Review: LG G4 Smartphone

I guess I'm doing something right as companies are now contacting me to review their products. This isn't new, but reviewing a new cell phone is. LG contacted me and asked if I wanted to check out their new G4 smartphone before it went public. At first I wasn't going to do it, but considering how pervasive smartphones are and their potential to record audio and video, I reconsidered.

While I liked the phone (see video above), the strongest attraction to any filmmaker has to be the video camera and I found that the G4 came up short for me. It's true you can shoot near-4k video, but I have little need for 4k anything. I was mostly interested in the front-facing camera for on-the-road video blogging purposes, but was disappointed in the resulting image quality.

I know that these phones are not made specifically for filmmakers. They are kitchen sink devices that try to be everything to everyone. That rarely works, but I will say the still camera mode was impressive (complete with full manual control, unlike video mode) and it is a great little media consumption device. I can't really comment on it's use as an actual phone, as this G4 review model is Wi-Fi only.