Right from the word go, LG had an uphill battle to fight for the flagship G4 to claim mindshare (and market share) from Samsung and Apple — and I’m not even broaching the matter of the value segment competition that has stormed the market over the past year. With the G4, LG is certainly up for the fight, but can it command the premium that fewer customers are willing to pay today? Let’s find out.
Design-wise, the G4 isn’t a massive departure from its predecessor, and that’s no bad thing. The standout feature is a premium design with a durable genuine leather back (there’s a plastic option too), one that is curved ever so slightly for added grip comfort compared to the cold, slippery metal of the competition.
It’s arguably one of the most premium yet comfortable flagships I’ve used, more so considering how ungainly phones with 5.5in screens get to be. The leather back doesn’t come at the expense of the removable battery and microSD slot (with up to 2TB card support!), and given that Samsung has ditched both in the S6, the G4 remains the only major 2015 flagship with both features. As with the G2 and the G3, LG’s rear button placement continues to be something of an acquired taste.
Fortunately, an equal amount of attention has been paid to the front of the G4, with a subtly curved qHD resolution (2,560x1,440 pixels) screen that’s not only impressively sharp and bright, but also features more natural colours than the oversaturated AMOLED screens on the S6. The rear camera is a 16MP variant with a f/1.8 lens with optical image stabilisation and laser autofocus. These make for impressive specs on paper that actually do translate into an excellent snapper —one that is on a par with the S6 on most counts but occasionally falters when you’re trying to take a quick photo, especially if your subject is in motion.
Under the hood, the G4 is unique in that it runs the Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 hexa core processor coupled with 3GB RAM and 32GB internal memory, which runs significantly cooler than the 810 processor which powers the G-Flex 2 and the HTC One M9. Now while it is perfectly adequate for high-end gaming, it does show occasional signs of lag, which isn’t something you’d expect for something north of 50 grand. The 3,000mAh battery just about lasted the day as a primary phone, which could have been better as well.
There’s a lot going for the G4, but it is undoubtedly hobbled by the occasional performance and battery issues, which makes an outright recommendation difficult — unless you’re hung up on the removable
battery and storage.
♦ Rating: 8/10
♦ Price: Rs 51,000
♦ URL: http://bit.ly/TT-LG-G4
A SLEEK OFFERING
At just 7mm thick, Seagate’s aptly named Seven is the slimmest external hard drive chassis I have seen — it’s even thinner than an iPhone 6 Plus! It can even fit in your shirt pocket, should you want to carry it like that. The silver-coloured metal hard drive is moulded to look like the outer casing of an internal hard drive, and looks quite dapper compared to the black and blue plastic-encased hard drives we end up using.
Inside, you’ll find a 500GB hard drive, formatted to work with Macs and Windows PCs. As with other Seagate hard disks, the Seven is preloaded with Seagate Dashboard backup software, which performs three main back-up functions: PC Backup (auto-back-up computer files and folders), Social (share your media on social sites and back-up from these sites) and Mobile Backup (back-up from smartphone).
500 GB isn’t a lot though, and performance is adequate, but not very fast — though it does pack in a speedy USB 3.0 port. Net net, you’re buying this baby for its looks — you can get almost four times as much storage if you opt for a regular external drive. It is sturdy enough to be taken along in your bag for daily use, and is a great add-on for super-sleek ultrabooks or the MacBook Air, more so since it adds little weight to your bag.
♦ Rating: 7/10
♦ Price: Rs 9,500 (500GB)
♦ URL: http://bit.ly/TT-SeagateSeven
A COOL BOOKMARK
The Mufubu Electronic Dictionary is such a neat little gadget. Imagine the convenience of a bookmark, except this one lets you search for meanings of words too – there’s a 38,000 word Collins English Dictionary right there on your bookmark! It comes with a battery save feature and three contrasting shades as well.
♦ Price: Rs 2,999
♦ URL: http://bit.ly/TT-ElecDictionary
technocool@kanwar.net; follow me on twitter @2shar
