LG G5 design and build quality
For years, LG advocated polycarbonate as the material of choice for its smartphone casing. The reason for this? It was the only way to ensure that the battery remained changeable. Not until the end of 2015 did LG produce a phone with a different material. With the V10, LG dared to use metal for the smartphone’s frame.
With the G5, LG is one of the last manufacturers to build a flagship smartphone with a full metal body. But there are different ways of production. The first and most common way is the milling. Here, the housing is milled from a block of metal. HTC has used this technique since the One M7, Apple has since the iPhone 5 and Huawei did with the Ascend Mate 7.
The LG G5 aluminum body has been constructed differently to other devices with a similar build. Rather than being milled out of a block, it has been done with an aluminum casting process. This method was developed in cooperation with the Korean Institute of Technology and is mainly used in the automotive and aerospace industries. This method caused some confusion among YouTubers and bloggers, as LG covered metal body with a primer and paint layer.
Most full-metal smartphones are given color accents via anodizing, rather than painting. This layer caused some G5 reviewers to question whether the G5 should even be called an all-metal smartphone, seeing as the hand does not touch metal. But the fact is that the LG G5 has a housing made of aluminum, but just under a layer of primer and paint.
There are more changes in the design of the G5 compared to the previous models, the G4 and G3. While the on-off button is still located on the back, the volume buttons are now on the left side. In addition, LG has placed a fingerprint sensor inside the on-off button as it did with the LG V10. If a fingerprint can unlock the G5, then pressing the on-off switch is not necessary. This button is therefore only really necessary for a restart, or just to switch the display off.
On the back of the LG G5 you’ll find double-camera optics placed alongside an LED flash and laser autofocus system. Both the complete camera system and the fingerprint sensor are not recessed into the housing and so create a hump. Nothing we haven’t seen before.
On the top of the frame is a noise canceling microphone and headphone port. There is also an infrared transmitter. The LG G5 is one of the last flagships with an infrared transmitter, with it being an omission from the Galaxy S7, S7 Edge and HTC 10. If you absolutely must have one to operate a TV or Hi-Fi system, you should consider buying the G5.
Onto the housing. In our test unit we noticed minor design weaknesses. First, a sharp-edge was present between the frame and the battery module release button, as well as a gap between module and smartphone due to poor alignment. After speaking with LG, we discovered that these peculiarities were only part of an early batch of G5 units. Units made during final production do not have these flaws.
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