LG G3 Review

LG announced the G3 in London on 27 May 2014 and put it on sale in Korea the next day, and its whole pitch was the screen: 5.5 inches at 1440x2560, 538 pixels per inch, in a body barely bigger than a 5-inch phone thanks to the rear power and volume keys the G2 had introduced. Vivo and Oppo had shipped Quad HD phones in China first, but the G3 was the one the world bought, and within months every Android flagship had followed.

The cost was immediate. The Snapdragon 801 at 2.5 GHz had almost twice the pixels of its 1080p rivals to push, so the G3 dropped frames the HTC One M8 did not, ran warm, and cut its own screen brightness when it got hot, which happened often enough that the dim, slightly muted panel became the review cliche. The 3000 mAh battery was removable, with a microSD slot beside it, and got through a day rather than two.

The camera was the real advance: 13 MP with OIS+ and a laser autofocus system borrowed from LG's robot vacuums, which locked focus in the dark faster than anything else that year and produced some of 2014's best Android photos. Knock Code unlocked the phone with a tapped pattern on the blank screen. Android 4.4.2 got a flatter LG skin, and the G3 was the first non-Nexus phone to receive Lollipop, in November 2014, with Marshmallow following. In the US it launched in July at 199 dollars on a two-year contract.