For about one and a half year, I’ve been an owner of an LG G5 smartphone. It has since gained two successors – LF G6 and G7 ThinQ. I thought I might share some information and my experience with you. Here goes:
- The front glass is quite thin and pressing on it a bit harder creates characteristic ripples on the screen.
- LG G5 suffers from screen retention. It doesn’t make the phone harder to use, but it’s a bit annoying. Watch this video to see the problem (notice how the status bar and navigation buttons are faintly visible). Fortunately, one workaround is to install Night Screen and set the brightness to about 80%.
- Battery life could be better. When I use the phone a bit more intensely, I sometimes need to recharge it during the day.
- It can heat up quite a bit.
- The GPS module is not perfect and it takes about a minute or two to pinpoint my location.
- It seems LG G5 won’t be getting an update to Android Oreo in Poland – at least not anytime soon.
- LG G5’s camera is very good, but not as good as the ones in current Samsung flagships. The wide-angle camera is a great feature, although it takes a bit less detailed pictures compared to the main camera. I wish there was a manual mode for videos, which was introduced in LG G6 and G7 ThinQ.
- The system works nicely. It stutters a little when you rapidly press the back button, though
- 32 GB of built-in storage might be not enough for some people. Fortunately, LG G5 supports MicroSD cards up to 2 TB.
- The fingerprint scanner is accurate, but it’s not perfect. Rarely, it fails to recognize my fingerprint five times in a row, which means I need to enter a password to unlock the phone instead. It could be faster, too, as it takes about half a second or even a full second to unlock the phone.
Is LG G5 worth buying in 2018? Possibly, but its successor (LG G6) has noticeably dropped in price since its release and in Poland, you can get a brand new LG G6 for less than $400. It’s up to you to decide.