LG G6 hands-on: sleek design, easy one-handed use, but no Snapdragon 835, loses removable battery for water resistance, and many apps are buggy on 18:9 screen
Cutting corners in the best way possible — With the G6, announced today at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, LG is changing its own definition of “flagship” phone.
Context & Ripple Effects
LG came into Barcelona with its hand forced by the pre-show leaks that had already confirmed the G6 would ship on last year's Snapdragon 821 rather than Qualcomm's newest chip. The hands-on now shows what LG traded to get there: an 18:9, 5.7-inch display in a one-hand-friendly body, IP68 water resistance bought by dropping the removable battery that was long an LG signature.
The open question from launch day got answered two ways within months: Ars Technica's April review flagged slow OS updates and a likely eclipse by Samsung's Galaxy S8, and by August Engadget's V30 hands-on framed that phone as 'the G6 should have been' — polished, focused, snappy.
First-order effects
- G6 buyers get a big-screen phone usable one-handed, but they're paying flagship prices for a year-old Snapdragon 821 and putting up with apps that render buggily on the unusual 18:9 aspect ratio.
- LG has abandoned the removable battery — a differentiator it held while rivals sealed their phones — in exchange for IP68 water resistance, aligning its hardware constraints with Samsung's.
Second-order effects
- Samsung's Galaxy S8, which Ars Technica already expected to outclass the G6, now competes against an LG phone whose headline feature — the tall screen — Samsung can match with newer silicon, squeezing LG's launch window.
- App developers face a new fragmentation tax: every 18:9 flagship forces layout and scaling work beyond the standard 16:9 canvas, and buggy early ports become a visible quality signal against the phone itself.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the tall-aspect-ratio display becomes the default flagship shape while sealed batteries and water resistance finish off user-serviceable hardware — with LG's own V30 showing that surviving this cycle requires shipping both the new format and current-generation silicon together.
- Flagship differentiation shifts further toward industrial design and screen geometry, a race where component timing (who gets the newest Snapdragon) increasingly decides reviews before software quality is even weighed.
The trend: Smartphone flagships are converging on tall, sealed, water-resistant designs where display novelty ships ahead of software support, and LG is learning that format leadership without chip leadership doesn't hold the review cycle.