It has been a long time coming, but the new LG G4 has finally arrived in Canada. It was back in April the LG G4’s specs and availability were announced, although all we knew was that it would be sometime in June and no firm pricing was given. Finally, in May, they firmed up the date as June 19, and as far as the pricing goes, LG invited Canadians to enter a contest, where they set the retail price at $699.99. Things were finally beginning to fall into place – the date and the list price. Fast forward to June 19, and today, the Canadian carriers are ready to put this new LG G4 out for sale at Rogers, Bell, TELUS, WIND Mobile and Videotron.
The prices are very close between carriers, however, there are some differences – Rogers is charging $199.99 on a two-year contract and $699.99 for an outright purchase. The Rogers version supports VoLTE and is only the second device to incorporate this feature. Pricing on Bell’s network will cost you $199.95 / $699.95, TELUS is slightly more at $200 / $700. Videotron is $199 / $699 with a free accessory kit worth $130 that includes a spare battery, a charger and a 32GB memory card. WIND Mobile, with WINDTab will cost you $499 or $699 outright. LG is also including the gray ceramic coated back and black leather back in the LG G4’s box for all purchasers no matter where you purchase the LG G4.
The LG G4 is an evolutionary update of the popular LG G3, and, although it looks about the same, LG has upgraded the LG G4 in all of the right places. Starting with the design, they slightly curved the entire phone to make it even easier to hold – it is not curved like the LG G Flex 2, not by any means, but just enough to add the comfortable fit in your hand. While the display of the LG G3 was QHD with a resolution of 2560 x 1440 and 538 pixels-per-inch (PPI,) it was rather ‘dull’ looking. LG upgraded the display by using a new IPS Quantum display technology that LG claims will give the display a boost in brightness of 25-percent, a 50-percent increase in the contrast and a 56-percent improvement in color accuracy.
The other upgrade was in the camera area – LG took a great camera and made it even better by using a 16MP sensor with a larger f/1.8 aperture for better low-light pictures. It kept LG’s excellent laser autofocus, dual-tone LED flash and OIS. Next they upgraded the front-facing camera (FFC) to a huge 8MP for excellent social media selfies and video chatting. The last big upgrade was the 64-bit Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 hexa-core processor and 3GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage with room to expand via a microSD card slot. LG bypassed the Snapdragon 810 octa-core processor they used in their LG G Flex 2, but LG and Qualcomm worked to optimize with the device and it appears to be performing as promised.