LG G4 vs. LG G3 spec shootout - My how things have changed

LG on Tuesday announced the LG G4, the flagship that will now serve as king of the company’s smartphone portfolio. There are plenty of upgrades to speak of—the phone now runs on a Snapdragon 808 chip, sports 3GB of RAM and more, but two areas stand out in particular: the camera and the display.

The LG G3 had a Quad HD display and so does the G4, but you’d remiss if you thought it was the same screen. LG’s G4 sports what LG is marketing as a “Quantum” display that it says reproduces colors 20 percent better than last year’s G3 screen, is 20 percent more visible outdoors, has 50 percent better contrast (1500:1) and consumes 11 percent less power, theoretically giving you more on-screen time.

The camera also improved. There’s a 16-megapixel shooter on the back with even better optical image stabilization, LG said, and there are more manual controls than ever before. LG says this is a “professional grade smartphone camera” that should be the best on the market. It’s designed to shoot better in lower light situations, but is also quick in ideal lighting conditions. Overall, LG said it “redesigned the camera from scratch,” and even added niceties like RAW image capture.

The UX has improved, too. LG dropped a lot of the software that was built in-house but was ultimately a duplicate of what Google already offers. So you’ll find Chrome as the default browser and Google Drive (100GB of free storage for two years) as the default cloud storage option.

There are plenty of other cosmetic and hardware differences, and we address a lot of them in our hands-on video and gallery. For more on how the two phones compare, check out our spec tables below.

LG G4 Gallery

LG G3 Gallery