This is my first smart phone, but I'm familiar with friends and family members smartphones... The reason I put off getting one for so long?
Addictive personality.
My review:
I'd complain about the battery life, but I've been running on full brightness with wifi/bluetooth/GPS/mobile data/speakers on full blast, while walking around the house bumping into walls because I can't put it down... I guess having to recharge it twice or more a day isn't that bad, considering how I'm using/abusing it.
I am (in case you couldn't tell) pleasantly surprised with this phone. I've always loved LG's, have had wonderful experiences with them. They always seem to do exactly what I want, and they last. At least in my experience... My old ENV3 had better speakers, and I will miss my keyboard, but I'm surprised how fast I've gotten with the touchscreen. I replaced the keyboard app with "Perfect Keyboard" only for the arrows. That was my only complaint with the stock keyboard app, maybe I just couldn't find them.
I was in a hurry to root this thing before I even got it, but honestly? I'm a lot more happy with it stock than I expected. It will be the first android phone that I'll be rooting, and I would like to thank everyone here for the awesome collection of information you have provided, your posts here have been extremely helpful in getting me up to speed. Hopefully I won't have any problems, but it's good to know I can come here for help/reference.
I did have to do a factory reset on it, however, as I kept getting the "phone.android.com stopped working" error, but I think it was because I had 2000 contacts in my gmail account and I panicked when it tried to sync them all and I think I aborted it or something, not sure exactly, like I said, I panicked. I did not want 2000 fricking contacts in my phone. It was my fault, and I'm not saying the phone can't handle 2000+ contacts... But I figured I'd mention it. I'm happy to report that I haven't had a single problem with it in a weeks worth of use since the factory reset.
While I love the look and design of the phone chassis, it just did not fit well in my hands... Maybe it's because they are small and womanly,
but I kept feeling like it would fall out of my hand because it was so thin... I almost dropped it trying to change the volume. I picked up a Trident Aegis case for it on ebay, on a whim really, and now I'm in heaven. I'm sure there are better cases for it, but this one suits me perfectly. Came with a car charger and screen protector too. It feels much better in my hand now, and I'm not constantly worrying about smudging up the back camera.
Speaking of the camera, let's be honest, it's not so good in dark areas, but it's a phone, and I bet it beats the iPhone camera. The flash seems to work great, and brightly lit shots look as they should, in my opinion. I took some beautiful shots of the sunrise this morning and was more than happy with the results. The HDR looked especially nice, and I was surprised to see HDR mode.
I've been out of the loop for so long, HDR is probably in all the smart phones these days. Some review complained about background noise when filming 1080p, but I didn't notice it. I've also heard complaints about the speaker, but I'm just happy with the 3.5mm headphone jack. Although the volume to my headphones is way too low. Does anyone have a fix/app for that? TIA
I didn't expect 4gb of bloatware though. I call it bloatware because of my inexperience, I'm sure someone here will correct my ignorance, but I wasn't expecting the entire OS to use up half my internal storage... Maybe that's an Android thing and not an LG thing, but I'm guessing it's Verizon and LG and Android combined.
But that's what 64gb microSD cards are for, right? I got this phone for "free" with contract from verizon, but I think I would be just as happy if I had paid retail for it.
Thanks again for all your hard work everyone, I really appreciate the guides and references.
Happy Hacking!