LG G3: still holding strong after 6 months on the market

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Legend has it that a jolly white-bearded man lives up North, and once in December, he rewards all the kids that have been good throughout the year with presents of their choice. We wonder if his bag of gifts can hold enough smartphones as that's what most kids wish for nowadays. After all, they need something to send all those holiday tweets from.

But in all seriousness, there's no denying that a smartphone can make an excellent holiday gift, and one of our top recommendations this season is the LG G3. Even though it has been half a year since its market debut, LG's flagship still has what it takes to get us excited – the stand-out design, the powerful specs, the wonderful software experience, the excellent value-for-money ratio. In fact, the LG G3 is well capable of giving many high-end competitors a good run for their money this holiday season. Allow us to explain what makes us say that.

First things first, the LG G3 is designed to stand out. Sure, it is a big phone, and that's a realization one makes instantly after picking it up. But with its thin bezels, ergonomic shape, and high screen-to-body-size ratio, the G3 is surprisingly easy to wield for a handset of this caliber. The power button is placed on the back, right under your index finger, although instead of pressing it, you can conveniently double tap on the screen to wake the phone up. 

And when you wake it up, your eyes are treated to one of the G3's key stand-out features – its 5.5-inch QHD display. With its extremely high resolution and pixel density – 2560 by 1440 pixels for 538 pixels per inch –  the LG G3 produces graphics of sharpness and detail levels that few other smartphone screens can match. This huge asset makes the LG G3 and ideal phone for viewing photos and videos, browsing the web, and playing games. 

Speaking of games, the LG G3 has no troubles running even the most demanding games in the Play Store library. This is made possible by the high-performance hardware inside of it, including a 2.5GHz quad-core Snapdragon 801 SoC and 3GB of RAM. Specs like these make the LG G3 a worthy opponent to a number of other companies' flagship devices, including the Galaxy S5, HTC One (M8), and Sony Xperia Z3. 

In charge of this hardware is a heavily customized Android build. Visually, the software running on the LG G3 feels mature and streamlined. It is visually pleasing and highly customizable, with support for themes and icon packs, as you would expect out of a modern flagship phone. On top of this, you get a rich arsenal of features, including enhanced security, a smart and accurate keyboard, an array of note-taking functions, and the option to run two apps side by side. 

This post would be incomplete if we skip mentioning the LG G3's splendid 13MP camera. Behind a seemingly average megapixel count stands a great deal of innovative technology, which seamlessly ensures the immaculate presentation of your images. With its built-in optical image stabilization, the G3's camera minimizes the chance of you ending up with a blurry image even in low-light conditions, the dual-tone LED flash produces natural light for your shots, and the innovative laser-assisted focusing system is capable of locking the focus on a subject faster than the blink of an eye. All of this technology is topped off by a simple, minimalist, and easy-to-use interface that you can get the hang of in no time. 

So if by launching the G3, LG's aim was to deliver an innovative, feature-rich, and forward-thinking smartphone, then it has definitely succeeded. Even now, six months after its debut on the market and at the verge of the holiday shopping spree, the LG G3 is a phone that can make heads turn with its non-conformist design, hardware capabilities, and arsenal of software features. Whoever finds one in a gift box, with a ribbon and their name written on it, will be getting more then just a phone. They'll be getting a companion they can rely on.