LG G5 Review: First impressions, Review and specs | The first mainstream modular smartphone

LG has made some great smartphones over the past few years, with the most notable being the Nexus, because of the Nexus branding. Other smartphones from LG’s stables though good, when compared to the competition have never really gained the attention they deserve. 

This may be because they don’t create as big marketing buzz, like Samsung does, but personally I don’t think that’s a bad thing. The product needs to speak for itself and that’s what the LG G5 is all about. It's an impressive smartphone at first glance. and probably the first mainstream modular smartphone in the world.

I've now spent few hours with the LG G5 and have a few first impressions to offer. I may also include some of the questions and answers in my review.

HARDWARE:

Under its metal body, the G5 houses a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 octa-core processor, supported by 4 GB of RAM and 32 of internal storage. The Snapdragon 820 was announced as a highly optimized processor, leaving behind the overheating problems that have plagued the Snapdragon 810. The build quality and hardware specification of LG G5 is very impressive. Here, I am sharing some impressions though, as listed below:

• The top of the 5.3 inch display glass curves down towards the back. That gives a cool effect, but also makes me wonder about the ability to survive a drop with the glass extending so far up.
• It's much lighter as compared to other high end devices, the LG G5 is 159 gm.
• The rear power button and fingerprint scanner is vastly improved over its predecessor LG G4 and LG V10.
• The volume button has been moved from the back to the left side.
• There is still an IR port on top, one of the few remaining devices with this capability.
• The removable bottom has a better fit and finish than I supposed.
• The headphone jack is on top.
• The battery is part of the bottom so it seems that extra batteries will include a full bottom piece. I haven't tried removing the battery from the bottom and will find out if it is removable.
• The microSD card and SIM card are contained in one side tray.

SOFTWARE:

• The LG G5 launches with Marshmallow 6.0 loaded out of the box. It's almost similar to what we see with Marshmallow on the LG G4. The LG user interference (LG UI) is very light with most of the LG features appearing in the vast amount of settings available to the user to customize and optimize the experience according to their needs.
• The always-on display is nice for seeing the time and date, but the notification icons don't give you anything more than the fact that there is something there from one of your apps. You can toggle this display off, but if you aren't wearing a smartwatch having the time available all the time may be worth it.
• It is very interesting to see there is no application launcher/app tray on the LG G5. This is similar to what we see with some of the Chinese phones, such as the Xiaomi and Huawei phones, and what we see on iOS. Thus, every app you install appears on one of the home screen panels. You can organize these into folders, but they will always be viewable. I'm not sure if people will like it, but the great thing with Android is that you can always install a third party launcher if you like.
• I'm pleased to see that you can still customize the bottom buttons, brightness controls have been improved, and the Marshmalow OS now lets me access my bank with my fingerprint rather than a PIN or password, which is quite good feature.

LG G5 special features:

The G5 has bowed to market demands with the inclusion of a fingerprint scanner, which, in addition to unlocking the smartphone, allows you to launch the camera, answer incoming calls and silence alarms.

fingerprint scanner

Other LG G5 special features include the Magic Slot, which allows you to connect to external gadgets such as smartphone VR headsets, speakers, external keyboards and cameras. The Magic Slot is found by removing the cap on the base of the device – which also allows you to remove the battery.

LG G5 overview:

I've been a huge fan of the LG G4 and LG V10, two of the most underrated smartphones of 2015. As LG continues to compete for marketshare with Samsung, HTC, Motorola, and others.

Modular design: I understand LG is trying to do something different here with the LG G5, but so far the only two modules we have seen is a camera grip and a digital audio converter. These are pretty specialized modules and the camera grip could have been accomplished with an add-on case, like we saw with the Nokia Lumia 1020. With a smaller capacity battery than before, it seems to me the water resistance and massive capacity battery of the Samsung S7 seems like a better move than going modular. I hope I'm wrong here and that LG offers up some compelling expansion options, but so far I'm not "getting" it.

Camera: The cameras on the LG G4 and LG V10 were amazing and the LG G5 continues that with its two rear camera solution. I've only taken a couple photos so far, but am liking the quick switch to wide-angle capture that we enjoyed through the front camera of the LG V10. I wish the front camera had that same functionality, but I guess LG ran out of room in the LG G5.

Price: In full disclosure, the LG G4 and new LG G5 that T-Mobile sent was offered as part of a special T-Mobile customer preview. The units are pre-production devices, have no warranty, and cannot be sold during the program. While T-Mobile and LG encourage participants to share their experiences so the companies can gather input from actual users, there is no obligation associated with the preview program.