LG today officially took the wraps off G6, its flagship smartphone for the first half of 2017. The company had already detailed many of the key specifications of the G6 before its unveiling today, but it did manage to reserve the best features of the handset for the last. 

Learning from the mistakes that it made with the G5 last year, LG is trying to make amends with the G6 this year.

Build Quality and Display

The LG G6 ditches the modular design found on its predecessor, the G5, in favor of a brushed all-metal design. Throwing out the modular design has allowed LG to ensure that the G6 is IP68 certified making it dust and water-resistant in up to 1.5m of fresh water for 30mins. The front of the handset is dominated by a 5.7-inch FullVision QHD+ (2880 x 1440) display with an 18:9 aspect ratio. The display has minimal bezels surrounding it that help in making the G6 more compact than its screen size would suggest. LG went to great lengths to minimise the top bezel which included rearranging the camera modules, sensors, and speakers internally. LG notes that the rounded corners and display of the G6 also help it in better absorbing shocks when dropped.

The rear of the phone houses the fingerprint scanner and the dual-13MP camera setup, with dual-LED flash in between them.

The 5.7-inch QHD+ display on the G6 is the first on a smartphone to come with an 18:9 aspect ratio. This aspect ratio is optimised for watching movies and will also display more content on-screen while using multi-window multitasking. It is also the first panel to support HDR10 and Dolby Vision simultaneously that provides for greater color accuracy and vibrancy when streaming premium content from Netflix, Amazon, and others.

Specifications

The LG G6 is a weird mixture of last year’s internals with the cutting-edge technology of today. The handset sports a Snapdragon 821 chipset clocked at 2.35GHz, 4GB RAM, and 32GB of storage space. The 7.9mm thick handset also features a microSD card slot, NFC, Bluetooth 4.2, dual-band Wi-Fi b/g/n/ac, and a non-removable 3300mAh battery with Quick Charge 3.0 support.

Like the V20, the G6 also sports a 32-bit quad DAC. The DAC has actually been upgraded over what is found on the V20 to deliver even better audio quality with lower noise levels.

Cameras

The dual-13MP cameras at the rear of the G6 is one of its key highlights. Since the wide angle and the normal lens now both feature a 13MP sensor, there is no difference in quality between the two. Additionally, LG has also worked on eliminating the lag that was present on the G5 and V20 while switching between the two camera sensors. On the G6, the switch is instantaneous that helps improve the camera experience further. The wide-angle camera now also has a wider 125-degree field of view.

While lower in resolution, the 13MP sensor on the G6 is better than the 16MP sensor found on the G5 in many ways. This is paired with a f/1.8 aperture lens and OIS 2.0. The secondary 125-degree wide angle 13MP sensor is paired with a F/2.4 aperture lens.

At the front, the G6 sports a 5MP selfie camera with a 100-degree wide-angle selfie lens. The camera app allows users to switch between a normal and a wide-angle selfie mode depending on their needs.

Software

The G6 will be the first non-Pixel smartphone to feature Google Assistant. Running Android 7.0 Nougat, the handset will also feature LG’s UX 6.0 that has been optimised to take advantage of the 18:9 aspect ratio of the display. UX 6.0 makes more use of natural colors and packs some features that take advantage of the 18:9 aspect ratio display including Square Camera for quickly sharing 1:1 aspect ratio photos on Instagram and Snapchat.

All the Nougaty features like multi-window multitasking, quickly switching being apps, and Comfort View (LG’s own take on Night Light) are also present in the skin. In addition to Display size scaling, LG has also added App scaling option that lets you individually adjust the density of apps installed on your phone.

The handset will also come with $200 of free in-game content for six popular games available on the Play Store.