A mountain of functionality: LG’s G2 reviewed

That’s pretty good, and should impress enough smartphone users, though some aspects of the G2 can use a bit of ironing out.

This is evident in the operating system where there’s an odd bit of jerkiness when you’re pulling down the top notification bar, or a neat bug that seems to pull you back to the top of the menu when you swear black and blue you want to go down the bottom.

LG’s screen double-tap to switch the phone on doesn’t always work — we rate it at about one every three times, actually, and you have to tap pretty hard — and the QuickRemote isn’t always easy to take out of the drop down menu, asking you to add a remote, even if you don’t have a remote.

During our review of the phone, we found that we couldn’t remove the QuickRemote feature and there wasn’t a button in the drop down to switch it on and off, but upon resetting the phone the option was there. It’s likely a software bug, but if you can’t find it and desperately want to turn the remote off, the phone might need to be reset.

We’re not huge fans of the on-screen keyboard, which doesn’t feel like a huge improvement from what was offered in the Optimus G, and not only tends to miss out on what you meant to say when you’re tracing words with your fingers, but also doesn’t always do the best job in letting you make corrections.

Keyboards can be replaced on Android, though, so this doesn’t totally phase us.

The lack of upgradeable memory does, however, and since the G2 only comes in a 16GB version with not quite 10GB available, you have to wonder why LG didn’t just provide a microSD slot and let this happen.

It’s especially confusing when you realise that this is the first smartphone to natively support the lossless audio format FLAC, which is one of our favourite things about this smartphone.

Playing back FLAC files on this phone means a higher definition of audio is possible in a portable way, as you walk, and that’s awesome, but FLAC files are also big, with a 3 minute song weighing in close to 20-25MB. That means an album can hit between 120 and 450MB at the minimum, and when you’re sharing 10GB of space between photos, videos, apps, games, and these big music files, this could become an interesting balancing act.

Conclusion

LG’s G2 does a lot of things very, very well.

Between the two day battery life, excellent screen, solid audio performance, and top mobile broadband speeds, it’s easy to recognise the G2 as being better than Samsung’s S4, which is what this phone feels like is taking on.

The LG G2 offers a mountain of functionality, providing a level of customisation and versatility beyond any smartphone we’ve seen. It can function as a TV remote control, as well as a controller your air conditioner. It will allow you to change just about anything you want on the interface, starting with the order of Android’s buttons; the order and availability of dropdown power controls, and the accessibility of the QSlide micro-apps. You can control the shortcuts on the lockscreen; which app shortcuts pop up when you plug an accessory or headphones in; how gestures relate to using your smartphone; the size of the keypad and keyboard for one-handed operation; whether the native music player can access sound files stored in cloud services such as Dropbox; different levels of vibration strength depending on the type of notification; what notifications the front-facing LED lights up for; if the camera will monitor your eyes to track you’re attentiveness to what’s happening on the screen; the order of shortcuts in the bottom of the dock  – including the ability to change where the main “apps” shortcut link goes – how the apps menu looks, and the individual volume levels of ringtones, notifications, system, and music and other internet sounds.

Without a doubt, this is a control freak’s dream, and the LG G2 delivers in ways no other currently released phone can.

As we said, it doesn’t get it all right, and we wish LG had kept with its previous glass body design and added expandable storage, but there is much to admire and enjoy here. If you’re considering a Samsung Galaxy S4, it’s worth putting the G2 in your hand to see which one suits you best.