Cool design, fine display, okay camera, decent processor, expandable memory
Battery life not as good as it could be, spec struggles to distinguish itself against similarly priced rivals
The small (S) version of LG's G3 hero phone retains the distinctive style while cutting the price pretty much in half. But has LG cut too much to make it worth your while?
Screen & chassis The G3 s does indeed look very similar to the original G3 -- and that's a very good thing - though with its 5-inch screen it hasn't actually shrunk a great deal from the original's 5.5 inches. The slick brushed metal look and curved edges of the casing are still there, but this time it's actually made of plastic. The power/sleep button flanked by volume controls is once again situated on the back, which is a perfectly logical place to put them, eliminating the need for protrusions on the side. The differing textures of the buttons makes them easy to distinguish too.
The display has shrunk by half an inch and so has the resolution, from the G3's higher-than-HD 2,560x1,440 pixels to a standard HD 1,280x720 (294ppi). There's an argument that a smaller screen doesn't need the extra pixels but it's still quite a drop.
However, it would be a little churlish to complain -- it's still a very fine looking screen, with vibrant colours and deep contrast, and if it hasn't got quite the oomph of its larger cousin, it's really not far behind.
Software & processor It's running Android 4.4.2 KitKat and even if it's not the very latest 4.4.4, you won't notice much difference. As usual, LG has added its own skin to Android but the differences are mostly aesthetic, including some nice transition animations, and not unwelcome. It's lost the LG Health and Smart Tips apps we saw on the G3 but neither of those was really a deal breaker anyway.
The quad-core processor is clocked at roughly half the speed of the G3 at 1.2GHz and backed by a single 1GB of RAM (the G3 has two). Its score in our AnTuTu benchmark test was also roughly half the figure of the G3, at 18,345. Thankfully that doesn't equate to half the performance. While the original G3 is exceptionally fast and capable, the G3 s still delivers an impressively nippy performance, slipping smoothly between apps and dealing adequately with HD games.
Photography
The 8 megapixel camera is a drop down from the G3's 13 megapixels and it's lost the dual flash feature (just one LED this time). However, it's retained the laser focus feature which seemed to work fine, locking in on foreground objects quickly, though it seemed a little less capable when the subject was less clearly defined.
The front-facing camera has 1.3 megapixels rather than 2.1, but it's good enough for basic selfies.
There's a modest 8GB of memory on board but you can add a further 64GB via microSD card.
The 2,540mAh battery didn't disgrace itself but didn't particularly impress either - you can expect to get about a day's use out of it, but not much more.
Conclusion It might look similar, but in many ways the G3 S is a very different phone to the G3 that inspired it. It's a little smaller of course, but with its reduced resolution screen, less powerful processor and compromised camera, it's roughly half the phone its cousin is in terms of capability, but also in price. If you want the G3 look for less, it's a good choice, but there are plenty of other good Android phones to choose from at this price.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
