LG G4 review: Design and build
Despite rumours of a metal build, LG has gone for genuine leather instead which is unusual as a main option (you can choose it for the Moto X but it's a premium extra). The leather feels nice with the stitching so it's preferable to faux leather as found on some Samsung devices but some colours aren't great such as yellow and sky blue. Although the leather is vegetable tanned and LG says the colour will change over time.
If the idea of leather puts you off the LG G4 straight away then don't worry because there is a ceramic option too which has a smooth diamond texture and comes in three colours: Metallic Gray, Ceramic White and Shiny Gold. However, this feels pretty plasticky especially the white model with LG confirming the polycarbonate is only 5 percent ceramic. You'll need to pay around £25 extra for the leather.
That cover is still removable giving you access to the battery and microSD card slot which is good to see. What we don't know is how the leather will wear over time so we hope we can have a sample long enough to see what happens.
The LG G4 looks pretty similar to the G3 apart from the switch to leather and ceramic. However, it's a shame that like the HTC One M9, the firm hasn't managed to slim it down. It's heavier at 155g and thicker at 9.8mm which isn't ideal. We were also hoping for the phone to be thinner on the width as the G3 is a tad difficult to use in this sense but the G4 is actually taller and wider at 76 x 149.9mm.
LG uses a Slim Arc curved shape which makes it comfortable to hold and supposedly makes it 20 percent more durable than a flat smartphone in face-down drops.
LG G4 review: Hardware
We knew a lot about the LG G4 prior to the launch, partly thanks to LG and partly the usual leaks online.
The firm has stuck with a 5.5in screen size and a Quad HD resolution (1440 x 2560) so it's the same as the LG G3 and offers a high pixel density of 538ppi. It's not the same panel though as LG has fitted its new IPS Quantum Display which is says has 20 percent greater colour reproduction, 25 percent improvement in brightness and 50 percent greater contrast.
It's not a huge leap from the G3 but that display is hard to follow and was the first Quad HD phone to market. Once again, we think the LG G4's screen is top quality so it's really the size which is more of an issue here as 5.5in will be too large for some users.
Which processor LG would opt for was something we had to wait to find out and it's not the Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 (as used in the LG G Flex 2) or the firm's own Nuclun processor. Instead the LG G4 has a Snapdragon 808 making it the first device we've seen with the chip. The reason is unknown but suspected to be behind the overheating issues of the 810.
The Snapdragon 808 is a six-core processor rather than octa-core offering dual-core ARM Cortex A57 and quad-core A53 with 64-bit support. It also has an Adreno 418 GPU which supports 3D gaming on 4K displays and X10 LTE which has integrated LTE Advanced for download speeds of up to 450Mbps.
LG says it has worked with Qualcomm on the 808 touting is as 'snappy yet energy-thrifty'. It claims the change means an extra 20 percent battery life compared to the G3 despite having the same battery capacity.
The LG G4 seems nippy after some hands-on time but as usual we'll have to spend a lot longer with it and get it into the lab before we can give you a final verdict on performance.
LG has simplified things when it comes to memory and storage with a flat 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage matching rivals. There is, however, that microSD card slot which many were annoyed to see dropped on the Galaxy S6 so you can bump things up if you need to.
A major feature which LG has been pushing since before the launch event is the camera which is confirmed would have an aperture of f/1.9 – narrowly beating the Galaxy S6 by 0.1. We now know the main camera is 16Mp, up from 13Mp, and has OIS 2.0 (optical image stabilisation).
It is, as usual, very difficult to test the camera out properly at the launch event but it looks promising. We will, of course, put it through its paces when we get a review sample.
What we like already is the addition of the Manual Mode which lets you start controlling the settings yourself –fun to try even if you're not into photography. You can tweak the shutter speed, ISO, exposure compensation, white balance and use manual focus. You can even shoot in RAW if you like and selfie fans can use the new Gesture Interval Shot feature to take a series of four selfies.
The G4 has the kind of wireless you'd expect from a top-end phone with 11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.1 LE and NFC. This does mean that LG hasn't added features you can find elsewhere such as a fingerprint scanner and heart rate monitor. The IR blaster remains from the G3 but you'll need to buy the Quick Circle case to use wireless charging which is a shame as it was a standard feature of the G3.
LG G4 review: Software
The LG G4 comes pre-loaded with the latest version of Android, 5.1 Lollipop and the firm's new UX 4.0 interface which it teased before the launch. It looks similar to the G3's user interface as you'd expect and still has existing features such as Smart Bulletin and Smart Notice but there are some new features.
We've already mentioned the new Manual Mode and Gesture Interval Shot above while talking about the camera but there's another which is related called Quick Shot. It simply means you can double tap the Rear Key to take photos, even with the screen off – you might need to do some cropping but it should mean you don't miss moments.
There's also an improved Gallery app and a new feature called Event Pocket allows you to create a unified calendar by dragging and dropping appointments and activities from multiple calendars and social media sites.
It's also worth noting that the LG G4 comes pre-installed with Google Office and G4 owners will receive an additional 100GB of Google Drive storage free for two years which is a lot of extra space. LG also said VW owners will be able to "view a car-friendly version of the G4 interface on the in-dash display for full integration with contacts, navigation and music on the smartphone."
In the hand it feels remarkably svelte, and that's mainly because it's just 6.7mm thick. These figures are slightly lower than those for the iPhone 6, which is 129g and 6.9mm.
It may have a plastic rear cover, but the chamfered aluminium band around the sides and smooth glass front make it feel more like a premium phone. Plus, the absence of any flex means build quality is right up there.
Turn it on and you'll immediately notice the vibrant colours of the Super AMOLED display which also has excellent viewing angles. You also get a 13Mp camera at the rear complete with LED flash and a 5Mp front-mounted "selfie" camera.
Inside, it's clear that there have been some compromises. The Snapdragon 410 processor isn't going to top any benchmark charts, and the phone runs the older version of Android: KitKat instead of the latest Lollipop.
Samsung Galaxy A5 review: design and build
Set into the metal band are two removable trays whose design is so similar to the iPhone that at a glance you could mistake the A5 for a bigger version of the iPhone 5.
The bottom edge is home to the micro USB charge and sync port as well as a headphone jack. On the left-hand side is a volume rocker, and opposite on the right is a power button - the same setup as the iPhone 6. On top is only a tiny hole for the microphone.
We like the shimmery metallic effect of the rear cover, but it isn't removable and neither is the battery. We didn't appreciate the three black dots at the top of the screen which were easily visible on our white test phone, although this is easily solved by buying the black model.
Samsung Galaxy A5 review: detailed specs
Another niggle, which serves to make the A5 look overpriced, is the fact that the screen has a 1280x720 resolution. This is acceptable on, say, the latest version of the Motorola Moto G, but at almost £300 SIM-free from online retailers, it's not as easy to swallow.
Don't get us wrong: the A5 has a great-quality AMOLED screen with some nice features including extreme power saving, but if you're prone to notice individual pixels, the A5 is quite obviously lower resolution than the Galaxy S6. And, for that matter, the Galaxy S5.
There's 16GB of internal storage, 2GB of RAM and a microSD slot for adding up to 64GB of extra storage.
You don't get 802.11ac Wi-Fi, but the 802.11n radio works on both 2.4- and 5GHz. There's also Bluetooth 4.0, NFC, GPS and ANT+.
And when comapared to the Galaxy S5, there's no fingerprint scanner, IR blaster or heart-rate sensor. Few people will miss these extras, but it's worth noting.
Samsung Galaxy A5 review: performance
There were no surprises in our benchmarks, with the Snapdragon 410 performing just as it does in the £109 Motorola Moto E. The Geekbench scores of 483 and 1476 for the single- and multicore tests respectively were within the margin of error.
Somewhat strangely, the Adreno 306 GPU in the A5 produced slower frame rates than the 2015 Moto E which uses an identical chip. On the A5 we saw 3.9fps in Manhattan and 9.2fps in T-Rex, while the Moto E managed 6 and 13fps respectively. None are great results, of course, but both phones will play casual games well enough.
In Sunspider, the A5 completed the web-based test suite in 735ms, while the Moto E was slower at 1301ms. In general use, though, both phones load web pages quickly and only script-heavy sites were what we'd call slow to load and use.
Battery life is comparable with other similar size phones. With a 2300mAh cell on board, Samsung says you'll get eight hours of 3G web browsing and 12 hours of video playback. There's also an Ultra Power Saving mode that you get with Samsung's flagship phones. This turns the display to greyscale, disables mobile data when the screen is off and restricts which apps you can use in order to extend standby time to 1.2 days when you have only 10 percent power remaining.
Samsung Galaxy A5 review: cameras
It's a little odd that Samsung didn't use the Galaxy S5's rear camera in the A5. The S5 has a 16:9 16Mp sensor, whereas the A5 has a 13Mp 4:3 sensor. By default it's set to a 9.6Mp 16:9 setting like a lot of Android phones, meaning you're effectively cropping off the top and bottom of each photo.
You'd think there would be little difference in quality between the cameras, but you'd be wrong. The S5's photos are visibly better than the A5's and there's a noticeable lack of detail when you zoom in to make the A5's photos the same size at the S5's at 100 percent.
Of course, we're being picky here and the A5 still has a great camera when compared to many phones: it captures more detail than an 8Mp iPhone 6 and is leagues better than the 5Mp Moto G.
Exposures are accurate, colours generally realistic and the lens is sharp right to the corners. The photo below was taken with the A5's rear camera and has been resized to 800x600 but is otherwise untouched.
We're not huge fans of Samsung's confusing camera app but it does allow you to customise the settings available in the quick-access bar so if you like to adjust ISO and exposure correction often, you can drag these controls to the bar.
Oddly, the HDR mode isn't a toggle control as on the Galaxy S5: instead it's a shooting mode all by itself. But as it isn't shown in the list of shooting modes by default, it's easy to miss.
One handy feature is that you can hold up your palm when using the front camera to trigger a two-second countdown timer to take a selfie. This isn't unique, but it's very useful if you're using a selfie stick.
Photo quality from the 5Mp front camera is good. Detail levels are better than phones with fewer pixels (let's pick on the iPhone 6 again) so the A5 is a good choice if you take a lot of selfies.
Video, which tops out at 1920x1080 at 30fps from the rear camera, is sharp and detailed but there's no optical stablisation and this makes handheld footage shakier than we'd like. The Galaxy S5 doesn't have OIS either, but it can shoot UHD (4K) footage.
Samsung Galaxy A5 review: should you buy a Galaxy S5 instead?
The A5 is a stylish, thin and lightweight phone with good cameras. However, its processor isn't particularly powerful and also happens to be found in the Moto E which costs only £109. The Moto E is also a 4G phone and if you're not fussed about its slightly smaller, lower resolution screen and mediocre cameras is a much better value choice.
Interestingly enough, the A5 has serious competition from Samsung's own Galaxy S5, last year's flagship which now costs only a little more than the A5 when bought SIM-free. It has a higher resolution AMOLED screen (1920x1080) and a faster processor. It also has a better main camera, but a lower-resolution 2Mp front camera.
You get extra features, too, such as the IR blaster, fingerprint scanner and heart rate monitor. Plus, the S5 is waterproof and has a microUSB 3.0 connector for super-fast transfers.
You might not care one jot for any of these, but the better screen and performance are enough to make the S5 worth paying an extra £20-30 for.
Huawei P8 review: Price
The Chinese smartphone and tablet maker likes to lure customers with an a affordable price, typically undercutting rivals like Google has traditionally done with the Nexus range. The P6 and P7 were both great value for money.
Huawei has priced the P8 from 499 Euro making it a fair amount cheaper than its competitors which typically cost close to £600. Although we're still waiting for the final UK specific price, the firm is off to a good start.
Huawei P8 review: Design and build
Huawei likes doing things wafer thin and although the phone got thicker from the P6 to the P7, it's now thinner again at just 6.5 mm. While a svelte phone looks great and seems better on a spec sheet, we've found some phones to be too thin becoming less ergonomic to hold. The P8 is extremely thin but luckily not so much that it's uncomfortable.
We like the mostly metal body and the bevelled edges make it more ergonomic in the hand. It's a shame that the back is tainted by legal information and the front looks strangely plain with no logo embossed anywhere.
The slender frame means that it's also very lightweight and a 78.3 percent screen-to-body ratio is impressive. Once again is has similarities in appearance to the iPhone 6 and now Galaxy S6 with the metal frame although it's more symmetrical than before as there's no rounded bottom edge. The square shape makes it look similar to the Sony Xperia Z3 so it's got a little bit of all three in appearance.
The P8 is bigger than its predecessor, and although it's almost the same height and width as the Galaxy S6, it gives the impression of being bigger because of the squarer corners.
The Huawei P8 will be available in four colours: carbon black, titanium grey, mystic champagne and prestige gold. These are split into standard and premium models so the 64 GB model only comes in black or prestige gold while the 16 GB is only grey or mystic champagne. It's not fully waterproof but it is spill resistant thanks to nano-coating according to Huawei.
In an interesting move, Huawei will offer an E-ink cover which sits ontop of the P8 to turn it into a traditional eReader. This means, in a roundabout way, the P8 rivals the YotaPhone 2. We've not seen this cover in the flesh so can't comment on it yet.
Huawei P8 review: Hardware and specs
Following on from the previous generations, Huawei has once again increased the screen size for the P8. It's now 5.2in compared to 5in and matches the Sony Xperia Z3. It's still an IPS screen and the resolution remains at Full HD 1080p creating a pixel density of 424 ppi. If for some strange reason this isn't big enough, the Huawei P8 max is a whopping 6.8in which is essentially a 7in tablet. The screen is decent with nice colour reproduction and viewing angles, although unusable at the lower end of the brightness slider.
As per the rumour mill, Huawei has installed a Kirin 935 octa-core processor clocked at 2 GHz and 1.5 GHz. There's also 3 GB of RAM and either 16- or 64 GB of storage which matches top-end Android phones. You'll be pleased to know that Huawei has kept the microSD card slot so you can add more storage which is a feature fewer manufacturers are offering and this also doubles up as a second SIM card slot so the P8 is dual-SIM.
Performance seems smooth during a quick play but after testing we're not overly happy with the P8 on this front. While the phone is smooth in general, there are points where it lags and really shouldn't. For example simply tapping an email to open it and scrolling within the Play store is jerky. Huawei says its 100 percent better than the P7 in GPU and 80 percent on CPU but our benchmark results aren't the most glowing – particularly on the graphics side of things which is why we suspect there is a perceivable lag to the interface at times.Battery performance should be 1.5 days with normal usage which isn't massively impressive but the battery is only 2600mAh as the phone is so thin. Unfortunately, we've only found the P8 to last a day on a full charge which is a big shame. In our battery test the P8 lasted five hours and 30 minutes with a score of 3296. This isn't awful but isn't impressive either with the Galaxy S6 managing six hours and 53 minutes and 4136 points.
We've also found it loose almost all its power from fully charged while sitting not being used over night or during the day. We're hoping this is just a problem with out particular sample and will be testing another to make sure.
Huawei P8 review: Software
As you'd expect from a new 2015 smartphone, the P8 comes with Android 5.0 Lollipop pre-loaded and Huawei is sticking with its own Emotion UI which is places over the top. It's similar to previous versions which is both good and bad.
We like the amount of customisation which includes themes and the ability to even change homescreen transition animations. There's also a really nice lockscreen which changes the photo each time you press the power key and offers some settings and shortcuts when swiping up from the bottom. However, the lack of an app menu is strange and unnecessary meaning all your app icons must sit on homescreen panels like the iPhone.
As with the P7, the Phone Manager app can be really useful if you get to know it. Offering you advice on which power and memory-hungry apps to shut down. You can also control notifications, clean storage and enable things like a harassment filter.
The drop down notification bar works well to an extent and we like the way it takes you to quick settings when there are no notifications to display. However, it doesn't group notifications properly so for example it will let you know you have x amount of emails then proceed to show you each one rather than giving you the option to expand that initial notification.
There are a number of background features which you're not supposed to notice such as Signal+ and Wi-Fi+ which automatically try to give you the best experience by switching between antennas and Wi-Fi. There's also a smart international dialler so you don't even need to put in the country code.
A strange feature called Knuckle Sense allows you to double tap the screen to take a screenshot which you can then edit and you can also draw around the section of the screen you want to screenshot if you don't want the whole thing. This is handy at times but the phone activates this strange drawing mode at really random times while using the phone normally. We've tried to turn this feature off but cannot find a setting for it anywhere. It would be fine you could just choose not to use it but the screen often thinks you're using a knuckle when you're not. This affects the entire experience of using the P8 as you never know when it's going to get in the way of what you're doing.
Google on Monday released an update to Android Wear -- just the second significant feature refresh for its wearable device software since its introduction more than a year ago.
"This update is overdue," said Ian Fogg, senior director and head of the mobile and telecoms team at IHS Technology.
"With other products, Google adds features fairly continuously," he told TechNewsWorld. "Android Wear hasn't had as much focus from Google over the last year as some of its other products."
The new features of Android Wear, announced just days before the scheduled delivery of the first Apple Watches, include the following:
- Hands-free operation -- with a wrist flick, you can shuffle between virtual cards of information.
- Watch-to-phone connection over WiFi -- as long as your phone is online and your watch is connected to a WiFi network, they'll be able to talk to each other.
- Always-on extended to apps -- apps can remain visible on the watch face without the device dozing off.
- Fancy Emoji search -- you can draw an emoji on the watch face and Android Wear will display the closest match to what you've drawn.
The new features initially will be rolled out on the LG Watch Urbane.
LG Watch Urbane
They will become available for the other six Android watches -- Moto 360, LG G Watch, Asus Zenwatch, Samsung Gear Live, SmartWatch 3 and LG G Watch R -- in the coming weeks.
Power Drain
Always-on has its drawbacks, though, argued Canalys' Matte. "Anything that's always-on is a waste of battery life. When you're not looking at the watch, it should be off."
With the addition of hand-drawn emojis, Android is keeping pace with Apple in the fun department.
"It's a nice novel thing, but that novelty won't drive the utility you need for long-term consumer adoption. There's only so many custom emojis you can do before you're bored," said Argus' Feland.
"It's like putting a Union Jack on the top of your Mini Cooper," he continued. "It's fun, but it won't increase your gas mileage. Fun drives those first few sales, but utility drives long-term adoption."
However, when it comes to the long term, Android Wear may be in a better position to respond to market change than Apple Watch, suggested James Moar, a research analyst with Juniper Research.
"Android Wear has a much more flexible platform than Apple, both in terms of software and hardware," he told TechNewsWorld.
"While this means that at present quality control will be an issue for Android Wear, it will allow successful apps to show and lead much more easily than Apple's tightly regulated system," Moar pointed out.
"This adaptability is key to Android Wear and is a core advantage for Google," he added.
In addition, it allows Google to produce more varied form factors than the Apple Watch.
