LG G4 vs LG G3 vs LG G2 – battery life comparison

G4vsG3vsG2 batteryFollowing on our LG G4 battery life article, we decided to dig deeper and see how LG’s flagship line has been holding up in our battery tests over the years and compare their results. The devices that we are going to take a look at are the LG G4, LG G3 and LG G2.

Before we start, we want to explain once again how we perform our battery tests. The settings at which we test the devices are always the same – brightness is set to 120 cd/m2, Wi-Fi is turned on and 3G and GPS are turned off. We measure the battery life during a phone call, web surfing via Wi-Fi, 3D gaming and video playback.

Battery life depends on lots of factors. Some of them are the capacity of the unit, of course, the SoC found in the model, along with screen size and resolution, and last but not least the operating system. Both the UI and OS receive updates in order to fix bugs, add new features and improve performance and battery life. A couple of years-old devices don’t receive the latest optimizations, but that doesn’t mean that they haven’t been updated since their release.

In the graph below you can see some of the specs of the aforementioned devices, to obtain a better grasp of the whole picture.

SmartphoneLG G4LG G3LG G2
Display5.5 inch QHD (2560 x 1440 pixels)5.5 inch QHD (2560 x 1440 pixels)5.2 inch Full HD (1920 x 1080 pixels)
CPUSnapdragon 808 (2x Cortex-A57 @ 1.88 GHzSnapdragon 801 (4x Krait 400 @ 2.46 GHzSnapdragon 800 (4x Krait 400 @ 2.26 GHz
GPUAdreno 418Adreno 330Adreno 330
RAM3 GB2 GB2 GB
Battery3000 mAh3000 mAh3000 mAh

Both the G2 and G3 run on quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon SoC’s, that have all their cores clocked up at the same frequency. This means that no matter how light and easy or heavy and demanding the task is, it will be dealt by the same cores. In LG G4, the SoC is a hexa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon, which has two clusters. One of them consists of four Cortex-A53 cores, clocked at 1.44 GHz, which are more energy efficient than the Cortex-A57 cores, clocked at 1.82 GHz, found in the second cluster. This should lead to better energy consumption, meaning that low-demanding applications, tasks and processes will be handled by the quad-core cluster, while the harder ones will make use of the dual-core one. The battery capacity of all the devices is 3000 mAh.

In the graph below you can see how each device held up in our battery tests. Quick information about them: Wi-Fi Web surfing – we use a custom script that goes through various websites; 3D gaming – we run the Epic Citadel benchmark on a continuous loop; Video playback – we use a 720p HD video.

SmartphoneLG G4LG G3LG G2
Wi-Fi Web sufring470 minutes (6 hours and 50 minutes)466 minutes (7 hours and 46 minutes)583 minutes (9 hours and 43 minutes)
3D gaming188 minutes (3 hours and 8 minutes)219 minutes (3 hours and 39 minutes)222 minutes (3 hours and 42 minutes)
Video playback478 minutes (7 hours and 58 minutes)567 minutes (9 hours and 27 minutes)/td>587 minutes (9 hours and 47 minutes)

As you can see battery life is slowly decreasing with every generation. None of the results you see above are bad, but it is interesting how the older technology performs better or at least the implementation of the new technology isn’t good. We know that the bigger displays and higher pixel density increase power consumption, but since the G2 there have been a lot of software optimizations in order to improve the battery life.

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Apple Lover
8 années il y a un an

Dude G3 is 3GB RAM not 2GB. I think you copy and past the wrong information. There is a 16GB ROM and 32 GB ROM mine is 3GB RAM and 32 GB internal plus expandable to Micro SD card.

brayanhabid
brayanhabid
8 années il y a un an

How did you get that G3 up to 7 hours + of web surfing? Mine won’t get past 4 hours, no matter which method I try.

Rossen Pandev
8 années il y a un an
Répondre à  brayanhabid

We’ve mentioned what are the settings for the tests. Wi-Fi turned on, location off, Bluetooth off, and screen brightness set to 120 cd/m2.

Drew
Drew
8 années il y a un an

I still use a G2 and I can get 2 days off one charge with what is now a 2+ year old battery. 3 days with really light use. Hopefully the G5 will be closer to the life of the g2 because it has spoiled me…going back to charging more than once a day would be a huge downgrade imo

Paul Tasker
8 années il y a un an

The G2 has half as many pixels on the screen. Less powerful processor but the same size battery. Each version places more demands on the same size battery. The 3000mah is superb for a full Hd device resulting in G2 doing well. The G3 has to power a bigger higher resolution screen. Its always going to come of worse. Id say biggest disappointment is G4. With those low power cores and 2nd generation screen you would expect better. I have the G3 and am pleasantly surprised. It’s much better than galaxy s6 I had for a few days. That phone… Read more »

Paul Tasker
8 années il y a un an

Have to agree. About 4 hours of web surfing seems realistic with G3. The absolute most I’ve ever had was 7 out of a z3 compact which only has 720p screen 4.6 inch and 2700mah battery. However only when new. After a few weeks was down to 6. 7.5 must be at minimum brightness.

JONATHAN N LITTRELL
JONATHAN N LITTRELL
7 années il y a un an

My g4 last two days. Much better than the g2 i had, doing the same on both. Screen at 70% bluetooth off wifi on sync on. Very pleased with the g4.