LG G6 review

waw the LG G6  is waw

OUR VERDICT

The G6 is a great phone from LG, one that pushes the brand back to the forefront of the smartphone pile in terms of design and screen. However, some odd choices to go with lower-spec performance and not upgrade the camera in a meaningful way while still charging a huge premium make this a tough sell.

Update: We've spent enough time using the new LG G6 with stable software to give a final verdict on this review - have a read to see how we found the battery, speed and camera now they're complete!

With the LG G6, the modular design of the LG G5 is gone in favor of a more traditional phone, one that takes multiple elements from the top handsets around, blended together to make a more prosaic (but still intriguing) handset. 

The G6 is a much more conservative design than its predecessor, taking the form of a sealed unit that drops the removable battery, replacing it with a larger-capacity power pack and waterproof shell.

Surprisingly, this phone isn't using the latest chipset from Qualcomm, so you won't be getting the full grunt of the Snapdragon 835. However, LG maintains this was a decision to benefit the consumer – using a chip it had expertise with rather than an unknown entity it couldn't test fully.

Instead, it's going with a Snapdragon 821 option, which LG told us was a better option given it had more experience working with the chip and could thus extract more performance rather than using an untested engine.

The screen is, really, the only place where innovation is still present on the G6, with the longer 18:9 display giving more screen real estate to play with, and introducing some clever little changes to the user interface to exploit the extra pixels.

Beyond that, there's not a lot that marks out the LG G6 from the rest of the competition – and that's a pretty good thing.  

Having used the LG G6 for a couple of weeks, it's easy to see that this is a 'grown-up' handset from the South Korean brand. It just feels nicer in the hand, more solid and refined, and I really haven't missed anything from the LG G5 at all.

The main thing that's perturbing is the early price rumor: it's going to possibly cost up to £699 (around $860 / AU$1125) at launch, and, well, that's just too much for what's on offer.

(This may be an early price from retailers jumping in too quickly though, so keep an eye out for other costs landing soon).

However, LG seems to have baked all the components together well, so if you do have to spend that much you'll be getting a decent phone.

It’s interesting that some early reviews of this preview build have called the LG G6 a 'return to form' - apart from perhaps the LG G2, the brand hasn’t had a stellar flagship device for years. Rather, it feels more like a ‘finally understanding what users actually want in a phone’.

LG G6 price and release date

OK - here's the curious thing about this phone. It's got a lower-spec in some areas, has prioritised things like design over an improved camera... and yet still costs far more money than we'd expect.

The LG G6 will set you back an eye-watering £649 SIM free in the UK, which is astronomical given we're used to seeing phones from this brand come in at almost half that cost after a few months of being on sale.

In terms of contract pricing, we're looking at around £40 per month minimum if you don't want to spend too much on the phone upfront, which again is rather high.

In the US, contract pricing is set at around $28 per month, which is in the region of Apple's iPhone 7 and the Google Pixel... both of which aren't considered cheap phones.

If you want to go for it SIM free in the North America, you're looking around $650, where it's AU$1,000 for those over in Australia.

For a limited time, you can trade in your old phone at Verizon to get the G6 for 50% off, which is a pretty tempting deal.

The LG G6 release date has already been and gone for most territories, with the UK one of the last to get its hands on the device - we're hoping that as it becomes more widespread, the cost of ownership comes down. 

Design 

The LG G6 is covered in a mix of glass and metal, with two sheets of Gorilla Glass (although weirdly it's Gorilla Glass 5 on the rear, but only the much older Gorilla Glass 3 on the front) framed with a rim of aluminum.

 What's most impressive is how little bezel there is on this phone – we're expecting the same kind of design from Samsung on the Galaxy S8, but the narrow bezels have been shrunken top and bottom to create an impressive effect when you turn the phone on.

Anyone aware of the LG G5's design will be surprised by the way of just how … normal this phone looks. Gone is the dull plastic back of the LG G3, the odd leather of the G4 or the come-apart design of last year’s phone – the LG G6 is smooth and classy all the way around.

That will disappoint those who like the way LG has taken things in a different direction in the past, but honestly, the G6 design is a smart move. It’s the most classically understated and sophisticated phone we’ve ever seen from LG, and it’s the perfect platform for letting the internals shine through.

The rear of the phone is smooth, with no protruding camera bump – we’ll get onto the snapper in a moment, but LG told us it chose slimmer sensors rather than more advanced camera tech to make the design of the phone sleeker.

It's a gamble, but last year's camera was fine, and LG can probably just get away without another change.