LG Launches G4 Flagship Phone in New York

LG has just launched their latest LG G4 flagship in New York today. Set to replace the year old LG G3 as well as to supplement the LG Flex 2, availability should begin in late may to June. While we’ve seen dramatic changes in the Galaxy S lineup from Samsung, LG has largely stuck to the same design, an evolution of the LG G3. That’s not to say that there aren’t improvements over the G3 because there are many.

The biggest and most obvious change is the addition of six new leather backs, complete with stitching down the center line. For those that aren’t into leather, the option to stick with a diamond pattern plastic back remains. Of course, the battery remains user replaceable behind the removable back. Unlike the Galaxy S6, the rest of the phone stays with plain old plastic.

In terms of more technical specifications, the SoC is a Snapdragon 808, a dual A57 + quad A53 chip, trimming two A57 cores from the Snapdragon 810. While this may drop multithread performance, single threaded performance should be better due to less thermal throttling, an issue the 810 has been running into. The SoC is paired with 3GB of ram, 32GB of base storage, SD card support, and a 5.5 inch 1440p IPS panel. As leaked earlier, the front camera has improved to 8MP and the rear shooter to 16MP, along with manual and gesture controls. Optical image stabilization is also improved to counter movements in all three axises, up from two.

All of these changes make the LG G4 an expected and unsurprising evolution of the G3. While Samsung has taken to reinventing their flagship Galaxy S6 to go head to head against Apple, LG has taken a different path in offering more flexibility but with some concessions to a premium feel. For now, we’ll have to wait and see which strategy will pay off as the struggle against Apple and budget OEMs continues.