The LG G4 Review

WiFi Performance

While mobile data is crucial to a smartphone, it’s often not the most common way to connect a phone to the internet as mobile data plans continue to have strong data caps to prevent excessive network use. As a result, WiFi is a major component of the smartphone experience, and poor performance here can be immensely frustrating.

In order to test this, we test the smartphone by using iPerf to measure wireless performance. To avoid making the router a bottleneck, an Asus RT-AC68U is used for the access point. In the case of the LG G4, it seems that LG has elected to share the WiFi subsystem with the G3, as we see the same Broadcom BCM4339 solution that was used on the G3. This limits the maximum possible throughput to 433 Mbps. The lack of MIMO is definitely a bit of a handicap in terms of maximum range/throughput, but a well-designed 1x1 system should be more than sufficient for everyday use.

Performance seems to be about the same as the LG G3, with the usual variance from run to run affecting throughput. I suspect that trying to distinguish any real differences will require an RF anechoic chamber and similarly advanced tools in order to determine just how sensitive the RF system is. For the near future, I suspect a 1x1 802.11ac solution should be acceptable for most use cases, but the 2x2 WiFi of the GS6 is definitely an advantage in terms of throughput, although reception seems to be pretty similar as well here.

GNSS

Although for the most part we don’t really use GPS all the time, when most people use GPS there is a very strong need for accuracy and low latency for an accurate fix, making good GPS functionality the cornerstone of a good smartphone. As people have come to rely on their smartphones for driving navigation almost all the time, poor GPS performance can ruin a smartphone. Probably the easiest example to point to for this is the original Galaxy S, which was almost impossible to use with Google Maps. It would become genuinely concerning to use this device for turn by turn navigation, as it was quite easy for the navigation to jump around, constantly recalculating and losing location which could easily be dangerous in an unfamiliar area.

In order to test the quality of the GNSS system of a smartphone, we do a rather simple test of time to first lock along with some subjective evaluation. In the case of the LG G4, the modem appears to handle GPS as time to first lock with any sort of mobile data connection is genuinely absurd.

As one can see, reception on the G4’s GPS system is strong, and time to first lock in airplane mode with no A-GPS is 35 seconds, with 10 foot precision achieved at roughly 55 seconds. Overall, I suspect that there will be relatively few issues with GPS as it seems to be accurate and reliable from general use such as turn by turn navigation.

Misc

As with our miscellaneous sections in other smartphone reviews, this section is effectively reserved for identifying various components and subjective observations that I otherwise couldn’t integrate into other sections of the review. For example, the fuel gauge is a Maxim MAX17048, which doesn’t require any calibration and appears to use voltage tracking instead. There’s no value at all in trying to “calibrate” the battery here, so I wouldn’t bother, as it would just hurt battery lifetime.

The NFC controller, something that is often of interest for NFC tag compatibility purposes, is an NXP PN547. As far as I can tell this controller should have a secure element, although given that Google Wallet now relies on host card emulation I’m not sure how useful that is.

Meanwhile the SlimPort transmitter is the Analogix ANX7816, which supports a maximum 4096x2160 resolution at 30 FPS, and presumably 1080p60 as well. There’s no MHL here as far as I can tell, so you’ll have to use SlimPort.

The speaker works well in the G4, but due to the rear-firing arrangement it’s definitely a bit annoying as I’d rather have a front-ported speaker similar to the Moto X Play and Moto X (2014). However, there is a TI TAS2552 4W Class-D audio amp, which helps boost the speaker while preventing speaker clipping. Along the same lines as audio, the microphone noise cancellation appears to be using Qualcomm’s Fluence technology.

Finally, there’s also something interesting over i2c that is a bit of an enigma as it seems to be exclusive to LG Display. Namely, a device called p1_dsv, which seems to be able to control at least two ICs named DW8768 and SM5107, which seem to work with the display to do something that I don’t fully understand. It’s likely that these are just related to backlight control and the display driver.