LG G4 review: features a powerful camera, all-day battery, and a great display, but plastic back feels cheap and software is poorly designed
LG G4 review — In the world of smartphones, Samsung and Apple cast big shadows. Perhaps no company is more familiar with those shadows than LG …
Context & Ripple Effects
Two weeks after the QuadHD-screen debut, The Verge's verdict splits the G4 down the middle: the f1.8 camera, all-day battery, and display are genuinely competitive, while a plastic back that feels cheap and poorly designed software undercut the premium pitch against Samsung and Apple.
That split becomes the template for LG's whole flagship line. A year later the modular G5 loses to the Galaxy S7 on almost every measure, its wide-angle camera reading as gimmick rather than feature, and by the G6 reviewers are flagging buggy apps on the new 18:9 screen even as the hardware improves.
First-order effects
- Buyers comparing the G4 against Samsung and Apple flagships get a clear trade-off: best-in-class camera and screen, but build materials and software that don't match the price tier — a hard sell in the shadow of the category leaders named in the review itself.
Second-order effects
- Samsung's Galaxy line faces less pressure than LG hoped: when the follow-up G5 lands inferior to the S7 'in almost every way,' LG's answer is feature experimentation — modular accessories, then Hand ID on the G8 — that reviewers keep classifying as gimmicks.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds across the G5, G6, and G8 coverage, LG's flagship identity calcifies into strong hardware carried by weak software, pushing its credibility toward the V-series experiments like the polished, video-focused V30 while the premium Android market consolidates around Samsung.
The trend: LG's G-series shows a decade-long drift of competent flagship hardware undermined by software quality and gimmick features, steadily ceding the premium Android market to Samsung.