LG G5 Review: A Bold Bet on the Future of Phones | Tom's Guide
The LG G5 boasts an innovative modular design and useful dual cameras, but short battery life holds it back. That means you can swap out parts of the phone for other components — dubbed Friends by LG — to enhance the phone's functionality. In addition, the G5 offers a handy two-camera setup on its rear and a removable battery. We wish the G5 lasted longer on a charge and had a better display, but overall this ambitious handset satisfies.Thanks to its speedy 1.59-GHz quad-core Snapdragon 820 CPU and 4GB of RAM, the LG G5 is a powerhouse. It breezed through several rounds of Haunted Hotel: Death Sentence without lag. And pulling up a photo from the camera viewfinder was fast. The camera also fired successive shots rapidly, though the phone sometimes takes a while to switch from portrait to landscape mode. The G5's score of 5,357 on the general performance Geekbench 3 test is much better than the average smartphone (3,207).When unveiling the phone in February, LG touted a Hi-Fi module that was supposed to improve the phone's audio output, but the accessory in question has since disappeared from LG's website and marketing materials. LG declined to confirm when (or if) the Hi-Fi DAC module will be available. Other Friends, save for the Cam Plus, don't actually attach to the G5 via its pop-out slot, and are better described as accessories.Those who want all-day battery, stunning looks, swift performance and best-in-class cameras will find a better phone in the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge. But if you like the idea of swapping in a spare battery and like the promise of modularity, you'll be happy with the LG G5.
