Overall love

[paco1x]

I like this phone mostly for the wide angle camera, great for street pics and the system is fluid even in stock rom... what i don't like too much is the poor battery time, at most can reach 3h SOT and barely 24h of mild use. Also the GPS started to fail badly and it was useless, but i fixed 2 weeks ago and now is working great and accurate.

 

[CajunVoodu]

Main utility

The screen isn't the biggest and or brightest however; I use it on a day to day basis for my work (construction foreman). With an otter box, I don't worry too much about breakage. It's fast enough, small enough and takes amazing job-site photos. It is also ridiculously easy and cheap to self repair! The main reasons why I still don't feel too bad about not upgrading: modularity, cheap/easy repairs, cameras and most importantly... The audio quality! I use a pair of 50mm driver, turtle beaches coupled with the bass booster/equalizer pro app and I absolutely love it. Maybe if the G7 has an OLED display; then I will upgrade. Until then, I have plenty of other rooted devices to perform my dirtier deeds lol. Cheers fellas!

 

[mikeyg79]

Had a G3 for a while until the GPS, wifi and SD card all failed
Used a Galaxy S5 for a while, but not enough built in storage

Figured I'd go back to an LG and got the G5.
Wide angle camera - good
internal storage - good
big enough, fast enough
GPS - absolutely sucks!!! Why can't they fix this? I'm ready to smash it and buy another phone because of it.

 

[Nico3d3]

I tried hard to love this phone but it will never be the same kind of relationship I had with my Galaxy S3. I have the H831, it can't be rooted so no more playing with custom ROM for me. I had so much fun trying CyanogenMOD on my S3. I was even able to install Marshmallow even if Samsung didn't support this version of Android on it. The LG G5 has all the processing power of a 2016 flagship, it's as powerful as a Galaxy S7 but it caused me too much troubles. Also, I once a had Moto X Play, it wasn't nearly as powerful as the LG G5 but, at least it included useful features. Moto Voice is pure genius. I'm puzzled by the fact that even the new Google Assistant can't reproduce the features included in this app. I was able to get all my SMS on my car speakers with text-to-speech from Moto Voice.

 

[johnathanamber]

Overall, I am pretty happy.... now, when you talk about this GPS... that makes me furious. Missing turns and getting lost is not something I like.

 

[DizturbedOne]

crap GPS, charging port problems, fast charge stopped working. 2 of them bricked out of nowhere, one bootlooped. all the screens looked terrible. all bled light. all with terrible battery life.

I liked the G5 for maybe six months despite its terrible screen, battery life, bad "auto" mode on pics but then I went through 3 in a row while they were being babied... I'm done. I have a V30+ now and after having to put together a 4th G5 with parts from the previous 3 and STILL have charging issues?! Done.

Worst part is that it seems to be a software issue. Here I am FOUR UPDATES LATER (since it started acting dumb) and it's still not fixed. SMDH

Going back to Samsung next time. My wife's Note 8 is badass. I love this V30+ but after being so inconvenienced by so many bricked and bootlooped phones (ALL STOCK FIRMWARE, NEVER ROOTED AT ALL) and Sprint or LG not doing crap to help me (except try to outrageously charge me to fix a phone that was still being leased to them) HAHAHA... I'm truly done. Samsung ftw

 

[Trudi]

This will be 2 years now I got a G5 for me, and another one for my wife. On both we had the same problems : this is the crappiest phone I ever bought. Bad SOT, bad luminosity if using it outside, GPS never worked correctly even if phone was sent 4 times at LG repair center, my battery died after 7 months and my wife's after 1 year, continuous screen burn...
I loved my G3. I hate the G5. Not sure to ever buy LG again. Newer LG devices don't seem to be much better in terms of screen and battery.

 

[Astrako]

Totally agree.

I had G2, G4 and G5.

- G2: was great, the best phone I ever had, being superb overall, and even better than some mid range phones today. A pity that LG left it in 5.0.2 instead of 5.1.1
- G4: camera was amazing, and screen too, but with time this suffered horrible ghosting, and the bootloop problem, too much heat due SD808+2K screen, awful battery duration and crap LG support (promised Nougat, never released officialy for international variant) killed it and LG reputation.
- G5: amazing camera too with the plus of wide angle. The rest could be considered as the worst phone ever made: horrible screen with ultra low brightness even at maximum and ghosting, ghost light, etc. Incredible bad built quality, worse than a crap chinese 50€ phone. GPS unusable due to bad design. Battery worse than G4.... more?

 

[paulmt123]

Compared to g2, G3 and g4.
G2 had lovely design. Less bezel than g5. But sadly it was too old and started overheating. Performance was good but camera was slow. Excellent battery.
G3 felt like it couldn't cope with high end screen. Sluggish and laggy at times. 801 not quite up to the job. Full HD would have made more sense.
G4 definitely quicker and nicely designed. Much better speaker. Better screen colour too. Still a tad laggy when scrolling and battery life is a big weakness.
G5 love the wide angle camera. Main camera similar to g4 so decent but not amazing. Very good outside,, excellent manual controls, auto flawed inside as uses shutter speed that's too low. Could do with being quicker lens in low light.
Speaker still good, battery not great but removable so using 2 helps here. Charges quick. Like the screen. Accurate pleasant colours.
Don't like the size of the bezels. Not pretty but acceptable design. Overall a bargain for the 130 I paid for a second hand one. Had to send it back for GPS but was quickly fixed by the online shop I got it from. GPS now excellent. Overall probably don't love it but definitely like it. It's very reliable too. Only need to reboot about once a week or less to stop battery drain. Never crashes or freezes.

 

[wildpig1234]

lacking ability to root, OLED and voice and lte data simultaneously prevent the 5 stars in my book

 

[Chrisjjj]

Not a great phone that's why you can pick it for so cheap on ebay.

Cons:
Small development community
Weak battery
GPS has been unusable on 4 of 5 I've used
Screen and phone size a downgrade from G3/G4
Screen has ghosting issues
Back camera glass cracked while in a case
Off button has failed on 1 of 5
Volume buttons have failed on 1 of 5
Main camera stopped focusing on 1 week old phone
Thin piece of main board broke off near battery insertion point

Pros:
Price
Run fast and smooth

The phone is terrible, and poorly designed and I've spent many hours trying to fix it. I've used 5 because me and my wife have one and gave a broken one to my 3 year old. My mother and brother also use one which I also maintain/fix and I've sent 2 back. I have lots of experience with them and know how bad they are.
I would never recommend getting one but if you want a very cheap but still capable older flag ship with lots of features and you don't mind repairing phones then it might be worth a go. Really the biggest issues is the GPS which I have no doubt fails due to the phones age causing poor contact. Even with new phones that have been sitting for years.

Rating:
1/5

 

[penguinjoe]

My G5 replaced a Samsung Galaxy S5. I chose it because it is pretty much the last of the flagship phones beyond the LG V20 that will let you swap the battery without having to tear the phone apart. I like it for the following reasons:

1. Cheap. I can get a new/refurb one for about $150-$200 CA
2. Serviceable. These are one of the most serviceable phones I have ever seen. So much so that I Frankensteined one from odd parts I got cheap. And I'm not a phone repair technician.
3. While battery capacity is pretty poor, there is nothing stopping me from carrying an spare one (or two -- they are thin & easy to stuff in a pocket) so that's a plus
4. Aluminum body is a little nicer than the plastic crap I had on the Samsungs.
5. "right size" screen. I don't have huge hands so a screen less than 5.5" is best for me. I'm not comfortable with anything bigger.
6. Always on display and the second notification led in the top edge of the phone is cool. Though for battery life, I only use the always-on display on rare occasions. The notification led on the top edge is a nice additions since I don't have to pull my phone out of my pocket to see that I missed someone trying to contact me.

There are downsides for sure:

• Piss-poor 3-party dev support. Only 3 models get any kind of rom support - the H850, H830 and RS988. That's it.
• LG's bootlocking policy blocks most models of this phone from being rooted. I need root support to be able to do full phone backups. There are some models that you can remove the bootblock lock on (the T-Mobile H830 and th4e RS988 being the most consistent with that feature not having a bunch of gotchas).
• While the body is aluminum, the finish is pretty fragile. I use cases always, so this isn't really a problem for me.
• No waterproofing at all. Not a big deal to me since I am not in the habit of dropping my phones in the toilet.

All in all I am satisfied that this phone will keep me happy for several years just as my (old) Sammy GS5 did.

 

[lorcro2000]

I love my G5. Picked it up at full retail when it launched and have no regrets. Hasn't given me any trouble at all, even survived a shoulder-height drop onto pavement. I was lucky it landed on the right edge. After that I got a case. That was over a year ago, if not two. It's an H850 so rootable, and the stock Oreo that came out for it improved battery life for me incredibly. On low usage days I come home after work with 80% remaining, after maybe an hour of SoT. It's on its second battery, which was easy to change, because, hello, swappable battery, which you can't get in a flagship anymore, which blows chunks.

Love this thing still. It will be a dark day if it breaks. And I'm going to have to put in a ROM of some kind, since LG stopped patching it, but its working so well with the stock I'm reluctant to mess with it.

---------- Post added at 01:31 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:28 PM ----------

Had it for years, has worked perfectly, does everything I need, on its second battery so SoT is great still.

 

[nikiva101]

I love this phone, its been going on three years

Yes, yes, it's possible to love a phone. Heck, you sleep next to it, don't you? Rate this thread to indicate your love for the LG G5, all things considered. A higher rating indicates that the LG G5 is an incredible phone that you enjoy tremendously. You love it.

Then, drop a comment if you have anything to add!

 

[DesChyko]

Just six months on the G5..

I got a refurb one I guess.. LG VS987 as an upgrade on the Samsung S3 which I've used for three years but gave me repairable hassles, which I don't mind.
It's been all pros for me, except the fact that I couldn't root the phone. The S3 took me a while to figure out how to root it even, but it was on this forum I found out rooting VS987 was impossible so I let that rest. However, I discovered I didn't need to root it anyway as the bloatware can simply be hidden and not used after forced closing. They don't autostart.
The reason I made this choice was the removable battery. I can easily swap out a weak one and in case it drops into liquid, I can easily pull the battery and probably carry out maintenance on it myself like I do on the S3.
The memory is also a plus, a whooping 2.5GB extra on the RAM compared to the S3 so my apps actually stat active for a long time. I was able to use three apps at once on a single screen and sent the screenshot to wow my colleagues using Multi Screen and QSlide apps.
The design is also a nice one for me. Slim and a little curved at both ends of the phone.

 

[ecdy]

Only one flaw

I had been using a G5 for over three years, dropped it only a few times (it was in a soft-cornered case), replaced the battery twice. I liked it for the replaceable battery, reasonably fast and smooth operation, dual camera with adequate resolution, SD card, etc. Really it's the replaceable battery that I value most.
But the normal back camera ceased to focus a couple of weeks ago, on either auto or manual modes, with behavior that looked like a mechanical glitch in the lens-moving mechanism. Apparently this is not an uncommon problem; it might lie somewhere in software, or in hardware--the camera module itself, or maybe contacts between the module and the back cover.
Rather than replace the camera module (cost about $20) I retired that phone and used LG Switch to move over to one of my spares--they're a great buy, brand new even now. LG Switch is a very useful program, but the spare phone was still 'way back on Android 6 or 7 and it had to go through all the updates to 8 in sequence..
Now I'm down to only one spare new one. I hope the camera in the unit I'm using now lasts more than 3 years.