OK, I have been on the Verizon ship since 2007 or so, and on their smartphone ship since 2010. Now, I am only a sophomore in high school, so this review might be slightly different than one from an adult. Well, here goes.
When I found out about T-Mobile buying out contracts from Verizon, Sprint, and AT&T, I felt as if I had to have them. For me, Verizon had been screwing up with Android since I had the Droid 2 back in 2010. They are the slowest at putting updates out (their S3, my previous phone, got 4.3 back in mid-December), they don't carry Nexus devices anymore, they screwed up with the Galaxy Nexus. All of these of course are my opinion, but they are important things to me. So with T-Mobile doing this, I jumped on it (no pun intended). I told my parents all we would be gaining for doing the switch, and what we would possibly lose. All we would lose as a family is some signal out of town, but we gained so much more. A cheaper plan, all of us got a new device, we gained GSM, which is a huge plus for me since I am going to Spain this summer. T-Mobile has international texting included in their plans for free, calling is 20¢ a minute, and let's face it, as a teen, I don't talk on the phone much at all through voice. I do a lot of texting, though. I gain the international texting all because I went to GSM. Their service in my area is excellent, I haven't been in an area that I have been below 2 bars of LTE, even places where I had 3G on Verizon. At my house, I now have 2-3 bars of LTE in my room. My room is a basement, and with Verizon I would drop signal all the time. That hasn't happened to me yet. Now on to the phone review.
Let me explain why I chose the G2 over other devices that I could have gotten. My first choice was the Note 3 until I saw the price per month, which was $5 more than on the G2, and the only thing I gained was a bigger screen and 1GB more RAM. Everything else is virtually the same. I was at first cautious about LG, as I have never had a device made by them since I had a flip phone. I was also cautious about button placement. I quickly adapted to the new layout. The phone is blazing fast, and it has amazing battery life. It has a 3,000 MaH battery in it. My phone choices other than this that I had to choose between personally were the S4, Nexus 5, HTC One, and the Note 3 mentioned earlier. I was first gonna go with the Nexus 5, but didn't mainly because the camera on the G2, S4, Note 3, and HTC One all outperform it. Then it came down to what was inside. With the release of the S4 and HTC One coming before the release of the Snapdragon 800, they have a lower clocked quad core. That left the Note 3 and the G2. The thing there was price. I didn't want to pay $30 a month for the Note 3, so I went to the G2 for $5 less. I fell in love with the camera on the G2, it is so much better than the S3.
Now I will go to software and how it handles itself in the OS. This device runs 4.2.2 with specs that could easily power 4.4. Same specs as the Nexus 5. It handles 4.2 well, and it handles it's own custom UI well. I had Nova Launcher on there for 5 minutes before even giving LG's UI a try. Their UI is very good, smooth, and fits the phone well. I uninstalled Nova because of this. The only thing I don't like is the icons, but I can deal with that. Within LG's UI, I haven't had any hangs in the system, and I haven't had any apps stop responding. The phone handles this all well.
On to the build quality of it. It feels like a very solid built phone. It doesn't creak, it doesn't feel hollow, and it doesn't have gaps like some of these "non user-serviceable" phones have around the edge. The buttons feel solid. The screen sensitivity is amazing. The only issue I have is the glossiness of the back picks up smudges like crazy. I can get a case to take care of that.
Any other thoughts about it from me? Yes. This phone has been under appreciated by what I have seen, and it hasn't picked up as much good reputation as others. It is hidden by the HTC One, the S4, the Note 3, and the iPhone 5S and 5C. LG has never really been in the game to be top, they are out there to make the products that are amazing for their price, and this one hit that right on the spot. The reason I didn't go with an iPhone is because the last one I owned, a 32GB 5, was honestly nothing too special. I'm not going back to a phone that I can't do what I want to it for customization. That is also why I left Windows Phone 8 after about 1 month of usage. Too much of a boring design. This is the one phone I have found that has completely sold itself to me in the first day of owning it.
When I found out about T-Mobile buying out contracts from Verizon, Sprint, and AT&T, I felt as if I had to have them. For me, Verizon had been screwing up with Android since I had the Droid 2 back in 2010. They are the slowest at putting updates out (their S3, my previous phone, got 4.3 back in mid-December), they don't carry Nexus devices anymore, they screwed up with the Galaxy Nexus. All of these of course are my opinion, but they are important things to me. So with T-Mobile doing this, I jumped on it (no pun intended). I told my parents all we would be gaining for doing the switch, and what we would possibly lose. All we would lose as a family is some signal out of town, but we gained so much more. A cheaper plan, all of us got a new device, we gained GSM, which is a huge plus for me since I am going to Spain this summer. T-Mobile has international texting included in their plans for free, calling is 20¢ a minute, and let's face it, as a teen, I don't talk on the phone much at all through voice. I do a lot of texting, though. I gain the international texting all because I went to GSM. Their service in my area is excellent, I haven't been in an area that I have been below 2 bars of LTE, even places where I had 3G on Verizon. At my house, I now have 2-3 bars of LTE in my room. My room is a basement, and with Verizon I would drop signal all the time. That hasn't happened to me yet. Now on to the phone review.
Let me explain why I chose the G2 over other devices that I could have gotten. My first choice was the Note 3 until I saw the price per month, which was $5 more than on the G2, and the only thing I gained was a bigger screen and 1GB more RAM. Everything else is virtually the same. I was at first cautious about LG, as I have never had a device made by them since I had a flip phone. I was also cautious about button placement. I quickly adapted to the new layout. The phone is blazing fast, and it has amazing battery life. It has a 3,000 MaH battery in it. My phone choices other than this that I had to choose between personally were the S4, Nexus 5, HTC One, and the Note 3 mentioned earlier. I was first gonna go with the Nexus 5, but didn't mainly because the camera on the G2, S4, Note 3, and HTC One all outperform it. Then it came down to what was inside. With the release of the S4 and HTC One coming before the release of the Snapdragon 800, they have a lower clocked quad core. That left the Note 3 and the G2. The thing there was price. I didn't want to pay $30 a month for the Note 3, so I went to the G2 for $5 less. I fell in love with the camera on the G2, it is so much better than the S3.
Now I will go to software and how it handles itself in the OS. This device runs 4.2.2 with specs that could easily power 4.4. Same specs as the Nexus 5. It handles 4.2 well, and it handles it's own custom UI well. I had Nova Launcher on there for 5 minutes before even giving LG's UI a try. Their UI is very good, smooth, and fits the phone well. I uninstalled Nova because of this. The only thing I don't like is the icons, but I can deal with that. Within LG's UI, I haven't had any hangs in the system, and I haven't had any apps stop responding. The phone handles this all well.
On to the build quality of it. It feels like a very solid built phone. It doesn't creak, it doesn't feel hollow, and it doesn't have gaps like some of these "non user-serviceable" phones have around the edge. The buttons feel solid. The screen sensitivity is amazing. The only issue I have is the glossiness of the back picks up smudges like crazy. I can get a case to take care of that.
Any other thoughts about it from me? Yes. This phone has been under appreciated by what I have seen, and it hasn't picked up as much good reputation as others. It is hidden by the HTC One, the S4, the Note 3, and the iPhone 5S and 5C. LG has never really been in the game to be top, they are out there to make the products that are amazing for their price, and this one hit that right on the spot. The reason I didn't go with an iPhone is because the last one I owned, a 32GB 5, was honestly nothing too special. I'm not going back to a phone that I can't do what I want to it for customization. That is also why I left Windows Phone 8 after about 1 month of usage. Too much of a boring design. This is the one phone I have found that has completely sold itself to me in the first day of owning it.
