LG's Snappy G3 Phone Is Poised to Test Rivals

LG Electronics has a strong product on its hands with its new smartphone, the LG G3. It is a powerful phone with a beautiful display, great camera and a pleasant, uncluttered Android operating system interface.

But will enough people notice? Smartphone headlines are dominated by Apple and Samsung, and few customers in the United States think of LG as a maker of high-end phones.

They should. Last year's LG G2 was a good phone that got people's attention, and the LG G3 could make the company a serious challenger. It features the same top-of-the-line processor found in the Samsung Galaxy S5 and the HTC One (M8), its top Android competitors, and it does not skimp on any specifications.

The price of the LG G3 ranges from free to $200 with a new contract, depending on your carrier, or just under $600 with no contract. It is available on all four major carriers in the United States; all offer it in black or white except Sprint, which offers it in black or gold.

Its possible drawback is its size: With a 5.5-inch screen, the LG G3 may prove too bulky for some. And because of its big, power-hungry screen, battery life is not great. But in almost all other areas, the phone shines.

Like its two top Android competitors, the G3 includes camera innovations, such as using a laser for autofocus, which measures the distance between camera and subject and supposedly leads to faster focusing. Also like its rivals, the G3 includes the ability to refocus parts of an image after you have taken the photo.

The 13-megapixel camera produced impressive images. Close-up focusing seemed quicker than with the Galaxy S5, and low light performance was very good - but not if the subjects were moving. Wiggly children came out as blurry as ever.

Perception of the camera's quality is helped by the G3's remarkable display, which is called Quad HD and has higher resolution than the Samsung Galaxy S5 and the HTC One (M8); it is higher even than the iPhone 5S with its Retina display. It also has more pixels per inch - a measure of visual quality - than any of its competitors.

The resolution and pixels per inch improvements can't actually be detected by the naked eye, but the G3's colors are realistic and vivid, and video, photos and games look excellent. And LG enhances the experience with an extremely thin bezel, so the phone appears to be almost all screen.

The screen is bright without being garish, and LG's chosen backgrounds and minimal changes to the standard Android interface give the whole experience an elegant, subtle feel.

The elegance extends to the phone's design. In addition to its nearly invisible bezel, the G3 has no physical buttons on the front or sides. The power and volume buttons are on the back of the phone.

That is confusing at first; more than one curious friend could not figure out how to turn it on. But the placement eventually feels natural and even preferable.

In addition, LG introduced a feature in earlier devices that lets you turn on the phone's screen by tapping twice. It is so convenient that it makes other phones' power buttons feel downright annoying.

You can even set up a specific knock code to unlock the phone, instead of a personal identification number or swipe pattern.

Although the back of the G3 is plastic, a brushed-aluminum effect makes it look premium, and it has an authoritative heft (some might call it heavy).

The G3 offers two welcome improvements over the G2. It has a microSD card slot, so you can add storage and hold more photos, videos and apps, and its battery is removable.

That last is important because you might find yourself needing to carry a spare. The phone's battery barely powers a day of normal use, and you will have some anxiety by afternoon. If you are on your phone a lot, you will need an extra charger.

For calls, the G3's quality was good but not excellent. The phone seemed to have low volume, all the way around. Part of the problem is that it's so big, you have to move it around a bit to situate the speaker over your ear.

The G3's large size also made it hard to operate one-handed. For quick tasks, it can be frustrating, although male users did not seem to have a problem, other than fitting it into a pants pocket.

The only other disappointment is the G3's 2.1-megapixel front-facing camera, which produced decent but not outstanding selfies and group shots.

Over all, the LG G3 was a test phone I was loath to give up. Its design, performance and just the right amount of extras from LG make it arguably the best Android phone on the market right now. Hopefully, phone buyers will notice.