.
- geon 12y ago
  Won't the high res screen use more power?
  - neverminder 12y ago
    It would. But screens are getting more efficient in power usage, do they not? I think that most companies aim for a battery that would sustain a moderate usage throughout the day, which is perfectly reasonable in my opinion.
- pedrocr 12y ago
  Most "4K" is really 3840x2160 which is exactly twice 1920x1080. So scaling 4K resolution to a 1080p screen is easy, just average every four pixels into one. This screen though has 1/3 more pixels in both dimensions so scaling is actually harder. Since a Nexus 5 is already at 445PPI with a 1080p screen I don't see any advantage of going 4K on this form factor. On a large tablet perhaps, but not on a phone.
  - neverminder 12y ago
    Maybe I was just assuming a similar point of view and I realize this maybe far fetched, but in my opinion and in very rough terms - the natural progression of the screen concept should be to shrink the pixel to the size of a molecule which would then produce an image indistinguishable from the real matter. Such arguments as "human eye can't make a difference" don't really apply here, wouldn't you agree?
    - pedrocr 12y ago
someperson 12y ago
Very high resolution panels will be needed for Virtual Reality headsets to reach human eye level fidelity. When looking at even this LCD panel from just an inch away from your eyes and through lenses, it's actually quite a low effective resolution per eye. We still have to go A LONG way to go with respect to screen technology. Also unfortunately this technology is LCD (not OLED), so not suitable for VR applications due to lack of low-persistance.
- wtallis 12y ago
  Can't any LCD be made into a low-persistence display just by pulsing the backlight? I don't see how OLED is necessarily any better.
  - acous 12y ago
    The persistence is just 1 factor... LCD response time is very slow compared to OLED (~5ms vs ~0.01ms). Every millisecond is important when it comes to VR.
    - wtallis 12y ago
      So, the persistence isn't really a factor at all, just the response time.
      - acous 12y ago
        Well persistence is a factor too. Say your display is updating at 120hz without low persistence... the image stays on screen for 8ms, so you have, say, 1ms of accurate image plus 7ms displaying an inaccurate image. For whatever reason our brains prefer to have no image rather than an inaccurate image, so it helps to turn off the display for that 7/8 of a frame. While you can do that with LCD, you have to wait 5ms for the pixels to change before you can strobe, so your frame is an extra 5ms out of date. That's my understanding at least, I'm not an expert by any means.
        12y ago
pervycreeper 12y ago
He is criticizing the phone maker for making the wrong tradeoff, but really, that's for the consumer to decide. Some people may value the (possibly) marginal improvement in sharpness. Why resist technological improvements?
- potatolicious 12y ago
  You realize this is a review right? He's not proposing we ban the phone, or prevent its sale, or in any way interfere with the market. How is he resisting technological improvements, and how is he preventing consumers from deciding? He is a consumer who has decided the tradeoff being made is wrong, and expressed his opinion publicly.
mkhpalm 12y ago
Looks cool except for the customized android part with a 1-2 year half-life. I'm baffled at how companies can't figure out that less software customization mixed with long-term OS upgrades is consistently more valuable to consumers.

38 points by sizzle 12y ago

How long does the battery last on average for their typical usage? I carry around an external battery in my pocket along with my phone. You can buy one for pretty much any phone. Whenever I'm low on battery, I just plug in the external and continue using it, even if I'm walking. It's really convenient. I think I'd prefer the big screen size even if the battery dies after only a few hours.

gstamp 12y ago
Battery life on the second page.
imaginenore 12y ago
7 hours 20 minutes browsing on Wifi. Not bad at all.
- TheSpiceIsLife 12y ago
  If the battery will last long enough for me to get from my 3 metre charge cable in the kitchen to the charger in the car to the charger at work, it'll do.
  - lozf 12y ago
    Meanwhile, those of us who "get out more" would appreciate any improvements that can be made.
tkubacki 12y ago
oh my, I'm old I remember Nokia's 3310 battery lasting for a whole week :)
- Joeri 12y ago
  Turn off data, wifi, gps and all background apps. You'll be surprised how long your battery lasts.
  - kalleboo 12y ago
    I have a couple year old Android I use with the SIM card from my home country when traveling to receive emergency calls from work. It usually lasts just over 2 weeks with roaming data turned off.
  - thaumasiotes 12y ago
    The screen itself draws a large amount of power; making heavy use of the kindle app used to threaten to exhaust my phone.

pling 12y ago

That's kind of crazy. The thing that gets me with all these things is the energy density in your pocket. 3Ah is a lot of energy. When a LiPoly goes off, it goes off in style. Even the 2Ah one in my Moto G is scary. And in this 3Ah behemoth, the battery life sucks!?!?

hackerboos 12y ago
Battery life on the G3 is better than most other smartphones. I'll be purchasing a G3 as battery life is becoming a nuisance on my Samsung Galaxy 4.
higherpurpose 12y ago
From a rough estimate, a 2x increase in resolution reduces the battery life by 30 percent overall, if everything else is equal. But they usually increase battery size and get a more powerful (therefore more efficient with high resolutions) GPU, to mask that. That's how a 1440p phone can get the same, or almost the same battery life as a phone with 720p screen and a significantly smaller battery. Now the question that most OEMs don't seem to ask themselves is - how much better would the battery life be, if they kept the old "standard" resolution, and increase the battery life and used a new GPU, too? It could be up to 50 percent longer. Not to mention that focusing on resolution, and making the screen more expensive that way, takes away from them focusing on other aspects of the screen, such as viewing angles (there was a comparison around between LG G3 and Galaxy S5 viewing angles, which I can't find now, but LG G3 viewing angles were pretty bad). Focusing on needlessly expensive higher resolution screens also takes component money away from investing in even better cameras, more storage, and so on. For example, instead of paying $70 for a 1440p display, they could be paying $50 for a 1080p one (which are pretty abundant now), and get a $40 camera sensor instead of a $20 one. I, for one, would appreciate such a component choice much more.
- msh 12y ago
  The answer to your question is here: http://www.anandtech.com/show/8031/huawei-ascend-mate-2-review/2 http://www.anandtech.com/show/8031/huawei-ascend-mate-2-revi...
- 12y ago

megablast 12y ago

> Android OEMs have shown time and time again that they design, not for a great user experience, but for the showroom, spec sheet, and marketability. You see this with a lot of their ardent fans, they talk up the specs, as if we are back in the old days.

georgemcbay 12y ago
> You see this with a lot of their ardent fans, they talk up the specs, as if we are back in the old days. Depends upon which fans. Ardent Android fans are, well, fragmented into at least two groups: Those who are all about the specs of the latest flagship phone from the various high-end phone manufacturers (Samsung, HTC, LG, etc) and those who wouldn't touch a non-Nexus Android phone with a ten foot pole. The second group generally doesn't care about specs as long as they are reasonably decent for a modern phone.

neals 12y ago

Running a game on this thing means that the gpu has to work that much harder to render those extra pixels. I'd rather have a higher framerate than more pixels.

neverminder 12y ago

My reasoning is this: if 4K is a new standard resolution for media (TVs, desktop monitors, laptop screens), phones should not be excluded, so there wouldn't have to be any upscaling/downscaling/converting which increases energy consumption and results it lower quality. LG is taking the right path and this screen should be just a test run for an upcoming 4K one.

geon 12y ago
Won't the high res screen use more power?
- neverminder 12y ago
  It would. But screens are getting more efficient in power usage, do they not? I think that most companies aim for a battery that would sustain a moderate usage throughout the day, which is perfectly reasonable in my opinion.
pedrocr 12y ago
Most "4K" is really 3840x2160 which is exactly twice 1920x1080. So scaling 4K resolution to a 1080p screen is easy, just average every four pixels into one. This screen though has 1/3 more pixels in both dimensions so scaling is actually harder. Since a Nexus 5 is already at 445PPI with a 1080p screen I don't see any advantage of going 4K on this form factor. On a large tablet perhaps, but not on a phone.
- neverminder 12y ago
  Maybe I was just assuming a similar point of view and I realize this maybe far fetched, but in my opinion and in very rough terms - the natural progression of the screen concept should be to shrink the pixel to the size of a molecule which would then produce an image indistinguishable from the real matter. Such arguments as "human eye can't make a difference" don't really apply here, wouldn't you agree?
  - pedrocr 12y ago

someperson 12y ago

Very high resolution panels will be needed for Virtual Reality headsets to reach human eye level fidelity. When looking at even this LCD panel from just an inch away from your eyes and through lenses, it's actually quite a low effective resolution per eye. We still have to go A LONG way to go with respect to screen technology. Also unfortunately this technology is LCD (not OLED), so not suitable for VR applications due to lack of low-persistance.

wtallis 12y ago
Can't any LCD be made into a low-persistence display just by pulsing the backlight? I don't see how OLED is necessarily any better.
- acous 12y ago
  The persistence is just 1 factor... LCD response time is very slow compared to OLED (~5ms vs ~0.01ms). Every millisecond is important when it comes to VR.
  - wtallis 12y ago
    So, the persistence isn't really a factor at all, just the response time.
    - acous 12y ago
      Well persistence is a factor too. Say your display is updating at 120hz without low persistence... the image stays on screen for 8ms, so you have, say, 1ms of accurate image plus 7ms displaying an inaccurate image. For whatever reason our brains prefer to have no image rather than an inaccurate image, so it helps to turn off the display for that 7/8 of a frame. While you can do that with LCD, you have to wait 5ms for the pixels to change before you can strobe, so your frame is an extra 5ms out of date. That's my understanding at least, I'm not an expert by any means.
      - 12y ago

pervycreeper 12y ago

He is criticizing the phone maker for making the wrong tradeoff, but really, that's for the consumer to decide. Some people may value the (possibly) marginal improvement in sharpness. Why resist technological improvements?

potatolicious 12y ago
You realize this is a review right? He's not proposing we ban the phone, or prevent its sale, or in any way interfere with the market. How is he resisting technological improvements, and how is he preventing consumers from deciding? He is a consumer who has decided the tradeoff being made is wrong, and expressed his opinion publicly.

mkhpalm 12y ago

Looks cool except for the customized android part with a 1-2 year half-life. I'm baffled at how companies can't figure out that less software customization mixed with long-term OS upgrades is consistently more valuable to consumers.