 On the surface, the LG G5 has everything smartphone enthusiasts have been asking for. So why is it then that I didn't like it? Is it possible that LG didn't pay enough for a positive review? Or, hear me out on this, is it possible that dbrand provides all of our phones anyway, and that I am capable of forming opinions all on my own? Let's find out. TunnelBear is the simple VPN app that makes it easy to browse the web privately and enjoy a more open internet. To try TunnelBear for free, check out the link in the video description. Spec wise, it's pretty hard for LG to have gotten this wrong. With MediaTek still playing catch up and Intel having seemingly bowed out of the smartphone processor race for now, Qualcomm is pretty much the only choice at the moment unless your name is Apple. So a Snapdragon 820 processor clocked at 2.15 GHz on the faster cores, paired with an Adreno 530 GPU beats at its heart. In line with Halo SKUs from other manufacturers, the G5 packs 4 gigs of DDR4 memory, 32 gigs of onboard storage with microSD expansion, and Corning Gorilla Glass 4 on its Quad HD or 2560x1440 resolution 5.3 inch panel. It's also got wireless AC and LTE advanced for wicked connectivity, Android Marshmallow, and it's available in a variety of colors including pink with a 3000-ish milliamp hour battery, actually 2800 milliamp hours to be precise. But in spite of these similarities, there are a great number of differences between the G5 and the Galaxy S7 from LG's fellow Korean rival Samsung that need to be addressed. We'll begin with performance. The G5 performs about like you'd expect for an 820, maybe a little better. My usual run geekbench until it hurts throttling test gave it only a 10% gap between its top score and its bottom scores. A very favorable result. Next up is the screen. It tickles me to no end the way that LG's TV division is beating the OLED drum with Samsung positioning Quantum Dot LCD as the top technology of today, citing concerns about maximum brightness and burn-in, while Samsung's mobile division has been pimping OLED for years at this point, and LG is still using LCD. The truth of the matter, in spite of the clear flip-flopping even within the same freaking company, is that there are just trade-offs to be made either way. The S7's OLED screen saves enough power for it to have an always-on clock feature and gives it astonishing readability in direct sunlight at the cost of some color oversaturation, while the G5's IPS LCD screen boasts more true-to-the-original content colors, great viewing angles without the weird color shift of some OLEDs at extreme angles, and, shockingly, an always-on clock with notifications, too, that thanks to their displays, surprisingly solid blacks manages to look almost as good as the S7's, unless you're in a really dark room where you can see that all the pixels are backlit, and doesn't even manage to drain the battery life anymore. So, full marks for the screen and a bonus point for the subtle curve at the top that makes the phone slide onto your face a little more gracefully, and actually makes it so that pulling down your notification tray is a little bit smoother, too. This is the first application of curved phone glass that feels purely functional to me, as opposed to a mostly-just-because-we-can sort of thing. Above the screen is a mediocre 8-megapixel F2.0 selfie camera that, thankfully, doesn't share the S7's makes-my-nose-look-huge-fish-eye lens, but otherwise doesn't really blow me away. Then at the bottom of the screen, below the on-screen-only, no physical buttons, is not one, not two, but three of the big features of the G5. First up is the bottom-firing speaker that delivers marvelous 5.1 surround sound in spite of its... No, I'm just kidding. The G5 suffers from CUP syndrome, which is curious, unfortunate placement, just like the top two smartphones right now. I'm talking, of course, rather, about the reversible, more durable, quick-charge 3.0-equipped USB Type-C connector. Bye-bye, Micro B. Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out. Two, the fact that pressing this little catch on the bottom causes that 2800 mAh battery to slide right out, allowing it to be changed once it wears out without a fancy toolkit, or even throughout the day as needed. And three, the way that the bottom charging module here disconnects from the battery, allowing it to be replaced with other modules. So dbrand, who, as I mentioned, provided our skinned G5 here, sent us the camera one to get a feel for what that's like. And basically, it's pretty stupid so far. I had it on for a day before I realized that it's thick, awkward to hold unless you happen to be taking a picture, and, aside from the extra battery capacity, something that I could get with a sleeker battery case for most phones, contributes absolutely nothing to the usability of the device. It's a glorified hand grip and shutter button on a phone whose camera forced me to stop using it earlier on in my daily use review cycle than I normally would. I mean, to be clear, the camera isn't unusable or anything, and it would be a huge upgrade if you're still rocking a Nexus 5 or something. But when I'm coming from the Galaxy S7 or an iPhone 6S, it is a significant kick in the balls. There's no gesture to launch, something that everyone, not just Motorola and Samsung, needs, by the way. The low-light performance, everything from dimly lit without flash to very dark and flash assisted, frankly blows chunks in comparison. Look at this shot of my family in a hotel room compared to the iPhone 6S. And video recording is a solid meh. And on top of all that, the G5 isn't waterproof. I mean, I know it's not advertised anywhere as being waterproof, but it is amazing how much more likely I am to use my camera to capture an awesome moment when it's water resistant, launches faster, and takes better pictures. This trade-off for a removable battery and being able to install modules like a clip-on shutter button is a horrible one for me personally. One that isn't helped by LG's Android skin this time around. I'm not going to hate on the lack of an app tray, believe it or not. And I even like some of LG's flair. Double tap to wake is wonderful, and I didn't realize how much I missed it until I had it again. And the addition of a recently uninstalled apps button is actually kind of cool, it's you reinstall them with like one touch. But management of hiding apps, something that you need to do since your home screens are also your app drawer now, could be better. I wish I could just drag them to a hide on the top of the screen after I long press or and then uninstall on the other side rather than digging through a settings menu for some inexplicable reason. Creating folders doesn't intelligently suggest a name as it does on other phones available even with the Android operating system. So I'm not sure how they missed that. And it doesn't even let you start typing right away. Clustered notification cards sometimes, I'm actually not sure if I'll be able to recreate this on camera, but they sometimes like clump up when I try and expand them making them hard to read. And the rear lock button with fingerprint sensor, while reasonably fast and easy to reach while holding the phone in my hand, ended up being kind of a pain whenever the phone was resting on the desk next to me. Something that happens quite a bit since I use a password protected lock screen. Both Sony and Samsung's implementations and Apple for that matter are better here with a fingerprint sensor on the side or on the front. Which I guess leads us pretty perfectly into the conclusion. There's nothing about the G5 that makes me say, what the hell were they thinking? Like OnePlus neglecting to include NFC on the OnePlus 2. It's got a feature set that isn't wrong. Some folks are going to buy it just for the IR emitter. And there's no right answer between swappable battery versus water resistance. It's just not the mix that I want for myself. And that combined with the only pretty good camera, awkwardly positioned touch sensor, lack of wireless charging, and high price make it hard for me to recommend it in a world where the iPhone 6S and the Galaxy S7 exist. Speaking of existing, you know what exists? dbrand. They make high quality vinyl skins for your device. Which is to say, if your device is one of the devices that they make skins for. They've got support for iPhones, Android phones, actually a wide variety of Android phones, and even computers including MacBooks and some select PCs like Dell's XPS lineup. And the best thing about dbrand is you can use their configurator to set up your device to look exactly the way you want. Whether you want wood grain finish like this laptop here, the XPS 15 we reviewed. Whether you want a sexy matte black like you saw on the G5 that I reviewed today. Or whether you're completely color blind with no sense whatsoever, and you want a multi-colored iPhone SE that makes people go like, eww, when you walk past them while you're talking on it. So check out dbrand.com, we've got it linked in the video description. Customize your device the way that you want, and order, because they're affordable and they ship worldwide. So thanks for watching guys, if this video sucked you know what to do. But if it was awesome, get subscribed, hit that like button, or even consider supporting us directly by using our affiliate code to shop on Amazon, buying a cool shirt like this one, with a direct monthly contribution through our community forum, which is linked in the video description. Now that you're done doing all that stuff, you're probably wondering, hmm, what should I watch next? That's a great question. Why don't you go watch this video over on channel Superfun? Just click that little button in the top right corner to check it out.