LG's modus operandi since 2016 has been to steadily iterate on its flagship phone platforms. Its seemingly low level of commitment to pushing the envelope with its top-tier smartphones comports with its earnings: the company's mobile division isn't making money, and what chance it has of doing so lies in releasing low- and mid-tier devices through deep carrier partnerships rather than $800+ flagships to try and compete with the likes of Samsung and Apple.

The G6, V30, G7 and V40 were all fine phones, but they didn't do much to draw attention from the other mainstream competition that was beating them on features, execution, price, or some combination of the three. The LG G8, in being closely related to the G7 and V40, hasn't changed the formula much, and on the face of it is destined to the same fate as those two predecessors.

But the competition has progressed slowly as well, and as prices have gone up across the board LG is actually price-competitive out of the gate this year. All while adding a few notable improvements including a larger battery and new speaker system. Is it enough for LG to make any sort of dent in the flagship smartphone market? We explore that idea right here.

The Good

Solid, attractive hardware
Excellent call quality
Above-average display
Headphone jack and SD card slot
Average battery life

The Bad

Software feels dated, cumbersome and unpolished
Cameras don't compete at this price
Air Motion is a solution in search of a problem
LG's software update history is highly questionable

Lots of good here

LG G8 What I love

LG's hardware game is strong, and even though things haven't substantially changed since the G7 that slow rate of improvement is pretty much par for the course for the smartphone world as of late. Much like Samsung has done with its last three generations, LG is taking a slow and steady approach, and the resulting G8 is a nicely formed combination of metal and glass.

LG's hardware game is strong with the G8; there's a lot to enjoy here.

This black model I've been using looks particularly featureless and monolithic, but this design is well executed in any color. The symmetrically and uniformly curved glass on both sides transitions perfectly into the painted metal frame, and LG's ability to place dual cameras underneath the glass back without a separate camera pod protrusion is worthy of applause. The only cutouts are for the LED flash and rear-mounted fingerprint sensor — the latter being a welcome reminder that it's still okay to do an "old school" capacitive sensor in a world where in-display sensors are a mixed bag. (LG also managed to finally include a fingerprint sensor gesture to drop the notification shade. What a world!)

The one place LG quickly bucked a trend was in the heft and substantial feel of the G8, which is much improved over last year's V40 that felt a bit hollow and too light. The G8 strikes a great balance between weight, thickness and usability; it feels as though it's built to stand up to years of use and abuse, but isn't heavy or bulky. It projects the quality you'd expect when spending $850 on a phone.

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Specs, features performance and battery life are all positive marks for LG's latest flagship.

The G8 is a really good size, with a 6.1-inch display that feels roomy but slots underneath the latest "big" phones. It's slightly larger overall than the Galaxy S10, which is clearly its main competitor, but you wouldn't notice the millimeters between the two. The display itself doesn't match Samsung's latest in colors or brightness — and in reality, no company's screens do — but is above average and has given me nary a problem outside of just not getting as bright as I've been used to with the Galaxy S10 series.

Everything inside matches the level of the exterior. The G8's spec sheet is your typical laundry list of high-end components, but it's punctuated by nice-to-have features like a headphone jack (with high-quality DAC), SD card slot, Quick Charge 3.0, wireless charging and IP68 water resistance. LG has nailed the software stability and performance, too — everything is just as fast, smooth and consistent as any recent phone. Though of course I can only evaluate those metrics after roughly a week with the G8; only time will tell whether the software holds up better than LG's reputation would lead you to expect. There's a long list of examples of LG flagships deteriorating rather quickly over time, and software updates to address issues are few and far between.

LG's new display speaker technology has a clear upside over individual speakers.

LG's new speaker technology that uses the entire display as a vibrating diaphragm to project sound is a neat bit of innovation that actually has a clear upside. Call quality is crystal clear, plenty loud, and doesn't require any specific ear placement — though it does end up projecting sound quite widely, which you want to keep in mind if you're trying to keep things (relatively) private when taking a call near people. As a full-display speaker for listening to music, podcasts or videos, it's a bit more of a mixed bag. LG's "Boombox" tech makes the display speaker and down-firing resonator pair up to be extremely loud and clear when placed on a hard surface like a table, and having the sound just kind of come at you from everywhere rather than a defined speaker area is an improvement. But when holding the phone, that extra level of full-phone vibration just feels weird and generally compromises the sound quality overall (mostly just cutting out mids) to the point where it's worse than "traditional" stereo speakers.

The G8's 3500mAh battery (which is a tad larger than the Galaxy S10's) provides expectedly solid longevity. It's not a serious battery champion like the Galaxy S10+ or OnePlus 6T, but I'd categorize it right alongside the Galaxy S10 and a step up from the Pixel 3 XL. I ended most days with a good amount of battery left to spare, even on heavier days with lots of phone calls and music streaming over Bluetooth that keep the phone's radios active for hours on end. On heavy days like when I travel or had to do lots of Google Maps navigation while driving, I found a charger for a quick top-up in the evening. Most people will be happy with the battery life considering the size of the G8; if it were any larger of a device, you'd expect Galaxy S10+ levels of endurance.

Struggles

LG G8 What I don't like

For as much understanding as I give LG's steady approach to hardware improvements, I will condemn it for doing the same with its software. LG's software has consistently been a couple years behind in all aspects, but it's particularly painful to experience in 2019. Companies like Samsung finally figured out how to strike an attractive and useful balance between design and features, which is ostensibly what LG is trying to do but critically failing at. Its features feel haphazard and in many cases like afterthoughts, but you don't have any sort of draw in the other direction such as a nicely-designed interface.

LG hasn't critically evaluated its software in years, and it really shows.

The lock screen, launcher, settings pages, notification shade and default apps — aka, most of the software — have no cohesiveness, nor do they look good or work particularly well on their own. Nothing is broken, and as noted above performance is very good, but we hold modern smartphones to a much higher standard nowadays.

If you need a reminder of how long it's been since LG critically evaluated its own software, look no further than the notification you receive on first booting up your G8 that tells you to "not remove the battery" while the phone is running, which was last actually applicable in the LG G5 released in 2016. It's very clear across the entire software experience that this product is in maintenance mode and not being actively improved.

It's a time machine back to 2016's software, and unfortunately for LG it's not even good 2016 software.

It's a common no-thought solution whenever a smartphone maker continually fails to produce a good software experience that they'd be better off using Android One, but I really do feel that's the way forward here unless LG is willing to pull a 2017-level Samsung move and pull a 180 on design and properly invest in its user experience. Very little is salvageable at this point; you need to burn it all down and start over, or admit you can't do it on your own and switch paths entirely to go with Android One.

As LG is wont to do, much focus was put on its new Air Motion feature considering it was one of the only really new things to lean on when coming from the G7. While it has promise, unfortunately, it's effectively a flop. It's billed as a way to use hand gestures to control various aspects of the phone without touching the screen, leaning on a new ToF (Time of Flight) sensor and IR light next to the front-facing camera to accurately recognize and track your hand from 6-12 inches away. You can set it up to launch apps, capture screenshots, control media playback and address alarms, timers and calls. All interesting use cases, in theory, but the quality of execution is the real weak point. Despite lots of training and experimentation, I just can't get the G8 to recognize my hand gestures very often or very quickly — and as soon as it takes more than a moment to recognize my hand, I'm better off just touching the screen; after all, it's right there.

Air Motion has potential, but it's too slow and inconsistent to consider using today.

If the recognition was far closer to 100% and didn't take so long, I could see a few good reasons to use it from time to time, but still don't see this being any sort of replacement for just good software interface design and a touch screen. The good thing is that you can just turn Air Motion off entirely, so it won't ever get in your way if you don't want to use it. And the display notch created by the extra sensors isn't particularly intrusive. But it's frustrating to see time and development resources were put into this feature, only to be released when it clearly doesn't work very well or have great appeal even if it was flawlessly executed, all while the rest of the core software experience could use some work.

There's a silver lining to the inclusion of the dedicated ToF sensor and IR light on the front of the phone, though, and that's a more secure face unlock system that actually uses a 3D model of your face rather than a typical 2D "picture" like just about every other Android phone. It's been fast enough, and works from a wide variety of angles in challenging lighting conditions. Unfortunately the face unlock, although secure, can't be used to authenticate your access to apps or purchases, but that issue is on Google's end rather than LG's. There's also a "Hand ID" authentication option that reads unique features of your hand to unlock the phone, but like Air Motion itself, it's a second-rate option to the viable alternatives.

Cameras

LG's main draw in photography a few years back was standardizing on offering an ultra-wide-angle camera, which I (and many others) absolutely loved using for the unique perspective it provided — despite the fact that it always lacked in out-and-out photo quality. In many ways it was a crutch that kept LG from being criticized quite as much for its overall lower image quality when compared to Google, Samsung and Huawei. In the last few years LG has really waffled about with its camera strategy, and in the end hasn't really made many improvements.

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A distinct lack of strong colors and crisp details is noticeable.

On paper, the 12MP main sensor with 1.4µm pixels, an ƒ/1.5 lens and OIS has what it needs to produce solid photos. But LG's processing just doesn't make the most of the materials. Photos are generally good, but they're once again missing that little extra feeling that they're exceptional at any time. When HDR doesn't trigger, the photos lack the colors and contrast I'd prefer to see. Like Samsung is often accused of, the G8 also mashes down details in textures that give a more smoothed out or blotchy look to parts of scenes you'd expect more definition.

Low light shots are where LG is a bit further behind the curve, and it's once again about the processing as the hardware is clearly good enough to let in enough light to produce better photos than this. For the most part, low-light shots are relatively low in grain and pretty sharp overall — but they completely lose any sort of color and are generally bland. Now and then I got a really crisp shot (check out that candlelit cocktail above) when the camera didn't try to brighten the image up, but those instances were bookended by photos that were so bad I didn't even want to save them, let alone share them.

The camera is fine, but is lacking any exceptional qualities that take it to a high level.

Looking purely at the main camera's quality, this is something more akin to a less expensive phone like the OnePlus 6T than the high-end phones it actually competes with on price. The shots are totally fine for Instagram, and you really need to start leaning toward nitpicking to find real problems with the photos, but like other parts of the G8's experience you just expect a bit more at this price point.

The main camera struggles are a bit tougher to swallow when the ultra-wide camera is not particularly good either — and again, is identical to the G7 and V40. The 16MP sensor has just 1.0µm pixels, and the 107° lens doesn't have the same dramatic view as the Galaxy S10 (or LG V30 at that). Photos are fine enough in good lighting, but are a complete disaster in dim scenes. And curiously, the fixed-focus lens has a minimum focal distance of about 2 feet, which ends up being extremely limiting when you want to get a close-up dramatic wide shot of something. Samsung, which admittedly also has a lower-quality sensor behind its ultra-wide lens, is beating LG at its own game with the Galaxy S10.

Tough sell once again

LG G8 Should you buy it?

To say that LG's flagship phone strategy feels "rudderless" would be a disservice to captains everywhere. Even without a rudder, a talented mariner can be resourceful with the tools available and still give the vessel some sort of direction. And at the very least, the lack of a steering mechanism doesn't mean that it's going to immediately take on water and sink.

It's not a lack of direction, but drive and momentum, that keeps the G8 from getting to the next level.

And yet, LG's lack of direction and drive to regularly improve and compete with the fantastic slate of smartphones available today seem to be dooming it to the depths. The G and V series aren't necessarily lacking direction, but instead seem to be missing momentum and power — phone after phone comes out with the same little mistakes, same shortcomings and same "almost there" that only cuts it in ship-to-ship cannon fodder. They're not bad phones, they're just missing the little bit of polish and extra effort to be great — and you need to be great to compete today.

For the first time in a while, LG hasn't shot itself in the foot with pricing. At $850, the G8 sits right below the $900 Galaxy S10 (opens in new tab), and given LG's propensity to slash prices short after release it could be a very interesting buy at $750 or less as the weeks tack on. But then the G8 is still going to be compared with the Galaxy S10e (opens in new tab), and will still be more expensive than the forthcoming OnePlus 7. Once again LG has a really solid phone that's completely marginalized by the latest Samsung competitor doing everything a little better for effectively the same money.

3.5 out of 5

The LG G8 is a fine phone. It mostly competes with Samsung's Android-leading Galaxy S10, and in a few small areas — like its audio technology — it even bests it. But software that has been lost in the sands of time, camera quality that hasn't kept up over the past few years, and a bunch of random features that are neither useful nor interesting all dull what would otherwise be a very sharp phone. It will be a great buy at a discount for someone who wants to try something new, but it's going to be a tough sell head-to-head with a Galaxy S10 on the shelf.

LG G8

The G8 is a fine phone, but one that also struggles to stand out. It has hardware, specs and nice-to-have features that are all well-executed and enjoyable to use, plus a few neat additions like the speaker system and 3D-based face unlock. But LG's consistent missteps in software design, camera quality that doesn't stand up to the competition, and focus on new features like Air Motion that are purely distractions all get in the way of a core phone experience that is otherwise solid and worth considering.

$850 at B&H (opens in new tab)

Andrew was an Executive Editor, U.S. at Android Central between 2012 and 2020.

40 Comments

After purchasing a LG G7 ThinQ from Rogers in Canada, I am very disappointed in the OS update and Patches released for it. I am STILL on Android 8.0.0 and will never buy another LG product no matter how many "features" it has. LG and the carriers need to fix this.
I like LGs ux and have always thougt it intuitive and straight forward. When I switched to the Moto X4 I tried to customize it to be as much like LG as it could be. Well to each his own. But oh my gosh I miss Knock on so so bad.
LG became the worst enemy of themselves, i wouldn't buy any of there phone, probably ever again. It's pretty much just Huawei or Samsung if u want high end device.
Why do I get through every LG G8 review with the same frustration? The reviewer complains that the price is too high at $850, but to mention of all the launch price offers. Best Buy will sell you it unlocked, right now, at $700. If you activate it on a line when you buy it, you only pay $650. T-Mobile is selling it for $620, and Verizon and AT&T (Sprint too, I imagine) have incentives that make it much cheaper. That, and it keeps getting compared against phones above even its MSRP; I have seen multiple reviews that are posted as the G8 vs. the S10+, and even this article laments the G8's battery life against the $1,000+ Samsung offering. One review complained you have to get a microSD card to get more than 128 GB of storage, as if it's actually bad to send you to Amazon for a $40 microSD card, rather than raising the price $100+ to double the internal storage, like you get from Samsung (if you don't go microSD) and Apple.
The main issue on the price is that the initial sale offers are very fluid. They deserve their own articles in which when the offer is gone the article becomes irrelevant. You don't want a review that becomes irrelevant, or worse, upsets people when the initial sales aren't on anymore. As far as comparing the phone to the S10, that's the main competitor on Samsung's side. Yes, it's $50 more, but the S10e is $100 less expensive, has the same CPU, storage and RAM amounts, a slightly smaller (lower res) screen and slightly smaller battery In my book that equals a $100 lower tier device. But most of the arguments will be the same. So you compare it to the closer price and more intended competitor. Also, as for the storage issue mentioned, most other manufacturers have optional storage upgrades, and some have optional storage upgrades PLUS expandable storage. We all have our preferences. Hell, if I had mine, HTC would still be relevant. I loved their designs. But they've all but gotten out of the market.
You have a fair point about relevance. However, is it worse to have an article that is inaccurate in two weeks or two months because prices changed, or is it worse to have your article not align with the information available the day you out it up? Plus, with as much as this site recycles their "everything we know about [PRODUCT]" articles with sometimes-tint edits, they shouldn't have much trouble adjusting the price in a review--or, at the very least, acknowledging the launch price differences in SOME part of the article. It wouldn't be that hard to say "at just $700 unlocked at launch, it is a great value against the $900 S10 it competes with, but if it goes up to uts $850 MSRP, finding a market would be a much tougher sell." Yeah, other companies have more storage upgrade options, but the review I was referencing wasn't taking that stance, only complaining about having to go with microSD.
The S10 and S10+ had a lot of sales at release and I did not see any reference to these in the initial reviews. Anyone reading a review should not focus on the price mentioned in the review. Prices always change over time. The article did mention that LG generally discounts their products not long after launch. If I read this review six months from know I would use the review as an incentive to check out the current price.
The problem is that even then it's more expensive than the OnePlus 6T at list price, which actually beats it in several areas. The OnePlus 7 will likely be a better phone at a lower price. Where does that leave LG? The mainstream folks will likely go Samsung. The price conscious/enthusiast crowd will also go OnePlus. That leaves nothing for LG.
Some valid points, however external storage does not serve the same purpose as internal storage unless you are just keeping files.
LG is good for it's own price. Honestly after the Note 7 issues I decided to buy an LG V20. While I liked the price, I regretted buying it two and a half months later. Constant phone freezing, phone randomly rebooted itself, I quickly realized why I spent the extra money on my Samsung products. Maybe it was just a faulty phone, maybe not. LG though isn't for me.
I'm currently using the LG V40. Fantastic phone, but I do wish LG would push the boundaries. Software updates are a necessity. Why am I still on 8.1? Hardware needs to equal the competition. Your handsets need to be focused, and offer the best core experience without compromise, and without being distracted by niche features. Focus on what makes you special: peerless audio quality and a versatile camera (Huawei has passed you here, LG, step it up). Offer your handsets at a lower price than the competition, and position yourself as a more premium OnePlus. You've got some great ideas, so capitalize on those. Google Assistant button? Awesome. Your fingerprint sensors? Awesome. Be better.
Zachary, don't get audio quality and loudness mixed up... they are separate things! LG's forte is having the voltage to drive high impedance headphones with decent loudness. Quality is things like noise, dynamic range, distortion, and in that aspect, LG is good, but not king of the hill.
Don't preach at me about audio quality. I've used many phones and so far LG has by far been the best phone for listening to lossless audio files on my premium headphones, bar none. If there's a mainstream phone that surpasses high-end LG's with their Quad-DAC's, I haven't found it.
I'm a professional studio recording engineer. HTC USonic is light years ahead. But, LG has the best game in town for the old built-in analog jacks. Not too many phones sound better than Sennheiser open backs plugged into the output of a million dollar recording console. Usonic does, and I know that from personal experience. They are the closest you can get to standing there in the studio during a live mixdown session. I'm not alone either. The quote below is from GsmArena: "It's very difficult to put perceived sound into words, but if we had to describe it: HTC's USonic earbuds are like if music was deconstructed and reconstructed to where you can hear all the instruments. It's truly something you need to hear for yourself." A word of warning though: If you do try them, it will take a week or so to get used to the mind job they will do to you... but it's a good thing ;)
Extreme just a bit
Sometimes it seems that the press is LG's biggest enemy. Let's be honest here. There's obviously some strong bias. Because it's been the same knocking and criticism for years now, but yet LG has remained a player in all major carriers (in the U.S.) with flagship offerings. Meanwhile a number of other heavily praised and favored manufacturers by AC you mainly see with only mid & low-range devices. Long story short LG is doing something better than they're getting credit for. LG has been able to maintain in mainstream distribution with flagship devices while many others (HTC, MOTOROLA,.....) have been nowhere to be found. So in the U.S. at least, LG has been and is a strong brand that's getting dinged more by critics/press than general consumers. More to the point is. Many people that ignore these reviews and personally interact with LG flagship offerings like the devices. The challenge is more popularity than anything. When they get a better tap into pop culture. All these other things critics and gloomy reviews have said will carry no weight.
Think it's a pretty gross overstatement to say that LG is "remained a player" — it's only in one country and only because it bends to the will of the carriers and bloats up its phones.
Fact are facts and I was pertaining to the U.S.. So I don't think that's exaggerating. I can't speak on other countries, I'm not there. What I can say is for the U.S. market things go by different measures that what these articles state. Everything from the pricing, to honestly what really matters to the mainstream consumer. Walk into these carrier stores and ask an employee what customers look for in a device, it really won't be much. It's either default Apple or Samsung because that's all they know.
clbond79 - Apple or Samsung is all the salespeople push, at least in AT&T stores. If you don't want Apple, there's Samsung. If you don't want Samsung, there's Apple. And and if you don't want either of those, they will reluctantly show you an LG.
Come on now...LG has been making phone just as long as the other two. They have had chance after chance to become a major player in the same league, and they blew it. That's no one's fault but their own.
Depends on which AT&T store. Lol..The one I go to will only sell you a Samsung or an Apple. LG? LG who, they will say.
T-Mobile seems to do a decent job at pushing LG. Anytime I work with T-Mobile the reps always comment on how I made a good choice with the V40, and anytime they sell one they always get good feedback.
Yeah, you're right on that. Metro PCS does a decent job too, but they usually have the lower devices and not the top of the line ones. At least the ones near me.
Guess today was the day LG told everyone to released their review video lmao
Notch makes it an immediate no-buy. I will never buy a phone with a destroyed display. What's sad is I'd love to give this phone a try as I used to love LG phones. Between the notch and no updates, I won't consider LG at all.
I was reading along and got to the photo section, then I thought "Really nice composition and choices for the photographs... this must be Andrew's work", and I was right! For the phone itself, it's fine, but it's almost like the development team has half-hearted support from the company. I can almost hear the conversations at LG, with the G8 team wanting to do things special, and being told "Umm, we'll get back to you. Just keep working with what you got so far". Everything is decent, but it struggles to be best at anything. Yes, there's audio, and if there was someone who picked it for that reason, I'd say "Nice choice", even if they are not "The" best in audio. However, can you imagine how people in the industry would go nuts, like musicians and producers, if LG went all out in the audio department and did things like double headphone jacks and digital I/O to tie into mixers, and software like a mobile version of Garage Band? I think that would turn heads. It seems they tried to focus like that on cinema capabilities in the past, but without a great camera, it did not reach its potential.
This is what I'm hoping to see from the V-series. A serious focus on audio and cinematography for all creative professionals who need the best in media from their phone. Like that old Marshall phone from way back.
I remember the Marshall phone! The London, wasn't it? Dual jacks with individual volume controls too.
While LG have the hardware side nailed, their software is ugly, and they don't bother to update their phones anymore it seems. LG had their chance and failed to take them and now they're just a minor player against Samsung.
Just a little side question: Is it possible to turn OFF the swipe notifications on the FP reader?
My fingers brush against the back FP reader a lot, and I'm deeply grateful the phone ignores unintentional touches like that. It would annoy me like crazy if the notification shade came down every time... Oh, second question: why are those side bezels so fat?
LG lost me because of updates. no thanks LG. i'd consider it if it were $499. maybe. even then i'd likely pass
LG is going to be another HTC they're pretty much done. They can't compete, they're way behind not only on hardware wise but also software. All the photos I've seen on their phones are terrible looks washed up and their bokeh affects are bad as well when you zoom in you can clearly see missing "bokeh effects". Until they work on their software issues they will be nonexistent. For me camera software absolutely most important thing on smart phones.
The hand motion gestures are getting terrible reviews. Plus the boom-box sound vibrates too much. Wow-we, LG is really trying but it just ain't working. Is this phone a dud??
Out of the box, the Boom Box isn't set up right. I adjusted mine in the sound settings and it's really better. I will say it's not quite as loud as the G7, but it's a fuller sound.
As for the palm gestures.... swing and a miss. Maybe they'll improve it with a firmware update.... Wait.. LG? .. Update? I think I'll live without it.
I have a G8 ThinQ ordered from T-mobile using their promotion where it's basically half off their retail price using bill credits.
This will be the (let me count them, hang on a moment...) 5th LG phone I've owned. I would not have left HTC, for LG but T-Mobile didn't sell the version of the HTC One M8 with their reframed LTE radios built in. (That's another story)
HTC had "Boom Sound" after their Beats license ran out. I just never use my phone as a "boom box" so that feature won't get used too often. I plug in headphones or use Bluetooth.
I don't believe this phone is a "Dud". Hand motion is like said above, a non-problem looking for a solution. Sure, it's innovative, but it feels like the components for the hand motion to work were already there for the facial recognition, and some engineer said, we could use this to do some cool software tricks.
My first LG phone was the G6. If you remember it was one of the first "full screen" phones. I loved it. No real bad experiences, no real software updates either. Then the G7 came along with the Boom Sound setup. Heard it, loved it, bought one. (Having T-Mobile Jump helped with that) It's a great phone, nailed my wish list for improving on the G6. I really thought I'd keep the G7 for two years at least. Enter the G8. Audio is my main driving force when buying a phone. That started with the Moto X Pure Edition. Then the Idol 4S. The main reason is I'm old and "don't hear so good", and I love music. The first thing I did when I saw this article was to watch the Review.... On my G8. (it arrived yesterday... and yes, "Jump" helped). The sound was amazing. I wasn't struggling to hear what was said, just sat back and listened comfortably. As of now I've had one phone conversation using a phone without a speaker. Again amazing, unlike any phone I've ever used. Something you've really got to experience. As for everything else. I haven't been able to set up the palm unlock yet. Having your palm in front of the display makes it hard to follow the prompts. I've used the camera a couple of times and the results are good enough for me. Photography isn't the reason I buy phones. The Ram and Storage blow my G7 away. The Snapdragon 855 is fast..... And I've learned that to get a software update from LG requires a new phone, so now I have Pie. Physically this phone is just a bit narrower than the G7. It's smooth, shiny and slippery as hell. No, LG did not include a case like the Review Phones apparently did. Spigen has a couple nice ones for it. I guess the question of the day here is, should you buy a G8. For me it was simple. It does what I want a cellphone to do. It had a price of around $600 which translates to $25 and change a month. My G7 was $30. It's also not a Samsung Galaxy, I haven't jumped on that bandwagon yet.
T-mobile is selling this for 620.00 bucks. Now that's a good deal. A good display & battery. Decent cameras & hand motion gestures. At this price it's kind of a no brainer. Plus the 32bit DAC, an audiophile's dream?
This seems like a very biased review. Not sure if LG isn't "pushing" enough money under the table to A.C., at least compared to Samsung, but just look at the complaints. None or very few are anything but personal opinion, and soft ones at that. The hardware is top notch, the software doesn't slow down to a crawl like Samsung, (I own an S10+ and have owned many other Samsung phones, so I am not against them, just being honest. Yes, I know, you can reinstall every 6 months to "make them fresh", but you shouldn't have to). I do think this phone isn't quite as good as an S10 or S10+, but 3.5 out of 5, give me a break. If you can't truly be partial and honest with a review, then you shouldn't be writing them. Ban me, or slam me, don't care. I am just getting tired of sites berating LG, when they actually make decent products that deserve recognition for the things they are doing right. Not for the little things they are aren't doing quite as well as the big boys, and then being given a crappy review by an obviously picky reviewer. Be sure to cut the edges off your bologna sandwich.
The way I see it, if you can pick up the g8 for 620.00 it's a no brainer. The P-OLED display is very nice, cameras & battery way above average. For audiophile's this is a dream phone. The 32bit DAC is class leading. I have compared the display with my s10+ & in all honestly it matches up very well. This LG G8 is a very good offering. If I didn't have the 10+, this would be my choice! Good sales, bad sales the G8 is a very good phone!
I love LG , but I wish they had Web OS as the UI. In fact I wish Web OS would replace Android . Web OS did things on the Palm Pre that it took years for Android and Apple to do. I know LG bought Web OS from Palm but it works great on their tv's and appliances.

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