LG G2 vs Samsung Galaxy S4 vs HTC One vs iPhone 5

Battery

Power up

The Samsung Galaxy S4 is similarly equipped to serve media fans, thanks to an almost-as-big 5-inch screen, up to 64GB of built in storage, a microSD card slot and solid battery life provided by a 2600mAh battery.

The HTC One has a great screen too, though with no microSD card slot your storage is limited to the 32GB that comes with the phone. It has brilliant speakers and reasonable battery life provided by a 2300mAh battery.

The iPhone 5 has a smaller 4-inch screen, so it's not as ideal for movies, but it's still a high quality picture and it provides true 16:9 widescreen. It has up to 64GB of storage, but like the HTC One there's no microSD card slot.

In other words all of these phones are great for media, but going on first impressions the LG G2 looks like it might actually be able to trump the competition as it promises the complete package of a great screen, great sound, long battery life and loads of storage.

Price

For many people the choice of phone will in large part come down to the price and while we'd hoped we'd be able to do a comparison on that, we unfortunately don't know what the LG G2 will retail for. However being a flagship device with specs to match we'd hazard a guess that it will be in the £450-£500 range at launch. That amounts to $620-$775 in the U.S. (off contract, of course) and AU$690-AU$863. That would put it roughly on a par with the Samsung Galaxy S4, HTC One and iPhone 5.

Conclusion

So far we have mixed feelings about the LG G2. The screen was good in the less-than-ideal conditions where we toyed around with the phone, the camera promises a lot and it's an enormously powerful handset. But LG seems to have placed a lot of focus on the user experience by putting the buttons on the back and adding a bunch of software features aimed at making life easier.

There's nothing wrong with that, but we're not convinced by how successful those will end up becoming. If anything, LG seems to be trying to solve a button problem that was never really there. The plastic build is also a little disappointing, particularly in comparison to the HTC One and iPhone 5.

Right now as an overall device we're not sure it's any better than the iPhone 5, HTC One or Samsung Galaxy S4 and LG is likely to have a hard time convincing consumers on these shores that they should buy it over any of the aforementioned devices.

James is a freelance phones, tablets and wearables writer and sub-editor at TechRadar. He has a love for everything ‘smart’, from watches to lights, and can often be found arguing with AI assistants or drowning in the latest apps. James also contributes to 3G.co.uk, 4G.co.uk and 5G.co.uk and has written for T3, Digital Camera World, Clarity Media and others, with work on the web, in print and on TV.

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