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The LG G5 is a rare breed of smartphones, as it is one of the very few now which offer a removable battery.
Years ago it was almost a given that you'd be able to remove the battery from your phone, buy a spare and swap them round when one had died. However, as phones began to demand style and fashion sense, the days of removable batteries are now numbered.
LG is one of the last remaining holdouts for the removable battery form - and a button towards the base of the left side of the G5 allows you to pull the bottom bezel out of the phone when pressed. Attached to this bezel is LG's luminous power pack which you can up clip - with a large amount of force.
I was worried I might snap the connectors, such was the force required to remove the battery and I fear this could be a weak point going forward for the G5.
The G5 comes with a 2800mAh power pack, which is actually smaller than the LG G4, and the Samsung Galaxy S7 - both of which offer 3000mAh batteries.
That's a little disappointing, and unfortunately the smaller battery size does show. With moderate to heavy usage I found the G5 wouldn't get past early evening before dying.
I regularly had to give it a top up before leaving the office if I wanted the G5 to see it through until bedtime - and with a USB-C connection and no wireless charging on offer it made the process all the more frustrating.
Not that I'm complaining about the inclusion of the USB Type-C port - it's the incoming new technology and more and more handsets are adopting it. That's a good thing, but while I have a wealth of microUSB cables, I'm limited when it comes to the new form.
You'll need to remember to take your charger with you if you're a moderate or heavy user then, as the G5 will need topping up at some point.
Diving into the battery usage details and the main culprits are the screen (no surprise), and idle drain (slightly more surprising).
In fact, idle drain could account for up to 20% of battery drain every day - which is a pretty steep loss considering the phone is just sitting there.
Start using the G5 and intensive games such as Real Racing 3 can give it quite a hammering, but even basic web browsing and social networking saw several percentage points drop off.
Some mornings I could find myself down by over 25% within the first three hours of the day, with my commute consisting of Spotify music streaming, a few rounds of Clan Royale and some frantic emailing taking their toll.
The LG G5 doesn't compare favorably to the Galaxy S7, which I found easily saw out a full day, even with moderate to heavy usage.
There is a power saving mode, which assists in reducing power, background activity and screen brightness to keep you going a bit longer - but ideally I don't want to be turning this on mid-way through my day.
Imagine my surprise then when I ran the techradar battery test on the G5 and it lost just 9% of juice - an impressive performance.
The test involves playing a 90 minute HD video at full brightness while connected to Wi-Fi and accounts syncing in the background.
That's a better performance than the Galaxy S7 (13%), which has a smaller - yet brighter - display and the LG G4 (15%). It's also a significantly better showing than the iPhone 6S (which lost 30%), and Sony Xperia Z5 (25%).
On the other hand the G5 didn't perform as well in our web browsing test. Using a web script the phone cycled through a series of websites for two hours and was down to 39% battery by the end.
Of the five phones it was pitted against only the iPhone 6S performed worse, with a drop to 22%. The Sony Xperia Z5 scored slightly better with 40% and the Huawei P9, Samsung Galaxy S7 and HTC 10 all performed better still.
A way around the battery drain problem is to invest in LG's Cam Plus module for the G5, which sports an integrated 1200mAh battery as well as a shutter key, zoom wheel, record button and hand grip.
At £79.99 (US$69.99, around AU$90) it's not exactly a cheap fix, and as I mentioned in an earlier section of this review it does add significant bulk to the handset making it a little tricky to use when you're not snapping pictures.
Having used the LG G5 for a number of days with the Cam Plus module attached I was easily able to get a full days use from the phone, and at a push I could eke out a day and a half.
