Huawei P8 is one of the finest Android devices, with many features similar to the iPhone 6.
The whole world is talking about Huawei’s smartphones which were launched to global markets. It’s 2015 and although the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus are still going strong it’s time to look ahead to Apple’s next flagship smartphone, which could be less than five months away.The Chinese smartphone maker, Huawei, for years has been trying to mesmerize consumers just the way Samsung Galaxy S6 and Apple’s iPhone did, but so far, it has failed to generate a similar captivating effect.Life’s not so good when you’re stuck in the shadow of a big rival with deep pockets, but if anything can drag LG into the sunlight, it’s the new G4.
LG’s newest flagship, the LG G4, almost feels like someone read a bunch of Android forums and wrote up a checklist of all the current hot-button issues. Ever since Huawei’s launch, it’s become uniquely the top topic for specialists’ pages all over the world and the hotspot of international press agencies. On Saturday, TweakTown talked about the alleged new processor and camera. “Inside, we should find Apple’s new A9 processor, which will be made by their main competitor: Samsung. Even though the company’s phones offer attractive prices, powerful specifications, and unique designs; it still hasn’t been able to make a great impact globally, except for China. LG’s flagship Android smartphone for 2015, the takes what we loved about the G3 before it – and made it into the Android-to-have among those in the know – and hits the boost button.
Coming to all major U.S. carriers, it’s another contender for this year’s “Best Android Smartphone” award, right alongside the new HTC One M9 and the Galaxy S6. BBC has allocated huge spaces for the unique P8 phones, where it commented saying that many reviewers were impressed with the design of a smartwatch unveiled in Barcelona, which one tech blog described as “the surprise hit” of the trade fair. Samsung will use their new 14nm FinFET technology to make Apple’s custom processor, so we should expect a seriously fast dual- or quad-core processor from Apple in the iPhone 7.
It has top of the line everything — from the screen to the camera to the processor — and the removable battery and SD card that all other flagships now lack. Since the company bundles all iPhone sales together in its quarterly reports, it’s unclear how many of the 136 million sold in the last six months are of the Plus variety. Nonetheless, the rest of the mobile world hasn’t stood still either, so does the G4 have what it takes to push back against Samsung’s excellent Galaxy S6? The new Android-powered phones, which were unveiled in London, come in two sizes – the basic P8 with a 5.2in screen and the P8max with a larger than normal 6.8in display.
It’s not really design, performance, or hardware that’s the big eye-catcher (though those things are certainly improved), it’s what the G4 still clings to things many other phones have abandoned. Both feature a 13 megapixel rear camera whose image sensor includes pixels dedicated to measuring white light as well as the more common red, green and blue color pixels. Yes, one can also claim that these days all smartphones resemble one another, with more or less the same rectangular shape, and a big display screen, while small features such as speakers or an extra button helps differentiate them at times. The G4 is available with either a real leather back or a plastic back, and the difference between the two – and how the phone ends up feeling in your hand – is considerable.
With hardware designs, software functionality, and user expectation all converging on a ‘default’ look and feel of a handset, making sure a modern smartphone stands out requires a distinctive voice and style alongside the standard physical aspects. It is quite interesting that manufacturers such as LG and Samsung have produced some great designs by introducing curved edges on their smartphones, for a user some times it is more easy to remember a curved phone rather than a mere bunch of great specs. The company apparently spent years perfecting the eco-friendly vegetable tanning process it uses, finishing the hide with a row of real stitching down the center. The knuckle sense technology that you to double-tap the screen with your knuckle to take a screenshot – that’s going to appeal to the Snapchat generation wanting to capture pictures before they disappear,” said Mr. Maybe I’m an LG power-button apologist, but the power and volume rocker on the back panel annoyed me on last year’s G3, and subsequently the G Flex 2, for a couple minutes.
Since iOS lives and breathes in much the same way between the iPhone and iPad, there isn’t much of a transition to the software user experience, like there was initially with Android. Curving the screen edges into the chassis has created a unique handset that stands out at retail points of sale, that is easily identified ‘in the wild’, and has critics raving about a handset that is different, new, and exciting.
As for Reuters, it mentioned that P8 and P8 max flagships stack up against the latest models from Samsung and Apple in technical specifications if not marketing budget. We think so but rumours are thin on the ground on the subject at the moment but it’s early days so stay tuned as we’ll be updating this article as new information becomes available. Meanwhile, whereas the leather back on the second-gen Moto X I used for several months quickly picked up scuffs and scrapes, LG claims its leather will be both more resilient to damage and more accommodating to developing the sort of pleasing patina you’d get from traditional luxury goods. Made from a single piece of metal, P8 is thinner than its rivals, with a width of 6.4 mm, in addition to Huawei’s larger version; the P8 Max which comes with a 6.8in screen.
According to research group Gartner, Huawei’s volume has grew globally in the mobile phone market to become a major player in the smartphone global sales, shipping 68 million units. To give the three polycarbonate panels their due, they do at least look vaguely interesting, the textured patterning catching the light and, for a brief moment at least, making you believe that they could be hammered metal or even ceramic.
Would an Android handset of this size even garner a cursory glance as a heavy-hitter if the spec sheet showed 1GB of RAM, 1080p display, 8MP rear camera and 16GB internal storage? Although most smartphones are built around Android, the ability to skin Google’s Operating System means manufacturers have the ability to define a handset on their own terms to consumers.
Apple is one of the former and if we look at previous launches, it’s highly likely that the iPhone 6S will be announced in September and will go on sale a week or two afterwards. This is just another plastic phone and, when combined with the chrome-effect plastic trim of the edge, and the screen surround bezel that’s only vaguely lifted by its iridescent pattern, it pales in comparison to the crisp S6 or the clearly considered One M9. This is driven home by the plastic pieces peeking out from behind the leather, making this less attractive than some of the non-plastic phones we’ve seen this year. I’ve heard people complain about performance in an iPhone 5 — a three-year-old phone — running iOS 8, but rarely am I within earshot of a gripe about the 6 Plus doing the same. Customers consider many features in a smartphone but mostly look out for a high quality camera and Huawei P8 doesn’t disappoint at all in this regard.
This provides 32% higher brightness and contrast levels and cuts down on noise in low light by 78%, leading to brighter, more detailed images in a wider variety of conditions. The result of its camera turned out to be really impressive under low light conditions, at least now we can worry less about the camera quality on Android devices. The functionality has kept pace with expectations, but the look of the UI, along with a similar style of navigation through menus and options, means that in use the S6 family still has too many of echoes of iOS to escape the domineering presence of Apple. The market is too—some people will like the way leather “ages” as it scratches and dents over time, and others don’t want their phone to be so easily scuffed and scratched and stained. With over 400 apps and a nasty habit of keeping several frozen in the background, I’ve come to be impressed at how well the device manages to stay robust.
Takes a little getting used to, true, but after a little exploratory probing with your forefinger it’s not too difficult to find the control you’re after. It needs a multi-year run of handsets that show off South Korean innovation and artisan skill, it needs a strong marketing messages to promote differences without drawing comparisons; and it needs the courage to contemplate a long-term plan in the face of roller-coaster quarterly numbers and monthly market share analysis.
You’ll also be able to use the P8 together with up to three other smartphones to create videos from four different angles simultaneously using Huawei’s new Director Mode. Resolutions are also likely to stay the same although one rumour suggests the new iPhone will have a 5in display with a 400ppi and what about the Samsung Galaxy Note Edge rivalling concept below by Michael Shanks? A little unwieldy, and one-handed operation is problematic at times (even with Reachability turned on), I tell them, but overall, it’s a device that grows on you (ed. no pun…). The phone is available in more than 30 countries including Columbia, Germany, Spain, South Africa, and UAE, but it is not confirmed that when it will be available in the US. Unlike so many flagship Android phones of the moment, though, you can jab a fingernail under the edge of the back cover and pry it off, revealing two features power users are still clamoring for.
It’s really cool at first, but as the new car smell fades it begins to of blend into the highway of other similar looking, plastic-y slabs of phones. LG tried to spice things up by including lots of different types of backs, including a pretty stylish black or tan leather option (that are much nicer than I expected), but it’s not enough to compete with Samsung’s, or even HTC’s, metal unibody design. While the Samsung Devices team is working to pull away from Apple and find a way to boost its revenue and profits back to the levels seen around the Galaxy S3 and S4, Samsung’s silicon fabrication business becomes ever more reliant on an order book filled by Cupertino. Android Authority – The renowned and specialized website in reviewing capabilities of phones supported by Android – has exclusively reviewed Huawei’s P8 rear camera. So, I’m pleased to see LG offering an alternative, since that’s part of what makes the Android ecosystem so great: different takes from different companies, and you pick your phone to suit.
We already have the Lightning connector which can be plugged in either way round so we’d put money on Apple doing it at the other end of the cable, too. Unfortunately, just as Samsung found there was a downside to compact construction with the S6’s occasionally underwhelming longevity, so LG encounters a couple of compromises with its design decision, which I’ll return to later.
LG vaguely describes the plastic back as “ceramic-infused plastic.” It is a few microns thicker than one of Samsung’s plastic backs, which are so thin and flexible that they “peel” off the back, but other than a slight increase in thickness we don’t see any major difference over the usual low-quality plastic that has plagued Android phones for so many years. Finding touches that are unique to the company to stop the perception of Samsung ‘following’ another manufacturer is key – the team should build elements that are intensely associated with Samsung, and continue to polish and improve them throughout the life of the device and beyond. So, you get two Cortex-A57 cores and four A53 cores, which the 808 flips between depending on load, and slightly less capable graphics from the Adreno 418 GPU. With the phone only resting on a few points, it’s easy to quickly get wear marks in the back of the device—ours appears after only a day or so, and are visible in the pictures. Currently built into the Apple Watch and the new 12inch MacBook, Force Touch gives the device pressure sensitivity, allowing them to distinguish between a light tap and a hard press, enabling opportunities for new gestures.
Displays on smartphones have just great for a few years now, but LG is pushing the envelope with what it calls an “IPS Quantum Display.” The company says the new display tech has 20% better color reproduction, is 25% brighter, and has a 50% increase in contrast ratio. Personally, though I know some love to see the raw numbers, my curiosity is always around how well selected the processor is: has a manufacturer simply reached for the latest and greatest without giving thought to power consumption or heat output, or are they taking a more measured approach. The drop-down notification menu and lock screen look a little different, but LG does an admirable job of making all its proprietary applications, like Smart Bulletin and Smart Notice widgets, blend in with Android’s new Material Design.
The company worked for two years with Qualcomm to tailor the 808 to the G4 and vice-versa, figuring that the right chip and software combination is going to be better than anything else. We don’t have any solid clues that point to the iPhone 6S’s price in the UK yet, but we expect that it’ll be similar to the price of the current iPhone models.
I’ll come back to software specifically later, but suffice to say multitasking wasn’t a concern, the camera sprang to life quickly, and the gallery was rapidly populated with thumbnails. If you’re a gamer – and I could well understand you wanting to on the G4, what with its brilliant display which, as I explain in the next section, is a real peach of a panel – then you might run into the limits of the Adreno. Sadly, it’s not just gamers who’ll be disappointed by the G4’s mediocre rear speaker; the LG won’t be challenging HTC’s BoomSound any time soon.
Though side-by-side with the S6 it’s probably better than Samsung’s speaker, when they’re both placed on their backs on a desk the positioning leaves LG’s sounding more muffled. There’s also Smart Notice, an LG widget that gives hints throughout the day on how to improve your battery life, but it didn’t give me so much as a peep when Facebook and Messenger were doing a little dance on my phone’s grave. Quantum physics seems a strange place to start when you’re talking about a smartphone display, but according to LG it took a trip to the cutting-edge of physics to make the G4’s 5.5-inch, 2560 x 1440 panel. Thankfully there’s an option to turn all this off, just scroll the quick settings all the way over to “edit.” It’s a bummer that you can only have one or the other though—Google’s double panel system was designed to give quick access to power controls while not crowding out notifications. Even as I write this, I still can’t understand why my iPhone 6 Plus is unable to briskly switch from landscape to portrait mode when on the home screen, especially when it performs is good within apps.
Maybe it’s my eyes, trained over years of phone testing to prefer warmer colors, but the G4’s screen strikes me as leaning a little too far on the cool side, though it’s only really noticeably when the brightness is cranked up to the max. At more everyday levels, the colors are incredibly balanced: sure, bright reds are still bright red, but there isn’t that luminous glow to everything that some phones lean toward. Sometimes the neon highlight colors—like the default wallpaper and in the notification panel—combined with the new colorful and contrasty screen can seem like a little much.
The camera, among the best I’ve used on a smartphone, has continued to be a stalwart, though I’ve yet to see any real upgrade in software performance. Thanks to Lollipop’s Camera 2 API, The camera also has a full set of manual controls—ISO, aperture, white balance, exposure, and focus can all be adjusted. The previous iterations of LG’s Android customization haven’t exactly been met with universal joy, but it seems the message is – slowly – sinking in. In the rush to build a 64-bit chip, Qualcomm dropped its custom cores and went with an off-the-shelf design from ARM, and apparently the integration left something to be desired. LG’s default themes are back to brighter colors from their foray into more subdued tones on previous handsets, which work well on the Quantum display, though I’m still not a fan of the blocky custom icons.
Smart Bulletin is the G4’s take on HTC’s BlinkFeed, though it’s all LG-centric rather than news: think of it as an aggregate of your calendar, recent step count from the rudimentary LG Health app, and tips & tricks for using the phone. If you don’t want to mess with all that business and want something more straightforward, just switch to the Auto or Simple modes and the camera software will do the rest. The screen’s size should ideally open up things like split screen multitasking, more dynamic notifications and maybe even some unique usability tweaks for one-handed or voice operation.
While Qualcomm’s general design seems to have a lot of problems, with the 808 it has stuck a good balance between raw speed and the reality of heat constraints. If you want a non-Samsung device though—or if you just can’t live without the features the S6 dropped this year—this chip is pretty much your only choice. Event Pocket is an intriguing concept, involving dragging photos, Facebook events, and nearby points of interest into calendar entries, effectively pre-populating them rather than forcing you to tap in the details with the – surprisingly good – onscreen keyboard. The 16-megapixel sensor is paired with both an f/1.8 aperture lens and LG’s second-generation optical image stabilization, which can now compensate for shake in all three directions rather than the two of its predecessor. Just about everything you could want to fiddle with to eke the best of a scene or subject is here for the tinkering: white balance, ISO, brightness, shutter speed, focus points, and more.
LG says they did user research and found that consumers didn’t care about shaving a few tenths of a millimeter off the device in exchange for removing the replaceable battery. We wish it would have taken that research further and asked if more thickness for more battery was a wanted feature, because we bet most people would have asked for more battery.
Every change you make is reflected in real-time in the preview, so even if you’re not 100-percent sure what you’re doing you can generally fudge around and see what’s doing what. You’ll need to offload the latter to a computer to actually make anything of them, however, since out of the box the G4 lacks even rudimentary RAW editing skills. Lurking just under the LED flash, it promises to do for white balance in automatic mode what the well-trained eye of the capable photographer does in manual. Plus we prefer Samsung’s metal and plastic to LG’s leather and plastic, because Samsung puts the non-plastic material in places your fingers actually touch.
Qualcomm’s 2015 SoCs aren’t that much faster than older versions, so if you currently have a Snapdragon 800 phone (like an LG G2) you aren’t getting a huge speed boost, either. Point a camera at a dress, for instance, and it has to decide whether it’s white and gold given blueish lighting, or blue and black under warmer lighting. LG’s approach promises to first figure out the light condition and then the visible and invisible light emissions from the content of the scene, coming up with a more accurate setting in the process.
As far as recommending the G4 above everything else, the only thing it really has going for it against the Galaxy Note series is that it’s newer than the Note 4. When things get darker you can occasionally get some pleasing sparkly bokeh thanks to the f/1.8 lens, but there’s also a tendency toward over-sharpening and aggressive noise reduction. Again, these are great photos – and you could probably do some very interesting things if you took the time to finesse the RAW files – but they’re not perfect, as no smartphone really ever has been in low-light.
Both Full HD and 4k video look great, particularly with the OIS helping keep things smooth – though this is no Steadicam, so don’t expect it to iron out every sharp movement, and at times there can be an odd side-to-side wobble as you’ll see in the 4k sample clip below – albeit with LG’s over-enthusiastic processing sometimes stepping in a little more than I’d prefer. LG’s obsession with selfies – something the whole mobile industry appears to have become fascinated with – has spawned a new iteration of its Gesture Shot, too.
Now, not only can you clench your fist in-frame to trigger a three second countdown, a double-clench sparks off four photos with a second pause between them. Less impressive is the beautifying editing, which took my mediocre face and turned it into a bizarre wax figurine of a quality that would bankrupt Madame Tussauds were they to dare display it. It’s clearly intended as a retort to the launcher option on the S6, with the G4 trimming even more time by not only loading the camera app when you double-tap the volume-down button, but capturing the shot, too. The G4 has great battery life, the 3,000 mAh pack easily lasting a full day of active use: several accounts of push email turned on, social networking, some browsing and Google Maps use, playing with the camera, and more.
To be fair, it’s entirely possible that LG – or someone else – could release another back cover, without the case attachment, that adds wireless charging support. Its well-considered camera make it a strong candidate for best Android for keen photographers, while its power and storage flexibility make it a compelling option for power users.