The LG G6 is the flagship device that got everyone talking at MWC 2017. Its 18:9 aspect ratio left me in awe and with it now in my hands, I found myself questioning every other phone in existence with a 16:9 aspect ratio.
Simply put, when you go 18:9 you’ll never want to go back. Why? Because the LG G6 adds that extra bit of display you’ve been longing for while keeping similar dimensions to conventional phones, such as the Huawei P9 I use day to day. By elongating the screen and reducing the bezels, LG has struck gold with a flagship phone that’s perfect for viewing videos, reading the news and multitasking.
The LG G6 comes with 32GB of internal storage, with up to 2TB of expandable storage through a microSD card. You’ll find it in the UK in Astro Black, Ice Platinum and Mystic White. I received the Ice Platinum for review.
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LG G6 review: Price and competition
LG hasn’t confirmed the price with us, but LG’s UK website links out to Argos, which has it at £650, and other retailers are also selling it at this price (Clove and MobileFun), so it’s safe to say this is as official as it’s going to get. In the US, Verizon has the LG G6 listed at $672.
LG had initially promised us a “very competitive” price, but it isn’t that much cheaper than the Samsung Galaxy S8 at £689, and it’s more expensive than both the iPhone 7 at £579 and Google Pixel at £600.
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LG G6 review: Build quality and design
The LG G6 looks great and it oozes premium quality with its stylish metal frame and glass back. The latter is made with Corning’s Gorilla Glass 5, which gives it much-needed drop protection and scratch resistance, but it isn’t particularly fingerprint-resistant. Interestingly, LG says the corners of the display panel inside are angled in such a way, that if you were to drop the phone on its side, it won’t break the screen; at least, that’s the theory. The phone is also IP68-rated, meaning you can submerge it at a depth of 1.5m for 30 minutes, so it’s as tough as flagship smartphones get.
The 5.7in front display is protected by Corning’s Gorilla Glass 3 and, due to its 18:9 aspect ratio, the LG G6 screen-to-body ratio is an impressive 78.6%. The phone isn’t too heavy, at 163g, and despite the size of the screen, it’s still usable one-handed.
LG has opted to keep the power button around the back of the phone, sitting under the dual-lens camera with dual-LED flash. The button doubles up as a fingerprint reader but unfortunately doesn’t give you any swipe features or additional shortcuts.
The volume rocker sits on the left side, with a dual-SIM and microSD card tray on the right. To charge and transfer files, you have a USB Type-C port on the bottom edge, and to listen to music, a 3.5mm headphone jack at the top.
As for colours, the LG G6 comes in Astro Black, Ice Platinum and Mystic White. The Ice Platinum is the best looking of the bunch, but I’d avoid Astro Black: its rear glass and colour make the G6 look like a cheap smartphone, and fingerprints are painfully obvious.
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LG G6 review: Display
The LG G6’s display is the main attraction here, and it completely changes the way you look at a smartphone. Holding the 5.2in Huawei P9 and the 5.7in LG G6 side by side with the screens off, you’d be forgiven for wondering what the fuss was all about. It’s only when you power them on that the differences become immediately apparent.
Its 18:9 aspect ratio is a refreshing step forward for smartphone technology. The extra bit of screen isn’t just an “add-on”, either, it’s a genuine improvement. It makes reading the news, watching movies, taking pictures, multitasking and gaming more enjoyable and practical than before.
The LG G6’s greatness doesn’t stop there, though: there’s also Dolby Vision and HDR 10 support. Previously only available on high-end TVs, HDR widens the colour range, producing blinding white and seriously deep black. Obviously, your content will have to be HDR as well, but you should be able to watch both Netflix and Amazon HDR content as soon as the mobile apps have been enabled for the technology.
However, there is some day-to-day benefit, too: to meet these standards, LG has clearly worked on the screen’s contrast and brightness. I measured the screen’s contrast at a frankly astonishing 1,678:1 and 2,112:1 depending on screen content, which is the best we’ve seen on a phone, ever.
With a maximum 492cd/m2 brightness, the IPS screen is readable in all but the very brightest of conditions – I had no problem viewing the phone outside – and it also delivers stunning black level response. Dark scenes in movies are actually closer to the black colour you’d expect from a high-end monitor or an AMOLED screen, instead of looking slightly grey. At a measured 0.23cd/m2, it isn’t as impressive as the LG G5’s 0.19cd/m2 screen, but it is still up there with the very best IPS phone screens.
The only thing I was disappointed by was the colours the screen produced in day-to-day use. It could only cover 93.2% of the sRGB, gamut while other smartphones – particularly those with AMOLED displays – can do better.
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LG G6 review: Software
The LG G6 comes with Android 7 Nougat out of the box, with LG’s latest Android overlay – UX 6. This focuses on advanced multitasking, boasting much-improved camera software and more enjoyable ways to engage with films, games and apps.
Coupled with LG’s 18:9 screen, you can divide the screen into two even squares, permitting you to run two apps simultaneously, take pictures while viewing your gallery, and even use your browser to find ratings of a restaurant while at the same time finding the directions there on Google Maps.
The software is a pleasure to use and, as it doesn’t hog too much RAM, it provides the LG G6 with relatively smooth performance.
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LG G6 review: Performance
That’s just as well, as the LG G6’s core specs are uninspiring. Instead of moving to the 10nm Snapdragon 835 chip, LG has decided to stick with the Snapdragon 821 – the same chip used in the Google Pixel and Pixel XL phones – and it's only a minor improvement over the Snapdragon 820 found in the G5. It’s a quad-core 2.35GHz processor backed by 4GB of RAM.
For a flagship phone, I’d have expected an octa-core processor with 6GB of RAM, and when I used the LG G6 alongside an octa-core smartphone, I found the LG a little sluggish and unable to cope with strenuous multitasking tasks. I also found the fingerprint sensor to be a bit slow in comparison with others I’ve used, and it doesn’t cope well with moisture either; a little bit of sweat meant I had to resort to tapping in my four-digit PIN.
Put through synthetic benchmarks, the LG G6 achieved a Geekbench 4 single-core score of 1,777 and 4,137 in the multi-core benchmark. Compared with its competitors, the G6 offers nothing over the Google Pixel – not surprising given that it uses the same chip. What’s slightly more surprising is that the LG G6 lags behind the year-old Galaxy S7 and is completely outpaced by the Huawei P10. We’re pretty sure it will be trumped by the Galaxy S8’s Snapdragon 835/Exynos 8895 as well.
^Geekbench 4 performance
For gaming, the LG G6 utilises the Adreno 530, which is the same GPU found in the LG G5, but with a slightly higher clock of 653MHz versus the 624MHz one in the G5 it performs marginally better. The extra headroom comes from the Snapdragon 821’s ability to manage power consumption more effectively.
^Looking at the graph above, you should remember that the G6 has the highest resolution out of the bunch, thus its onscreen performance is comparatively low.
Moving on to storage capacity, the LG G6 comes with 32GB of the stuff. For a flagship phone in 2017, I’d have expected 64GB. The £400 OnePlus 3T offers 64GB as its base storage, as does the forthcoming Samsung Galaxy S8. Nevertheless, you can sacrifice your second SIM slot for a microSD card, which will grant you up to 2TB of extra space (although currently the biggest microSD card you can buy is 256GB).
I wasn’t all that impressed with the phone’s battery life, either. Crammed inside the G6’s body is a 3,300mAh battery, which looks big, but only achieved a time of 12hrs 52mins in our battery benchmark. For a flagship phone, I’d have hoped for a little more juice, but it’s sufficient to last you the day with medium use. If you’re a heavy user, the Google Pixel’s 16hrs 23mins or the Galaxy S7’s 17hrs 48mins would be a better fit.
Using the 821 chip does give the LG G6 one key advantage over the LG G5, though. It means it can support Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 3, which will give you around 50% charge in 30 minutes. A fast charger is included in the box alongside a USB Type-C cable and earphones.
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LG G6 review: Camera specs and settings
The camera on the old G5 was great, with LG’s dual lenses receiving high praise from us last year. I expected great things of its successor, then, but it’s a little different this year: the resolution has fallen from 16 to 13 megapixels.
It still works the same way, though, with one 125-degree wide-angle lens and the other with a bog-standard, 71-degree field of view. As was the case with the LG G5, the main camera has a bright f/1.8 aperture, while its wide-angle counterpart is a smidge dimmer at f/2.4.
The 18:9 FullVision display is a great companion for camera enthusiasts. You can separate the display into two squares and preview the previous shot while snapping the next one immediately above. It's strangely satisfying, and means the whole process of capturing, previewing and taking the next shot is much quicker than normal.
I was very impressed by the LG G6’s camera app, too, which provides a host of different options and modes. When you open the app, you’ll notice two icons with trees in them at the top. This allows you to cycle between the wide 125-degree and 71-degree lenses. The transition between lenses is seamless, allowing you to quickly capture two different perspectives at the touch of a button.
Within the camera app’s settings, you can choose between several different photo modes: panorama, 360 panorama, food, popout, snap, slow-mo, and time-lapse. A tap of another menu button brings up different filters.
Then there’s the manual photo and manual video modes. Manual photo mode gives you control over the white balance, focus (regular lens only), exposure compensation, ISO and shutter speed.
The LG G6’s manual video mode gives you even more control, including the ability to change the mic gain, audio crossover, add a wind noise filter, change the white balance, manual focus (regular lens only), exposure compensation, ISO sensitivity and shutter speed. You can also set the resolution, aspect ratio and frame rate for videos, record in 4K 16:9 at 30fps, in 1080p 16:9, 18:9 and 21:9 Cinema at 60fps. Recording at 720p grants you 120fps with a 16:9 aspect ratio, and 60fps at 18:9 or 21:9 Cinema.
It’s even possible to lock the exposure (AE-L) in this pro video mode, which is fantastic if you want to whack the LG G6 on a tripod and record professional-looking footage. Better still, there’s focus peaking under the manual focus option. This fringes objects in focus in green pixels, just as with a professional video camera. Unfortunately, focus peaking disappears when you hit record, which means it’s not all that useful.
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LG G6 review: Camera performance
When it comes to quality, the LG G6’s dual 13-megapixel lenses are up there with the very best. I wouldn’t say it’s the best camera on a smartphone – that accolade belongs to the Google Pixel, closely followed by the Samsung Galaxy S7 – but it’s fantastic nonetheless.
Images are clear and packed with detail with both lenses. The difference between the two lenses is apparent indoors. Low-light performance is a lot better on the f/1.8 lens because it lets in more light, so you’re snapping photos indoors, avoid the wide-angle lens.
^Indoor shot in normal mode, f/1.8 (image has more light than the wider lens)
^Indoor shot in normal mode, f/2.4 (image is not as clean)
HDR adds a considerable amount of detail to photographs, with images appearing more natural, and in the test shots below, you’ll see the sky and building are more balanced here.
Naturally, you’ll get more objects in your image with the wider lens, but there is a compromise on quality, with the f/2.4 lens able to capture less light. It’s a tradeoff, but given you have the option to cycle between the two modes, there’s not much I can complain about.
^Road shot in HDR mode, f/1.8 (more light, closer angle)
^Road shot in HDR mode, f/2.4 (less light, more objects in-picture)
I was particularly impressed with the G6’s dual-LED flash, it doesn’t wash the scene in blue or pink as some phones’ flashes can, keeps good colour accuracy and eliminates distracting shadows.
^ Indoor shot in normal mode, f/1.8 with flash
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LG G6 review: Verdict
The LG G6 is a decent flagship with a great screen, an impressive camera and a great design (as long as you don’t choose the black version). I love the tall, narrow shape – it provides a slice of extra screen real estate without making the phone awkward to use one-handed – and the thin borders at the top and bottom of the phone keep its height to a minimum as well.
At £650, the price is competitive, but although it’s cheaper than the forthcoming Samsung Galaxy S8 (£689), it doesn’t cost that much less. At that rate, if you’re spending upwards of £600, you shouldn’t mind spending that little extra for a phone that has a more colourful AMOLED screen, a faster Exynos 8895/Snapdragon 835 processor, more storage and such handy extras as iris- and facial-recognition unlocking.
So while the LG G6 is a fantastic phone in its own right, it isn’t the Samsung Galaxy S8 killer we were hoping for. If the price falls as quickly as the LG G5’s price did last year, this conclusion may change. For now, though, I advise you wait and see how much better the Samsung Galaxy S8 is.
| Hardware | |
|---|---|
| Processor | Quad-core (2x2.35 GHz Kryo & 2x1.6 GHz Kryo) |
| RAM | 4GB |
| Screen size | 5.7in |
| Screen resolution | 1440 x 2880 |
| Screen type | IPS |
| Front camera | 5 megapixels |
| Rear camera | 13 megapixels |
| Flash | LED |
| GPS | Yes |
| Compass | Yes |
| Storage | 32GB |
| Memory card slot (supplied) | microSD (256GB) |
| Wi-Fi | 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac |
| Bluetooth | Bluetooth 4.2 |
| NFC | Yes |
| Wireless data | 3G, 4G |
| Dimensions | 148.9 x 71.9 x 7.9 mm |
| Weight | 163g |
| Features | |
| Operating system | Android 7.0 |
| Battery size | 3,300mAh |