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REVIEW: There's only one real reason to buy the LG G5
The G5 is LG's latest flagship premium smartphone, and it's very good.
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It has a fresh design with new materials, as well as some interesting features that other phones don't have.
At the same time, it failed to impress in certain key areas.
You can buy the G5 now for about $650, but pricing will vary depending on your carrier.
Here's everything you need to know about the G5:
The G5 is LG's first all-metal smartphone, save for the bottom front panel, which is made of plastic.
It's a welcome move away from the plastic smartphones that LG released in the last few years while other companies like Samsung, Apple, and HTC were releasing smartphones with premium materials, like metal and glass.
But the G5's metal build still doesn't quite match the premium feel of Samsung's Galaxy S7, the iPhone 6s, or HTC's new 10.
No other premium smartphone lets you swap out the battery.
LG will give you a free second battery and charging cradle that acts like an external battery if you buy the G5 before May 2.
The G5 features the new USB-C standard for charging and connecting to computers. The new plug also lets it charge faster than the previous standard, microUSB.
That means you can give the G5 quick charging boosts throughout your day so you don't run out of battery.
With charging combined with the removable battery, there's no way you could possibly run out of juice on a typical day. The G5 is the longest lasting smartphone out of all its competitors.
The G5 runs on the latest and powerful Snapdragon 820 processor, which means fast performance. I can easily and quickly jump from app to app without much sign of slowing down. It also plays graphic-heavy games well.
I turned from balanced journalist to raging fan-boy when it seemed like LG ditched the Android app drawer on the G5.
The app drawer is where you can store your app icons so you can keep your home screen clean and uncluttered. It's arguably one of the main benefits of Android over iOS.
Unfortunately, the app drawer isn't on the G5 by default. You can restore the app drawer, but it's a convoluted process that involves many, many steps.
There is a workaround where you can store all your app icons into one folder and place it wherever you like, so it's not the end of the world. It's still not ideal, though.
The G5's removable bottom gives the G5 a lot of potential to do cool things that its competitors can only dream of thanks to separate modules LG calls "Friends."
For example, LG showed off a camera grip that gives you more control over taking pictures and video with the G5. However, a pre-release unit I tried didn't quite live up to expectations.
So far, the only Friend module available is the removable battery.
LG is letting developers design new modules for the G5. It'll be interesting to see what modules developers come up with, but for now, there isn't much.
LG has finally given its premium smartphone a fingerprint sensor, but it's on the back where the home button is and it's fairly small, which sometimes makes it hard to find with your finger when you're trying to get into the G5 quickly.
Having a fingerprint sensor on the back isn't a bad thing. The Nexus 5X and 6P also have their fingerprint sensors on the back, and my colleague Ben Gilbert thinks it's great.
However, if you want to unlock your phone when it's sitting on your desk, you have to pick it up to reach the fingerprint sensor, unless you unlock it with your PIN on the screen.
So, while the fingerprint sensor on the back is fine, a fingerprint sensor on the front like most phones is better.
Unfortunately, you won't be able to buy the G5 unlocked directly from LG in the US. You have to buy it from your carrier, which means it'll come with a bunch of your carrier's awful apps that you can't uninstall.
It's not the worst thing in the world, as these apps don't take up too much of your storage, but it's still an annoyance.
Speaking of storage...
You can add to the G5's 32GB of built-in storage with a microSD card, which is great! Running out of space because of too many photos, videos, or music can be a thing of the past.
What's not great, however, is that you can't install apps on the microSD card, even though it's a feature in the current version of Android. That means LG actively disabled that feature on the G5. Samsung did the same thing for the Galaxy S7.
HTC's 10 is the only premium smartphone that lets you install apps onto a microSD card.
Tech Insider's photography and camera expert Rafi Letzter said the G5's dual camera is "just a weird, unnecessary gimmick."
The super wide-angle lens might look cool at first, giving your photos a fisheye GoPro-style effect, but you wouldn't want that effect for every photo. As a result, you wouldn't use the super-wide angle lens as often as, say, a lens that takes pictures with a narrower field-of-view that's good for portraits.
Using Rafi's words, "If LG had attached a second lens that was even twice as zoomed-in as its standard smartphone lens, that would have been much more useful."
The G5 can zoom in about as much as the other smartphone cameras in its class, but the pictures look much better.
They're clearer, sharper, and almost look like you took the picture without zooming in compared to the zoom on the Galaxy S7 and iPhone 6s Plus.
Despite having more megapixels than the Galaxy S7's 12-megapixel camera, the G5's main 16-megapixel shooter isn't quite as good.
The S7 is sharper, does better in low light, has better autofocus, and deals better with colors compared to the G5.
Check out Rafi Letzter's comparison of the LG G5's camera with the Galaxy S7's.
The G5 is a good, solid Android phone, and it's your only option if you want a removable battery.
But if that doesn't matter to you, the Galaxy S7 is the better choice for its camera, gorgeous design, and nifty features like wireless charging and water-resistance, all for a similar $650 price tag.
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