LG on Tuesday officially unveiled the LG G4, the latest and greatest Android smartphone from LG. It’s a really improved device, one that we think is definitely worthy to go on head to head with the Galaxy S6, and it packs a unique combination of power, an incredible display and a solid camera (at least on paper) and truly interesting and premium design (If you go with the leather back variant).

We had chance to check out the G4 but we are still waiting for the device to come in our office so that we can play a little bit more with it and test it. There’s one very important thing we want to make clear: the leather model, which features a removable back panel too is crafted from leather that took three months to tan using vegetable oils.This adds a much more premium feeling to the device than the plastic version that feels not as premium as the leather. We haven’t reviewed the device yet, but we can already almost say for certain – you want to go with the leather model.

Specification at a glance :

Design

LG put its focus in he design of the LG G4 and, as such, they said it spent 3 years trying to find the perfect leather for the back of the phone. The phone isn’t water  nor dust resistant, but that back leather panel is treated as such so that the colors won’t fade over time, LG said. It said that only 10 percent of leather products in the world use the similar vegetable tanning process that it does, instead of chemical dyes. They didn’t change much in the whole body design and it is identical to the last year LG G3 but they added a small curve to the phone like in the G Flex 2 .

Display

The 5.5-inch Quad HD “Quantum” display has a slight curve that LG says should make it more durable than flat displays. It’s not nearly as curved as what you’d find in the G Flex 2, but it’s curved nonetheless. That “Quantum” name is a marketing term by LG to represent its focus to get as close to “DCI compliant” as possible. It said that DCI is a common standard used by Hollywood film studios to get colors, visibility and contrast as close to accurate as possible, and that it’s 98 percent DCI compliant. Take that for what you will, but we can confirm that colors looked great, and the same photo of bright red strawberries viewed on an S6 looked orange in comparison to the same photo on the G4 display. The panel in general has improved over last year’s G3 Quad HD screen, too. LG says color reproduction has improved by 20 percent, it’s 25 percent more viewable outdoors, contrast has improved 50 percent to 1500:1, and it’s also 11 percent more energy efficient, which means you should see less of a hit on battery life.

Battery

You shouldn’t worry too much about the battery, though because LG squeezed a 3,000 mAh removable battery inside, which pops out with ease. It doesn’t offer wireless charging out of the box, but you can buy a special rear panel to use that in the future, LG said. The focus, we’re told, is on having a removable battery, something Samsung ditched this year and a move that LG wants to take advantage of.

Hardware

You’ll find a Snapdragon 808 processor under the hood. LG said it worked with Qualcomm hand-in-hand on the chip and opted for it instead of the Snapdragon 810, though didn’t specifically say why. There has been concerns about the Snapdragon 810 overheating, but LG didn’t say anything on that front. Instead, LG showed us a few of its own benchmarks — and keep in mind these are LG’s benchmarks, not a third party — that show the Snapdragon 808 performing on a par with Samsung’s Exynos 7 chip used in the Galaxy S6 for things such as opening apps, loading the camera and more. In fact, LG said the camera launches in 0.6 seconds, a hair faster than the 0.7 seconds it takes the Galaxy S6 to launch.You’ll also find 3GB of RAM, which seemed to navigate LG’s UX 4.0 as smooth as  possible. LG said the phone is as close to a Nexus device as it could go, and tapped Google to provide 100GB of free Drive storage for 2 years, comes loaded with Chrome as the default browser and more. It did this all instead of adding duplicate apps for things it agreed Google typically does better. The calendar is the one exception, where LG added a few neat tricks that allow you to drop in screenshots of upcoming events to automatically add them to your calendar. It’s something we’ll need to dive into more in our review.

Camera

Finally, LG says the camera should be the best on any smartphone out there. We couldn’t take many shots during our brief hands-on time, but there are plenty of manual controls for photographers to take advantage of, and the camera is indeed very quick. It also supports JPEG and RAW files, so you can edit images with the most data in them after loading them onto your computer. The RAW support will likely be appreciated by plenty of camera enthusiasts. Either way, you can’t replace a DSLR with a phone camera. The pixels are much too small, even at 1.5 or 2 micrometers, vs 4 micrometers for an entry-level DSLR, not to mention interchangeable lens, faster shutter speeds, ability to take wide-angle up to super-telephoto pictures, etc. However, this seems to be a great companion for a photographer on the go who happens to see something interesting and doesn’t have their DSLR on them. The RAW format and adjustable settings are great features most won’t know what to do with, but photographers will definitely appreciate.

LG G4 Release Date and Conclusion

The LG G4 will launch on Wednesday 29.04.2015 in South Korea and perhaps in the end of May in the US. Launch plans are still being hashed out, but it will definitely aim for stirring the phablet market. Its relationship with the LG G Flex 2 will be uneasy though and customers might be split between the two. In-fighting aside, pricing will determine the success of the LG G4 – users right now seem very willing to pay extra for a premium design, but it remains to be seen whether they would like to have real leather on their smartphone.

We’ll be bringing you plenty of additional coverage as soon as we get a review unit in, but it’s easy to see the G4 is quite a contender. It may very well sport the best screen on the market, and the best camera, and those are two things consumers put high on a list of requirements for a new smartphone. For more specifications and release dates check regularly, and for more News and reviews you can subscribe to our Facebook page. If you like this article like it and share it down below,  you will help us a lot. We would love to read your opinion, so don’t be afraid and comment. Have a good day from the whole team!