LG G6 review: Cutting corners... Like a pro

Gallery

LG G6's Gallery app supports Albums and Timeline views. In both, you can pinch zoom to change the size of thumbnails and in Timeline view this has the added effect of moving between photos grouped by day, month or year.

You can easily bring in more photos on the device - the G6 supports DLNA (so you can view photos stored on computers on your network) and cloud support. It's pleasingly comprehensive - Drive, Box, Dropbox, and OneDrive are supported (with most phones you get just one of those or not even that much).

Albums • Camera reel • Timeline view • Image options • Cloud sync

The Memories screen takes photos and videos and creates a short video out of them (the content is grouped by time and location). Collages and slideshows take just a few taps to create and then the Play on other device option will use Miracast to send your media to your TV.

The image editor is a very basic one. You get filters, cropping, and rotation, but the image parameters you can alter are limited to Light, Color and Pop.

Viewing an image • Image details • Basic editor

Music player

South Korea gets a QuadDAC in the G6, the world gets a DAC. The music player is just the same though. With DLNA and cloud support (same as the Gallery: Drive, Box, Dropbox, and OneDrive), accessing your music library is a breeze.

DLNA and Cloud access make maintaining your library a breeze • Library • Album view

The Now playing interface makes use of the squares concept with the album art on top (couldn't find any for our Sting album, though), and controls on the bottom. Go into landscape and a playlist shows up in the right square.

The Now playing interface: In portrait • In landscape • On the lockscreen

For lossy music formats you have access to the equalizer (it's disabled for FLAC/ALAC). It can subjectively improve the sound. It has a QuadBeat setting for LG's own headsets, Bass, Treble and Vocal boosters too. A 5-band equalizer is on hand for those who want manual control. For those who'd like to fool around there's pitch and speed control too.

Equalizer presets • Custom EQ • Pitch and speed control, because why not

The music player itself is easy to use and has niceties like Folder view and automatic search on YouTube for the song's music video. Play on another device is available too, for DLNA-enabled players and speakers.

FM radio

In a weird turn of events our otherwise US version of the G6 (as evidenced by the wireless charging support) has an FM radio receiver as well. We don't know the implications of that and we won't be pondering too much on it.

The fact is, the app is one of the slickest-looking we've seen. It supports RDS so it will pull the current station's name along with whatever gibberish it's broadcasting. It only does it for the current station and not for the entire list of stations. You can name 6 favorite stations, there's an option to output through the speaker (headphones still needed for reception), and there's a sleep timer as well. No recording though.

FM Radio player

Video player and editor

There's no dedicated video player, you launch videos from the Gallery or the File browser, which is fine by us. Both apps have cloud support. You get thumbnails for seeking preview, a screenshot shortcut in the interface, and a GIF maker (5, 10, or 15 seconds length).

Video player • Seeking preview • GIF maker

The video player supports QSlide if you want to view the video in a small, floating window. You can also manually load a subtitle file and change the font.

QSlide • Player settings • Subtitle settings

There's a video editor that lets you cut out parts of the video (the Auto option picks the best 15/30/60 seconds of video). It can also change the playback speed for parts of the video to create a dramatic effect.

Solid audio output

The LG G6 doesn't have the impressive loudness of the V20 either with headphones or with an active external amplifier, but it's still above average in both parts of our test.

The clarity however was top notch - perfect with no resistance applied to its line-out and excellent with our standard headphones set. The only affected reading was stereo crosstalk and even that didn't suffer too much.

Keep in mind that LG will supply the G6 with a Quad DAC in the South Korean Market so this model might get even better results but we're perfectly happy with what we've got on this one anyway.

LG G6 frequency response

You can learn more about the tested parameters and the whole testing process here.