
LG G5 modular phone: Hi-Fi DAC, battery slide out, connection interface - danielconde
http://www.engadget.com/2016/02/21/lg-g5-modular-official/
======
jfrumar
I'm so glad LG are sticking with a switchable battery - it's a must have
feature for me. Lots of people have forgotten what it's like to grab a wall-
charged battery, slip it in and run out the door with 100% power in a few
seconds. Tethering your phone to the wall sucks. Clunky portable battery packs
are the worst. I hope this phone sells well, it has my support.

~~~
IshKebab
Honestly that sounds rubbish compared to just having a phone with a decent
battery life in the first place. I used to think it was impossible (I had a
Nexus 4) but my Z3C has an impressively good battery life - so much so that I
rarely think about it. I don't even bother plugging it in for satnav duties.
Also it charges at a pretty decent rate - probably takes an hour to fully
charge from 0%.

Battery swapping is a workaround for flawed phones.

~~~
ryukafalz
Depends how long you plan to keep your phone. Lithium-ion cells have finite
lifespans, and if you plan to keep your phone for years at a time, or if (like
me) you tend to purchase slightly older phones, removable batteries are a
godsend.

FWIW, though I'm not happy about the non-removable battery, I currently use a
Nexus 4. It's gotten worse over time, but I used to be able to comfortably get
about 2 days of runtime on a full charge. Now it's about a full day, though it
sometimes needs a little help if I'm in an area where reception is weak.

~~~
Pxtl
Well, if you're talking about giving an old phone a new lease on life with a
replacement battery as a once-in-a-lifetime service operation, it's fine to
break out the tools to replace the battery.

If you do battery swaps as a nightly workflow so you can have a day battery
and a night battery, then yeah pop-out replacement is the only option

~~~
ezzaf
Having disassembled the aforementioned Z3C a couple of times, I disagree that
it's fine to have to break out the tools for it ever. It's a tough job, with
lovely warnings like this one from iFixit:

"Warning first: Never try to move the battery unless it's broken and need to
replace. Because there is very very strong adhesive sticker between battery
and motherboard.And too much effort or careless operation will break the
motherboard."

It's also difficult to maintain the waterproof seal when reassembling the
phone. So while the Z3C has great battery life, you're essentially only going
to have that for a couple of years.

~~~
madeofpalk
Funnily enough, for all the bad press Apple gets for glued together devices,
the battery is trivially easy to replace in iPhones.

~~~
culturestate
This is, I suspect, a byproduct of the fact that they handle (the vast
majority of) their own frontline customer support and repairs. The most
commonly-repaired parts are designed to make the process as efficient as
possible for the Apple Store techs.

~~~
madeofpalk
That's exactly it. Apple Retail iPhone 'techs' are relatively low skilled and
low paid, and have a very small amount of time to do what they do. The most
common parts, like camera, speaker, battery, screen etc. are made like Lego to
make it easier and quicker for them to do their job.

------
mmastrac
This might give people a taste for what really modular devices like Ara can
offer, but the fact that it doesn't do battery swaps without powering down is
going to make it far less interesting to people. An internal battery to give
you 30-60s in an emergency hibernate mode would have been game-changing.

Kudos to LG for actually taking this step though. With luck this will whet the
appetite for phones that are truly modular (and show manufacturers that there
is a market for swappable parts).

~~~
post_break
I've never heard of someone needing a phone to stay on while changing the
battery.

~~~
jshevek
Few people may _need_ for a phone to stay on while changing the battery, but
is a huge plus. I spent over a year on a phone that could hot swap a battery
if you do the swap smoothly, and avoiding the need for a reboot was definite
pleasure.

~~~
XorNot
My last iPaQ could do this trick. There was a button cell NiMH next to the
LiIon cell to keep it going.

------
kyriakos
It appears that LG is the only company to dare offer real innovation on its
flagship models. I don't know how well this model will do but it seems it's
not just a faster rehash of last year's model.

~~~
giancarlostoro
The LG phones have been great so far, I still have my G2 years later, everyone
in my house has had them.

~~~
thebaer
Agreed -- the G3 is the best Android phone I've owned in my 6 years of owning
Android devices, and will be the first one I use until it doesn't work
anymore, as opposed to upgrading on the 2 year cycle.

~~~
giancarlostoro
Exactly my same mentality for now, although I do want to get into Google Fi
which only allows specific phones (due to how their network works) so I may
have to try a phone that might have faults.

------
throwaway41597
\- Replaceable battery is always good

\- Proper camera handle and better DAC too, but not as mutually exclusive
modules

What I want is:

\- A robust and replaceable bumper that integrates with the design (i.e. isn't
ugly). The phone should not be designed as if the user isn't going to slap an
ugly case on it.

\- A hole for a wrist strap so I don't worry I'm gonna drop my phone. All
cameras have one, but now that phones are taking over, none have it.

\- An unlocked bootloader that doesn't void your warranty. Or even better lets
you set the signing key on first use (a sort of Trust On First Use that the
user is the owner).

~~~
zamalek
> An unlocked bootloader that doesn't void your warranty.

I, like probably most of you, flash a new image to the phone when the stock
software starts showing its warts. I agree with this idea but I do understand
where phone manufacturers are coming from. You can obviously avoid the problem
of software-bricked phones by having the factory image as a secondary ROM that
can be hardware flashed with a button sequence.

The real problem is, I recall a bad Android kernel floating around for the
TyTN II (a long time ago) that would toast the CPU after extended use. That's
_permanent_ damage that would be covered by warranty and would cost LG money.
Maybe what they could do is only lock down the kernel. Who knows, it's a
difficult problem to solve.

To add one feature:

\- A slide-out tactile keyboard[1].

The TyTN II is the greatest smartphone that I have ever owned for this reason.
Touch keyboards just _don 't_ cut it. The answer isn't to have predictive text
(i.e. SwiftKey) but instead to not botch up the text in the first-place.

[1]:
[http://regmedia.co.uk/2007/08/28/htc_tytn_2_2.jpg](http://regmedia.co.uk/2007/08/28/htc_tytn_2_2.jpg)

~~~
throwaway41597
I think it's worth looking at desktops for flashability. You can install any
OS on most desktops and there aren't that many issues about it. In my opinion,
hardware shouldn't break because of bad software. That would mean that an
exploit could not only brick a phone's software, but break the hardware beyond
repair. What you mention sounds like bad thermal throttling, it's the CPU's
job, not the OS's.

My idea of a fair compromise between manufacturers and customers is:

\- Let the customer run any OS will full hardware warranty. If a problem looks
like it's caused by software, require the customer to flash back to official
software, and provide warranty if the problem persists.

\- Bolt down the hardware to restrict use out of specs (no overclocking, no
software defined radio, ...)

\- Provide an engineering pin. When removed, the phone is out of warranty and
you can flash any firmware (you can have OC, SDN, custom SSD firmware, ...)

Google really could show a whole more love for tinkerers. A better OS isn't
getting made because it's so difficult to flash on your own device, let alone
flash it on thousands of user devices.

Regarding your point about keyboards, I personnaly don't like typing without
all my fingers, so what you propose wouldn't suit me. But do you think an
addon that bolts to the back would be okay for you?

~~~
zamalek
> Bolt down the hardware to restrict use out of specs

That's what I was thinking, require their signature to change bits that could
harm the phone. You could even market this feature: most phones only have
change-able back-plates. I'd bet that people would jump at the chance were
they to _see_ how drastically Cyanogen or MIUI changes their phone - don't
just give people the chance to install any ROM, but actually provide a few of
the more popular ones ready to go.

> But do you think an addon that bolts to the back would be okay for you?

With the module system of the G5 this seems completely plausible. When you
frame it that way you can really see how LG [are trying to] shine in the
blandness that is the current cellphone market.

------
noobie
Rant.

It really bugs me when consumers ask for more features regardless of their
feasibility, here we have a great phone with changebale batteries and yet we
ask for it to be still on while we swap the batteries! Hasn't it occurred to
us that maybe it's technically difficult to add in a supercap. Just be
thankful. This is like constentaly asking for phones with more RAM and
processing power, I am really glad Moore's law has come to end, maybe now
consumers will be faced with the harsh truth that it is not simple to keep on
creating more powerful devices for them to watch cat videos on.

~~~
danielconde
I agree. With automobiles, people seem to be more aware of the constraints and
the balance of capabilities to make a vehicle that fits a segment. I.e.
_sports cars_ aren't always comfortable. One day, people may understand
tradeoffs in phones and realize that long battery life may require a thick
phone.

~~~
theon144
>realize that long battery life may require a thick phone.

I'm pretty sure most people realize that, and everyone I've ever heard
complaining about battery life also added that they wouldn't mind a thicker
phone.

------
laacz
Modularity comes with a price in form of wasted space. Nevertheless, this is
something completely fresh from a major smartphone vendor. And it is done with
their flagship phone. That's the spirit.

~~~
jfoster
Some phones are at the point where I am prepared to opt for something
thicker/heavier in order to get a bit more out of it.

Longer battery life, swappable battery, greater durability, better camera,
etc. I can absolutely handle the phone being a few millimetres thicker to get
these things.

------
darklajid
My "is it worth even thinking about a particular device" litmus test is "can
it run CM". Unfortunately that's impossible to tell for future devices, most
of the time.

~~~
ThatPlayer
LG's older LG G4 still only runs CM on two variants. The international one
(H815), and the T-mobile (H811) models as these are the only ones easily
unlockable bootloaders.

~~~
mixedCase
Blame your carriers.

------
voltagex_
I wonder if the bootloader will be unlockable. I've been spoiled by Nexus
devices for years and I remember how much work the Galaxy S3 I briefly owned
was.

What's LG's track record like with releasing sources? Nexus devices don't
count.

~~~
mih
Looking around on forums like XDA, one sees that LG typically has different
models depending on the market. The tech specs are identical, but it has more
to do with carrier branding and lockdown. For instance, in markets such as the
EU, LG G4 shipped with an unlockable bootloader while in the US and Asia it
was not. Workarounds and custom ROMs exist, but you also see plenty of stories
about bricked phones. Put simply LG simply does not have the friendliest
attitude towards developers, as opposed to say HTC. They are compelled to
release GPL source code for the device, but getting it to run on your device
takes a bit of work.

~~~
voltagex_
Sigh. I wish I could love the Nexus 5X, but it just didn't represent a big
enough jump to justify a 2x price difference from the 5 (in Australia).

I'm not sure who "lg-devs" are, but they seem to have a full source tree for
the G4 at [https://github.com/lg-
devs/android_device_lge_h811](https://github.com/lg-
devs/android_device_lge_h811). No idea if it boots, though.

------
acd
I think its good of LG to design a phone that is good for the environment in
the sense that users can swap the battery and upgrade the storage instead of
having to buy a whole new phone when those run out of capacity.

Global warming dictates that we as consumers not only our politicians are
responsible for the future we create. If manufacturers can help make devices
that last longer I´m going to choose such a device the next time I buy a
phone.

I think its bold of LG to think differently and stick out of the crowd of
similar phones. Like that you can upgrade the storage capacity via MicroSD
cards.

~~~
sschueller
I agree, I think phone manufacturers should be punished for not making
batteries replaceable and contributing to waste. Having a few screws to get to
a battery is OK but gluing it in such a way that it requires special tools is
just idiotic. Same goes for laptops.

------
omonra
I've been a loyal Samsung owner since S3. Didn't upgrade to S6 because they
dropped removable battery. Was waiting to see if it's brought back with S7 -
it's not.

Will be getting this phone as an upgrade. For me removable battery and SD Card
in a flagship phone are a must. Then comes camera quality, then price.

~~~
namocat
I was in the same boat as you (loyal Samsung owner, still using my trusty S3)
until a few months ago when I decided to go for last year's LG flagship, the
G4, and I gotta say I've been extremely displeased with LG. Particularly, the
way LG Mobile has handled the many problems that have plagued the G4.

Apparently, catastrophic bootloop failures of the G4 were such a widespread
problem, that a petition has so far gained a couple thousand signatures [0] to
get LG to officially recall the bricked phones. I personally experienced the
bootloop of death on my G4 only a couple of months after getting it, and their
customer service has been atrocious - even refusing to fix my phone after
they've now admitted its due to a known hardware defect [1] because mine was
the international, unlocked version. So, just a heads up to beware LG's
"Caveat emptor" practices.

[0] - [https://www.change.org/p/lg-mobile-launch-a-replacement-
prog...](https://www.change.org/p/lg-mobile-launch-a-replacement-program-for-
defective-lg-g4s/u/15477570)

[1] - [http://www.androidauthority.com/lg-admits-g4-bootloop-
proble...](http://www.androidauthority.com/lg-admits-g4-bootloop-problem-
hardware-fault-669603/)

~~~
omonra
Thank you.

Funny enough I experienced a similar issue with my S4 a few years ago. One day
it just died - no messages, no nothing. Completely out of the blue, no falls
or anything.

I took it to Samsung repair, they sent it off and returned it to me in a few
weeks. I looked on the forums and apparently it was a fairly common (ie
thousands of people affected) issue. Same reason - a random hardware chip
malfunction that manifests itself after 6-9 months of use.

I think this was the issue: [http://forums.androidcentral.com/telus-samsung-
galaxy-s4/380...](http://forums.androidcentral.com/telus-samsung-
galaxy-s4/380081-samsung-galaxy-s4-won-t-turn.html)

So basically I think any manufacturer can fall prey to this - a faulty
component that takes months to manifest itself.

------
agumonkey
Random note, I recently used an old Nexus S as a mp3 player. I was surprised
by the sound texture of crappy mp3 over my 10$ panasonic earclips... I started
to wonder if the hardware wasn't responsible. According to some people it
embeds a Wolfson DAC (of Wolfson DAC fame ~_~). It does makes a significant
difference.

~~~
elbrownos
I don't follow. You're suggesting a good DAC can make crappy MP3 sound good
over crappy earphones?

~~~
agumonkey
Yes, even to someone that barely care, while on a bus ride, it makes that much
of a difference that I suddenly enjoyed some mid-fi mp3 in an entire new way.

------
userbinator
_Press a tiny button on the G5 's edge and the bottom and battery easily
separate from the phone._

Incidentally, several years ago Chinese manufacturer Jiayu made an iPhone-
looking phone also called the G5 and having a dedicated button to release the
back cover:

[http://amirexpress.ir/index.php?route=product/product&produc...](http://amirexpress.ir/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=161)

------
SwellJoe
I want a better ADC, even more than I want a better DAC (though both would be
best). I'd like a high quality recording device for the field...a phone or
tablet would be perfect, but there's no good way, that I know of, to get the
signal into the device at high quality.

~~~
moreati
My first thought is: through the micro USB port, exploiting the OTG feature. A
few variations on googling 'android external microphone' lead to
[http://www.androidaudiorecording.com/record-from-a-usb-
micro...](http://www.androidaudiorecording.com/record-from-a-usb-microphone-
or-audio-interface-with-your-android-phone-or-tablet/).

Sorry if you've been down this road already.

~~~
SwellJoe
Yeah, I've seen that one, and it's a clumsy solution, at best; it has a custom
USB driver and only works with that one piece of software (or did, last time I
looked at it). It's certainly better than nothing, and it's cool that
_something_ exists, but the lack of general purpose USB audio interface
support in Android is frustrating as hell, especially since iOS has had it for
so long.

------
ank_the_elder
Snapdragon 820 features
[https://www.qualcomm.com/products/snapdragon/processors/820](https://www.qualcomm.com/products/snapdragon/processors/820)

------
pmlnr
The Fairphone2 was already modular before this...
[http://shop.fairphone.com/spareparts.html](http://shop.fairphone.com/spareparts.html)

------
sunilkumarc
Any hints on the price yet?

~~~
zdkl
I read unconfirmed reports of ballpark 500USD

~~~
kyriakos
Probably 600-650euro in Europe

------
mrmondo
I guess the battery swapping could be useful, but I'd rather spend the money
on quality components in it from the get-go than have the option to buy extra,
replaceable components.

------
happywolf
I had a LG Nexus 4 and the battery got bloated after a year of use. When I
tried to get help, LG just ignored me even though that was a safety issue.
Thumbs down on it.

------
sandGorgon
Really really wish LG was making the Nexus this time around. But it seems that
HTC is doing it using a fairly meh design of the M10.

~~~
izacus
Huh? Nexus 5X is LG.

~~~
sandGorgon
I meant 2016 - HTC is rumored to be making them.

------
jkot
Internal battery is only 2,800mAh :-(

~~~
CountHackulus
Which doesn't really indicate what battery life is going to be like.

~~~
noobie
Do elaborate please. (Not /s)

~~~
BHSPitMonkey
We don't know how much power the phone actually draws in use.

~~~
zootam
but also, having a weak battery life also creates demand for the battery
packs.

if they're hotswappable and somewhat affordable, I think people will have no
issue buying the packs and swapping during the day as needed.

~~~
mkesper
The article stays the phone goes dead and reboots when changing modules.

~~~
tdicola
And this is a problem because?

~~~
dandrews
Because (at least on my Moto X 2012, Android v5.1 Lollipop) rebooting can take
upwards of ten minutes. Some OTA updates apparently trigger an 80-some-odd
module "optimizing" run, which I presume is ART doing its AOT thing. If you're
in a hurry to use your phone this can be maddening.

~~~
slyall
One of the reviews I saw said the rebooting time was pretty fast

------
shadowfax92
Beginning of a new Era! I hope google launches it's Project Ara soon.

------
threeLetters
I don't know what a DAC is. What's a DAC?

~~~
charlieglass
Digital to Analogue Converter. It converts digitised discrete samples to an
analogue signal that you can listen to.

------
shams93
I wonder if we'll finally get sub 2ms audio latency from an android device via
this dac, or whether its just going to be very nice quality audio with 100ms
latency.

~~~
nix0n
Switching the DAC will only help with quality, not with latency, because the
latency is a software issue. Samsung has implemented software workarounds to
skip some parts of the audio processing path and reduce latency, but I'm not
sure how low it gets. See
[http://superpowered.com/androidaudiopathlatency](http://superpowered.com/androidaudiopathlatency)
and [https://github.com/felixpalmer/android-
visualizer/issues/5](https://github.com/felixpalmer/android-
visualizer/issues/5) for more info on all this.

------
danjayh
Interesting phone, horrible article. Typical of the modern Engadget, the
article is light on facts and heavy on superlatives. For instance, I had to
head over to some random Android website (androidHeadlines) to find out that
yes, it does have Micro SD card support, and that it has 32GB of built-in
storage (pathetic, Engadget). I _do_ really like the idea of extensive
expandability, but I wish it could be standardized somehow (admittedly
difficult in a mobile form factor). I think this would encourage the creation
of interesting devices by interesting startups, which is something that would
probably get everybody here excited.

If you want a decent article by a respectable pub, check out the Ars version
(linked below). It has all of the technical info that Engadget missed, minus
the comments on how 'fantastic' the device feels.

[http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/02/lg-g5-hands-on-lg-
may...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/02/lg-g5-hands-on-lg-may-have-
made-the-most-innovative-phone-of-mwc/)

~~~
klausa
God forbid a tech site writes about anything else than phones, tablet and
laptops.

The horror!

~~~
danjayh
I realized the irony of complaining about Engadget going inappropriately off-
topic and then doing so myself, and edited that out. Trying my best to stay on
the rails :). I do stand by my opinion that even their tech-focused articles
are horrible these days, including this one. To anybody reading this now --
klausa is not just writing crazy replies, I did previously have a blurb about
a graphically explicit non-tech Engadget article in the parent comment.

~~~
digi_owl
On that note, the last time i read Engadget actively was back when they edited
hockey masks on all faces on Friday 13th.

Sadly all the big sites head this way. Likely because their owners are
breathing down the editors necks to be more "hip and social conscious".

------
mattmcknight
Not sure why they would cripple it with just 32GB of internal storage. Too
much Android stuff refuses to run from, or store data on, the SDCard.

~~~
monocasa
Newer android releases use the SD card in a much cleaner way that allow pretty
much anything to run off of them.

~~~
jsheard
Apparently LG and Samsung have both decided to disable Marshmallows unified
storage feature. Baffling.

[http://www.androidcentral.com/lg-g5-keeps-sd-card-shuns-
adop...](http://www.androidcentral.com/lg-g5-keeps-sd-card-shuns-adoptable-
storage)

[http://www.androidcentral.com/galaxy-s7-regains-microsd-
card...](http://www.androidcentral.com/galaxy-s7-regains-microsd-card-shuns-
adoptable-storage)

~~~
asafira
What? Does anyone have any ideas for why they would do this?

~~~
therealidiot
Need more memory? Buy a new phone!

