LG debuts the new G5, a powerful modular smartphone

After much teasing of its new features, the LG G5 finally launched at MWC 2016 in Barcelona with quite a big bang and some headline features that are enabled by its modular Magic Slot such as a quick slide out battery, an add-on camera module with battery and a pro-class Hi-Fi DAC. There's a lot more highlights such as its twin rear cameras, and always-on main screen and a host of companion devices to amp up the LG G5's capabilities.

Design and Features

It seems like most of the leaks we've reported are fairly accurate, such as this one that pretty much confirmed that the LG G5 sports an all metal uni-body design with volume controls on the side. LG today further revealed and confirmed that the LG G5 is constructed from an aluminium body with a "Magic Slot" that will allows for a slide-out battery to quickly swap out a depleted unit for a fully charged one in seconds.

LG has taken advantage of the modular nature of the battery module to further expand on the phone's capabilities and the first two are the LG CAM Plus module and the LG Hi-Fi Plus with B&O Play. Again, these were also leaked previously, so it didn't actually catch us by surprise.

The LG CAM Plus module essentially offers enhanced photo taking capabilities through a comfortable grip to emulate a traditional standalone camera. The enlarged handling grip also offer physical buttons for power, shutter, record, zoom and LED indicators in addition to intuitive focus control and exposure lock - features that you are usually found on standalone cameras. This camera module also comes with an extra 1,200mAh of juice to complement the phone's standard 2,800mAh battery pack - that's a total capacity of 4,000mAh to allow for longer shooting time.

On the other hand, the LG Hi-Fi Plus with B&O Play is a collaborative development with B&O to meet the needs of audiophiles with this portable Hi-Fi DAC. The 32-bit Hi-Fi DAC upsampling technology is the same as that first introduced on the recent LG V10 smartphone and it now supports 32-bit 384KHz high definition audio playback. When you don't intend to use it with the LG G5, the Hi-Fi Plus with B&O Play can used as standalone Hi-Fi DAC to any other device or PC.

Camera

The LG G5 takes off where the V10 left. While the V10 featured dual selfie cameras, the G5 offers dual rear cameras, one with a standard 78-dergree lens and the other with a 135-degree wide angle lens that 1.7 times wider than existing smartphones and more importantly, 15 degrees wider than the human eye's field of view. That means you can capture exactly what you see.

The main camera is the same 16MP camera with OIS that was featured on the LG V10, while the new wide-angle lens is an 8MP camera. The single front camera uses an 8MP sensor similar to the G4.

An always-on QHD display

The LG G5 uses a 5.3-inch QHD resolution (2,560 x 1,440 pixels) IPS display instead of a 5.5-inch QHD display on the G4. That means it's also sharper at 554 pixels per inch!

Unlike the V10 that offered a secondary screen for always-on information (time, notifications and other key info), the G5's main display will now support this function.

To minimize power consumption, LG redesigned the display driver IC memory and power management function so that the display’s backlight only illuminates one small part of the overall display. Thanks to this technology, the always-on display requires only 0.8 percent of the battery’s full capacity per hour to operate.

While that sounds like a menial amount, a quick math check would park a full day battery consumption a little more than 19%. That's a actually quite a bit of power drain and probably a lot more than what people would expect to trade off for an always-on screen. As such, we're not quite sure if it would play out to the phone's benefit until we test it ourselves.

Check out the key specs and LG G5's companion devices on the next page!

Key Specs

As leaked out previously, the LG G5 will be powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 64-bit processor with Adreno 530 graphics. The processors is optimized for VR and supports 4K image/video capture and playback, while it is said that the graphics engine is 40% faster and up to 40% more power efficient than the previous generation. Complimenting it are a low power Qualcomm Hexagon DSP and a Qualcomm Spectra 14-bit dual image signal processors that shore up the LG G5's image capture and processing capability.

The Snapdragon 820 processor also has an integrated X12 LTE modem that supports Category 12 download speeds of up to 600 Mbps and LTE Category 13 uplink speeds of up to 150 Mbps. We've covered more details of this modem over here.

Other key specs are as follows:-

• aptX HD: 24-bit Hi-Fi Wireless Audio - an enhanced codec that supports 24-bit sound over Bluetooth, delivering rich and clear sound over wireless connections without any loss. It's supported by its companion device, the LG Tone Platinum.
  
   
• Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0 - the fastest iteration of Qualcomm's Quick Charge capability. Hit the link to read more.
  
   
• Low Power Location Estimation (LPLE) Technology - enhances the battery efficiency by as much as 41.9 percent by improving the power consumption related to location-based apps.
  
   
• RAM and Storage: 4GB low power DDR4 RAM and 32GB of internal storage with micsoSD expansion slot.
  
   
• Operating System: Android 6.0 Marshmallow - You'll want to know these accompanying tricks to optimize the OS.
  
   
• Size and weight: 149.4 x 73.9 x 7.7mm and 159 grams. This makes it a little more comfortable in the hands as it's a tad less wide compared to the LG G4 and it's probably a bit slimmer compared to the curved back of the G4. It's also much more handier than the much larger LG V10.
  
   
• Battery: 2,800mAh. This is a little less than the G4's 3000mAh battery capacity, but it's now easily swappable.
  
   
• Colors: Silver / Titan / Gold / Pink

LG G5's companion devices

With the G5, LG is launching with it a playground of devices called LG Friends to complement the smartphone and your modern lifestyle with new experiences.

• LG 360 VR - VR goggle that can be connected with the G5 via a dedicated cable and works exclusively with the G5 to simulate a 130-inch TV viewed from two meters away. Weighing only 118g, device is compatible with 360-degree images and videos captured with LG 360 CAM as well as all Google Cardboard content.

• LG 360 CAM - A compact 360-degree angle camera equipped with two 13MP 200-degree wide angle cameras, 1,200mAh battery and 4GB internal memory, which can be supplemented by a microSD card. Captures video in 2K resolution and 5.1-channel surround audio recording on three microphones to help users effortlessly create high-quality 360-degree contents (compatible to Google Street View and YouTube360). Content is best enjoyed on LG 360 VR or other devices capable of viewing 360-degree content.

• LG Rolling Bot - a companion device that works quite a bit like the Sphero and capture images and video with its 8MP camera. It is best used as a remote monitoring system for your home or keep an eye on your pets.

• LG Tone Platinum Bluetooth headset - first of its kind to be equipped with aptX HD codec to deliver lossless 24-bit audio.
  
   
• LG Smart Controller - control unmanned aircraft like drones with its smart controller joystick and check the live video feed via the LG G5.

Last but not least, don't forget to check out the new touch-enabled case cover for the LG G5 that was officially announced even before the phone was made known!

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