LG G3 review

A great handset that's only slightly let down by lacklustre design

LG G3 review
LG's best phone yet shows the brand is making great strides in the smartphone game

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One of the big selling points of the LG G3 is the fact the company thinks it's sorted the onboard keyboard, making it into something more usable and better than the wealth of third-party options out there.

It's certainly taken some dramatic leaps forward, as the keyboard is both resizable and able to learn from your typing action, meaning it becomes more accurate the more you use it.

LG G3 code

The keyboard is decent, but can't beat third-party options

The resizing option is pretty good, although increasing the height of the keys does limit the space you can see what you're actually typing, which isn't great when you're trying to enter text into fields on the web browser.

Similarly shrinking it doesn't do a lot for trying to improve the accuracy, no matter how much I used it. One of the other elements that LG has brought in is the next word prediction, but it's not really got the idea well.

For instance, if you're trying to type "can't" but accidentally enter 'vant' then it will still go with that option, rather than working out what you're after.

I always use the test of whether the keyboard makes me want to install Swiftkey Keyboard, and sadly with the LG that was the case after a couple of weeks' use.

The ability to change the layout to your own choices slightly is a big boon though – having the comma key instead of settings is a real win.

But given so many good aftermarket options are so good, I can't say the new keyboard is really a selling point; HTC's phones are still the only ones I've not bothered to upgrade the typing experience on.

The call quality on the LG G3 is pretty good though, as it seemed to offer really good connection throughout. It also comes with all the bells and whistles you'd hope, such as being able to message straight from the call if you so need.

LG G3 review

Call quality is strong and reliable

The one issue I did note is that the LG G3 sometimes struggled to get a signal where other phones managed it just fine – it wasn't that the signal was weak, or the reception from the phone poor, it just was stuck searching to find any reception, meaning a restart or putting it in and out of airplane mode to sort.

However, it was decent at flipping in and out of Wi-Fi and 4G – while it doesn't have the download booster of the Samsung Galaxy S5 or S6, when it gets a fast connection it didn't let it go.

The internet browsing, as a result, was super slick and speedy whether using the onboard browser or Chrome – the latter isn't obvious, but now that Google's managed to get its mobile internet app up to speed I can't see why you'd use LG's option.

LG G3 review

Chrome has improved to the point where proprietary browser's are irrelevant

It's not that it's bad, but it harks back to an older era where the clever notions were from the manufacturers and Google's Chrome offered nothing more than a desktop sync – but that advantage has been eroded now.