LG has announced its 2016 flagship the LG G5 ahead of MWC in Barcelona. As the name suggests, it is the fifth generation of the flagship G series smartphone. We went hands on with the LG G5 in Barcelona, check our first impressions.
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First up, the G5 has got amazing modular design (nothing like the LG G4), which left us impressed with its premium build quality. The phone has 5.3-inch display in a really compact form factor and feels solid overall. It measures 149.4 x 73.9 x 7.7-8.6mm and weighs 159 grams. In real life it feels even more compact and light weight in hands.
There are quite a few upgrades from the predecessor G4, but the biggest highlight of the smartphone is its unique hardware expansion slot at the bottom. Although the phone has metal unibody design (LG calls it ‘fluid metal’ body), but still the bottom part gets popped-open and then you can connect couple of add-on hardware accessories dubbed ‘LG Friends’ to it.
There are two dedicated accessories from LG as of now – a camera grip called CAM Plus and B&O portable Hi-Fi audio player. The CAM Plus adds This adds few DSLR controls to phone’s camera – a hardware shutter key, power button, record video button, and zoom dial along with additional 1200mAh battery. LG also said that it will open up the standard for third-party manufacturers so that they can create more accessories / add-ons.
The B&O Play can either be used with LG G5 or even as a separate Hi-Fi digital audio chip (DAC) that connects to any smartphone or PC. It supports 32-bit, 384KHz high-definition audio playback.
Upfront, the LG G5 has a 5.3-inch Quad-HD (1440 x 2560 pixels) Quantum always-on display that lets you can check the time, battery status, and notifications without waking the phone.
The back has a fingerprint reader just below the dual-rear camera setup, which doubles up as a power button. There is a 16-megapixel rear camera with dual-LED flash, OIS 2.0, Laser auto focus, manual mode and a secondary 8-megapixel rear camera with 135-degree wide angle lens and 4K video recording. The front camera is also an 8-megapixel shooter.
The bottom edge accommodates the speaker grill, USB Type-C port and primary microphone. The left edge has volume rocker, while the right side has SIM card and microSD card tray. The top edge has 3.5mm audio jack with IR blaster and secondary noise cancellation mic.
The smartphone is powered by a quad-core Snapdragon 820 64-bit processor with Adreno 530 GPU and 4GB of RAM. The 32GB internal storage is expandable up to 2TB with microSD card. It runs latest Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) with LG UX out-of-the-box.
The handset is backed by a 2800mAh removable battery with Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0 support. Connectivity options include 4G LTE, WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac (dual-band), Bluetooth 4.2, GPS, NFC, and USB Type-C.
The LG G5 comes in Silver, Titan, Gold and Pink colors and will be available globally in April along with dedicated ‘Friends’ accessories.
Written with inputs from Varun Krish in Barcelona, and Images by Sandeep Sarma