LG G2 and MSM8974 Snapdragon 800 - Mini Review
by Brian Klug on September 7, 2013 1:11 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- LG
- Mobile
- LG G2
- Android 4.2
- MSM8974
- Snapdragon 800
Display
We've been very pleased with what comes out of LG Display as of late, and the G2 doesn't disappoint. It's a 5.2-inch diagonal LCD with 1920x1080 resolution for 423 PPI density. Of course, it isn't just resolution that matters, but of course calibration, viewing angles, and other quality measures. What's interesting about the G2 is that it has two discrete touchscreen matrices which get routed to the top and bottom and out two different connectors. LG says this allows it to get the bezels on the G2 down to 2.65mm. I find a lot of what constrains device size lately is really width rather than height, and maximizing the amount of the front area used by display helps devices include bigger displays without getting too large.
Saturations:
Grayscale Sweep:
GMB Color Checker:
I measured the G2 display and was very impressed with how things turned out. The panel goes nice and bright (around 400 nits) but not quite as high as the 460 from the 720p LG Display panel from the Nexus 4. On the bright side however it comes in close to 6504K in temperature, and has some of the lowest DeltaE 2000 scores we've seen, with the iPhone 5, HTC One, and G2 clustering together in the GMB color checker test and saturations sweep.
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Crono - Saturday, September 7, 2013 - link
I'm surprised this qualifies as a "mini" review (even for AnandTech), but I'm impressed by the graphics performance of the G2 more than anything else. I'm just wondering if there are any applications or games yet that can take advantage on Android.fteoath64 - Saturday, September 7, 2013 - link
The graphics benchmarks put the Moto-X in a strong position een though it uses the older cores and newer Adreno 320 gpu. Granted it has only 1280X720 resolution, the overall performance is very close to the S800 with FullHD screens. This actually means that the Moto-X SoC is well optimized for it purposes. It also seems to beat the SGS4 in most graphics tests.Krysto - Saturday, September 7, 2013 - link
The test was done at 720p - for everyone - which means Moto X is beating most everyone else in GPU performance - at the same resolution. If you take the real world case, and put the others at their native 1080p resolution, then in the real world Moto X will be 2x better in gaming performance since it will push half the pixels.Also Adreno 320 is not new. Is a year old, just like the S4 Pro CPU cores. Just because S4 and HTC One used the same GPU this year, doesn't mean it's "new".
coolhardware - Saturday, September 7, 2013 - link
Pretty nice point!A question though, do any Android games render at a lower resolution and then upscale to fit native resolution?
Also, the LG G2 comes in about 6th place in top pixel density of phones
http://pixensity.com/list/phone/
and it has the largest screen of those top 6 phones... #7 Lenovo / #8 Sony are bigger though :-)
Looking forward to the final review and seeing LTE performance!
nerd1 - Saturday, September 7, 2013 - link
All the pixel density fad is apple's clever ploy to conceal their small screen. Resolution / size = density, so smaller screen will get higher dpi. However, it is quite obvious that if resolution is the same, larger screen is much easier on eye.FwFred - Saturday, September 7, 2013 - link
Agreed, we are well into the point of diminishing returns with PPI on high end smartphones. I'd imagine we are getting to the point where we are wasting power/performance for spec chasing.theduckofdeath - Sunday, September 8, 2013 - link
RR3 doesn't render in 1080p on the GS 4, I can clearly see pixelation in the 3D parts. I guess it might be because they're perhaps lazy in utilizing multi-core hardware? Because the game lags considerably when there are a lot of AI cars in front of you.warisz00r - Saturday, September 7, 2013 - link
If the next Nexus phone is indeed based on this, then color me very stoked.Panickd - Sunday, September 8, 2013 - link
Maybe loosely "based on". According to the FCC paperwork the Nexus 5 has a display of roughly 4.96 inches to the G2's 5.2 inches. Looking at the pictures the camera is also in a different place on both as well. Not huge differences, mind you, but seems like a lot of work going into making them different if they are indeed based on the same general design.I would plunk down for a G2 in a heartbeat if LG didn't have such a shoddy support and update record for their phones. I currently own an old G2x and am currently scanning around for it's successor. I'll have to wait to see what the Nexus 5 really turns out to be, I suppose.
Impulses - Sunday, September 8, 2013 - link
I'd take the smaller display and battery if it comes with a slightly better looking/feeling build (more Moto X and less Galaxy S).