Despite being a self-confessed technology tart, I’ve not really felt the need to post about my mobile phones before. Yes, I get really excited at renewal time, but things have been largely incremental so far. My first full-screen touchscreen smartphone was a HTC Desire, and a couple of years later I went for the (then) all-singing-and-dancing HTC One X. They were good phones, but nothing groundbreaking in terms of what they did for me, or how they did it.
Fast-forward another couple of years and it’s time to renew again. I initially only went into the shop to try out a few handsets, but ended up making my mind up, paying £20 to end my contract early, and taking a new handset back to the office after lunch.
The phone in question is this one, the LG G2.
The LG G2, my new friend
Now the reason I’m even bothering to write this post is because of just how chuffed I am with this phone, it’s absolutely incredible. I know there are other premium handsets around, but I didn’t really want one. Samsung Galaxy S4/5 – I hate the touchwiz interface, and the other big selling points are a bit gimmicky for me. Fingerprints? Automatic scrolling? Not interested thanks. HTC One – beautifully made thing, but I wanted a change from the Sense UI and something different after knowing how incredibly slow they are at releasing firmware updates. Sony Xperia Z1/2 – again, nice phone but a bit too clunky for me. The glass front and back feel nice but make it heavy.
So in the end it was between the G2 and the Google Nexus 5, which I was really sold on at first, but after trying them out I went for the non-Google branded LG, and I am so glad I did. In no particular order, here’s why.
- Battery life. First and foremost the battery on this thing (3000 mah) is awesome. I unplugged it this morning at 6:30am and have made a few calls, some texts, web browsing, upgraded some apps, facebook and that sort of thing and it’s now showing (10 hours later) 86% remaining. This is with wifi on all day and brightness set to normal. Just amazing, I’ve never had this on a smartphone before.
- Knock, knock. You can wake the phone up by double-tapping on the screen. Doesn’t sound exciting? Try putting your phone on the desk, table or arm of the sofa. Now wake it up to check email, launch an app or something. Find yourself clawing your hand round to press the power switch? Not me, not any more. It’s so obvious, and works so well, it’s amazing it’s not been on every phone before. The same works in reverse to lock it, just double tap anywhere there isn’t an icon or on the notification bar.
- Power and volume switches on the rear of the phone. Probably the most radical feature is having these on the back of the phone under the camera. it sounds odd, but in practise it’s awesome. It’s where my hand naturally falls on the phone, and it means the bezel on the sides of the screen is so thin.
- IR Blaster. I didn’t realise until I got it home that it has an infra red blaster in it, and a really useful universal remote app. The app even lets you design your own layouts, and it’s accessible from the lock screen.
- The video recorder allows you to zoom on a face in a crowd, and the microphones on the phone isolate that person’s voice for more clarity. You can also zoom in on any playing video. Something so small but so obvious once you use it.
There are so many other little things which would make for really boring reading for anyone but a G2 owner, so I won’t list them all here. Things like a lifetime 50GB allowance on Box cloud storage, or simple wifi sharing with a computer. Suffice to say this is an awesome handset, and if you’ve found your way here after umming and ahhing when trying to decide what to go for, do yourself a favour and pick one up.
To think, people still buy iPhones…