‘Mirror’s Edge Catalyst’ gets delayed once again

EA will release Mirror’s Edge Catalyst on June 7th in North America and June 9th across Europe, a delay of two weeks. This is the second time Catalyst has been delayed; the first re-scheduling pushed the game’s release back three months, from February 23rd to May 24th. In the first instance, DICE Senior Producer Sara Jansson said the team needed more time to polish the game’s mechanics. This time around, Design Director Erik Odeldahl says DICE needs more time to work on Social Play features.

“To support the Social Play features, we are using a brand new online technology,” Odeldahl says. “We also want to make sure we have the opportunity and time to address player feedback from the Closed Beta.”

The Mirror’s Edge Catalyst closed beta kicks off on April 22nd and will be live through April 26th.

If video killed the radio star, VR slayed it

There’s nothing in virtual reality quite as rapturous as exiting Tyler Hurd’s Old Friend for the first time. The uptempo, computer-animated experience, backed by up and coming VR studio Wevr, is a three-minute long, hyperactive, confetti-filled romp through a neon-hued world of happy clouds, little naked green men (that wouldn’t look out of place on the set of The Muppets) and one very determined marching band leader. It’s essentially a dance party set to the Future Islands track of the same name and it stars you, the viewer, as a squiggly-armed raver. In a way, it does for VR what The Buggles’ Video Killed the Radio Star did for MTV: It’s defining a whole new genre for a whole new medium. Think of it as the next phase in the evolution of the music video.

“Yes, music videos exist, but this is a whole new category of music interactivity… music storytelling because you interact with it,” says Wevr co-founder Anthony Batt of Old Friend’s appeal. “… When you look at the [little green] guys, they look at you. They see your hands. So when we saw Tyler’s piece, we just thought, ‘It is a whole new space. Just a whole new thing.’ And I think VR needs that. For it to be more popular, I think it needs to be more fun.”

Batt’s right to be concerned about the accessibility of VR. Many of the current commercial experiences, which are targeted at early adopters, either rely on principles of video gaming, proximity-based gimmicks, documentary work or high-art aesthetics. All of which can prove to be a barrier of entry for the broader tastes of the general public. Old Friend succeeds because it asks nothing more from the viewer other than to have fun, dance (if you want to) and inhabit a kaleidoscopic virtual space. Quite simply, it has mass appeal.

Old Friend’s marching band leader sets the pace for this VR dance party

The genius of Old Friend’s design is in how quickly it acclimates the viewer — be they VR veterans or novices — to the VR world before setting off on a high-octane thrill ride. It amuses so consistently, so fantastically with ever-changing colors, the constant pulse of the music and choreographed performances by the troupe of little green men all around you, that you forget to feel embarrassed about dancing with a bulky headset on. But it’s the ability to wave your avatar’s squiggly arms all about much like you would at a club or concert (and, hopefully, in time with the music) that really sells the experience. By incorporating your upper body, it makes the whole thing feel, well, real. It shifts you from a passive observer of this virtual synthpop revelry to the life of the party.

That appeal is due, in part, to the relentlessly upbeat visuals and infectious optimism of the Future Islands track that inspired it. But Old Friend works so convincingly because it taps into a deeper and more irresistible, primal human response to music. Simply put, it makes you want to dance; it makes you want to bust as many weird moves as you can with the coterie of Muppets-like creatures. It’s only when it ends that you realize Hurd’s taken something personal — like a private dance party for one you might’ve had in your living room or bedroom — and repurposed it into a virtual world. What Hurd’s created here is something you can expect will trigger a flood of imitators, especially as VR gains a pop culture foothold and more and more musicians seek to cash in on the medium.

And while elements of interactivity are present in the piece — happy-faced clouds and mountains smile when you gaze at them, and you can manipulate your avatar’s arms using the Vive controllers — they don’t overwhelm to the point of distraction like in so many other ambitious VR experiences. So though you can pull the controller’s trigger button to make your in-VR hand open and close, it doesn’t serve any deeper purpose; you can’t pick things up or reach out and touch anyone or thing.

You can move your hands (and even fist pump) to the beat in Old Friend

“It’s been kind of a process of figuring out how to add just the right amount of interactivity so people don’t feel like they need to do stuff,” says Hurd. “But also [to add] some rewards for trying. … I don’t know if you noticed, but if you touch the little guys, they bat their hands away.”

Old Friend’s high-profile premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival this week in New York is a significant victory for Hurd: It’s his first VR project, and he developed it himself. His road to the festival spotlight and studio distribution was serendipitous, to say the least. Hurd first caught Wevr’s attention with Butts, a cheeky, computer-animated short-cum-VR experience he’d created two years ago. But Butts didn’t start out as a VR project and, in fact, Hurd had nothing to do with its initial VR development.

It wasn’t until some friends of his out in San Francisco, who he’d worked with at video game developer Double Fine, had taken it upon themselves to adapt Butts for VR. As Hurd explains it, they’d been experimenting with Tilt Brush, the Google-developed VR painting application, and asked if they could port Butts to VR. Hurd, however, wasn’t sold on the burgeoning medium.

“I was like, ‘I don’t know. That sounds kinda stupid.’ I was like, it’s not gonna work because I was coming from a filmmaker thought with it. I had a camera in mind. What do you do about the camera?” he says.

Flatulence and confetti go hand-in-hand in Butts

Within a couple of weeks, Butts had been reborn as a VR experience, but Hurd, who was living in New York at the time, didn’t get to see the finished product until about six months later.

“They had a DK1 [Oculus’ first development kit] and a Kinect 2.0, and they were doing head tracking. Like their own mishmash head-tracking technique. … But then when I got to see it on a DK2, immediately I was like, ‘I need to do this now!,’” says Hurd of that first ecstatic brush with VR that led to his eventual epiphany.

Inspiration for Old Friend struck Hurd while riding the subway and listening to the Future Islands track. He’d direct a music video in his mind with “all these crazy dances” — a vision he built out with each successive listen. Once he’d decided to begin mocking up the experience using the track as the focal point, there was only one crucial hurdle left to overcome: licensing approval. Hurd says he tried every available point of contact he could find to get in touch with the band, but to no avail. Batt had suggested he change the track, but Hurd wouldn’t budge. “I was like, I’m not changing this song because the song inspired the piece. You change the song, you change the piece,” he says.

That is, until Wevr stepped in and finally hammered out a deal in the weeks leading up to Old Friend’s Tribeca debut.

Neither Hurd nor Batt would comment on exactly when Old Friend would see a commercial release, except to say that it’ll be sometime soon and will be distributed via Transport, Wevr’s VR Netflix-like content platform. Already, Hurd’s contemplating his next music-based VR project, for which he’ll once again partner with Wevr.

Old Friend’s happy world has clouds and mountains that smile when you look at them

“For the next one, I definitely want to incorporate hands more,” says Hurd of planned interactivity for future projects. “… I have some great ideas for how to create an avatar because the closer you get to an actual body, the weirder it is. It’s never going to be right. This one [Old Friend] is basically like you’re puppeting the character. So that puppeting thing I want to keep doing. I have some ideas for that.”

As for Future Islands’ reaction to Old Friend, well, that’s still somewhat of an unknown.

“They just know about it, but I haven’t actually ever talked to them directly or know if they’ve ever seen it. My hope is that now I’ll get to meet them and show them. And be like, you inspired me to do this. Thank you.”

Image credits: Tyler Hurd/Wevr

iCloud and Siri Teams at Odds as Apple Seeks to Move Cloud Services In-House

Apple’s efforts to move its cloud infrastructure in-house for its web services are being slowed by “political infighting” between the company’s iCloud and Siri engineering teams, according to The Information.

The paywalled report claims that the fighting is holding back Apple from fixing “technical problems that have plagued iCloud and iTunes,” while at least one key engineering manager is said to have departed the company over the ongoing conflict.

Steve D’Aurora, an engineering manager in a team led by Patrick Gates, resigned last week. That’s raised the possibility that Mr. D’Aurora’s superior, Darren Haas, a “head of cloud engineering,” would leave as well. Both Mr. D’Aurora and Mr. Haas joined Apple through its 2010 acquisition of Siri, the voice-activated assistant on the iPhone.

Multiple sources claim that Apple is working on building its own internal cloud infrastructure, known as “Project McQueen” internally, to reduce its dependence on services like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. Apple spends an estimated $1 billion or more on cloud services each year.

Apple reportedly inked a $400 to $600 million deal with Google last year to “significantly” cut down on its reliance on Amazon Web Services, but its reliance on third-party providers should decrease as it builds or expands new data centers in Arizona, Nevada, Oregon, Ireland, and Denmark.

The new infrastructure is meant to help improve the reliability of iCloud and Apple’s other apps. The infrastructure work has taken on added significance this year. Apple CEO Tim Cook has publicly played up the company’s intention to generate more Internet-services revenue from existing iPhone owners, including from the App Store and things like Apple Music.

In June 2015, it was reported that Apple is building a high-speed content delivery network and planning to upgrade its data centers with more of its own equipment. The foundation of the high-speed data network was reported to be long-haul pipes connecting Apple data centers in California, Nevada, North Carolina, and Oregon.

Apple may be enlisting Chinese server vendor Inspur to help migrate its cloud services in house. Inspur already has employees and facilities close to Apple’s headquarters in California, including an R&D team and production center, and it has previously agreed to partnerships with Microsoft, Intel, IBM, and other technology companies.

Tags: Siri, theinformation.com, Google Cloud Platform, AWS
Discuss this article in our forums

Griffin’s $40 BreakSafe Power Cable Brings MagSafe to the 12-Inch MacBook Starting April 25

Griffin Technology has announced that its BreakSafe Magnetic USB-C Power Cable for the 12-inch Retina MacBook, including the new Early 2016 model introduced earlier this week, will start shipping on Monday, April 25.

BreakSafe is a magnetic breakaway power cable for USB-C laptops such as the 12-inch MacBook which, unlike the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro, does not feature Apple’s proprietary MagSafe technology first introduced in 2006.

The cable, originally announced at CES 2016, has a quick-release magnetic connector that plugs into the 12-inch MacBook’s USB-C port and safely disconnects from the rest of the cable when under stress or strain, such as tripping over the power cord.

BreakSafe’s magnetic connector is 12.8mm deep, while the USB-C cable is six feet (1.8m) long. The cable, compatible with USB Power Delivery and rated up to 60 watts, is for charging power only and does not support data and video.

BreakSafe can be ordered now for $39.99 on Griffin’s website ahead of April 25 shipping.

Related Roundup: Retina MacBook
Tags: MagSafe, USB-C, Griffin, BreakSafe
Buyer’s Guide: MacBook (Buy Now)
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Apple Seeds Second Beta of iOS 9.3.2 to Public Beta Testers

Apple today released the second beta of an upcoming iOS 9.3.2 update to public beta testers, just a day after seeding the second iOS 9.3.2 beta to developers. iOS 9.3.2 beta 2 comes just over a month after the public release of iOS 9.3 and three weeks after the release of iOS 9.3.1, a followup bug fix update. iOS 9.3.2 has been in testing since April 6.

Beta testers who have signed up for Apple’s beta testing program will receive the iOS 9.3.2 update over-the-air after installing the proper certificate on their iOS device.

Those who want to be a part of Apple’s beta testing program can sign up to participate through the beta testing website, which gives users access to both iOS and OS X betas.

iOS 9.3.2, as a minor 9.x.x update, focuses primarily on performance improvements and under-the-hood bug fixes to address issues that have been discovered since the release of iOS 9.3. We don’t know all of the fixes that will be included, but significant Game Center bug appears to have been fixed in the first beta, while iOS 9.3.2 beta 2 added the ability to use Low Power Mode and Night Shift simultaneously. No other outward-facing changes or immediately apparent bug fixes have been discovered in the first two developer betas.

Related Roundup: iOS 9
Tag: iOS 9.3.2
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Apple Seeds Second Beta of tvOS 9.2.1 to Developers

Apple today provided developers with the second beta of an upcoming 9.2.1 update to tvOS, the operating system designed to run on the fourth-generation Apple TV. tvOS 9.2.1 is a minor update that comes one month after the launch of tvOS 9.2, a major update that introduced a range of features from Bluetooth keyboard support and dictation to Siri search for the App Store and app folders.

tvOS betas are more difficult to install than beta updates for iOS and OS X. Installing the tvOS beta requires the Apple TV to be connected to a computer with a USB-C to USB-A cable, with the software downloaded and installed via iTunes or Apple Configurator. Those who have already installed the first tvOS 9.2.1 beta will be able to update to the second beta over the air.

As a minor 9.x.x update, tvOS 9.2.1 likely focuses on bug fixes and performance updates to address issues discovered since the release of tvOS 9.2. No new outward-facing changes were found in the first tvOS 9.2.1 beta, but should any new features pop up in beta 2, we will list them below.

Related Roundup: Apple TV
Tag: tvOS 9.2.1
Buyer’s Guide: Apple TV (Neutral)
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10 signs it’s time to get a new phone – CNET

For some, the sign it’s time to get a new phone is when Tim Cook takes to the stage in September and announces a new iPhone is upon us. Or when Samsung unveils its latest Galaxy phone for Android.

If you aren’t on anything resembling a regular upgrade cycle, then your aging phone may be dropping some none-too-subtle hints that it’s time put it out to pasture and buy a new phone.

Here are 10 signs it’s time to get with the times:

1. The touch screen is slow to respond

If your phone has started to register your taps and swipes as suggestions and not commands, responding to some while ignoring others, it’s time to upgrade to a phone that listens to you and cares about you.

2. Your busted-up screen is a hazard

Worse than a slow phone is a cracked phone. You may have grown accustomed to your smashed display to where you barely notice the intricate spider-web pattern of cracks, but a crisp new screen is certain to delight your senses. Or just your eyes.

Matt Elliott/CNET

3. The battery life doesn’t get you to lunch

You have enough going on each day without needing to schedule a recharge for your phone. Unless you’re watching YouTube and movies all day on a recent-model smartphone, you can reasonably expect to leave the house with it each morning to return at the end of the day without ever stopping to recharge its battery.

4. Your phone decides it’s suddenly time to shut down (again)

Do you know what’s worse than constantly running out of battery? The random shutdown. And the only thing less fun than the random shutdown is the random shutdown followed by your phone taking its sweet time powering back up. Or refusing to turn back on until a point in time of its choosing. Get a new phone and gain some predictability in your life.

5. Your photos and videos look like they were shot through a screen door

Along with a new phone comes a better camera. Stop capturing grainy, low-resolution moments and start collecting crisp, clear, high-resolution memories.

CNET Networks

6. Good morning! You’re still out of storage space

Even tiny, low-resolution photos can begin to accumulate and occupy a big chunk of an old phone. Move to a new phone and you’ll have, at minimum, 16GB of storage at your disposal. Then again, with a high-resolution camera on that phone taking high-resolution photos and videos, you may need tips on how to survive with a 16GB phone.

Sarah Tew/CNET

7. You flip open your phone to answer calls

If this applies to you, I’m also going to guess you maintain a Geocities page.

Sure, you’ve perfected the one-handed, wrist-snap maneuver to answer your flip phone, but you’ll soon come to enjoy the swipe-to-answer gesture of a modern cell phone, along with its many other benefits.

Alcatel

8. Plugging in headphones is an art

Getting audio through your earbuds begins by plugging them in and gently twisting the headphone jack. Sometimes, it’s a slight pull that gets the audio through. If that sounds familiar, the jack decided to retire early and your only option — if your old phone has it — is to use Bluetooth headphones.

Sarah Tew/CNET

9. No can understand what you’re saying

Maybe it was water damage or just old phone fatigue, but your friends have stopped accepting your calls. Your only options for getting your voice heard — should you decide to actually call someone — are to plug in your headphones or use the speakerphone. Otherwise you’ve basically resorted to text messaging.

10. 3G < 4G

What if I told you a 4G or LTE phone can deliver content up to 10 times as fast as your aging 3G phone? And not to rub it in, but just wait until you see the rumored speeds of the soon-to-come 5G network. Depending on how old your current phone is and the coverage in your area, when you upgrade to a new-and-improved phone you may also upgrade to a new-and-improved network.

CNET

If you are kicking the tires on a new phone, be sure to check out CNET’s smartphone buying guide to help you find the right one.

What’s the best TV streaming service? – CNET

Amazon has spun out its Amazon Prime Video service into a standalone monthly subscription, just like Netflix and Hulu currently offer.

Instead of paying a flat $100 fee every year for Amazon Prime (which includes free two-day shipping on most items, cloud storage, streaming music and video), you can opt to pay $8.99 monthly to watch movies and TV shows from Amazon’s catalog.

Amazon’s looking to compete with its two biggest streaming rivals, Netflix and Hulu, both of which offer similarly-priced monthly plans. However, Amazon’s monthly option seems to be the weakest deal since it’s cheaper to just buy a year Prime membership than pay the monthly fee.

With Amazon’s new plan, we wanted to check in on all of the streaming services available to see what they offer now and for how much.

Streaming showdown

*Showtime is owned by CBS, which is the parent company of CNET.

Netflix

Netflix is a strong contender for movies and killing it lately with plenty of original shows. It’s also completely commercial-free and available in hundreds of countries.

Basic plan:

• $8.99, £5.99, AU$8.99 per month
• Can stream on only one screen at once
• Does not include HD video

Standard plan:

• $9.99, £7.49, AU$11.99 per month
• Stream on two screens at once
• HD video

Premium plan:

• $11.99, £8.99, AU$14.99 per month
• Stream on up to four screens at once
• Ultra HD video

(Note that if you’re a long-time Netflix subscriber, your pricing may differ from what you see. Be aware that will change soon, though.)

Hulu

The big draw of Hulu is that you can watch the newest episodes of current shows the day after they air on broadcast. It’s good way to keep up with current TV without cable. The downside is that unless you pay more, you’ll see commercials. Sadly, Hulu is not available outside the US.

Free plan:

• No cost, but you’ll see commercials

Limited commercials plan:

• $7.99 per month
• Fewer commercials than free TV
• HD video, where available

No commercials plan:

• $11.99 per month
• No commercials, except on select shows
• HD video, where available

Showtime add-on:

• Additional $8.99 per month for Showtime content, including “Homeland” and “Masters of Sex.”

Amazon Prime Video

Amazon’s making a name for itself with original shows like “Transparent” and “The Man in the High Castle” and if you’re into older HBO shows like “The Sopranos,” it’s also a good pick. Sorry Australians, Amazon Prime Video is not available for you.

• $8.99, £5.99 per month or included with a $99, £79 one-year Prime Membership
• HD video
• Commercial-free
• Watch on up to two screens at once.

Streaming TV ServicesCreate line charts

SanDisk iXpand Flash Drive review – CNET

The Good The new SanDisk iXpand Flash Drive is super compact, very speedy when working with a computer and adds up to 128GB of storage to your iPhone or iPad. Its mobile app can back up data from your mobile device effectively and play back content well.

The Bad The drive can’t hold files larger than 4GB and doesn’t support popular audio soundtrack formats. It shortens the mobile device’s battery life.

The Bottom Line The new SanDisk iXpand Flash Drive is a good way to add storage to your iPad but it’s not a huge step up from its predecessor.

Visit manufacturer site for details.

View full gallery

The new iXpand Flash Drive from SanDisk

Josh Miller/CNET

Unlike many Android phones and tablets, iPhones and iPads don’t have expandable storage. You’re stuck with the 16, 64, 128 or 256GB that are built in to the Apple device you buy. Unless you get an iXpand Flash Drive, that is.

The new iXpand Flash Drive is the smaller and faster version of the clever iPhone/iPad accessory that came out in late 2014. It’s a thumbdrive that works with either a regular USB port on a computer, or a lighting port on an Apple mobile device. When connected to an iPhone or an iPad, you can use a free app, called iXpand Drive, to playback content stored on the drive — a wide variety of video, audio and document files — or back up the phone’s photos and contacts.

As a thumbdrive, the iXpand performed well in my testing with the sustained copy speed, via USB 3.0, of around 50MB/s for writing and around 90MB/s for reading, a huge improvement from just 11MB/s and 13MB/s, respectively, with the previous version. Thanks to its smaller design, the new iXpand Flash drive can also clip to an iPad without getting in the way too much. And in testing, the iXpand Drive app worked well for both data backup and media playback.

But the improvement ends there; the new iXpand still has a few flaws. First, it doesn’t have its own battery (the old version does), and in my trial, while backing up my photos on the drive, my iPhone 6S’ battery drained much faster — about 1 percent of battery life every 4 minutes. Also, anyone with a trove of ill-gotten videos should be forewarned: the iXpand Drive mobile app doesn’t support some popular sound encodings, such as DTS or AC3. This means many “ripped” video files will play without sound. (The old version of the drive used to support these sound encodings but no longer does now after required firmware upgrades.)

On top of that, the new iXpand drive retains a major drawback found in the previous version. It needs to be formatted in the archaic FAT32 file system to work with the mobile app. (You can format it in other file systems, such as NTFS or exFAT, but then it can only work as a regular thumbdrive.) FAT32 can hold single files of just 4GB or less. Since most feature-length HD movies require more than 4GB to store in a digital format, there are many movies you can’t bring with you using the iXpand.

In all, if you want fast copy speed, the new iXpand is a good choice at the suggested price of $49.99, $69.99 $89.99 and $129.99 for 16GB, 32GB, 64GB and 128GB, respectively. But if you want better battery life, the previous version is the way to go.

LG G5 Battery Life review

While its past G-series flagships have been small evolutionary upgrades on previous handsets, this year LG revolutionised its flagship with a modular-toting battery-replaceable metal design.

Yet, change doesn’t always mean for the better, and while there’s a lot of great things going for the LG G5, the redesign of the LG G5 means the battery has shrunk slightly from 3000mAh unit packed inside the LG G4 and LG G3 to a 2800mAh unit, which is still removable. Do the efficiencies of a new processor and Doze Mode in Marshmallow deliver enough to satisfy the power-hungry, or does the G5 fall short?

• LG G5 Review
• Feature Focus: LG G5 camera
• Feature Focus: LG G5 modules and peripherals
• Feature Focus: LG G5 CAM Plus

LG G5 Battery vs the LG G3

How does the LG G5 battery life stack up to the competition? Join us to find out in this, our LG G5 battery life review.

In the review below, we’ve compared the data from our LG G5 testing versus both versions of the Galaxy S7 and also compared it to Google’s flagship, the Nexus 6P. In the graphs below, (E8890) and (SD820) denote the Exynos and Snapdragon versions of the Galaxy S7 respectively.

WiFi Browsing Test

To kick off our testing, we charged the LG G5 to full, removed the charger and ran our custom WiFi browsing test tool at full brightness until the battery drained to 0. We then recharged the phone, and recorded the Screen on Time recorded by the Android OS. During the test, the LG G5 was placed 3 metres from the WiFi router it was connected to and syncing of accounts and data had been switched off.

In this test, the LG G5 scores an average Wi-Fi browsing battery life of 5 hours and 34 minutes. By way of comparison, this is lower than the Snapdragon powered Galaxy S7 (6 hours 30 minutes), the Exynos Galaxy S7 (6 hours 48 minutes) and the Nexus 6P (6 hours 37 minutes).

Video Playback Test

From WiFi browsing to video playback and again, we tested from full to empty. Looping the same 5-minute video over and over on each of these handsets, we ran the test at 50% brightness and then recharged the phone to get the screen on time listed by the Android OS. During the test, each device was put in airplane mode to prevent any syncing or connections preventing the video from playing.

In this test, the LG G5 scores a video playback battery life score of 10 hours and 2 minutes, which, while respectable again, does pale in comparison to the competition. Interestingly, the LG G5 continues the trend started in the first test of offering approximately 15 to 20% lower battery life than the Snapdragon powered Galaxy S7, which has a battery that is approximately 7% larger and scores 11 hours and 52 minutes.

Standby Test

Our third and final test involves testing the longevity of each handset, as an indicator of the maximum standby life. Each smartphone was charged to full and WiFi was turned on with the same set of apps syncing data and notifications (11 apps in total). After exactly 24 hours, the remaining battery life was measured and this data used to extrapolate the total potential battery life.

Standby testing is somewhat subjective as it will vary slightly between devices, even with the same set of apps syncing. In actual usage, standby time can vary widely but with the limited testing we’ve conducted, we can see the LG G5 achieves a standby battery life of 9 days and 4 hours. This is again, slightly lower than the Snapdragon Galaxy S7 but higher than the larger battery inside the Google Nexus 6P.

Real world usage

Testing under these conditions isn’t always indicative of day-to-day usage, where variables such as network coverage, usage of other apps and more, can all impact the actual battery life offered by a smartphone. To this effect, does the battery life live up to its billing above?

From a couple of weeks’ worth of usage, I’d say the battery life is somewhat on par with the data captured in our testing. Standby time is pretty good and with low usage, you can easily expect the G5 to last between two and three days. The real trouble comes with medium to heavy usage, where the battery life is somewhat of a let down. The maximum we’ve achieved is 4 hours’ screen on time, which is average compared with the 5-6 hours offered by the Galaxy S7. In fact, with the much more affordable Xiaomi Mi 5 able to also score between 5 and 6 hours, the G5’s battery is quite disappointing in actual usage.

Quite interestingly, the LG G5 does seem to offer 20 percent lower battery than the Snapdragon powered Galaxy S7, despite the battery only being 7 percent smaller. Whether this is down to Samsung’s per-app battery saving feature in TouchWiz is unclear but the data certainly provides food for thought and is something to keep in mind if trying to decide between these two smartphones.

Wrap Up

The first thing to note when considering the data above is that we’re using an T-Mobile US branded LG G5, and the few preloaded apps may have a small impact on battery life. That being said, there’s no denying that, although you can swap the battery inside the LG G5, it certainly isn’t on par with other flagships.

LG G5 in video:

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• 
  LG G5 Review!

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  LG G5 vs iPhone 6S

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  LG G5 in 20 Seconds

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  LG G5 vs Nexus 6P Quick Look…

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For heavy users in particular, the battery life may be a concern and for anyone but a light user, we’d probably suggest keeping a spare battery. And there in lies the G5’s biggest advantage – although a lot of smartphones do support quick charge, the fastest way to go from an empty battery to a full one is by swapping it out.

Consider that a removable battery is almost an extinct beast and the LG G5 is even more impressive for the heavy user; LG deserves plaudits for sticking to its guns about offering a removable battery and as long as you don’t mind splashing out for a spare battery, the LG G5 battery life won’t be a concern.

Will the update to Android N in a few months offer significant battery life advantages? What do you think of the LG G5 battery life and if you have one, what battery life have you experienced? Let us your findings in the comments down below!