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LG G6 sign-up page unveils stunning metal design



So let's start by looking at the design. You'll be forgiven for confusing the Huawei P10 for the P9, because both phones look strikingly similar. Both are rounded-rectangular metal unibody slabs with glass on the front, a glass camera strip along the top of the rear panel, and moderately-sized bezels above and below the display. It seems Huawei didn't want to significantly refresh the design of their high-end phone, so they didn't.


Normally, I wouldn't have any issue with Huawei sticking with the same design as last year, because last year's design was fantastic. However in 2017, several companies have experimented with larger displays, particularly LG and Samsung. These phones include taller screens with smaller bezels, keeping the size of the phone the same but giving you more screen real estate and a larger screen-to-body ratio. The P10 with its 71% screen-to-body ratio feels outdated and old in comparison to the latest massive-screen handsets.




LG G6 sign-up page reveals full-metal body design




"A RARE COMBINATION THAT MAKES THE LG G6 DESIGN VERY DESIRABLE"The G6 gives users what they want the most: a great battery capacity, huge display, no size increase, a fast and stable hardware platform and an industrial design that is durable (IP68 water-resistant) and beautiful (80% display to body ratio) at the same time. This is a rare combination that makes the LG G6 design very desirable.


The G5's gimmick is that it boasts a modular design, allowing the user to add special units - whimsically referred to by LG as "Friends" - to the bottom of the handset, augmenting it with additional features which, on any other device, would require an entire hardware refresh. The process of swapping out a module is simple; there's a small button on the lower-left edge of the phone and pressing this with your fingernail releases the bottom section, which also contains the speaker, microphone and USB Type-C charging port. Sliding this away from the main body of the phone reveals that the battery is also connected, and this has to be snapped off and fixed to another module before re-attaching it to the G5. The entire process takes seconds, and while the phone obviously turns off the moment the battery is removed, the boot time is thankfully quick. It's a neat trick and swiftly replacing a module in front of your friends is likely to garner more impressed glances than befuddled ones, but there are some niggles - on the unit we reviewed, the left-hand side of the module refused to fit flush against the body of the phone, leaving a noticeable gap.


While the LG G5's modular aspirations might turn heads and generate column inches, its design is sadly nothing to write home about. Say what you will about 2015's LG G4 and its leather back panel, at least it gave the phone a unique aesthetic identity - the G5 on the other hand is practically nondescript. It's not ugly by any means, just entirely unremarkable; LG's overdue shift to a metal chassis has been masked by the fact that the device is covered in a primer which makes it feel like plastic. Such is the confusion generated by this coating that the South Korean firm has been forced to issue a statement reassuring buyers that the G5 does indeed possess a metal body. LG maintains that the primer allows it to cover up those unsightly antenna strips, but the end result is a handset that looks and feels somewhat cheap, despite its flagship status. The rounded corners aim for the degree of elegance we've seen on the Galaxy S7 and iPhone 6S but fail to achieve the same effect, and the sharp edge which runs around the handset can make it mildly uncomfortable to hold.


The G5 might be the most ambitious flagship I've ever used, but you probably wouldn't guess that from its looks. "Boring" is the single most common adjective I've heard used in conversation to describe the phone's design. And that's understandable; physically, there's just not a lot going on here. For what it's worth, I personally find the G5 kind of charming. Its all-metal body is softened by rounded corners and a curved glass forehead that also houses the earpiece and an 8-megapixel selfie camera. The device is pleasant to hold too, though I'd still give the comfort nod to the Galaxy S7, which is actually a hair thicker than the G5. Throw in a Snapdragon 820 chip, 4GB of RAM, a 5.3-inch IPS LCD display running at Quad HD resolution and a USB Type-C port on the bottom and you've got yourself a solidly modern (if forgettable) phone.


The design elements are complemented with precise details, including minimized panel gaps, a tight wheel-to-body relationship and select use of chrome trim. V-6 models also receive dual chrome exhaust outlets.


Along with the metal body, LG managed to keep their popular removable battery feature while attempting to usher in an era of modularity through phones, by offering up modules that could potentially add-on functionality on the fly. The idea could mean big things in the future, but the G5 and its couple of modules are here now. In other words, we are going to judge them today. LG also went with a dual-camera setup to give its users more flexibility when taking photos, a move that may have led to a questionable design.


The 83% screen-to-body ratio on the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ is the best in the business among top-tier global smartphone makers right now. By comparison, the three-year-old iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus design has a screen-to-body ratio of 66%. As I wrote in an earlier opinion piece, using the iPhone after having used the Galaxy S8 feels like going back to a tube TV after having upgraded to a flat-screen.


The iPhone's operating system was also a shift away from older operating systems (which older phones supported and which were adapted from PDAs and feature phones) to an operative system powerful enough to not require using a limited, stripped down web browser that can only render pages specially formatted using technologies such as WML, cHTML, or XHTML and instead ran a version of Apple's Safari browser that could easily render full websites[44][45][46] not specifically designed for phones.[47]


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