LG G4 Smartphone

After just over a year of use, I would like to write down my experiences with the LG G4 smartphone. Over the course of this year, the smartphone replaced my GPS and my camera on most trips.

Screen

The 5.5-inch screen is a big advantage when taking photos, since many details of the photo can already be seen in the preview. Unfortunately, this directly comes with increased power consumption. In my case, a good 50% of the power consumption is caused by the display.

Micro SD card storage

The fact that the available storage on the smartphone can be expanded with micro SD cards becomes especially important with the camera’s storage-hungry RAW images. This way, one or more micro SD cards can simply be taken along on the trip and swapped out as needed.

Battery

The standard battery in the smartphone has a capacity of 3000mAh and is replaceable. The battery charges in just over two hours and lasts me two days on the trail with moderate use. In the meantime, I have swapped the battery for a 9800mAh one; since it needs a good 6 hours to charge with the standard power adapter, I swapped the charger for a fast charger that charges the large battery within three hours. With moderate use on the trail, the large battery lasts me up to five days.

GPS

On the trail I use the phone as a GPS receiver with the apps MAPS.ME (free), Google Maps (free) and OsmAnd+ (paid). Especially OsmAnd+ has proven itself very well thanks to the mapped hiking trails since the Skåneleden.

Below is a picture of the GPS app OsmAnd+ on the smartphone

Camera

In automatic settings, the camera takes very good pictures that can even be compared to those of an iPhone 6 Plus. The quality of the phone camera proved itself on various trips (Habichtswaldsteig, Skåneleden, Hexenstieg, the Brocken and several others). The shots can be saved in RAW mode, which allows post-processing without major loss of image information. In the meantime, I use the ProShot app for snapping pictures.

Since pictures say more than a thousand words, here are a few sample photos taken with the phone camera