The G5’s modular make-up is ditched in favour of skinny bezels and a knockout dual camera – Tom Mor an thinks the move has paid off

ast year’s modular G5 was an interesting experiment but it never really gained steam with the wider world – even if we loved the idea here at Stuff. So while you might not be able to bolt on a better camera or hi-fi amp any more, the G6 is a stunning sealed sandwich of metal and glass.

The 5.7in screen stands out for two reasons: the novel 18:9 aspect ratio (that’s 2:1, maths fans) and ludicrously slim bezels around its four sides. The 80% screen-to-bezel ratio means it utterly dominates the front, but despite being a little chunkier the phone doesn’t actually take up any more room in your hand than the 5.3in G5.

Extra space means extra pixels, so the resolution gets a bump up to 2880x1440. It might not have the blackest blacks or the most vibrant colours (you need OLED for that) but it is certified for Dolby Vision HDR video – and the difference is genuinely noticeable. The brightest of whites can appear at the same time as the deepest of blacks, with all the subtle gradations in between.

The G5’s always-on notifications return, keeping the time, battery status and icons for any inbound alerts on screen whenever you flick the phone into standby, so you don’t need to wake it up quite so often. That’s good because the bigger screen will put more strain on the 3300mah battery.

With a Snapdragon 821 CPU on board, the G6 feels incredibly quick, even with LG’S UX 6.0 sitting on top of Android Nougat. That gives you access to Google’s Assistant. This AI helper isn’t quite up to Alexa’s standard yet but it can dig into your Google account to find calendar appointments, plot directions in Maps and beam Youtube videos to a Chromecast.

With twin 13MP sensors, there should be no difference in clarity when you switch from the 71° standard lens to the 125° wide-angle one – it’s just about how much of the scene you want to fit into your snap. Give it good light and the G6 can take fantastic photos using either lens, although only the standard one has optical image stabilisation, which makes it a better be when things get a bit gloomy.

There’s ample detail, colours look natural and everything is exposed correctly when using auto-hdr. You’ve got to really zoom in to spot where noise reduction and smoothing starts stripping out detail.

While the super-slim bezels and front-filling display are sure to turn heads, the G6 doesn’t really do anything daring – but that’s not a bad thing. With a swathe of features that people really want – plenty of power, a gorgeous screen and a great camera – plus bonus additions such as waterproofing and microsd expansion, this is probably the most complete phone LG has ever made.