The LG G3 Review
by Joshua Ho & Anand Lal Shimpi on July 4, 2014 5:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- LG
- Mobile
- Laptops
- G3
Platform Power
In the weeks leading up to this review there seemed to be a litany of headlines crowning the G3 as the new king of the battery life hill in the Android space. Our own battery life results disagreed with the conclusions but I wanted something a bit more concrete. Thankfully with a removable back cover and removable battery, instrumenting the G3 for power analysis is just as easy as it is on the Galaxy S5. Just like we did in our Galaxy S5 review, we measured device level power (with the display enabled) running a number of workloads. As always, all displays were calibrated to the same brightness level (200 nits, full white). Note that we are looking at average power here, not energy consumption. The latter is really what you want to report but for our needs here average power should be good enough.
At idle looking at a white screen the G3 uses more power than a Galaxy S5. Here we see the real burden of using LG's 2560 x 1440 panel, lighting up that many pixels definitely takes its toll on power consumption. Compared to the GS4 however, LG's G3 is an improvement. When asleep and in pocket the GS5 has a negligible advantage, the G3 is fairly close and is clearly better than the Snapdragon 600 based GS4.
The SunSpider results give you the other datapoint that should put to rest the G3's power consumption story. Under a heavy CPU load, the GS5 still manages lower overall platform power although the G3 again is better than the GS4. The SunSpider numbers combined with the idle/white screen numbers are enough to tell the story about G3's battery life vs. Galaxy S5. The G3 has a 5% larger battery but the potential gap in power consumption is much larger.
The video capture, camera preview and GFXBench results are interesting to look at but I wouldn't conclude much here other than to say that the G3 as a platform can consume quite a bit of power under load. For a better look at these scenarios we'd need to integrate power consumption over time to calculate energy usage, which as I mentioned before was beyond what we really needed to do for this review.
The main point here is to settle the debate about the G3's battery life. Yes, it has a larger battery than the Galaxy S5, but that doesn't mean it'll last longer on a single charge. I won't comment on reasons that other battery life tests would conclude differently.
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ASEdouard - Saturday, July 5, 2014 - link
in a ''smartphone display'', not photo. Damn not edits.Midwayman - Friday, July 11, 2014 - link
No kidding. If I were comparing the specs of the two as competing phones, the g2 wins more of the tests I care about and is really close in the others. Only think I don't like is the sealed battery, but the cover is easy to remove even if its not technically 'user servicible'coburn_c - Friday, July 4, 2014 - link
The better battery life, the better display, the better size, the cheaper price.. Yeah the G2 is LG's best phone of 2014..ASEdouard - Saturday, July 5, 2014 - link
True that.goobersnatcher - Saturday, July 12, 2014 - link
I agree .... you can currently buy the G2 for slightly under $400. The G2 is a significantly better value. However, if money is taken out of the comparison ...... the G3 wins by a tad! Either would be a good choice. IMHOESC2000 - Friday, July 4, 2014 - link
Remember that android L is showing massive improvements in battery life. If G3 owners can get android L onto their devices without too much delay, admittedly a big if, then the battery life of the G3 can be expected to improve a lot. And it already ain't half bad.soldier45 - Sunday, July 6, 2014 - link
No SD card support kept me away from the G2.rowlin - Monday, July 7, 2014 - link
The problem is the G2 battery is not replaceable and the 4.4.2 upgrade degraded the battery life.Midwayman - Wednesday, July 23, 2014 - link
It actually can be replaced pretty easy. Not something that I'd want to do in the middle of the day as part of a routine of carry multiples, but easy enough if you're worried about the battery dying later in life.soldier4343 - Thursday, July 17, 2014 - link
Technology advances daily, they aren't going to wait on you and your 2 year upgrade cycle.