While most companies these days try to make their phones slimmer, remove essentials like headphone jacks and try to top the chart at the performance game, LG has taken a different approach with their latest phone, the LG G6. What LG did with the G6 is that they simply gave the people what they wanted! No one cares much about slimmer devices because even if they look great at first glance, they are quite impractical when you use it for long. Instead, the one thing most people want is a slightly thicker phone with bigger battery. And everyone hates the camera bump on the back of the phone since the device can’t lay flat on a table. So, taking stuff like these into consideration, and considering the fact that LG had a major flop with the G5, they took a step back and concentrated on the things which matter most to the users.The LG G6 is a beautiful device with metal framing and a glass back, it houses a one of a kind 5.7 inch edge to edge qHD display with an aspect ratio of 18:9 and a resolution of 2880x1440. Sure, some of you may say that the Xiaomi Mi Mix is the real winner of edge to edge display, but the G6 dropped in a little bit of frame on the edges to ensure the durability of the phone. The edge of the display is rounded because LG says that the main reason why a phone’s screen cracks when it is dropped is because the edge of the display is pointed, we may have to test it in action to put that theory to the test, but it does make sense. And it is not only the edge that is rounded, but the main display is slightly curved as well, to make sure that the main impact upon dropping the phone face down will be absorbed by the body and not the display. These small details sound awesome for use in the real world where most of us drop our phones occasionally and since the phone is rated IP68, it is water and dust proof so you can take the phone in the shower if that’s your thing.
The battery life in this phone is 3300mAH which should run for an entire day easily and the phone will come with fast wireless charger in some region and a standard Quick Charge 3.0 in others. As for the specs, this phone rocks a Snapdragon 821 with 4GB of ram and 32GB/64GB storage with expandable memory. As LG clearly stated that they are not trying to make the fastest phone but focused more on practicality, one can’t complain about the fact that they used an older generation processor but keep in mind that the Snapdragon 821 is fast enough to handle anything you throw at it and it is certainly powerful enough for multitasking and running high end games. This phone will come with Android 7.0 Nougat installed and it will support Google Assistant out of the box and it makes the G6 one of the first phones to do that other than the Google Pixel.
Camera is an important bit for most people when choosing a new mobile phone and its great to see that the G6 did not compromise on that front. This device comes with a dual camera on the back - A 125 degrees wide angle for taking those beautiful shots in small spaces and a 71 degrees standard camera for most shots. Both these cameras share the same 13 megapixel sensor with an aperture of f1.8 and this means that there won’t be a difference in quality between the two cameras. One great news for videographers is that this phone will support manual controls while video recording! This will be extremely helpful for most people who are struggling with videography on their cell phones, but the biggest drawback in the camera is that there is no stabilisation and this is indeed a huge disappointment but I hope that LG will at least include a digital stabilizer when the G6 is officially released. For photography, the G6 will come with a new camera application which LG is calling the “Square camera” which splits the screen in two and you will be able to take pictures and instantly see the preview on a splitscreen. This is a great example of how the G6 is taking advantage of the display’s aspect ratio. Another feature of the camera is that you can see the entire gallery in a carousel on the edge of the display unlike most phones, where you only get a small thumbnail which you need to tap in order to get a preview of the photo you just took. For Audio lovers, you will be glad to hear that the G6 will sport a Hi-Fi Quad DAC audio and if you have those raw audio files like ‘flac’ format, then you will be able to enjoy great music with this phone as long as you pair it with a nice set of headphones.
The LG G6 is still yet to be released and no official dates have been announced, but the initial impressions of this phone look very promising and I love the direction which LG is going as they are focusing more on practical phones and not half baked modular phones.
