The LG G8 Review: Solid, But Not Great
by Andrei Frumusanu on April 30, 2019 1:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Mobile
- LG
- Smartphones
- LG G8
- LG G8 ThinQ
GPU Performance
GPU and gaming performance of the G8 is something that is dictated by both the SoC as well as the phone's overall hardware design, specifically its thermal dissipation design.
We saw the Snapdragon 855 perform very well in the Galaxy S10, although the absolute improvements compared to the previous generation were quite conservative. Here the new LG G8 could distinguish itself by showcasing different thermal characteristics and possibly better sustained performance figures.
In the 3DMark Physics test which is mostly a CPU-bound workload within a GPU power constrained scenario, we indeed see the G8 performing better than the Galaxy S10+, which is a promising start. Huawei’s Kirin 980 phones here still lead the pack in terms of both peak as well as sustained performance.
The graphics test puts the G8 in line with the S10+ - both showcasing excellent performance. The Note9 still leads here due to Samsung having extremely lax thermal constraints on that device, resulting in quite high skin temperatures in long sustained scenarios.
In both Vulkan Aztec tests the G8 also leads the S10+ in the sustained performance department, even though the absolute improvements over last year’s G7 aren’t very big.
Finally, in Manhattan and T-Rex the G8 posts the most muted performance improvements over the G7, ending up almost identical sustained performance scores as last year’s phone. Here we also see the G8 tie with the Galaxy S10+.
Overall the GPU performance of the G8 and the Snapdragon 855 is very similar to that of the Galaxy S10+. The G8 is ahead of Samsung’s phone in some tests, which seems to be tied to more lax CPU thermal constraints. On other tests, the phone is pretty much in line with what we saw on the S10: conservative improvements over last year’s Snapdragon 845 phones such as the G7.
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hanselltc - Wednesday, May 1, 2019 - link
my question is, what the actual heck happened to the s10 with exynos in that second last picture on page 6?hanselltc - Wednesday, May 1, 2019 - link
Wait what? G8 has a night view mode now? was it not available or did u just didn't find it out lolhanselltc - Wednesday, May 1, 2019 - link
you just mentioned boombox and didn't test it or what?pjcamp - Wednesday, May 1, 2019 - link
If LG wants to differentiate itself, it can do two easy things: knock it off with the skins, and allow rooting. There aren't a whole lot of reasons to root anymore, but making Android Auto behave is one of them.PeachNCream - Thursday, May 2, 2019 - link
Dumping useless stock protrams that are out of date on day one and need an update anyway is another good reason to root. That Google search thing, Youtube, Chrome, two Photo viewers (Gallery and some Google Pictures thing), the books program, the doubled up music players, the movie software, all of that is useless crap that requires a lot of permissions. Nevermind the mandatory Facebook vendor value-add, like anyone older than 40 or younger than 20 even touches social media with a ten foot pole these days plus whatever other worthless stuff the phone company thinks I want. Rooting is nice to free up a chunk of memory so you can shuffle more useful apps into the system reserved area of NAND or roll old versions out and stuff current ones in so its a pity rooting is a rare thing. Though, I'd take a removable battery and an un-rootable phone 100% of the time over a sealed battery and rootability.Ratman6161 - Wednesday, May 1, 2019 - link
To me, this article points out something that I've always believed which is that benchmarks are useful but are nowhere near the whole story. So read them, but don't put an excessive amount of faith in them. They don't really tell you what the user experience is like.AdhesiveTeflon - Wednesday, May 1, 2019 - link
Great, are they going to have boot loop issues again where you get another refurb phone with the same boot loop issue?pcslide - Wednesday, May 1, 2019 - link
Can anyone tell me where were all those photos taken? I very much appreciate the scenery. Thx in advance.ukTechfiend - Thursday, May 2, 2019 - link
Fail to see how the G7 battery is such a disappointment to anybody, well over a days use possible, even two days is easy if you use it moderately. Also as far as colour saturation goes with the G8 screen, isn't this adjustable in the settings, like the G7? Full adjustment of saturation and colour tone is easily changed to your own preference.Andrei Frumusanu - Thursday, May 2, 2019 - link
It's not possible to get anywhere near better saturations with the manual controls.