LG G4 preview: A second encounter

Performance

LG G4 is the first smartphone to come out with the Snapdragon 808 chip. Qualcomm announced the 808 revision side by side with the flagship 810 model, but it is only now that we are seeing it in action for the first time.

The Snapdragon 808 offers a hexa-core 64-bit processor with two Cortex-A57 and four Cortex-A53 cores, an Adreno 418 GPU and 3GB of RAM.

According to LG, the chipset is supposed to provide equally good performance as the Samsung's Exynos 7420 found in the Galaxy S6 - at least for the regular daily tasks.

We ran some benchmarks on a Korean preview unit. The smartphone runs Android 5.1 Lollipop and we'd reckon the software should be pretty much final since the phone is already on sale in its motherland.

LG G4 leaves a lotto be desired in the CPU-centric GeekBench 3 benchmark. The smartphone lags behind this year's crop of flagship smartphone

GeekBench 3

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S6
  5215
• Samsung Galaxy S6 edge
  5095
• HTC One M9
  3761
• LG G Flex2
  3604
• Samsung Galaxy Note 4 Lollipop
  3394
• LG G4 F500L (S.Korea)
  2532
• Asus Zenfone 2 ZE551ML review
  2423

The trend continues in the AnTuTu 5 benchmark, which includes RAM and storage speed into the mix and is an indication of the overall performance of the device. LG G4 came close to HTC One M9, though it is far from the showing of Samsung Galaxy S6.

AnTuTu 5

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S6 edge
  70053
• Samsung Galaxy S6
  69396
• HTC One M9
  51427
• LG G4 F500L (S.Korea)
  49777
• Samsung Galaxy Note 4 Lollipop
  49273
• LG G Flex2
  47680
• Asus Zenfone 2 ZE551ML review
  42301

BaseMark OS II is an overall compound benchmark, while BaseMark X focuses on the device's GPU. See the LG G4 results below.

Basemark OS II

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S6 edge
  1826
• Samsung Galaxy S6
  1769
• LG G4 F500L (S.Korea)
  1672
• LG G Flex2
  1601
• HTC One M9
  1526
• Samsung Galaxy Note 4 Lollipop
  1332
• Asus Zenfone 2 ZE551ML review
  1094

Basemark OS II (single-core)

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S6
  3497
• Samsung Galaxy S6 edge
  3372
• Samsung Galaxy Note 4 Lollipop
  2574
• LG G Flex2
  2528
• LG G4 F500L (S.Korea)
  2423
• HTC One M9
  2401
• Asus Zenfone 2 ZE551ML review
  1462

Basemark OS II (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S6
  16986
• Samsung Galaxy S6 edge
  16856
• HTC One M9
  10128
• LG G Flex2
  9758
• Samsung Galaxy Note 4 Lollipop
  9198
• LG G4 F500L (S.Korea)
  8441
• Asus Zenfone 2 ZE551ML review
  5600

Basemark X

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S6
  27169
• Samsung Galaxy S6 edge
  27046
• Samsung Galaxy Note 4 Lollipop
  20043
• HTC One M9
  19848
• LG G Flex2
  19360
• LG G4 F500L (S.Korea)
  15090
• Asus Zenfone 2 ZE551ML review
  12565

GFXBench puts the Adreno 418 GPU of LG G4 to the test. Again, the component doesn't quite match the performance of its competitors in the segment.

GFX 2.7 T-Rex (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S6
  59
• Samsung Galaxy S6 edge
  59
• LG G Flex2
  49
• HTC One M9
  49
• Samsung Galaxy Note 4 Lollipop
  40
• LG G4 F500L (S.Korea)
  35
• Asus Zenfone 2 ZE551ML review
  27

GFX 2.7 T-Rex (onscreen)

Higher is better

• HTC One M9
  50
• LG G Flex2
  48
• Samsung Galaxy S6 edge
  39
• Samsung Galaxy S6
  38
• Asus Zenfone 2 ZE551ML review
  27
• Samsung Galaxy Note 4 Lollipop
  26
• LG G4 F500L (S.Korea)
  25

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S6 edge
  26
• Samsung Galaxy S6
  24
• HTC One M9
  23
• LG G Flex2
  22
• Samsung Galaxy Note 4 Lollipop
  18
• LG G4 F500L (S.Korea)
  15
• Asus Zenfone 2 ZE551ML review
  13

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (onscreen)

Higher is better

• HTC One M9
  24
• LG G Flex2
  22
• Samsung Galaxy S6 edge
  15
• Samsung Galaxy S6
  14
• Asus Zenfone 2 ZE551ML review
  13
• Samsung Galaxy Note 4 Lollipop
  11
• LG G4 F500L (S.Korea)
  9.4

Update, May 14: We re-ran the Kraken benchmark and got a much better result, close to what the Galaxy S6 scores.

Kraken 1.1

Lower is better

• Samsung Galaxy S6 edge
  3989
• Samsung Galaxy S6
  4154
• LG G4 F500L (S.Korea)
  4310
• LG G Flex2
  4621
• Samsung Galaxy Note 4 Lollipop
  5181
• HTC One M9
  5500
• Asus Zenfone 2 ZE551ML review
  6360

We also tried BrorwserMark 2.1 again though it returned the slightly disappointing score from before. We'll investigate the performance further in the review.

BrowserMark 2.1

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S6
  2718
• Samsung Galaxy S6 edge
  2702
• Samsung Galaxy Note 4 Lollipop
  2232
• LG G Flex2
  2086
• LG G4 F500L (S.Korea)
  1939
• HTC One M9
  1681
• Asus Zenfone 2 ZE551ML review
  1486

Overall, LG G4 didn't impress in our benchmark performance tests. We will revisit them when we get our hands on a retail unit of the device, but the early signs don't look promising.

It is important to note, that we didn't experience any hiccups while using the smartphone in real life - LG G4 felt snappy and ultra-responsive regardless of the task we threw at it. High-end gaming wasn't an issue either - LG G4 ran Dead Trigger 2 and Real Racing 3 without breaking a sweat.