Many of you probably know that I’m a big fan of the LG G2, and have been using it as my daily driver for a few months now (which is almost unheard of for me). I’ve been singing the praises of the LG G2 for quite some time now. Which it’s well deserved, and I still think it’s one of the most underrated phones of 2013. But with the LG G3 bringing almost the same specs to the table, is it really worth the upgrade? Well let’s take a look. First things first, this year seems to be the year of incremental upgrades. The HTC One M8 was a minor upgrade over the M7, same for the Samsung Galaxy S5 and Galaxy S4, and now the G3 and G2.
While the specs of the LG G3 and G2 are almost similar aside from processor, RAM and screen size, there is still a ton of new things in the LG G3 that we are all going to love. LG seems to have been listening to their customers, as they have added a removable battery, microSD card slot and even refined their UI. It’s now more flat, and a bit less clunky. That was really my only complaint on the LG G2. A lot of people were asking for a removable battery and microSD card slot, so it’s great to see that those have been addressed with the LG G3. Another sore point was the fingerprint magnet on the back. Now we have a metallic back that is made of polycarbonate. Which, as we talked about on the Android Headlines show this week, is great and not so great. It’s great because now it looks and feels premium and no more fingerprints. However, it’s not so good because it’s still plastic and not metal like the HTC One M8. But playing devils advocate there, metal makes it tougher for radios to give out signals, so your signal is going to be worse and if you’re someplace that barely gets signal, that’s not something you want.
Onto the camera. The LG G2 camera took some great pictures, it was a bit slow at times, but it was still really good. In fact one of the best. So how do you improve that? Lasers. Yes LG put a laser in the back of the LG G3. We have Laser Auto Focus on the LG G3, which makes the focusing time so much quicker. Around 250ms. Now in perspective, the time that it takes to blink is 300ms, so that’s pretty damn fast. Now we don’t have any hands on with the LG G3 just yet, but there have been a few sites that have done camera tests already, and man this thing is amazing. If you thought the LG G2 camera was amazing, just check out the LG G3 camera and you’ll be even more amazed.
So here’s the million dollar question. Is the upgrade worth it? That’s a question I’m still pondering myself. Since I can “JUMP” in August, should I bite on the LG G3 or wait and see what we get this fall. I’m leaning towards the LG G3 for a number of reasons. One is the camera, another is the display. Now battery life may not be as amazing as it is right now on the LG G2, but it’ll still get you through the day. So at the end of the day, I’d say if you have the G2, and you have no issues with it, then I’d say skip it. Unless you’re like me and need to have the latest and greatest. Then go ahead and pull the trigger, I can almost guarantee that you won’t regret it.
