This time LG gets it quite right

The past couple of generations of LG’s flagships have been a mixed bag of great specifications and design and experimentation that went all wrong. Of all the things to go wrong has been the price, which pushed customers straight towards the competition. But this time, the G6 has got enough right that it’s worth serious consideration for anyone in the market for a high-end smartphone.

There is general wide agreement that the G6 is LG’s best designed phone ever. It’s got a glossy sheen look on the back with a brushed metallic look inside glass. They’ve done this so well that it absolutely does not pick up smudges and dirt and looks beautifully clean — and there’s a lot to be said for that advantage. It’s the Titanium variant that you will need to pick up for this though. You can actually do without a case if you’re relatively careful because the G6 is not only well built, it’s narrow and very easy to grip. It also happens to feel very nice to hold. It’s a tall phone, fitting in a 5.7-inch screen that takes up most of the front. The bezels on the top and below are just super thin. The aspect ratio for that display is an unusual 18:9, making it very nice for wide angle photos and video. Some apps though may not be comfortable with the aspect ratio. On the other hand, two apps can fit on top of one another or side by side in neat squares on this excellent display.

The G6 has been relentlessly compared with Samsung’s S8 phones, which score over it on the gorgeousness scale and also take up more of the front with the ‘Infinity Display’ that spills over the sides, but the G6 is not far behind at all. And since it costs a bit less at ₹51,990 (much less than previous LG flagships) it’s very much in the running. On the looks front, the Google Pixel phones don’t stand a chance and Apple is in a class of its own.

The G6 has a dual 13MP rear camera set up, one lens standard and the other 125 degrees wide-angle. There are two aperture values: f/1.8 and f/2.4. The standard lens also has optical image stabilisation. The front camera is a 5MP shooter and allows you to take wide angle shots, great for getting a big scene in the background. You can switch between the two cameras with a tap. The cameras work great in good light, with a good job done of colours, lights and shadows, details and close ups. In low light, there’s a disappointing amount of noise. The camera app is filled with fun ways to shoot your photos. All that is a good thing as the other flagships the G6 competes with on the camera front (the Pixel, iPhone 7 Plus and Galaxy S7 and S8) are very accomplished at their job.

The Snapdragon 821 it uses is not the talk-of-the-town 835 that flagships are now after. That’s what Samsung’s S8 has in some versions with the equivalent (and possibly better) Exynos version in India. Though the G6 isn’t as butter smooth as Google’s Pixel, in daily use it’s very good and doesn’t heat up while going about its business either. They could have given a bit more storage than the 64GB onboard but the 4GB RAM is enough for most people. There is also a microSD card slot. The software is a little heavy on the LG customisation but there’s no bloatware and it doesn’t affect the phone’s great performance.

The 3,300mAh battery is decent and has quick charge support and though there’s much cribbing about it being non-removable, I think the era for the removable battery has long since gone. If it had been, someone would surely have complained that the phone wasn’t unibody and not designed well enough — not to mention that a removable back panel may have interfered with the water resistance the phone comes with.

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