LG G6

LG HAS DIALLED DOWN THE SHOW AND RAMPED UP THE GO IN ITS LATEST ALL-SCREEN SMARTPHONE

$1,199, lg.com/au, available now

With the LG G6, the brand has dialled down the ‘out-there’ innovation of the G5, and gone for a more quietly refined design, while doing enough to make it feel like an all-new phone; a fit warrior for the great smartphone battle of 2017.

The G6 is a much more conservative design than its predecessor, taking the form of a sealed unit that drops the removable battery, replacing it with a largercapacity power pack and waterproof shell.

The screen is, really, the main area of innovation, with the longer 18:9 display giving more real estate, and introducing some clever little changes to the user interface to exploit the extra pixels. The permanent Always On Display of the G5 remains, enabling you to quickly check the time, and any notifications you might have, at a glance.

The G6 is covered in a mix of glass and metal, with two sheets of Gorilla Glass – weirdly, it’s Gorilla Glass 5 on the rear, and the older Gorilla Glass 3 on the front – framed with a rim of aluminium. What’s impressive is how little bezel there is. The rear of the phone is smooth, with no protruding camera bump, which LG says it achieved using slimmer sensors rather than more advanced lens tech.

At the bottom of the phone is a USB-C connector, which supports Quick Charge 3.0 – and LG has kept a

traditional headphone jack at the top. Australian models score the Quad Hi-Fi DAC, producing rich, crisp audio for wired headphones. We also get 64GB of storage, so there’s plenty of room for those spacehungry audio files.

Unlike the G5, the battery is sealed into the handset. The power pack’s increased in size to 3300mAh within the slimmer 7.9mm frame – a good move.

With a Snapdragon 821 processor inside, LG might not be using the latest and greatest tech, but it has optimised it (using its experience with the 821) to bring greater power, whilst maintaining a healthy battery life.