LG G2 review

The UK hasn't seen many of LG's more impressive Android smartphones, but now following in the footsteps of the super-successful Google Nexus 4 comes the high-end G2. There's no pricing or release date available yet for the G2, but Carphone Warehouse does expect to have the phone on its shelves some time in October. The impressive specs lineup suggests the phone will likely be over £500.

Design         

The G2 is formed almost exactly like the Nexus 4, offering a plastic unibody with slightly rounded corners and top edges. While not as solid as the likes of the aluminium HTC One, the G2 nevertheless feels sturdy, although its shiny plastic back is a magnet for dirt and fingerprints.

The most distinctive element of the G2's design is the volume rocker switch the power button sandwiched in the middle that sits almost flush on the back of the phone. This is part of the strategy to make the G2 easier to use with one hand. It's quite unusual, but does work to an extent, favouring lefties and righties equally, keeping the edges smooth and making it easy to find the controls with your index finger. It felt a little unnatural at first, but it's likely that once you overcome the force of habit that leads you to feel towards the phone's edges for the controls, it'll quite quickly stop being fiddly.
On the bottom of the phone are a Micro-USB port and a 3.5mm headphone jack. Like the Nexus 4, there's no microSD slot here for expandable storage -- something you'll have to bear in mind when choosing between the 16GB and 32GB models.
LG really fits a lot of screen into the G2's body, with an almost edge-to-edge panel and a very slim bezel. Even though the 5.2-inch display is larger than the SonyXperia Z1's 5-inch screen, the handset itself is significantly smaller. While at 8.9mm it's not thinner that the Z1, the sloping sides do make it seem as though it is, and at 143g, it weighs in at nearly 30g lighter than its Sony rival, matching the HTC One exactly.
Features and performance

The stunning screen is one of the main selling points of this phone. It offers the same 1080x1920-pixel resolution as most of its high-end Android rivals, but being about 0.2 inches bigger, the pixel density does drop to about 424 pixels per inch (ppi). In comparison, the Samsung Galaxy S4 and the Sony Xperia Z1 both offer a ppi of 441 and the HTC One trumps the lot with 469 ppi. It's unlikely you'll ever notice the difference. The display is still sharp and bright, and if you tend to watch a lot video or do a lot of gaming, you might appreciate the slightly larger size of it.
Inside the G2 is Qualcomm's Snapdragon 800 processor with a 2.3GHz quad-core chip along with 2GB of RAM -- a promising lineup of specs, which lived up to expectations during testing.
On the AnTuTu benchmark test, the G2 scored a whopping 28,668, the highest we've seen from any Android phone, beating the Galaxy S4 Active -- the next highest at 25,964 -- hands down. The phone handled strenuous multi-tasking with ease and Real Racing 3 was a joy to play, with no lag or stutter.
AnTuTu's 3D benchmarking test didn't produce quite the same impressive results unfortunately, with the phone offering up a score of 3,476 to the Samsung Galaxy S4's 6,063. The phone did also warm up significantly when running the test, and to a lesser degree when playing demanding games.
The phone runs Jelly Bean 4.2.2, the latest-but-one version of Google's Android software, and also on board are a range of software features added by LG. Unlike many Android skins, LG's software doesn't make you feel like you're being constantly advertised to by your phone's manufacturer and clutter up your device with a bunch of pre-installed apps you'll probably never use. One of its homescreens seems to be permanently occupied though by immovable panels of instructions for various elements of the phone's software, which is the kind of thing you really need to only see once.
The features that proved most convenient and intuitive during general use were KnockON, which allows you to double tap the phone's display to turn the screen on and off, and Answer Me, which allows you to adjust the settings so you can answer calls simply by raising the ringing phone to your face.
A "Guest Mode" provides a similar function to Windows Phone's "Kid's Corner", allowing you to hand your phone to friends, offspring and strangers alike without fear of your Google Drive folder being accidentally emptied.
Inside the G2 is a 3,000 mAh battery -- a cut above the 2,600 mAh power pack tucked inside most of its rivals -- and Graphic RAM (GRAM), which supposedly reduces the display's energy use by up to 26 percent on a still frame. As with all high-end phones, you should presume you'll have to charge it every day, but also don't be surprised if the G2 gives you a little extra juice than you're used to. After a night and a day's heavy use I found the phone was still going strong, which was a surprise given that I had downloaded and streamed using both Wi-Fi and 3G pretty consistently.
Photography

On the back of the phone above the curious volume rockers sits a 13-megapixel camera with LED flash -- the same as the Galaxy S4. It shoots 1080p video at 60fps and can be launched quickly by pressing and holding the volume down key. On the front is a 2.1-megapixel camera for those all-important selfies, and it too can shoot video at 1080p, but at 30fps.
There are a bunch of different shooting modes you can play around with that allow you to capture panoramas, picture-within-picture shots, time-catch photos and others. Colours and contrast were generally very good, but the camera struggled with exposure and focusing in low light, and in overcast conditions, big patches of white-grey sky were completely washed out.
According to LG, the G2's OIS camera prevents blur when taking pictures from moving vehicles. I tested this out by photographing London's Battersea Power Station from a moving train. Overall the results were pretty impressive, particularly along the skyline, although there was still evidence of blur across the tracks and railings, which were much closer to the camera.

If you're looking for a high-end Android phone that offers a big, bright display you can use without stretching the tendons in your hand, the G2 is pretty much ideal. The G2 sports more screen than its main Android rivals, and yet remains sleek and light, steering well clear of phablet territory. With all that processing power to whizz through your games, videos and music, you'll probably become frustrated with a mere 16GB of non-expandable storage, but the 32GB model is very tempting proposition indeed.