Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

A little background; I love trying out new phones, from iPhones, Windows phones, and especially Android phones. I am a firm believer in mobile technology and always want whats best to help make my day easier. I have reviewed(since 2013) the LG G2, iPhone 5, HTC One M7, and the Galaxy S5, and I have also owned but not reviewed the S4, HTC One M8, and the Galaxy Note 3(my favorite). The general trend for the past year and a half amongst mobile manufacturers is making larger screens. The G3 sports a larger 5.5 inch screen over the G2's 5.2 inch screen. To keep customers happy, LG, Samsung, and HTC have or will have "mini" versions of each of their flagships...I personally love 5+ inch screens and find myself using tablets with much less frequency. If you're thinking about coming from an iPhone, give the larger phones a fair chance before you judge too quickly. Most people I know fall in love with larger screens and never want to go back to anything smaller. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paMb_cgVkug - very good processor and screen comparison by Erica Griffin. It has been 9 full days since I purchased the LG G3 from the AT&T store. If you only go by first impressions, it is very easy to fall in love with this phone, but give it time to show its true colors and you might see a different story. Going on faith from the LG G2, I went all in on this phone hoping I would fall in love with it. I gave away my Note 3, traded my S5 for the HTC One M8, and made the LG G3 my primary phone. Based on the hardware specs alone, this phone should at a minimum be as good as the other flagships. The G3 boasts a top of the line snapdragon processor from Qualcomm, the same or very similar processor that resides in the Galaxy S5 and HTC One. For the first half of 2014, the Snapdragon 801 is in all of the main flagships so at the heart of the G3 is a beast of a processor. For memory, the G3 has 3gb of ram which only the Note 3 can match. Not even the S5 or the One M8 have 3gb of ram(they have 2gb), which means the G3 should run very smooth even when multitasking. As for the battery it has one of the largest at 3000mAMP which only the Note 3 can make claim to a bigger battery at the time of this post. To spare you more boredom about the interior hardware details, I will just finish with the G3 has top of the line specs and should outperform all other phones... THE QHD SCREEN - Everyone is talking about LG being the first to release a phone with a QHD display, quad HD (4x720p), which has the highest resolution of any screen on the market(I'm referring to phones sold by At&T, Verizon, etc. The Oppo was the true first to announce a QHD display but not many people know OPPO). Apple made claims, back when they released their Retina display, saying that the human eye could not differentiate pixels with a density greater than about 300 pixels per inch (ppi)which is why they called their display a retina display, because the iPhone 4 had a density of 326ppi and technically they claimed we could not see the pixels with our eyes. We know this wasn't true when competitors like Samsung released phones with higher pixel densities reaching into the 400s and we could see for ourselves how much clearer those phones were in comparison to the iPhone. Samsung, LG, and HTC all had much clearer displays than the iPhones display which is why Samsung mocks Apple in a commercial aimed at the Retina display(it is slightly irritating that Apple treats its customers like they are stupid and mislead them to believe that nothing is worth buying with a higher resolution or even making people believe 4 inch phones are the best). With all of this being said, LG produced the G3 which has a large 5.5 inch LCD screen with a pixel density of 538ppi. Having never seen a QHD display before I bought the G3, I was hoping for major improvements in clarity- In 9 days of using the G3 I honestly cannot say I see a difference in the clarity between the G3, S5 and HTC One M8. I will say that I absolutely love the size of the G3 though, anything between 5 and 6 inches is perfect for a large phone and the G3 falls right in the middle. As for colors, I do not like the G3 screen because it has a "cold" temperature to it and everything seems to have a blueish tint. If you only use one phone you probably won't care too much and you might not even see what I am seeing, but I've grown to love Samsung's super AMOLED in their Note 3 and S5 especially since they tweaked the software to change the saturation of the screen depending on what the users have on their displays. This is one area where Samsung is just more refined than the G3. SO for the biggest hardware upgrade on the phone, I was highly disappointed. At least I learned that QHD is not necessary and there are very few apps that take advantage of this feature. If you do a QHD compatible search using Google, you will find very little information. Design - The G3 is gorgeous. It is a large phone, same size at the HTC One M8, but it feels very comfortable in your hand. LG spent a lot of time with the ergonomics of the phone as they gave it a curved back vs the flat style of Samsung phones. LG also did away with the glossy plastic that they used in the G2, and gave it a texture to look just like aluminum and boy is it gorgeous. It looks good, is light weight for a phone of its size and most importantly the G3 does not attract fingerprints like the G2 did. LG also listened to its customers and went to a removable back plate which gives access to the battery which can be swapped(HUGE benefit of swapping batteries vs being a wall hugger like iPhone users), and it also gives access to the expandable memory and SIM slot. It gives the phone a very clean look, especially with the volume and power buttons on the back of the phone. Of all of the Android phones, I think the G3 is the best looking and best feeling (phone over 5 inches),but most would probably say the HTC One M8 looks better. Camera - Wow, the camera is awesome. LG added a laser to help focus the camera faster than traditional methods. In real world use, the laser really does help. Combine that with the Optical image stabilization that LG added to the G2 last year, and you have the best performing camera of all of the phones. There aren't many modes or manual functions with the built in camera app, but there are enough modes to satisfy most users. Pictures always come out clear and crisp and I absolutely love the camera on the G3. This camera easily outperforms the HTC One M8, and because of its ability to focus quickly using the laser, it is faster than the S5 and Note 3 at taking pictures. This is easily one of the best smartphone cameras on the market. Audio - Lg added a 1 watt speaker to the G3...what is 1 watt? It's the loudest phone available, even slightly louder than the dual speaker HTC One M8. It doesn't sound great, but being loud at 1 watt, I can listen to music rather easily when I shower. The sound is clear but very tinny - you can't expect much from a speaker on a phone though unless you buy the M8. The biggest surprise for me was the internal sound processor... I don't know what Lg used, or how they tweaked their audio output for headphones, but I LOVE their audio processor. I am an audiophile and listen to a minimum of 1 hour of music through my cell phone everyday using quality in ear monitors from Westone. The G3 brings my music to life, and I love listening to music and sitting on the patio with this phone. No other phone sounds this detailed when listening through head phones. Thank you LG for not cutting back on sound. Everyday use - just like all other flagships, the G3 is fast. There are no stutters or lag when opening apps. Battery life is adequate, not quite the best as some people say, but it will get you through a full day. The large screen just works the battery hard. There are 32gb of memory built in and you can add another 128gb of storage using a microsd card which means you can store tons of pictures, movies, music, and apps. Memory will rarely be an issue for most with this phone. All in all it is a solid phone.......BUT, it isn't refined. I have experienced quite a few errors with the software that most reviewers won't experience in the first day or two of usage. I am getting apps that freeze, texting lags, and I have wifi connection issues. Maybe it's just my phone and I need a warranty replacement, but the phone freezing is something that used to happen to me on my iPhone 3...I have pulled the battery out now 5 times to give my phone a hard reset. This gets old quick, and most people don't like having to restart their phone due to software glitches. I have sat in the same seat at work for the last 3 years and none of my phones dropped wifi until the G3. When my wifi drops I have to restart the phone to get back a solid connection so my guess is that it is software related. This happens everyday with my phone now... I could go on for days with this review but I will try to summarize the G3 as best as possible. With the G2 I was wowed. I couldn't have been more impressed at the time with an Android phone, and I think the G2 and Note 3 were the best phones of 2013. With the G3 it was obvious LG was trying to hit another home run, and in some areas they did just that, the camera, the design, the screen size...but they didn't clean up the little details that are non issues for other manufacturers. The software, although beautiful, is still rough, very rough. I find myself restarting my phone way too often. My Note 3 and S5 I would restart maybe once or twice a week...and now the G3, at least 3 times a day. The screen colors just are not good. Why put in such a high resolution screen with such terrible colors? If LG can fix those things then yes the phone will live up to the hype...there are lots of things to love about the G3 and unfortunately there are a few things to hate too. IN 2014, the other flagships One M8 and Galaxy S5, have very few things to hate(the One I hate the huge black bar under the screen and the S5 people hate the design). Between those three phones the S5 is still the king with the G3 and M8 in a close 2nd. Another feature that I love about Samsung is they offer so many freebees. They have an agreement with amazon to give a free book for the Kindle App once a month. Samsung also has an agreement with Slacker radio to provide music to their Galaxy devices free of commercials with a beautiful interface(app is called Milk). A few other things with the Samsung phones, they get 50gb of free cloud storage with Drop Box, or free wifi for flights that have Gogo service...the LG app store crashes every time I open it on my G3. Hardware wise and design wise the G3 is a hit. Total package though, the G3 is not the complete experience I was hoping for. I definitely love the G3 but there are also things that I hate. You would hope by now that manufacturers would take the time to work out the kinks in their software these days especially because software is one of the main differentiators to users now that most hardware is pretty equal. Boy do I miss my Note 3...lol. Edit - One thing I forgot to mention, a minor complaint- the international version of the G3 comes with a spare battery and spare charger for that battery, as well as a nice set of LG headphones. I don't like LG/AT&T taking those items out of the US version. Apple gives away a very capable set of headphones and work to improve them...If LG truly wants to differentiate itself and work to be the best they shouldn't leave out things like headphones. If you need cloud space, Google offers 15gb of free storage or 1.99/month, or 23.88/year for 100gb of data. Apple offers 50gb for 100 dollars/year, basically four times more expensive for half of the space. 7/25/2014 - for no apparent reason, my phone started to get warm in my pocket. I unlocked the screen and got the error message that the G3 could not increase brightness due to temperature. The longer I use this phone the more bugs I get...any other G3 users experiencing bugs or is it just my phone? Maybe I have a lemon. - Another downside to the G3 - Accessories for the G3 are much more limited as compared to the iPhone or even S5. Something to keep in mind if you like buying cases, spare batteries, battery covers, etc. - Check youtube for G3 screen evaluations and you will see that others are experiencing screen brightness and color issues too. - If you also check benchmark scores, not that these matter to most people, you will find that the G3 performs at a slower speed than even the G2. - http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/lg-g3-problems/#!bpckB3 - a link to common issues